The Jobs Market Is Collapsing

Recent news from the jobs market has been terrible. Consider these points from the latest employment report:

Payroll employment has declined by 3.6 million since the start of the recession in December 2007; about one-half of this decline occurred in the past 3 months.

As the graphs below indicate, the economy is in terrible shape.

Let's start with the last expansion. The best reading of job creation for the last expansion gives us a total of 8,330,000 non-farm jobs created. This is from the 129,822,000 in August 2003 to 138,152,000 in December 2007. However, the latest reading of total non-farm jobs gives us a total of134,580,000. In other words, the job market has lost 3,572,000 jobs or 42.88% of all the jobs created in the last expansion. That's a huge total. Here is a graph of the above numbers.

But the situation becomes worse as we look deeper into the numbers. Here is a chart of total goods-producing jobs created during the last expansion:

You'll notice we didn't create any goods production jobs. In fact from the high point of 24,716,000 in July 2000 we've now down to 20,245,000. Some of these losses are caused by increased productivity. In other words, some of these are the natural results of job destruction. But there are other less positive reasons for the decrease as well.

The best reading of the professions jobs market gives the latest expansion a total of 8,288,000 jobs created, from teh low point of 129,864,000 in July 2003 to 138,152,000 in December 2007. But by the last job's report, we've lost 3,572,000 of those jobs. In other words, 43% of professional jobs have gone.

If we look at the job market from the perspective of the unemployed we get an ugly picture as well.

As the chart above shows, weekly new and continuing unemployment claims are at their highest level since 1982.

And the length of time people are unemployed is increasing.

The chart above represents the number of people who have been unemployed for 5-14 weeks. This is the highest the number has been since 1982.

The number of people who have been unemployed for over 15 weeks is at its highest level in since 1982.

And the number of people who have been unemployed for 27 weeks and longer is at its highest level since 1982.

The above three charts illustrate that the job market is still weakening -- people who have lost jobs are unable to find new ones and are therefore spending longer and longer times out of work.