Jobs down in August


When was the last time we had even one month of growth in employment according to the payroll survey? I cannot get to the Bureau of Labor Statistics webpage to check this. 600,000 jobs lost since January, 93,000 in August alone.
Washington Post, September 6, 2003: Payroll Jobs Down in August

The continued job losses have caused some analysts to begin to worry that if employment does not increase substantially in coming months, the recovery might begin to weaken again in 2004.

"The jobs report is just awful," said Bill Cheney, chief economist at John Hancock Financial Services in Boston. "Businesses across the board are figuring out ways to do more with fewer people. Practically every sector of the economy got rid of jobs in August."

If growth in the coming months "isn't enough to get any net hiring, the risks rise that the stimulus from the tax cuts and defense spending could produce a one-time boost that will fizzle out next year," Cheney said.

As has been the case for most of the past three years, job losses have been concentrated in manufacturing. That sector shed 44,000 jobs last month and more than 2.7 million since mid-2000, the department said.

"This is a lousy employment report as manufacturing has now lost jobs for 37 consecutive months," said Jerry Jasinowski, president of the National Association of Manufacturers. "The armchair experts who say this is just another cyclical downturn are in a dream world completely out of touch with today's competitive realities. This unprecedented loss of manufacturing jobs is due to structural changes in international trade, rising costs of production in the United States, and the resulting cash flow squeeze that forces job cuts."

Note we're starting to talk about a double-dip recession here. Or as I'd like to call it, a dubya-shaped one.

UPDATE: BLS website is back up. January 2003 payroll survey employment was higher than December 2002 employment. Seems odd, and I wonder how much of that is due to seasonal adjustment mechanisms. Having said that, using seasonal adjustment is still the best way to compare employment from January to August. January 2001 minus August 2003 (preliminary) equals 2,675,000 jobs lost. The start of the recession was March 2001, so March 2001 minus August 2003 equals 2,766,000 jobs lost. Okay, recession "ended" November 2001, according to NBER, so November 2001 minus August 2003 equals 1,139,000 jobs lost. Over the next 14 months, the economy has to create 81,000 jobs a month just to get above the level when the recession ended, and 191,000 per month to get back up to where it was when Dubya took office.

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