651k Jobs Lost In February, 4.4m Lost Since January 2008 (Charts), Unemployment Up To 8.1%

The Bureau of Labor Statistics February non-farm payroll report showed that the economy lost 651,000 private sector jobs in February. This is the fourteenth straight month of losses, putting the job loss toll since January 2008 at almost 4.4 million, with 2.6 million of these job losses occurring in the last four months. This is the first time since records began in 1939 that job losses were higher than 500k for four consecutive months. BLS also reported that 12.5 million people are unemployed. This is an 8.1% unemployment rate, up 3.2% from a year ago. It was only December 2008 that the—NBER officially announced recession. See charts below

Making these numbers all the more serious is the fact that there are now 8.6 million people who would like to work full time but are working part time because their hours have been cut or they can’t find full-time jobs. This forced-into-part-time-work category is up 787,000 in February alone and up 3.7 million over the last 12 months. This is the fine print of the jobs report—the headline job loss and unemployment statistics show that these 8.6 million people are employed and therefore not in the job loss category, but these 8.6 million workers are just hanging on.

Chart 1 below shows the jobs growth trend since January 2007 to January 2009. Chart 2 below shows which industries jobs were lost or gained last month. Chart 3 shows percent change in private sector jobs since the recession began in December 2007. Here is the full February jobs report.

CHART 1: MONTHLY JOB GAIN/LOSS JANUARY 2007 TO JANUARY 2009

CHART 2: FEBRUARY 2009 JOBS BY SECTOR

CHART 3: PERCENT CHANGE IN JOBS SINCE RECESSION BEGAN
Total nonfarm employment peaked in December 2007, coinciding with the start of the recession as declared by the NBER. With the recent acceleration of job losses, nonfarm employment has fallen by 4.4 million since its peak, with about half of the loss coming in the past 4 months.