USA Employment...Still Bumping Along the Bottom...

[GRG55]

The economy has lost 170 thousand jobs over the last year, and 7.5 million jobs since the recession started in December 2007.

Employment Situation Summary

Transmission of material in this release is embargoed



until 8:30 a.m. (EDT) Friday, July 2, 2010




THE EMPLOYMENT SITUATION -- JUNE 2010

Total nonfarm payroll employment declined by 125,000 in June, and the
unemployment rate edged down to 9.5 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor
Statistics reported today. The decline in payroll employment reflected
a decrease (-225,000) in the number of temporary employees working on
Census 2010. Private-sector payroll employment edged up by 83,000...

[charliebrown]

Re: USA Employment...Still Bumping Along the Bottom...

total number of people employed was down from last month,
U6 was up. Also weekly pay per worker was down too. I'm not sure if this is less hours worked, or
declining pay rate.

This was not a good report. But things have been worse in the great contraction.

[chr5648]

Re: USA Employment...Still Bumping Along the Bottom...

Does the bls count the amount of high school kids that graduate and don't continue their education? does the bls count college graduates without a job? obviously these would be seasonal adjustments, but from the look of things, and my conversations, there seems to be alot of post high school and post college unemployment.

[GRG55]

Re: USA Employment...Still Bumping Along the Bottom...

Does the bls count the amount of high school kids that graduate and don't continue their education? does the bls count college graduates without a job? obviously these would be seasonal adjustments, but from the look of things, and my conversations, there seems to be alot of post high school and post college unemployment.

Here's a chart from Calculated Risk on teen employment trends:





But this is the story of this "recession"...the long term unemployed...

[FRED]

Re: USA Employment...Still Bumping Along the Bottom...

But this makes the current recession appear less severe than the 2001 version.

You have to look at the second order effects.

[chr5648]

Re: USA Employment...Still Bumping Along the Bottom...

Do these account for seasonable adjustments? what about subtracting the adjustments?

[GRG55]

Re: USA Employment...Still Bumping Along the Bottom...

Fred: I don't see how the chart in the first post makes this recession appear less severe than 2001...it's deeper than any post war recession yet, and as the title of the thread implies we are "still bumping along the bottom" with no real indication of a sustainable recovery in job growth.

Having said that, I agree completely with iTulip...the real story of this recession is the extraordinary unemployment duration. And that is going to create societal dislocations and problems beyond imagination in the decade to come.

[GRG55]

Re: USA Employment...Still Bumping Along the Bottom...

Do these account for seasonable adjustments? what about subtracting the adjustments?

The chart is from BLS data which includes seasonal adjustments. The number of unemployed for 27 weeks or more was reported as 6.751 million (seasonally adjusted).

Also note that the shorter durations, which had been declining in recent months, all showed an uptick [as a percent of labour force] in June.

[jk]

Re: USA Employment...Still Bumping Along the Bottom...

Here's a chart from Calculated Risk on teen employment trends:





But this is the story of this "recession"...the long term unemployed...

this looks like a bifurcation of the unemployed population. there are a growing number of - essentially- permanently unemployed, and a separate population representing normal turn over in employment. those long unemployed are decreasingly likely to find any employment going forward, and are in the process of joining the underclass and/or the involuntarily retired.

[radon]

Re: USA Employment...Still Bumping Along the Bottom...

this looks like a bifurcation of the unemployed population. there are a growing number of - essentially- permanently unemployed, and a separate population representing normal turn over in employment. those long unemployed are decreasingly likely to find any employment going forward, and are in the process of joining the underclass and/or the involuntarily retired.

This raises the question of what to do with all the people that are are no longer needed to screw heads on dolls.

[GRG55]

Re: USA Employment...Still Bumping Along the Bottom...

Does the bls count the amount of high school kids that graduate and don't continue their education? does the bls count college graduates without a job? obviously these would be seasonal adjustments, but from the look of things, and my conversations, there seems to be alot of post high school and post college unemployment.

More interesting data on this question courtesy of Calculated Risk...

Table Long Term Unemployed

Education Level	% of Labor Force at that education level			% of Unemployed at that education level			% of Long-term unemployed at that education level			Average (mean) length of unemployment at that education level in weeks
Age	ALL (25+)	25 to 44	45+	ALL (25+)	25 to 44	45+	ALL (25+)	25 to 44	45+	ALL (25+)	25 to 44	45+
No High School	8.8%	9.7%	7.9%	16.8%	?(2)	?	15.3%	17.6%	12.9%	30.0	28.3	32.9
High School	29.1%	27.5%	30.9%	38.0%	?	?	38.6%	38.8%	37.3%	32.3	30.1	35.2
Some College(1)	27.6%	27.9%	27.2%	26.4%	?	?	26.8%	27.2%	26.4%	32.8	30.1	36.4
BA or higher	33.6%	34.9%	33.9%	18.8%	?	?	19.8%	16.4%	23.4%	32.8	29.2	36.2

[GRG55]

Re: USA Employment...Still Bumping Along the Bottom...

Another picture, this one from Jan Hatzius at Goldman Sachs:

Exhibit 1 illustrates the extent to which the recent recession and its aftermath have diverged from postwar experience by plotting the level of nonfarm payroll employment against prior postwar cycles, starting from the peak of the business cycle (i.e. the start of the recession). Relative to the start of the recession, the level of employment payrolls is now about 8% lower than in the median cycle of the 1954-1982 period. Scaled to the current level of the labor force, this is a shortfall of roughly 10 million jobs.

[GRG55]

Re: USA Employment...Still Bumping Along the Bottom...

Looks like the USA will be able to maintain some employment cleaning up tar balls even after the BP Macondo blowout is finally killed...

Tests: No crude oil in tar balls found along Florida coast

Orlando Sentinel
July 11, 2010

Florida's shoreline was apparently untouched by any raw petroleum before the Deepwater Horizon disaster smothered the western Panhandle with crude oil in June. That's according to what authorities consider to be the most exhaustive detective work yet on tar balls found along the state's 1,260 miles of coast.

U.S. Coast Guard lab findings defy the longstanding belief that a regular ingredient of at least some of the tar balls that for years have turned up occasionally on state beaches is either crude spilled during offshore drilling or oil that seeped from natural vents under the Gulf.

Of the 192 batches of Florida tar-ball samples sent since mid-May to a Coast Guard laboratory in Connecticut, the vast majority have turned out to be lumps of heavy fuel oil, dark and syrupy as molasses and commonly used to power oceangoing ships.

None of the samples was identified as containing unprocessed, crude oil...

...Gronlund said his chemists, when examining fresher samples, can easily distinguish between the chemical fingerprint of crude oil and those of refined petroleum products such as heavy fuel oil, diesel and various lubricants.

The search for tar balls along Florida shores took on heightened urgency two months ago when dozens of blobs of oily tar began to wash up in Big Pine Key, Key West and the Dry Tortugas.

Authorities then thought it unlikely that crude oil could have drifted so quickly across 500 miles of open Gulf from the BP PLC oil-well blowout, which began April 20 with an explosion and fire on the drilling rig Deepwater Horizon nearly 50 miles south of Louisiana.

A day after those tar balls first appeared in the Keys, a Coast Guard jet carried what was deemed to be "samples of national significance" to the service's laboratory, which determined within hours that they were composed of heavy fuel oil. The source was never identified...

[GRG55]

Re: USA Employment...Still Bumping Along the Bottom...

And it doesn't look like it's getting any better any time soon...

From Calculated Risk: [click on link for explanation of Benchmark Revision]

[Thailandnotes]

Re: USA Employment...Still Bumping Along the Bottom...

This raises the question of what to do with all the people that are are no longer needed to screw heads on dolls.

Put them in basement cubicles forging signatures on mortgage documents.