Latest Unemployment Figures §
The net lost jobs for April are officially 539,000. They're offset by the 66,000 census workers hired temporarily to take the census, and who will be unhired after the census is done. So you know the real number is still in the 600,000 range. (Over the course of the next year, the Census Bureau will hire some 1.4 million people. Temporarily.)
But we know the country needs a net gain of 150,000 jobs per month just to keep up with population growth and maintain the same employment rate.
Every monthly net loss of 600,000 jobs puts us back 5 months! (The difference of +150k and -600k is 750k.) Since the recession began in December 2007, some 5.7 million jobs have officially been lost. (source)
Even if the economic recession were to be over by the end of 2010, for employment figures to get back to pre-recession numbers (not percentages!) by May of 2011 (i.e. full employment recovery), we'd need to see growth in the range of 240,000 per month for 24 months assuming growth starting NOW!!
If we wanted it to truly recover and get back to the right percentages in terms of keeping up with population growth, we're talking of a need closer to 400,000 net jobs growth per month starting now.
Obviously, that's not going to happen. First of all, we're going to continue losing jobs for several more months if not much longer. One example: GM And Chrysler are shedding jobs and factories fast. Their supplies are doing the same. This will continue to have a ripple effect.
Corporate and consumer spending are now undergoing structural/secular change of a more or less permanent nature. Now that easy credit is gone, we're not just going back to the historical mean, we're falling further. People are saving more because they're scared. People are spending less because they're scared or because they're unemployed.
I just saw roughly 10 percent of my fellow employees laid off last week. I'm part of the majority of Americans who are scared and saving.