This is a supplement to my Friday post titled January Job Report Statistics, Wage, Spending, Inflation, and China Changes regarding planned layoffs and long term unemployment.
Layoffs for January 2008:
- Job cuts rose by 69% in January 2008
- December of 2007 had 44,416 (source is Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc.)
- January of 2008 had planned 74,986 layoffs
- August of 2007 was the most recent high with 79,459 and I think that was mostly tied to the abrupt end of housing construction
- 2001 had a an average of 140,000 layoffs from March to September
Long Term Unemployment:
- In January of 2008, 1.4 million people in the US are considered long-term unemployed
- The average for all of 2007 was 1.2 million people unemployed for longer than six months, that is 17.6%
- The percentage for all of 2000 was 11.4% (this was right before the 2001 recession)
- January of 2007 was about 21%
- December of 2007 was showing a reading of 18.3% (that is a one month growth of 3%) of those unemployed are unemployed longer than six months
Notes:
- The long term unemployed don’t affect the unemployment number reported by the government
- A high percentage of people that are long term unemployed erode away at the economy because they have used their unemployment insurance and savings and are now accepting of jobs that will pay less than their previous market standard (creating wage pressures for the employee)
- The rate of layoffs isn’t recessionary high yet, but it is increasing
- Those that have been laid off are not finding comparable jobs quickly
Resources for this post:
Why job market is even worse than you think
Stimulus plan may not lead to many new jobs
Working Thoughts 