Month 22 of Job Losses and No Relief in Sight

The Unemployment rate hit a dizzying 10.2% today.  It’s basically the highest rate we’ve had since 1983.  The unemployment rate that includes discouraged workers and workers at part time jobs that want full time instead hit 17.5%   Needless to say, this is NOT encouraging at any level.  The one thing I saw that is possibly hopefully was an uptick in temp jobs.  This may signal the need for workers but an unwillingness to commit to them yet.  Hard to know if it’s just seasonal, a blip, or a fluke yet.   Here’s a link from the NY Times that dissects the details.

It talks about the one thing that comes from over paying men, higher unemployment come recession time.  Women still earn 77 cents on the $ for men and are holding down jobs that tend to do better in recessions.  Education and health care sectors were one of the few job sectors hiring and women tend to dominate the people caring industries.  Institutional racism can also be seen in the numbers.  Asian Americans traditionally have the lowest unemployment rates while young black men have the highest.  Here’s the recent numbers showing this trend.

The latest job report amplified the reality that the pain has fallen particularly hard on men, who suffered a 10.7 percent unemployment rate in October, as compared to 8.1 percent among women. Among African American men, unemployment reached 17.1 percent in October.

Unemployment reached 9.5 percent among white Americans, 13.1 percent among Hispanics and 27.6 for teenagers.

Other details can be found straight from the BLS site here.

Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men (10.7 percent) and whites (9.5 percent) rose in October. The jobless rates for adult women (8.1 percent), teenagers (27.6 percent), blacks (15.7 percent), and Hispanics (13.1 percent) were little changed over the month. The unemployment rate for Asians was 7.5 percent, not seasonally adjusted.

The bad news on duration continues with a huge chunk of people being unemployed for long periods of time.  In a healthy economy, the majority of the unemployed would reside in the 4 -6 week range.  Anything noticeable beyond that is really bad news which is why the Administration and Congress are moving to extend unemployment benefits.

The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over) was little changed over the month at 5.6 million. In October, 35.6 percent of unemployed persons were jobless for 27 weeks or more…

WAPO spent some time discussing the possibility of new stimulus as well as the move to extend the benefits.

The crossing of that symbolic 10 percent barrier is likely to weigh on both the psychology of American consumers and the urgency of efforts in Washington to prop up the job market.

President Obama signed a bill Friday morning to extend unemployment insurance benefits longer, reflecting the rise of long-term joblessness. The bill also extends a first-time home-buyer tax credit and expands it so current homeowners are eligible, and the administration and congressional leaders are both weighing other steps they could take to bolster the job market.

Speaking in the Rose Garden, Obama called the unemployment rate jump to above the 10 percent threshold “a sobering number that underscores the economic challenges ahead.”

He also said his economic advisers were considering additional public spending to create jobs, which a growing economy continues to shed. Obama said new “investment” in road and bridge construction, renovations to make buildings more energy efficient, export support for manufacturers, and other ideas are now under consideration.

Any new fiscal stimulus would come on top of the $787 billion mix of spending and tax cuts that Obama pushed through in February. Congressional Republicans, in particular, have called the stimulus package ineffective and will likely cast additional spending as proof they are correct.

There’s some criticism afoot that the defense of the current stimulus as well as the number of jobs its said to have saved don’t add up.  There’s been a number of sites criticizing the Administration’s Job Math.  Here’s one such article from the Denver Post.

The federal government reported Friday that Colorado created or saved 8,094 jobs through grants, loans and contracts funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Problem is, the figure is wrong, according to an analysis of recovery.gov data by The Denver Post.
Although a Colorado Springs Head Start program reported it had created or preserved 269 jobs, the real number was three, according to an interview with a program manager. And although the largest private contract in the state funded with stimulus dollars was estimated at $166 million, the number was off by tens of millions, apparently because of a data-entry error, contract information shows.

Despite the government’s bid to provide unprecedented details of spending, figures for stimulus awards in Colorado, as with an earlier data release, are inconsistent, inaccurate or incomplete so far.

“You’ve got compliance issues and you have data-quality issues,” said Michael Balsam, an executive with Onvia, a Seattle company tracking stimulus spending.

There is definitely a lack of free fall in the numbers now, but my guess is they’re not going to turn around any time soon.  A lot of labor economists I’ve read recently are saying it may take until 2012 to see solid recovery in the jobs market.  This is way too late for the midterm elections and my guess is by then, it’ll be way late for a true democratic agenda.  The party will undoubtedly lose big.  Of course, we know who to thank for that.

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