Credit: Topic started on 6-10-2009 @ 06:24 PM by liveandletlive
The national unemployment rate
for the construction industry rose to 17.1 percent as another 64,000 construction workers lost their jobs in September, according to an analysis of new employment data released today. With 80 percent of layoffs occurring in nonresidential construction, Ken Simonson, chief economist for the Associated General Contractors of America, said the decline in nonresidential construction has eclipsed housing’s problems.
New figures showing an almost 5 percent increase in spending on single-family homebuilding and residential improvements mask the fourth consecutive monthly slide in nonresidential construction, a leading industry economist said today. Ken Simonson, chief economist for the Associated General Contractors of America, noted that spending on nonresidential construction projects declined in August by $3 billion, bringing the cumulative drop since August 2008 to $34 billion or 4.7 percent.
“The problems facing the construction industry aren’t just devastating construction workers, they are crippling our broader economy,” said Stephen Sandherr, the association’s chief executive officer. “Simply put, you can’t fix our economy until you fix the construction industry.”
Creating Jobs
“President Obama’s first priority in confronting the economic crisis is to put Americans back to work.”
“The recovery plan will SAVE OR CREATE about 3.5 million jobs while investing in priorities that create sustainable economic growth for the future.”
thirdbasepolitics.blogspot.com…
About those unemployment numbers….
By now you’ve likely heard about the 9.8% national unemployment rate as announced this morning.
But did you know that number could have been much higher had not the labor force massively decreased?
Once again, the unemployment rate would have risen by a much larger amount if the civilian labor force hadn’t lost 570,000 people since last month. As we mentioned in previous posts, the labor force normally increases by ~ 150,000/month, so that’s a huge, very unusual, decrease. In fact, had the labor force size simply remained the same, the unemployment rate would have jumped to 10.2%
Biden Says “Bad News” of Unemployment Numbers Does Not Diminish Confidence in Economic Recovery
freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com…
I don’t usually write about macro things. But a journalist asked me about the duration of unemployment, and I checked out how this recession compares to previous ones. I looked at the percentage of the unemployed who have been out more than 26 weeks in past recessions: July 2009, 34 percent; July 2003, 22 percent; July 1992, 22 percent; and even in the very deep and long 1980 to 1982 double-recession it was 25 percent in July 1983. “So what?” you might ask, since the unemployment rate this time is not likely to reach the 10.8 percent of late 1982.
The answer is that the welfare effect of unemployment depends on its duration. Society is worse off at 10 percent unemployment if that figure is concentrated on a small number of long-term unemployed than if it’s spread more evenly across the labor force. A few weeks of unemployment don’t exhaust savings and don’t lead to great depreciation of skills. A year of unemployment can do both.
By this important criterion, this recession has had the biggest negative impact since the Great Depression.
This is what caught my eye:
If you will accept that while people get discouraged, no one really drops out of the labor force (stops looking for work) unless they have saved $$, rich relatives or are wealthy themselves, then the 500k that purportedly dropped out of the labor force should be added to the 15.1 million considered currently unemployed, for a grand total of 15.6 million total currently unemployed.
Oct. 2 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. economic slump earlier this year was so severe it short-circuited the government’s model for calculating payrolls, raising the risk that today’s jobs report may be too optimistic. (MORE)
So if “Obama’s recovery plan will SAVE OR CREATE about 3.5 million jobs, and they dont expect the unemployment rate to go down any time soon, doesnt that mean that aproximately 11.6 million people at best have no chance of finding a job anytime soon?
