Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Employment Picture: Getting There... VERY Slowly

Bloomberg details:

Job openings in the U.S. fell in November from the highest level in two years, signaling a sustained labor market recovery will take time to develop.

The number of positions waiting to be filled decreased by 80,000 to 3.25 million, the Labor Department said today in Washington. The number of people hired dropped from the prior month and separations climbed.

The drop in job openings was led by education and health- service providers, which saw a 91,000 decrease in openings. Retailers had 37,000 fewer jobs available and state and local government agencies saw a 25,000 decrease. Professional and business services, which include accountants, computer systems experts and temporary-help agencies, had the biggest increases in available employment, followed by manufacturers.



Back to Bloomberg:
Compared with the 15 million Americans who were unemployed in November, today’s figures indicate there were 4.6 people vying for every opening, up from about 1.8 when the recession began in December 2007. The number of jobless fell to 14.5 million last month, pushing the unemployment rate down to 9.4 percent, the lowest since May 2009, the Labor Department reported last week.
Source: BLS

3 comments:

  1. Interesting question though is, what percentage of the news jobs are full-time positions that pay well enough to live on and have benefits that people need?

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  2. SPECTRE of DeflationJanuary 12, 2011 at 6:04 AM

    But for the fact that people are falling off the unemployment rolls, we would of seen no improvement in the unemployment rate last week. When you are using Banana Republic methods to print a better number, you are done. Up is down, left is right and night is day because the government says so. Scary as Hell if you ask me!

    One number that does say it all is the fact that minimum wage would be close to $20 per hour to have kept up with inflation. How exactly does one take care one's family with everything one would NEED, healthcare, food, fuel and education to name a few going through the roof? As I said, we are living in bizzaro world and please enjoy the bread and circus.

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  3. SPECTRE of DeflationJanuary 12, 2011 at 6:08 AM

    Actually I will adjust my last to post to say that the number would of improved to around 9.65 to 9.7 without the magic pixie dust they are all sniffing. Glaciers move faster than the unemployment number.

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