Here are the job market and compensation numbers for July 2008 (based on the job report):
Net loss of 51,000 jobs in the month (revised to a loss of 67,000 jobs in September 08)
- Analysts expected a loss of 75,000
- June was changed to a loss of 51,000 from an estimate of 62,000 and May
was modified to a loss of 47,000 jobs - seventh straight months of job losses
- Since the early spring the rate of job losses is slowing
Unemployment rate rose to 5.7%
- Forecasters thought it would raise to 5.6%
- Underemployment is now at 10.3%
- Highest since 2003 and more than 2% higher than a year ago
- Worst reading since March of 2004
- The rate is now up 1% since a year ago and over 0.7% over the last three months alone
- Those that are unemployed for longer than 6 months now makes up 19.1% of the unemployed, up from 18.4% in June
Specific Segment Job numbers:
- Construction lost 22,000 jobs
- Professional and Business Services lost 24,000
- Manufacturing lost 35,000 jobs
- Health Care added 33,000
- Government sector added 25,000
- Leisure and hospitality added 1,000
Wage:
- The seasonally adjusted average hourly wage increased 6 cents to $18.06
- Inflation is up 5% over the last 12 months
- Average hourly earnings over the past 12 months is 3.4% (same as June)
- For rank and file workers, the 12 month growth of paychecks is 2.8% (same as June)
- The number of hours worked dropped from 33.7 hours to 33.6 from June to July
- Workers who are now part time instead of full time in their current job rose to 3.7 million
- Highest in more than 50 years
- People who can’t find a full time job so are working a part time job rose to 5.3 million
- This is up over 1 million over the last year
- This is 3.7% of those employed – highest since 1995
Notes:
- GDP has to be around 2.5% growth for the generation of jobs.
- GDP for the second quarter of 2008 was 1.9% (revised to 3.3%)
Working Thoughts 