The Job Market Crashes to Earth

[xchrom]

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/06/the-job-market-crashes-to-earth/257972/

***SNIP

Earlier in the year, it seemed as if the U.S. labor market might be capable of defying the gravity of the world's economic problems. The country gained an average of 226,000 jobs a month from January though March, expanding as Europe spiraled into crisis and China showed signs of slowing down. But it might have been false hope. We know some of that economic activity was the result of an unusually warm winter, which moved up construction hiring earlier into the year. This month, building jobs shrank by 28,000, mostly due to seasonal adjustments by the Labor Department. Contractors are hiring fewer workers than usual now because they hired more than usual a few months ago.

In short, there now two months of data showing that we too are being dragged down into the globe's mess, which is only becoming more severe. Europe has proven itself chronically incapable of getting its act together. China's woes are accelerating as its factory production slides. These are our export markets, and as they contract, our factories, which have been the backbone of this recovery, are going to be in trouble. Already, May manufacturing output grew at the slowest rate in three months. And with Congress effectively on hiatus until the election, there isn't much sign that any help will come from our elected officials. The job market's only lifeline may be the Federal Reserve, which could try to inject some life into the economy by printing more money if hiring continues to disappoint. But there are no guarantees.

To put today's results in a long term perspective, I headed over to the Hamilton Project's recovery calculator, which lets you forecast how long it will take the country to return to pre-recession employment levels. If we added 208,000 jobs a month, which was the average during the best year of the oughts, we'd make it by around 2020. For some macabre fun, I plugged in 69,000. It couldn't give me an answer.




Our jobs growth is lower than anybody contemplated it might be a few months ago. And without some help, there's no sign things are going to improve.

[lunatica]

1. Add jobs just to update the US's infrastructure and what happens?

I just saw a special on how bad our infrastructure is. Fixing what needs to be fixed would probably add a million jobs. It's downright scary to know how badly we need to fix thing in this country. It would put a lot of young people to work and it would update our badly delapidated infrastructure.

[spanone]

2. bullshit. if that's the case, the world ended under gwbush

[patrice]

3. Here in Brownbackistan you can get hired for 40+ hrs in 6-days a week at a little better than $11@hr

No mention of benefits - AND - we get to pay ALL of the taxes for the corporation hiring you.

Yes, it was sales, so there was a potential for more, but you DO wonder what kind of deals the brand new managers were getting in that situation.

[Mister Ed]

4. Betcha some sweeping tax cuts for the rich would fix this in a jiffy!

, bitter

[BOG PERSON]

5. i wish the government would step up

and just start finding stuff for unemployed people to do in exchange for like a guaranteed minimum income. not only would that rescue a lot of americans from becoming part of the surplus population, it would go a long way toward restoring the public's trust in the government too.

but it would also probably distort labor demand + generally pervert the natural outcome of market forces, i.e. consigning a big chunk of the labor force to the surplus population. so what i wish the government would do is politically unfeasible.