J.O.B.L.E.S.S. How Do You Spell Recession?

Posted on | April 4, 2008 | No Comments

The Department of Labor released its much anticipated March jobs report today. The news was not good. That’s bad.

Collectively, we all danced a little jig early this week when the market soared (like a phoenix rising) to close up nearly 400 points.  We all secretly hoped that the gale-force winds of recession might finally slow to a manageable breeze.

But, it was not to be.  First, Bernanke finally joined our reality, well sort of, when he stated that we “might be in a recession”.  Then, the Department of Labor released its March Employment Situation Summary today.  The report is filled with negatives; the few positives–a 5-cent increase in the average hourly wage and measly industry-specific job gains–are not enough to salvage the news.

In March, we lost 80,000 jobs, 17,000 more than we lost in February.  The number of unemployed persons increased by 434,000 this month (bringing the total unemployed to 7.8 million).  The unemployment rate climbed from 4.8 to 5.1 percent.

Most of the job losses occurred in construction (51,000 jobs lost), manufacturing (48,000 lost), employment services (41,800 lost) and administrative and support services (38,300 lost).

And, if that’s not enough, the average duration of unemployment is now 16.2 weeks!

So that you don’t think the news was completely abysmal, here are the positive bits:

• The biggest job gains were in education and health services, food services and government.  These sectors added 42,000, 23,000 and 18,000, respectively.

• The duration of unemployment is going down (It was 17.5 weeks in January, 16.8 weeks in February, and 18.4 weeks one year ago in March 2007).

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