A jobs jolt
Posted on November 6, 2009 at 10:49 amI know the basic argument that employment is a lagging indicator, but who’s going to stand up and say this number won’t make for a dismal holiday shopping season? And keep in mind that the official unemployment rate doesn’t account for people who have simply stopped looking for work. Add them in and we’re getting way too close to 20 percent.
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California deal brings Oklahoma CCA jobs
Posted on November 5, 2009 at 7:24 amTwo days after announcing a big contract amendment in California, Corrections Corp. says it will grow the payroll at its North Fork prison by two-thirds. Look for a similar release soon about the 900-odd Golden State prisoners going to Arizona.
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One in eight Tennessee factory jobs gone since 2007
Posted on November 2, 2009 at 12:49 pmMore bleak data from the manufacturing sector: Tennessee factories has shed more than 56,000 jobs since September of 2007. The automotive sector accounts for more than 9,000 of those losses and has been laying off workers more quickly than the rest of the industry.
Putting health care reform in its place
Posted on at 10:22 amBehind job creation policies, that is. Robert Reich says the president has spent his political capital on the wrong priority.
The optimist in me says Obama can pivot off a health-care victory and launch some new initiatives that palpably and quickly spur job growth. The realist says there aren’t any such initiatives — at least none that can work fast enough to reverse the tide of unemployment before the midterm elections.
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Apartment rents to slide further
Posted on at 7:47 amData from the National Multi Housing Council shows the apartment market finding its feet, but observers don’t see price support coming soon from the job market.
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Just in case you thought onshoring might actually matter
Posted on October 29, 2009 at 8:02 am
Sitel VP Andrew Kokes says the anecdotal evidence of companies having success relocating call centers and other support operations to rural U.S. areas won’t materialize into anything material.
“I would say that there is zero reversal and it’s growing (offshore) faster than ever,” he said.
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VA adding call center in Smyrna
Posted on October 26, 2009 at 10:24 amThe Department of Veterans Affairs has chosen Smyrna’s Tennessee Expo Center for a new patient service call center that will generate about 300 jobs. The facility will serve 19 VA hospitals.
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Why state, local governments need more stimulus
Posted on at 9:10 am
Employment in state and local governments appears to lag that in the private sector by about a year. Given that the latter fell off cliff about a year ago, there’s a case to be made that funneling more stimulus cash to local governments now will stave off more job losses.
A more rigorous look at the looming physician shortage
Posted on at 8:26 am
A group of researchers that includes Vanderbilt professor Peter Buerhaus has compared projections of the number of physicians in the work force and concluded that widely used forecasts may be overly optimistic, especially when it comes to older doctors.
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State’s construction job losses among worst in country
Posted on October 22, 2009 at 10:08 am
Tennessee is 48th on an Associated General Contractors list that tallies the number of construction jobs lost in the 12 months to September. Only the hard hat job markets in Michigan, Arizona and Nevada fared worse.
“These figures should serve as a sobering reminder that public investments alone are not going to turn around a trillion dollar construction industry,” said Stephen E. Sandherr, the association’s chief executive officer. “The three most important issues in Washington ought to be jobs, jobs and jobs, which is why we need pro-growth measures like those we outlined in our blueprint for recovery.”
SEE ALSO: Our recent print story on the possibility of a construction labor shortage
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Crunching the numbers on the stimulus’ job impact
Posted on October 13, 2009 at 11:24 amEconomist Brad DeLong rips apart a Washington Post piece and offers up some basic math to help us get a better grasp on how spending trillions of dollars affects our daily lives.
That looks like a very good deal: buying an extra productive job for an American today at a cost of $2000 per year in higher taxes looking forward–particularly when you think that some of those extra jobs build up our productive capacity to make us richer in the future as well.
Mark Thoma follows up with some more perspective on the political dynamics of a crummy labor market:
I don’t understand why the left has allowed its hands to be tied be the GOP’s framing of the stimulus issue. Of course it’s a political non-starter if you don’t fight back and present alternative arguments. There are benefits to stabilizing the economy by shifting demand from the good times to the bad times even if it doesn’t affect future economic growth (one could even argue that slightly lower growth is an acceptable trade off for enhanced stability, but that too is a political non-starter). People need jobs, and we need to put the policies in place - whatever those are - that can provide them.
Banks are hurting small biz’s growth potential
Posted on October 12, 2009 at 9:38 am
Two related bits of info and analysis on the scope and repercussions of banks’ continued tightening of credit. The latest Fed numbers show outstanding commercial and industrial loans have dropped by some $250 billion in the past year. That has been most painful for small businesses, which can’t hit up the bond market to raise capital and create the jobs they have traditionally created coming out of a recession. Or in econospeak:
It’s not clear whether small businesses will continue to play their traditional role in hiring staff and helping to fuel an employment recovery. However, if [...] financial constraints are a major contributor to the disproportionately large employment contractions for very small firms, then the post-recession employment boost these firms typically provide may be less robust than in previous recoveries.
SEE ALSO: Via Milt Capps, a potential solution that would vacuum up leftover TARP cash.
Where the jobs will have to come from
Posted on October 5, 2009 at 9:52 amBelmont professor Jeff Cornwall says entrepreneurs will — as they have before — be the driving force behind a true recovery, one that really makes a dent in our painfully high unemployment rate.
So all we need is government to do more, and we will be OK? Sorry, neither big government nor big corporations feeding at the government trough have ever brought us out of a recession and into a sustainable recovery.
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Never to return
Posted on September 28, 2009 at 12:48 pmA new survey of more than 1,500 chief financial officers from around the world spits out one of the more disturbing recession-related statistics we’ve seen: A quarter of the jobs lost during this downturn may never be filled.
As a measure of just what it will take to return employment to year-end 2007 levels, CFOs say that, on average, sales revenues will need to increase by 37 percent from current levels in order to justify re-hiring those 6 percent of employees that have been laid off in the past 20 months.
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Four years till the good ol’ days
Posted on September 25, 2009 at 12:22 am
MTSU’s David Penn says it will take the Middle Tennessee job market until 2014 to recreate all the jobs that have been lost during this recession. On the flip side, that creation should begin by the end of the year, Penn told Thursday’s Economic Outlook Conference.
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