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U.S.News & World Report - What You Need to Know About the Brutal November Jobs Report |
| by By Liz Wolgemuth - 07/12/2008 |
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"Friday December 5, 1:32 pm ET
The job market took an especially brutal turn last month, with employers slashing their payrolls by 533,000 jobs--a figure that sailed above economists' expectations of 320,000 jobs lost. The Labor Department also........" |
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Friday December 5, 1:32 pm ET
The job market took an especially brutal turn last month, with employers slashing their payrolls by 533,000 jobs--a figure that sailed above economists' expectations of 320,000 jobs lost. The Labor Department also revised its employment numbers for October and September to show an additional 199,000 jobs lost over the two-month period.
There are now 10.3 million Americans who are unemployed and looking for work.
Here's what you need to know:
Who's cutting jobs? The payroll cuts were in nearly every industry. Jobs were lost in construction, manufacturing, employment services, retail, leisure and hospitality, and the financial sector. Healthcare and education were the only sectors to beef up payrolls.
What's happening to hours? Employers are not only slashing employees but also slashing employee hours. The average workweek dropped to 33.5 hours, which is the lowest average since the figure began being recorded in 1964. The number of people who were working part-time jobs involuntarily--either because their hours were cut or because they couldn't find full-time jobs--hit 7.3 million, about 2.8 million higher than a year ago.
When will it improve? Economists do not expect the job market to improve much before 2010. Joshua Shapiro, chief U.S. economist at MFR, says the labor market will continue to be "dreadful" for months. "History tell[s] that once the labor market weakens as much as it has in the past several months, job-shedding takes on a life of its own and tends to persist for a long while," Shapiro wrote in a morning note.
What is the government doing? It is clearly difficult to find a job in this market--the Labor Department reported yesterday that the number of people continuing to collect unemployment benefits hit a 26-year high. The pesident recently signed a bill that extended unemployment benefits by seven weeks, or 13 weeks in states with high unemployment rates, to provide some relief.
Congress is working on a second stimulus plan that would likely include an infrastructure spending program meant to boost employment by putting people to work building bridges, roads, and public buildings.. Some economists now expect that the stimulus will be much larger than the $500 billion figure previously suggested.
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