State jobless rate stays put
Posted on November 19, 2009 at 3:09 pmTennessee’s unemployment rate was 10.5 percent in October, even with September’s number and almost 4 points higher than that of a year ago. The biggest gainers and losers during the month were seasonal sectors: Schools added jobs, leisure and hospitality companies shed them.
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Dr. Doom sees 11% unemployment for two years
Posted on November 16, 2009 at 12:38 pmNouriel Roubini says the U.S.’ high jobless rate isn’t dropping anytime soon and risks causing a double-dip recession.
Other measures tell the same ugly story: The average length of unemployment is at an all time high; the ratio of job applicants to vacancies is 6 to 1; initial claims are down but continued claims are very high and now millions of unemployed are resorting to the exceptional extended unemployment benefits programs and are staying in them longer.
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High jobless number here to stay
Posted on November 11, 2009 at 11:26 amEconomist David Rosenberg, who thinks the jobless rate will soon top 12 percent, breaks down the dynamics of the unemployment rate and the bleak prospects of it falling anytime soon.
Think about it. We haven’t yet hit bottom on employment but that will happen at some point. Employment is not going to zero, of that we can assure you. But when we do start to see the economic clouds part in a more decisive fashion, what are employers likely to do first? Well, naturally they will begin to boost the workweek and just getting back to pre-recession levels would be the same as hiring more than two million people. Then there are the record number of people who got furloughed into part-time work and again, they total over nine million, and these folks are not counted as unemployed even if they are working considerably fewer days than they were before the credit crunch began.
So the business sector has a vast pool of resources to draw from before they start tapping into the ranks of the unemployed or the typical 100,000-125,000 new entrants into the labour force when the economy turns the corner. Hence the unemployment rate is going to very likely be making new highs long after the recession is over — perhaps even years.
Think the headline jobs number was bad?
Posted on November 9, 2009 at 7:59 amThen you don’t want to dig into the nitty gritty.
[T]he U.S. population is significantly larger today (about 308 million) than in the early ’80s (about 228 million) when the number of part time workers almost reached 7 million. Still - even adjusted for population - part time workers is at record levels.
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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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Seeing red
Posted on November 5, 2009 at 11:23 am
Barry Ritholtz passes on a graphic we’d all like to see be much blander.
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For the people, with the people
Posted on November 3, 2009 at 7:27 am
Spring Hill Mayor Michael Dinwiddie has begun working the line at GM’s Spring Hill plant, where the last Chevy Traverse will roll off the line in three weeks.
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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.
Why state, local governments need more stimulus
Posted on October 26, 2009 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.
State unemployment falls slightly
Posted on October 15, 2009 at 3:54 pmTennessee’s unemployment fell 0.2 percentage points in September, with professional services job growth outpacing retail job losses. However, 11,300 people left the state’s work force in the past month, meaning they were no longer counted in the jobless number.
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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.
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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Unemployment insurance systems get federal cash
Posted on September 29, 2009 at 8:10 amTennessee’s unemployment insurance plan infrastructure will get an upgrade courtesy of almost $7 million in Labor Department cash. Only Georgia, Ohio and Oregon received more money – which says we either lobbied well or our systems really need the help.
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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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