11k Jobs Lost In November, 7.16m Lost Since January 2008 (Charts), 10% Unemployment

By TheBasisPoint, December 4th, 2009

The Bureau of Labor Statistics non-farm payroll report showed that the economy lost 11,000 private sector jobs in November. This is the 23rd straight month of losses, putting the job loss toll since January 2008 at 7.16 million, with 4.08 million of these job losses occurring in 2009. After six straight months of losses greater than 500k from November 2008 to April 2009, job losses leveled off despite one spike in June 2009, and today’s report is a big surprise with losses decreasing so significantly. BLS also reported that 15.4 million people are unemployed. This is a 10% unemployment rate, up 5.1% since the recession began in December 2007. See charts below.

Additionally there are now 9.2 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 4.5 million since January 2008, but has been little changed in the past seven months. This is the fine print of the jobs report—the headline job loss and unemployment statistics show that these 9.2 million people are employed and therefore not in the job loss category, but because of their job status these 9.2 million workers aren’t likely to be consuming at normal levels.

Going forward for the rest of the year, we will see hiring for the 2010 Census have an impact on jobs numbers—these are temporary workers that will artificially inflate job rolls to the tune of about 1.5 million jobs. Even the BLS confirms that it will be difficult to get a handle on the job count because of the Census hiring:

In Spring 2010, the U.S. Bureau of the Census will begin collecting demographic data for the decennial census as directed by the U.S. Constitution. Initial preparation begins up to a year and a half prior to the actual Census Day (April 1, 2010) and involves thousands of temporary workers to conduct address canvassing and follow-up. Short-term field operations have very dynamic staffing levels that vary from day to day. During the various phases, the temporary and intermittent nature of the work can result in significant changes in monthly employment estimates as measured by the Current Employment Statistics (CES) survey. Hiring for the census is reflected in data for Federal government. The following chart and tables detail the impact of the 2010 Census on CES Federal government employment estimates.

Chart 1 below shows the jobs growth trend from January 2008 to present. Chart 2 below shows which industries jobs were lost or gained last month. Chart 3 shows how job levels have behaved in the last 10 years, with shaded areas representing recessions. Here is the full BLS jobs report.

CHART 1: MONTHLY JOB GAIN/LOSS JANUARY 2008 TO NOVEMBER 2009