Friday, March 6, 2009

Job losses are still ugly


You've probably seen lots of charts on the payroll data released this morning, but this one focuses only on private sector jobs. By excluding government jobs, which have been rising all throughout the recession (civil servants are notoriously difficult to fire, and expansive government spending plans require ever-more watchdogs), it actually makes the jobs picture worse than what you see in the headlines, by about 1 million.

4 comments:

Cabodog said...

Interesting -- still more jobs today than there were in 2001.

joemckendrick said...

Scott: Same observation as Cabodog -- the current levels for both surveys, though down and ugly, either are on par or exceed the 2000-2001 peak. This was considered the zenith of "dot-com" boom time with full employment and critical labor shortages. Has our labor force grown that much in nine years?

Scott Grannis said...

From the peak of the economy in 2001, prior to the recession, the labor force has grown about 7%, or just over 10 million.

Over long periods the labor force has tended to grow a bit more than 1% a year. So the past 8 years have been a little slower than usual.

LC said...

I'll be in Park City next week as well! Maybe I'll see you on line for the lift,