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Unemployment continues to be on the minds of most Americans, and in May the level of unemployment nation wide jumped again, up to 9.4%.We are now sitting at levels of unemployment that we have not seen since all the way back to 1982, as another 345,000 jobs were lost last month. The good news is that this was much lower than the figure that analysts had been forecasting.
Going into today's announcement, experts were expecting to see the number of new jobs lost last month to be around 530,000 jobs. So in some ways, last month was a successful month for the economy as far as unemployment is concerned. It was the lowest number of newly lost jobs in the past 8 months.
While it is possible to find a silver lining in the story, that probably comes as little consolation to the people out there that are among those who lost their jobs. In all, we have seen six million people lose their jobs since the recession started back in December of 2007. The layoffs have really been mounting the last seven months, as 4.6 million of the totals jobs lost occurred in that time period.
Hopefully, what we are seeing is the peak of job losses for the country. We will need to see a few more months in a row with lower losses, but May is a bit encouraging. What analysts are fearing is a double dip recession which could produce another sharp spike of job losses.
One thing is for sure... unemployment is a lagging indicator, so we are going to continue to see overall unemployment rise for at least another five or six months. That is, of course, assuming that the overall economy is currently coming out of its recession. Should the recession fool us, and start to worsen, the job losses could extent well into next year.
So while it is still way too early to draw many assumptions from today's news, we can at least argue that this could be the start of better days for the nations unemployed.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
6-05-2009 @ 5:21PM
adam1drift said...
I think it is funny how the media and the white house are playing this... "Its really bad, but its not bad at all..."
I dont get it... they think that this is the point where the unemployment rate bottoms out but it just isnt.
I see us going as high as 12-13% I just dont see a true turn around...
6-05-2009 @ 6:55PM
william lindblad said...
One consideration that seems to be lacking is the the official figures are always lower than reality, lower in the sense of optimistic. It is similar to the method used for calculating inflation - always remove food and energy. Is this a realistic barometer? Typical of this is is the end of unemployment eligibility. When this occurs one is removed from the role and not counted. Does this mean that a job has been found, of course not, it just means that there is a movement from a statistic to a non-entity.
It is quite the same with "job loss". While the reported losses are not as high as expected (but still large), there was mention of "job creation".
A little common sense could be applied here. If it is all negative, it is negative and there is no way to make bad news good news, unless you are the government or a Wall St. spin doctor. It is like the signs of winter to a migratory bird. When they appear the critter heads South. The signs say that this economic mess is far from over are prevalent, in fact quite abundant if the entire world is considered, yet the St. prefers fantasy land in which the good times keep coming. Schiff and Roubini are going to prove correct as another "Southern migration" is a sure event, short of a miracle intervention.
8-07-2009 @ 6:26PM
dannieb said...
amen to William Lindbald!
My calculations are almost doubled on unemployment.
Not only do you have people that have fallen of the numbers
game, but they should count all the people that are on Social Security that can work, but can't find work.
And let us not forget our homeless people that our Government would rather forget about.