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Employment Rate Drops as Economy Sheds 62,000
"Private sector job gains in the Bush years may fall below 3 million by November."
The employment to population ratio (EPOP) ratio fell to 62.4 percent in June, its lowest level in more than three years, as the economy lost another 62,000 jobs in June. This was the sixth consecutive month in which the economy lost jobs. The private sector lost 91,000 jobs in June. With the April and May numbers revised down by 76,000, the job loss in the private sector over the last three months has been 273,000, an average of 91,000 a month. The private sector has now shed 578,000 jobs since employment peaked in November.
Job loss continues to be led by construction and manufacturing, but most sectors are now losing jobs. Construction lost 43,000 jobs in June, with both residential and non-residential construction now shedding jobs. Employment in residential construction has fallen by 15.8 percent since its peak in February of 2006. By comparison, real spending is down by almost 50 percent over this period. The fact that employment has fallen so much less than production undoubtedly reflects the fact that many undocumented workers never showed up in the employment data.
Losses were widespread across sectors. Manufacturing lost 33,000 jobs in June, a number that would have been larger had it not been for the return of about 15,000 striking workers in the auto sector.
The retail sector lost 7,500 jobs, with 4,800 of the lost jobs in auto dealers. Auto dealerships have shed just 25,900 jobs (2.1 percent of total employment) over the last year. Given the sharp falloff in sales this number is likely to increase substantially in the months ahead.
In the same vein, employment in the real estate sector has fallen by 2.4 percent from its peak in January of 2006. With sales of existing homes down by almost 30 percent, sales of new homes down by almost 50 percent, and prices down by 15 percent, it seems virtually certain that there will be much more job loss in this sector in the months ahead.
The temporary help and the larger employment services sectors are both shedding jobs at rapid rates, losing 30,400 and 56,900 jobs, respectively in June. These two sectors, which are often seen as harbingers of future employment trends have, respectively, lost 150,000 and 200,000 jobs since January.
The health care sector, which had been adding jobs at a rate of more than 30,000 a month, added just 14,500 jobs in June. The earlier rate was clearly unsustainable, since it would imply enormous increases in health care costs. Similarly, educational services, another key growth sector, added 15,300 jobs in June, a rate that is also not likely to be sustained in the months ahead.
State and local governments added 25,000 jobs in June. They have added 233,000 jobs over the last year. With most state and local governments now facing severe budget shortfalls, this pace will surely slow in the new fiscal year.
The news in the household survey is consistent with the weak picture in the establishment data. The June EPOP is a full percentage point below the peak hit in December of 2006. It is 2.3 percentage points below the peak hit in April of 2000, a difference that corresponds to 5.4 million fewer people having jobs.
The biggest falloff has been among teenagers, who have seen a drop of 4.5 percentage points in their EPOPs. (The EPOP for black teens fell to 19.6 percent, the lowest rate since March of 1984.) While some have attributed this to the minimum wage hike, this falloff in teen employment is standard for recessions. The EPOP for teens fell 6.8 pp from April of 2000 to May of 2002, a period in which there was no change in the federal minimum wage. There also was a big jump in Hispanic unemployment, which at 7.7 percent is 3.0 pp above its low in October of 2006.
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13 Comments so far
Show AllIt's the Oil stupid!
Many more layoffs are coming. The only hope for the economy is if, Obama gets elected pulls us out of Iraq and has tea with the Iranians, and oil falls to $40 per barrel.
It's really that simple.
Wow! And maybe Santa Claus will bring each of us good little boys and girls enough gasoline for a year!!!
In other words, there is no hope for this economy, including the feckless Obama.
We have the candidates that the corporate media have decreed that we should have. We're fucked.
jj
We lost 62,000 jobs but the jobless rate is the same, 5.5%
Now that is neat. Figures don't lie but liars figurer.
Answer: These damn lazy people who have run out of unemployment insurance are no longer counted because they have stopped looking for jobs. Ha Ha. BS When I lost my job in 1990 I still kept looking after my unemployment stopped. With luck I found one.
That would mean if everyone lost their job and runs out of unemployment we will have 0% unemplyment.
Same thing they did with Social Security (Clinton) was create core inflation which excludes food and energy. Gives you a low figure and will help with your money if you quit eating and using energy. If this did not happen everyone that receives SS would receive twice as much and they are getting. And before the critics start I damn well paid into the fund and I damn well should receive my fair due. As should everyone else. But no, the Congress uses that money each years for BS.
This type of bullshit has been go for years fiddle with the figures and make them look good. Them is the inside the beltway boys.
In the midst of this decline, note that state & local governments have added 233,000 jobs over the last year.
Read the other article in today's lineup about the war on drugs, another failed war. I think this outcome is typical of government. Government is not effective at what it attempts to do. Society's problems are the sum of the problems of its members. Government cannot solve them. Pious politicians thrown huge sums at problems and proclaim the wonder of the huge sums allocated, yet nothing improves. The US has become blinded by money. All too many people recognize no other power.
We get a very poor return from government. Until the government begins to adopt solutions that work, that produce results, this nonsense will continue.
www.uspeacegovernment.org
In knowledge, there is real power.
Are the number of graduating students..high school and college who have just entered the job market calculated into these figures in any way? There must be thousands of these potential employees who are ready and willing to work but without an opportunity to physically add to the statistics. Wouldn't that change the overall dynamics of the actual employment figures? Just curious.
These figures are flat lies if you consider a "job" to be something that occupies a person for better than 30 hours a week and pays enough to support one adult and one child above the poverty line.
If a person responding to the survey reports that they did a single hour of paid work in the last two weeks they are reported as 'employed.'
The actual number of working age adults who 1)Need to work to support themselves or their families and 2)Don't have enough work to meet those needs is closer to 25%. Watch the storefronts boarding up and the number of homeless that increase every day.
If Obama has a clue he can't mention it because the media would attack him 24/7 if he told the truth.
If Obama has a clue he can't mention it because the media would attack him 24/7 if he told the truth.
Wow, such blind faith in Obama. But all along, folks, what did you think NAFTA really was? Many of us knew or became aware after the Seattle riots that it was really a race to the bottom. And the greedy ba** can't seem to destroy our job base fast enough. Hey, they are replacing us coming and going. The jobs that they cannot send away, they are recruiting cheap labor to fill, while telling you you're not qualified enough or do not want to do them! You're being sucker-punched at every turn, and believe the elites when they keep telling you how good it is for you. They're laughing all way to the bank. Don't you get that they don't give a dead fig about your hardship, or if your children go hungry, or even whether you live or die? They are RUTHLESS, and totally without conscience. They only PRETEND to care when it's necessary to hold the bleating sheep at bay. Sorry, but someone had to say it.
I wonder what corporate America will do when gas prices make it no longer cost effective to import all of the shoddy, sweatshop-made, lead-laced products into the US that used to be made here by American workers before our government subsidized the export of all of our jobs?
Or as jobs evaporate and wages plummet perhaps we'll simply reach a point where we're too poor to afford to buy them any more.
jesusofjonesboro July 5th, 2008 4:45 pm
"We have the candidates that the corporate media have decreed that we should have."
A little long for a bumper sticker, but well said.
The __ H O R R O R __ OF __ IT,
Reports just in that:
Politicians may be Failing Our Lobbyists
Namaste « Presence »
« We must be the change we wish to see in the world » — Gandhi
« There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed » — Gandhi
« We adopt the means of nonviolence because our end is a community at peace with itself » — ML King
veracity-did you used to go by the moniker presence-namaste?
truely, the real unemployment rate is more like 25%, just as pangolin says. They don't count in their numbers the poor folks that scrap by with 20 hours a week working a McJob. include those folks and you will start to see a very scary precedent. It is absolutly inexcusable why so many americans are idle or underemployed, while the corrupt elite in america takes more and more, and gives less and less (whether that be employing more people with fair 'living' wages, or by usurping their duty to pay taxes by covertly incorporating in places such as the Cayman Islands-all legal of course-they wrote the laws!!)
H O M E W A R D _ A N G E L,
Yes, that is me, and NSPIRE ( much before that ) and few dozen shorter life ones ( hummer bummer, twasbrillig, … )
¿ Are you also a reincarnation ?
Namaste « Presence »
The unemployment-to-population-ratio is a pretty good way to measure employment rates rather than the traditional way. It is still far from perfect because the adeqate hours and adequate pay is not part of the calculation. It makes no distinction between those who choose not to work and those who would work if there were childcare or better transportation. It makes no distinction between a job that allows you to live and a job that is a joke.
camus13 - I noticed that after Katrina the unemployment rate in New Orleans remained about the same or improved. This did not seem to make sense, since so many businesses had closed etc. So I looked into it and this is what I found. The unemployment rate is figured by a fraction
number of people unemployed
divided by
number of people in the work force.
The number of unemployed (numerator) is based on people who have applied in the unemployment office and are still looking for work. It does not count those who never worked nor those who have stopped looking or those who are not eligible for unemployment insurance or those who never applied for benefits. Naturally it is always an undercount.
I am not sure how the work force (denominator) is counted. But I saw that after Katrina the work force number was much much smaller than before the hurricane. So if your work force is smaller, then the unemployment rate doesn't look so bad. So if people flee from a region or drop out of sight as workers, then they are not counted in the work force.