Browse by Tags

Global Economic Watch » All Tags » jobs » employment (RSS)

KnowNOW!

Global Economic Watch

Syndication

Recent Posts

Tags

View more

Other Useful Blogs

Archives

  • Layoffs Down Slightly in November, According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas Report

    There were fewer layoffs in November than in October, but the total number of layoffs in 2011 has now surpassed 2010, with one month still to go. James O'Toole reports for CNNMoney : Outplacement consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas said 42,474 planned layoffs were announced in November, down 0.7% from October's total. That's the second straight drop after September's 28-month high of 115,730. But job cuts announced this year are up 13% overall and now total 564,297 -- already more than 2010's full-year total of 529,973 -- and we still have to get through December. Government and retail jobs, as well as those in the financial sector, have taken the biggest hit so far this year, the report showed. The government has announced cuts of more than 180,000 jobs this year, while retail has lost more than 48,000 and financial services 56,000. Read the full article here . Note: the Challenger report is for layoffs specifically. We'll be looking ahead to the Labor Department's monthly employment report for overall jobs numbers this Friday.

  • Chart(s) of the Day: The Effect of Construction Crash on Jobs and GDP

    Adrian Peralta-Alva , Senior Economist at the St. Louis Fed , gives us two charts that highlight the impact of the housing boom and bust on employment and GDP across 31 nations: Peralta-Alva writes: The chart on the left shows the direct effect of the changes in construction sector employment from 2008 to 2010 versus total employment for 31 different countries. The change in construction sector employ- ment is the construction sector’s proportion of 2008 employment times the percentage change in this sector’s employment from 2008 to 2010. This chart also contains a statistically fitted line that illustrates the strong relation between the two variables. The fitted line implies that declines in construction employment can directly account for about half of the observed changes in total employment. The chart on the right shows a similar analysis for the direct effects of construction sector output declines and declines in total GDP. The statistically fitted relation between these two variables is still positive, but a little weaker as the dots do not follow the line as closely. This weaker relation may be explained, at least in part, by the fact that the share of total employment in the construction sector is considerably higher than its share in GDP. Read Construction and the Great Recession here .

  • October Jobs Report: Unemployment now at 9.0 Percent

    The US economy added 80,000 jobs in October, according to the latest numbers released by the Department of Labor . The unemployment rate dipped down slightly, to 9.0 percent. The professional and business services and leisure and hospitality sectors led the job growth, while government employment continued to decline. Perhaps the most positive news from the report is that the number of long-term unemployed, those out of work for 27 weeks or more, dropped by 366,000 over the month. Here's a look at the unemployment trends from the Bureau of Labor Statistics : Here are some of the key data from other areas we like to track in the monthly jobs report: The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) decreased by 374,000 to 8.9 million in October. These individuals were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job. In October, 2.6 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force, about the same as a year earlier. (The data are not seasonally adjusted.) These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. Among the marginally attached, there were 967,000 discouraged workers in October, a decrease of 252,000 from a year earlier. (The data are not seasonally adjusted.) Discouraged workers are persons not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them. The remaining 1.6 million persons marginally attached to the labor force in October had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey for reasons such as school attendance or family responsibilities. Read the full report from the BLS here .

  • Atlanta Fed Macroblog: Charting Estimated Jobs Recovery

    On the heels of the September good-but-not-good-enough jobs report, David Altig --senior vice president and research director at the Atlanta Fed --charts how long it will take for the US economy to recover all the jobs lost since the start of the recession: The chart is from the Atlanta Fed's Macroblog , where Altig writes: Payroll employment growth has averaged about 110,000 jobs a month since February 2010, the jobs low point associated with the crisis and recession. This growth level compares, unfavorably, with the 158,000 jobs added per month during the last jobs recovery period from August 2003 (the low point following the 2001 recession) through November 2007 (the month before the recent recession began). One hundred and ten thousand jobs a month compares favorably, however, to the 96,000 job creation pace so far this year. Are these sorts of differences material? If the economy can find its way to creating jobs at the same rate as the last recovery—which nobody remembers as particularly off-the-chart spectacular—we would be back to the prerecession level of overall employment by spring 2015. If, on the other hand, we can only eke out the sub-100k pace we've seen this year, that date moves out to 2017. Altig goes on to point out that this chart is for the number of jobs, and not for the unemployment rate. With the slowest jobs recovery rate of the above chart,the unemployment rate would actually get higher, according to Altig's estimates. Read the full post here .

  • July Jobs Report: Unemployment Rate 9.1%, Small Job Gains in Private Sector Nearly Matched by Losses in Public Sector

    The unemployment rate has edged back down to 9.1%, as the US economy gained 117,000 as the US economy jobs in May, according to the latest report from the Department of Labor . The private sectors continues to add jobs. Notably, health care, retail trade, manufacturing, and mining led the way in hiring, while the public sector continued to lose jobs. Here's a look at the unemployment trends from the Bureau of Labor Statistics : Here are some of the key data from other areas we like to track in the monthly jobs report: The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) was about unchanged in July at 8.4 million. These individuals were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job. In July, 2.8 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force, little changed from a year earlier. (These data are not seasonally adjusted.) These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. Among the marginally attached, there were 1.1 million discouraged workers in July, about the same as a year earlier. (These data are not seasonally adjusted.) Discouraged workers are persons not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them. The remaining 1.7 million persons marginally attached to the labor force in July had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey for reasons such as school attendance or family responsibilities. Read the full report from the BLS here .

  • The Curious Case of Older Workers and Employment During the Recession

    Casey Mulligan has a very interesting post at the Economix blog today, based on this surprising graph: So older workers have either been more successful at keeping their jobs. Or many have had to return to work or work longer because of diminishing funds in retirement accounts--in which case they have had more success than younger workers at finding employment. Or both. Read Why Hasn’t Employment of the Elderly Fallen? here .

  • Kaufman Foundation Report: Small Businesses 'Starting Smaller, Staying Smaller'

    No matter what the prevailing discussion is in Washington, job creation remains perhaps the biggest challenge for policymakers. And many of the most ardent small business supporters argue that their sector is the real engine of job creation in the US. So jump-starting that engine would certainly be welcome. But it may be that small businesses started to change in size before the recession. That is, that they became smaller and had fewer employees. A new Kaufman Foundation report highlights this issue, and makes the case that a boost in small business job creation is highly dependent on the number of small businesses, and not so much on current small businesses hiring more people. Recent Census Bureau research has pointed to one factor that is contributing to this slowdown in job creation—shrinking job creation in startups. As shown in Figure 1, startups created an average of 3.5 percent of total U.S. jobs annually in the 1980s, but in the 2000s contributed only 2.6 percent of total U.S. jobs. While diminished in number, these jobs still were the difference between positive and negative overall net job growth in the United States. Media and academic commentators who bemoan America’s unusually slow rate of job creation after the 2007–2009 recession are missing what we believe is a longer-term trend that began earlier in the decade and might best be called a slow jobs “leak.” In the pages that follow, we draw upon newly available data to track businesses over time and dig deeper into the health of U.S. startups. We examine young companies’ size at birth, jobs created, and survival patterns to draw inferences about the health of emerging companies in the United States. The patterns we find among young businesses show that recent U.S. startups are performing much worse than prior cohorts in terms of job creation. Conventional wisdom about job growth tends to focus solely on the jobs that are being created at existing (typically big) companies. But as a wealth of recent research has shown,6 new businesses are vital contributors to a healthy jobs market. Indeed, we know that, until the Great Recession, new firms in the United States generated on average about 3 million new jobs every year. While these firms typically follow a quick up-or-out pattern of success or failure, our analysis highlights for further scrutiny of some additional and, we believe, significant facts about the jobs actually created by new businesses. Read Starting Smaller; Staying Smaller: America’s Slow Leak in Job Creation here .

  • McKinsey Global Report on 'Job Creation and America's Future'

    The McKinsey Global Institute 's new report on job creation paints a grim picture of employment prospects in the US for the coming years. The authors write that in today's global economy "there is no more important economic priority than building a strong workforce." And they project a return to full employment will take longer than in previous recoveries. Much longer. Here is a look at their projection compared to past recessions: The US economy needs to find jobs for the millions who lost jobs since the start of the recession, and then it needs to provide sustained growth and "better matching of US workers to jobs" for there to be any hope of a return to full employment by the end of the decade. From the report: To return to prerecession employment levels by 2020 and accommodate the new entrants into the labor force, the United States will need to create 21 million net new jobs in this decade. To understand how this might be achieved, we created three scenarios of sector job growth, using our survey data, interviews with companies, and macroeconomic forecasts of sector demand. In the most optimistic scenario, 22.5 million new jobs could be created by 2020, returning the economy to a 5 percent rate of unemployment by 2018. However, in the low-job-growth scenario, only 9.3 million net new jobs are added—implying continued levels of high unemployment. In our midrange scenario, about 17 million jobs would be created, with the unemployment rate remaining at nearly 7 percent in 2020 (Exhibit E2). The low-job-growth scenario is frighteningly familiar. Essentially, it would be a continuation of the weak US job creation trend since 2000. It would mean further contraction in manufacturing employment, a continued wave of automation and offshoring in administrative and back-office positions, and a new wave of automation in retail (for instance, more widespread adoption of self-checkout). As in the past decade, our projections show that college graduates would fill a disproportionate share of whatever jobs would be created. Where the scenario would diverge from the past decade is in health care, in which large efficiency gains or significant cost controls unaccompanied by job-creating innovation could slow rates of job growth. Read the full report, An economy that works: Job creation and America’s future , here .

  • Indeed: Interactive Map of Job Listings Per Capita by Metro Area

    The job search site Indeed has an interactive map that roughly shows which metro areas have the most new job listings. This is based on data from the first quarter of 2011. Here's what the map looks like: Click here to use the interactive map. (H/t The Big Picture )

  • February Jobs Report: 192,000 Jobs Added

    The US economy added 192,000 jobs in February, and the unemployment rate dropped to 8.9% according to the latest report from the Department of Labor . Here's a look at the unemployment trends from the Bureau of Labor Statistics : The economy has created, on average, 106,000 jobs per month since February 2010. Here are some of the key data from other areas we like to track in the monthly jobs report: The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involun- tary part-time workers) was essentially unchanged at 8.3 million in February. These individuals were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job. In February, 2.7 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force, up from 2.5 million a year earlier. (These data are not seasonally adjusted.) These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. Among the marginally attached, there were 1.0 million discouraged workers in February, a decrease of 184,000 from a year earlier. (These data are not seasonally adjusted.) Discouraged workers are persons not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them. The remaining 1.7 million persons marginally attached to the labor force in February had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey for reasons such as school attendance or family responsibilities. Read the full report from the BLS here .

  • Manufacturing Sector Adds Jobs for the First Time in a Decade

    +1.2%. Not a startling figure. But as James Hagerty reports in the Wall Street Journal , that may be a pretty significant number, as it represents the growth rate of manufacturing jobs in the US for 2010. It is the first year in which the sector gained more jobs than it lost since 1997. Of course, there was a lot of room to grow after the losses during the recession, so while the positive growth is significant, it may not be time for widespread celebration. And while growth may continue, Hagerty reports, it won't be at fast rates: The economists' projections for this year-calling for a gain of about 2.5%, or 330,000 manufacturing jobs-won't come close to making up for the nearly six million lost since 1997. But manufacturing should be at least a modest contributor to total U.S. employment in the next couple of years, these economists say. After a steep slump during the recession, manufacturing is "the shining star of this recovery," says Thomas Runiewicz, an economist at IHS. He expects total U.S. manufacturing jobs this year to rise to about 12 million. Currently, manufacturing jobs account for about 9% of all U.S. nonfarm jobs; the average pay for those jobs is roughly $22 an hour, or nearly twice the average for service jobs, according to government data. Despite the upbeat forecasts, job growth may remain modest because many companies are finding ways to increase production through greater efficiency and automation, without adding many workers. In the third quarter, U.S. manufacturing productivity increased as output rose 7.1% from a year earlier and hours worked grew just 3%. Conrad Winkler, a vice president at the consulting firm Booz & Co. who focuses on manufacturing, says manufacturers are being very cautious in their hiring, partly to avoid the risk of having to lay off people later on. Read the full article here . And watch James Hagerty discuss manufacturing jobs on WSJ's News Hub:

  • ADP Payroll Report: US Companies Added 297,000 Jobs in December

    ADP just released its December payroll report, and it shows a big boost in private sector hiring. Bloomberg 's Timothy Homan reports that companies "boosted payrolls" more last month than any previous month since the survey began in 2001. Seasonal hiring always makes December payroll numbers a bit different from other months, and the ADP report only includes private sector jobs, but this is likely welcome news ahead of Friday's Labor Department jobs release. Homan: Employment increased by 297,000, exceeding the highest projection in a Bloomberg News survey, after a revised 92,000 rise in November, according to figures from ADP Employer Services. The median estimate in the Bloomberg survey called for a 100,000 gain last month. Faster job growth will fuel the income gains necessary to further spur consumer spending, which accounts for about 70 percent of the economy. A Labor Department report in two days will show companies added 150,000 workers last month and the unemployment rate eased to 9.7 percent, according to the Bloomberg survey median. Read the full article here .

  • One Positive in US Employment: Job Stability

    Top White House economic adviser Austin Goolsbee was on ABC's This Week yesterday, and he tried to strike an optimistic tone about jobs for 2011: While we haven't seen the final employment numbers for 2010, it is difficult to imagine that the official unemployment rate dropped much below 9.8%. And the deeper we look into the data, the more bleak the jobs picture for 2010 was. But Brookings Senior Fellow Gary Burtless highlights one under-reported piece of the story that could be a positive sign for hope: job stability improved in 2010. So if you have a job, you are less likely to lose that job than you were a year ago: For more of Burtless's prognosis for the job market, click here .

  • October Unemployment Report: US Economy Adds Jobs

    It looks like we had some real job growth in October. While the unemployment rate remained at 9.6%, nonfarm payroll employment went up, with an additional 151,000 jobs added during the month, according to the latest report from the Department of Labor . Here's a look at the unemployment trends from the Bureau of Labor Statistics : In some of the other areas we like to track from the monthly jobs report: The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) fell by 318,000 over the month to 9.2 million, partially offsetting large increases in the prior 2 months. These individuals were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job. About 2.6 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force in October, up from 2.4 million a year earlier. (The data are not seasonally adjusted.) These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. Among the marginally attached, there were 1.2 million discouraged workers in October, an increase of 411,000 from a year earlier. (The data are not seasonally adjusted.) Discouraged workers are persons not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them. The remaining 1.4 million persons marginally attached to the labor force had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey for reasons such as school attendance or family responsibilities. Read the full report from the BLS here .

  • The Merits of More Spending on Infrastructure

    In his Labor Day speech Monday, the President announced a plan to pump $50 billion into infrastructure projects across the country. Brookings Senior Fellow Robert Puentes thinks this is a good move, as he believes bridges, roads, and railways are all in need of significant repairs. But he also wants the government to have a plan for using infrastructure projects to increase long term employment, and not just temporary jobs: Read more from Puentes on the federal government's infrastructure policies here .
1 2 Next >