Average Weekly Hours Worked, NFP Changes
By Barry Ritholtz - December 8th, 2009, 11:20AM
Two more interesting charts related to NFP (Our earlier chart collection is here).
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The only sectors showing real growth in employment are Education, Health Care and Government employees (i.e., Census takers for 2010)
CHANGE IN TOTAL NONFARM EMPLOYMENT
December 2007 through October 2009
Chart via Office of Thrift Supervision
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The change is hours worked appears to be part of a longer term secular trend. Regardless, this is just ugly, even with the recent improvements:
Average Weekly Hours: Total Private Industries (SA, Hrs)
Chart via Asha G. Bangalore, Northern Trust Global Economic Research
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December 8th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
Gee, it’s no wonder why health care and education cost so much. Another mini bubble that needs to be popped. Maybe we can all just care for and educate each other? That can be our entire economy, along with various financialized and gamed ponzi schemes, of course.
December 8th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
the reality is alot of those will not be coming back for more than a decade
December 8th, 2009 at 12:09 pm
¨Government employees (i.e., Census takers for 2010)¨
Spot on… and more to come. I have heard Locke (former governor of Wash. state, now in Wash DC for a.o. the census) say that for next year´s census they had come up with an extra extensive questionair. They need a lot of extra census workers for that. Also, they want to make sure they do not miss anyone, not even non-registered immigrants, so they want extra census workers for that too. In total, he estimated 1 million (!) temporarily (well paid, his words) gov. jobs. Expect some surprise U3 numbers soon.
December 8th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
Ugly, ugly, ugly. But this has been going on for some time: the shift to government jobs. Healthcare is effectively a shift to government employment given the size of Medicare and Medicaid.
What’s more interesting and unspoken is the demographic difference between a few “hot urban spots” like Manhattan, D. C. and Silicon Valley and the rest of the country. D.C. has never experienced a Depression or recession. Upper and middle class govt workers and contractors that is. Always more as opposed to fewer.
OT but not.
Krugman had an incredibly stupid op-ed piece on carbon cap-and-trade in the NYT yesterday. Not only was it vacuous but it exposed him as a willing shill for someone. Anyone care to guess who?
December 8th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
alfred
Indeed, healthcare and education are all too often quasi (at least the funding), or often actual, government jobs. And so as wonderful as it is for any given individual to have a job in these sectors, and as much as we certainly do need a certain number of employees there, it has to has it’s limits, and is not a great sign of robust employment growth to come.
And right now these are the areas that “everyone” is being directed to by employment counselors everywhere. How’s that going to work out? Glut anybody?
December 8th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
So instead of producing stupid material things that idiots can indulge themselves with, the economy of the future will produce an educated electorate. What a disaster (for the GOP). Not only that, but these educated bastards will be wasting their money on living longer and healthier lives, rather than living in absurdly oversized houses and driving absurdly oversized vehicles (poor Bin Laden, who is going to fund him now). Yes the world is definitely falling apart ;-)
December 8th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
@DeDude: Educated but unemployed (with enormous student loans to repay). Great combo.
December 8th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
Mannwich;
Only unemployed if they didn’t get their education in health care, or green energy, or other fields of actual use for society.
December 8th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
@DeDude: Don’t think those industries are quite big enough for everyone to work in, no?
December 8th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
A great example of a still robust local economy that is quasi-government in nature is Huntsville, Alabama. As this metro is part of my sales territory, I visit quite frequently, and grew up nearby.
Every damn job in that entire city is linked to the defense industry. They never built cars, never produced anything other than tech and Space and defense. In times when defense spending is cut, this economy suffers, often contrary to the US as a whole. Meanwhile, as many metros in the US are experiencing growing unemployment (including Birmingham, where I am, which saw it’s u-3 double in the past 12 months), are shrinking, Huntsville is booming.
Huntsville is 2nd only to Washington DC in the number of 4 Star Generals living in it’s metro population. Growth is everywhere, and homes, retail, and hotels are building on top of each other. It’s like 2005 all over again in The Rocket City!!
December 8th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
The Census isn’t hiring till 2010, Barry. I hope yours was just an off the cuff comment rather than a smarmy attempt to smear data you dislike.
December 8th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
i used to live in scottsboro, even back in 74 them genrals loved them some huntsville, the redneck florida, as far as costs and lake front properties go
alabama has actually had the fewest foreclosures per capita during the whole mess
December 8th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
How come Department of Labor hasn’t updated the monthly exhaustion rate since October? Anybody know?
http://ows.doleta.gov/unemploy/claimssum.asp
December 8th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
Come on DeDude. I know you’re not that obtuse. As Mannwich (and I) said, you can only have just so much of healthcare and education. We can’t ALL do it. And with so many people now trying to go there, retraining, etc. And with it being THE place to be according to career and job counselors, how is that going to work out?
We’re going to have a ton of people spending money for healthcare retraining that will end up a bust.
It’s the Big(ger) Picture
December 8th, 2009 at 3:39 pm
onlooker-
dedude has got it down-
highly paid green urban professionals- employed in alternative energy or healthcare- who take care of themselves- eat organic- and drink sparingly- up at dawn for Tai Chi in the public square-
the rest of the people- who cares about them
December 8th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
In the old days it pretty much took a full day of work to produce the basic things needed for a family to survive (food, cloths, shelter) and with a few bartered exceptions, the family pretty much produced it all themselves. As society became more specialized and efficient, less and less hours were needed to produce food to feed a family (or give them clothes, or build their shelter).
The “excess” labor time (hours in a work week in excess of what is needed to produce the basic nessesities for a family), can be spend in a lot of different ways. It can be used to build infrastucture to make society better or more efficient (roads, bridges, airports, parks, etc.). It can also be used to make society safer, for those who have lots of things (more police, jails, military), or better for those who have little (more food stamps, social programs). The efficiencies can also be channeled into shorter work-weeks, longer vacations, and earlier retirement (as the Europeans have done by accepting a lesser GDP to have a shorter work-life). It can be invested in other quality-of-life items such as education, health care, or arts. So all that excess labor time, that our increased efficiency creates, can be used in many different ways to make life and society better.
The most idiotic thing a society can invest the fruits of its efficiencies in is a propaganda machine that convinces everybody that whatever they have, it’s not enough, and that the purpose of their life is to get more.
December 8th, 2009 at 6:35 pm
We have become France without trying.
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