April’s employment data was released today. We now stand at an 8.9% unemployment rate which represents a 26 year high. Every one appears to be spinning away a brighter side of over 539,000 lost jobs with the refrain that at least it’s not as bad as it was in January. 
But, just because it’s marginally better, doesn’t mean the worst is over. All time series have variation and this may or may not signal the end of the worst of the worst monthly losses.
I’m still trying to figure out how people are finding glimmers of hope in this news given the historical perspective shown in the graph above from the NY Times as presented by its blog Economix. This compares the current recession to previous recessions. As you can see, we’re still straight off the cliff at this point. Equally impressive is the graph below from Market Watch which shows the monthly change in nonfarm payroll growth. It appears that the monthly changes may be close to bottom, but it’s way too early to tell if there’s going to be any improvement. That’s when you have to examine some of the underlying factors in the market. Remember, variation in any series is to be expected so you’ll get ups and downs just from random variation. Those movements don’t necessarily indicate a trend. What do economists say about these numbers?
From Economix:
“The employment data do not yet corroborate the extent of the diminishment of the intensity of the recession suggested by other economic indicators (ISMs, consumer confidence, etc,). However, if we continue to see declines in the four-week average of jobless claims (which has fallen for four straight weeks), this may suggest smaller declines in employment later in the second quarter. Nonetheless, relating this report to the bank stress tests, the unemployment rate in April is already at the “alternative more adverse” average level assumed for the 2009…” — John Ryding, Conrad DeQuadros, RDQ Economics
“In April, more than one in four unemployed workers, 27.2 percent, had been without jobs for six months or longer, the highest rate on record since the government started calculating this statistic in 1948.” — National Employment Law Project
“The unemployment rate rose to 8.9 percent, but this is entirely due to a surge in the size of the labor force, as household employment is reported to have risen…
“[W]ith the smaller headline job loss number, many are interpreting the April employment report
as yet another sign that the economy is “stabilizing,” but the more accurate assessment is that the economy’s pace of contraction is slowing, which is not quite the same as stability and is still a long way from the economy actually improving.” – Richard F. Moody, chief economist, Forward Capital, LLC“Soaring unemployment is depressing wage gains, up only 0.1% in Apr, putting the y/y rate down to 3.2%, a 40-month low. There’s much further to go here; seriously bad news because without wage gains people can’t deleverage unless they cut spending deeply.” – Ian Shepherdson, chief United States economist, High Frequency Economics
“With the exception of education and health care jobs, declines in the private service sector have been pervasive.” — Joshua Shapiro, chief United States economist, MFR Inc.
“[M]ost of what gains the labor market saw in April were due to the hiring of temporary workers in preparation for the 2010 Census, as government employment increased by 72,000 while the private sector shed 611,000 jobs.” — Economic Policy Institute
“[T]here were indications that industry’s headlong decline is bottoming out, as the manufacturing workweek rose for the first time since July 2008, and manufacturing overtime rose for the first time since November 2007.” — Nigel Gault, chief United States economist, IHS Global Insight
“[I]t still looks like the unemployment rate will move above 10% in coming months which will exacerbate the credit losses confronting the financial sector.” – David Greenlaw and Ted Wieseman, Morgan Stanley
“[T]he household measure of employment managed to rise for the first time in a year, up 140,000, and economists note that the household measure, although more volatile, can sometimes be better at picking up turning points in the economy. Even when the household measure of jobs is adjusted to be more like the payroll methodology (count each job a multiple job-holder has and exclude the self-employed), the data still showed a rise.” –Ian Morris, head of United States economics, HSBC
“Thanks to the economic stimulus program including innovative monetary policy, the economy could hit the bottom sometime around mid-year. The financial market has begun to stabilize and the credit flows throughout the economy are slowly improving.
“Economic contraction during the current quarter should moderate to around 3 percent compared to a decline of 6.1 percent during the first quarter.” — Sung Won Sohn, Smith School, California State University CI.
“Employment declines are gradually burning out. However, don’t be surprised to see job losses near 500K over the next two months and a lagged rise in the unemployment rate beyond.” –Steven C. Wieting, analyst, Citi
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Filed under: Economic Blogs | Tagged: Job Losses, job market, unemployment rate
My husband was all ready to retire two months ago and then we looked at each other and said “Are we nuts? Who is going to walk away from a full time job with benefits right now.?
Not us! He’s stuck for at least another year. Just more to go into his pension (yes – he actually will get one).
However, we feel very bad because some young person is probably not going to get hired until he goes.
Nah, they probably have a hiring freeze – so even if he leaves there won’t be a replacement.
I am lucky that I worked in academia. Three f my students just graduated and I am fearful for them. I wrote two successful grant proposals and was able to hire two grad students with that money. It was a tough choice because there were some who applied that were seasoned -like 5-10 years into the profession. I made a choice to help the newer grads because it is tough to gain experience. I am now about to write more grants and hopefully help some people.
we’ve had a hiring freeze off and on all year. we can’t hire ANY one new, even if it’s to replace some one that quit.
That’s going to be the situation at the school that I am quitting. But you know what? I do. not. care. If these folks had treated me with even a modicum of respect or dignity? They wouldn’t have a vacant position that they won’t be allowed to hire into.
And I do realize how fortunate and privileged I am to be able to say f*ck you to any employer in this economy.
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Very nice. You guys should put something on the front page, on one side perhaps, that talks about that.
I’m feeling very tweety now.
I’m sitting in my antiques shop here in Central TX watching the minutes go by. It’s after 2:00 and exactly one person has wandered in the door since I flipped over the ‘open’ sign. Looks like yet another day with no sales, as the overhead continues. Unemployment is lower in this region than in most of the country, yet those people who do come in, including those with secure jobs and decent incomes, are gluing their wallets shut. Say a prayer for those of us who have small retail businesses, because if things don’t improve very soon, many of us will go under by year’s end. This is the paradox of thrift which Paul Krugman talks about.
A friend of mine manages a craft store in VT and
can relate to what you are saying. I will send a prayer out for you.
Thanks, PD. After losing so much to Katrina, further losses are almost too unbearable to contemplate. My husband and I are already near the bottom economically, but along with millions of other Americans, we’re invisible to the lying, overpaid MSM, which insist on putting a rosy gloss on economic dross and serious pain. By doing so the MSM are simply increasing the agony of uncertainty by making so many feel so alone, as if there’s something lacking about us, instead of something very lacking in our government, now a subsidiary of Wall Street and the banksters. I try not to think about the situation too much, in an effort to avoid the road to madness.
This is very eloquently said. I was thinking I’m glad you have blogs such as this one so you don’t feel so alone and that’s true for many of us not marching to the MSM beat!
I knew of someone years ago who stopped renting a store front for thier antiques shop….just had warehouse space and an on line shop. Whichs seems like an idea. But I would think much is lost when one can’t stop by a shop such as yours and talk with you.
yup, and the fact credit is so tight means that it’s not easy to fund anything period, even on a card. One of those economists talked about de-leveraging above, that’s should be scary for every one but especially small businesses.
Since Katrina, I found out exactly how loyal certain businesses were about returning. I try to do all my shopping at local, small businesses now. I avoid the big box stores more and more all the time and definitely avoid ANY chain restaurant.
I go mom and pop all the way!
Good for you, d’kat. If only more people thought the way you do…
Well, that’s just depressing because I DID just quit my job!
are you going to be looking for another?
Not really. I haven’t been commenting here too much lately (or even reading as closely as I once did) because I’ve been so busy. I work at a law school (as an administrator who also teaches), but my night-and-weekend law practice is far more lucrative and I get more work than I can handle. The law practice also is minus the 30 faculty members who treat me like crap 9-5, so that’s another plus. I’m mostly worried about health insurance.
well, that’s good! you can probably look into the state’s blue cross blue shield program … that could be affordable
The scary thing is there are SO many job applicants. The job I was up for required a MLS and preferred a subject masters…It got over 70 applicants, about 1/4 of them had PhDs.
A History department here was highing for an instructor for a satellite campus (it is a step between high school and a comm. coll. – teach 6-9 3.5 hour classes a week!) it had over EIGHTY applicants all with PhDs.
My advice, if you have a job KEEP it! Don’t retire, and for the love of Bob DON’T try to job hop!!
satellite campuses and tech schools will do well for a time because people can be convinced if they are better educated, it will help in thier job search ….but the other parts of your posts disprove that notion….and you have a great point about job hopping …as in don’t do it. In my husband’s dept a number of folks were canned and it was those who left a job else where for the job in his dept that went. Awful. They left jobs to go to this job and were canned…ouch
It has not gone unnoticed by me, nor most people, that the MSM have been trying to pump us all up with psychological Viagra over the past couple of weeks. Their friends are pumping the same Viagra into the markets… as far as I can tell, the MSM have a flaccid reality they are not being honest about, and the markets are slightly priapic, but I don’t actually believe the invisible hand is going to help them out. At any rate. Its all going to go flat again, and soon.
That graph is the brutal truth of it. In fact, that is the first time I have lost my breath over economics, and I knew it was going to be bad. Its bad alright. Really really bad.
yup, that’s pretty much a straight down drop on that employment trend there … very scary, and it really shows you it’s the worst we’ve had since the Great Depression!
To continue on in typically cheery fashion – the signs point toward the definite possibility of our landing in another depression, which of course will officially be reported as an inconvenient recession. When will Americans rouse themselves from their private comas and band together to demand some truths and subsequent consequences? Ever?
I’m not holding my breath. Look how long it took for every one to get disgusted about Iraq and now it’s completely out of the public’s mind. We just shipped a lot of brand new young meat in Navy straight over to Afghanistan today. I guess we have another leader who never watched Lawrence of Arabia, or that movie about the Russians there … The Tank was it?
actually I read somewhere a month or so ago that the economy’s been sucking for 6 quarters now. That makes it officially a depression
I was asked to layoff close to my entire department (7 people) last week Thursday. It was a completely unexpected development and a shock as we were doing well.
We now have a skeleton crew and I am splitting my time between two unrealted departments.
I cried for most of the weekend.
0h, that is so awful, I’m sorry.
The institute of higher learning I decided to marry (for the stability) almost 8 years ago, is about to start massive layoffs, due to the brilliant endowment managers sinking an official 20% into CDS’s and other toxics (I bet it is closer to 40 but we will never know due to the non-transparency there). I keep doing gender math, hoping I will not be on the block due to being the only female where the male-female ratio is 40+ to 1… I already know that one colleague is on the block in my over-worked group… and I do not think we can afford to lose him but they are using this situation to get rid of a “troubled” employee who has been exemplary for a couple months now after disciplinary action. I would like to go to bat for him and save his job, but then, my calculations are that it would make ME a troublemaker. This is sickening. Retroactive laws need to be made, and people need to sit in prison for life for engineering and operating this calamity. Elizabeth Warren is RIGHT, this is a giant PONZI scheme on a global scale. It was illegal from start to finish, and the government-bankster incest should not go unpunished.
We will see what happens when the real suffering kicks in. This is devastation on a global scale. Terminator landscape and all.
So much pain out there, so little effort to hold accountable those responsible for it. Rage is absolutely warranted.
ayup
Elizabeth Warren is RIGHT, this is a giant PONZI scheme on a global scale.
There is no question about that. None.
I am so very sorry this is happening, LFI.
*unrelated
At NQ, Larry Doyle was also reviewing the morning numbers and had an interesting take on the upwards “reviewing” of the January and February numbers and on the underumployed ones.
So basically since they always seems to underestimate the first published numbers and since they are counting the census workers as full-time employees, the situation is even worse in reality.
Much more like discribed here. I don’t know about you all, but I WANT PROSECUTIONS!!!! I want to see some of those f#$$&ers in orange jump suits.
You only have to work an hour a week at a paid job to be considered ‘employed’ now thanks to a Republican rewrite of the calculation a while back.
That’s why you also have to look at “underemployment”
which is folks working part time when they don’t want to be, and folks working jobs that are beneath their jobs skills that will probably move to another one once the job market improves … besides the lower threshold of what it means to be unemployed, we also have really bad unemployment insurance so it forces people to grab jobs they really wouldn’t take under normal circumstances. Europeans don’t do that which is why their unemployment rates look higher typically, but really aren’t.
[...] Don’t Quit Your Job if you can Help It! (by dakinikat at The Confluence) April’s employment data was released [Friday]. We now stand at an 8.9% unemployment rate which represents a 26 year high. Every one appears to be spinning away the bright side of over 5[3]9,000 lost jobs with the refrain that at least it’s not as bad as it was in January… [This graph] from the NY Times as presented by its blog Economix … compares the current recession to previous recessions. As you can see, we’re still straight off the cliff at this point. [...]