Employment Situation November 2009

7 12 2009

On Friday, the BLS released the Employment Situation report.  Everyone jumped on the news that the unemployment rate actually dropped for the first time in months.  While this is a great indicator, the basis for the jump was an increase in temporary help and healthcare jobs.  With Christmas looming,  I fear this is an artificial indicator as this is temporary help for a season that requires more than normal levels of help.  We need a number of industries adding jobs for this report to be positive, until then it is just a little less negative.

We lost 11,000 jobs compared to the 130,000 that Wall Street expected.  Or perhaps we have cut so many jobs the last few months, that we could not find a place to cut anymore.  I am also curious if this isn’t a little manipulated either in timing or impact as the President has been calling for job creation.

What I would really like to see out of Congress and the White House are very specific plans around job creation.  Just like a company saying we want to see 20% growth, yet not laying out the specific marketing, sales, and operational plans to get there it is all just hope.  And hope is not strategy.


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Employment Situation Oct 2009

6 11 2009

The employment situation continues to demonstrate the frailty of the current economic climate.  In Sept the unemployment rate was 9.8%, Friday it was announced that Oct witnessed this number increase to 10.2%.  “This is the highest rate since April 1983.”  We are also at the second highest point (and growing) in the history of tracking the data – 1948.

(Here is the link to the commissioner’s report to Congress and the original report)

Employment Situation Oct 2009

If we look at a visual of the informtion, a number of things jump out at least to me:

1.  The Good, it looks like (at least to me) the higher the number, or the swifter the increase, the quicker the the unemployment rate drops.  There appears to be a natural slope (green line – A) to the decline in the the unemployment rate after a spike, which then is followed by a less gradual slope that marks a return to a healthy market (red line – B).  In roughly 1975 and again in 1983 we saw two spikes which then followed the green line’s slope – except in the case of 1983, we actually saw that trend bear out over the longer term, yet moved faster during the initial recovery period (reb box).

2. The Bad – if this follows the trend pattern of 1983 we may be looking at another 7-8 year recovery process to return the unemployment rate to around 6% which roughly appears to be natural healthy level.

3. The Ugly – We have yet to see the peak of this trend.  And even if this does turn around in the next month or two, we are so bad a shape across so many other sectors it may take far longer for us to return to a 6% unemployment rate.  If we continue to see credit tighten up at the rate it is going, we will see continued pressure on unemployment.


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Employment Situation Sept 2009

6 10 2009

Statement of Keith Hall, Commissioner, Bureau of Labor Statistics before the Joint Economic Committee UNITED STATES CONGRESS (PDF of his speech, or PDF of the actual report)

Job losses continued in September, and the unemployment
rate continued to trend up, reaching 9.8 percent. Nonfarm
payroll employment fell by 263,000 over the month, and losses
have averaged 307,000 per month since May. Payroll employment
has fallen for 21 consecutive months, with declines totaling 7.2
million. In September, notable job losses occurred in
construction, manufacturing, government, and retail trade.
Construction employment decreased by 64,000 in September.
Job losses averaged 66,000 per month from May through September,
2
compared with an average of 117,000 per month from November 2008
through April.

“Job losses continued in September, and the unemployment rate continued to trend up, reaching 9.8 percent. Nonfarm payroll employment fell by 263,000 over the month, and losses have averaged 307,000 per month since May. Payroll employment has fallen for 21 consecutive months, with declines totaling 7.2 million. In September, notable job losses occurred in construction, manufacturing, government, and retail trade.

Construction employment decreased by 64,000 in September. Job losses averaged 66,000 per month from May through September, compared with an average of 117,000 per month from November 2008 through April.”


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Employment Situation Aug 2009

9 09 2009

This is a new series of blogs in which I will call out and blog on a number of economic indicators based upon the musings of Bernard Baumohl in The Secrets of Economic Indicators.  In this series, I will work to provide a visual or two to explain the situation as well as a link to the press release.  The goal will be to post a blog covering the reported data and to build out a series of informational charts based upon the data.

Employment Situation is one of the more important indicators of US Economic health, and perhaps even more so in this economic climate.  It provides us an indication if the economy is expanding, or contracting in terms of jobs and therefor money to be spent.  Here is the press release from 9/4/09 which is August 2009 data.

Key points (from press release):

  • Non-Farm payroll employment declined by 219,000
  • Unemployment increased by 466,000 to 14.9 million
  • Unemployment increased to 9.7% (up .3%)
  • While job losses continued, the losses are not as bad as the months before
Aug 2009 Unemployment Data by gender and race

Aug 2009 Unemployment Data by gender and race

Analysis:  We are still losing jobs in the economy.  Teenagers are at almost 2.5x the national average, and minorites having 2x the increase as the average.

Risk:  While we have some indications that the recession is getting better, it is clear we have some elements that still have some ways to go.  If your business is targeted at teenagers and/or minorities you may want to plan for sales to remain weak until the trend at least turns back to positive growth.


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