Today’s Job Report

Holy crap! Unemployment jumped to 7.6% last month, the worst since September 1992. Nonfarm payrolls plunged by 598,000. The economy has lost jobs for 13 straight months. Since the recession began, the economy has lost 3.6 million jobs–half of that came in the last three months of 2008.
Here’s a look at the unemployment rate since 1995:

Here’s another measure of employment, the number of employed as a percent of the total population.

The traditional unemployment rate only counts folks “in the labor force” so if you’re not looking for a job, you’re not counted. Of course, people stop looking for jobs when there are no jobs so I really don’t get that one.
How’s this for a scary number. If the employed/population rate was at the level it was in April 2000, there would be nearly 10 million more jobs today. Wow.
I’m not a big fan of the nonfarm payroll report because it’s constantly getting revised. Today, the government revised all the monthly numbers for 2008. Can you guess if they were revised better or worse?

Actually, the numbers for January and February were a tiny bit better, most everything else is a lot worse.

Posted by Eddy Elfenbein on February 6th, 2009 at 8:29 am

The information in this blog post represents my own opinions and does not contain a recommendation for any particular security or investment. I or my affiliates may hold positions or other interests in securities mentioned in the Blog, please see my Disclaimer page for my full disclaimer.