Jobs

http://http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/05/business/economy/05jobs.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2

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"The best part of this morning's jobs report may be the hints that the government is understating job growth." (David Leonhardt)

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Private sector hiring has had a nice jump to 222,000 as of 3/4/11. That's a good number. Unfortunately, the "net number" is lower because state and local governments are continuing to lay off workers. High oil prices added to government layoffs are not a good mix for improving the "jobs" side of the economy.

As Floyd Norris points out, there are two categories to highlight in this month's jobs report: from the peak in August, 2008, 450,000 jobs have vanished from state and local governments (2.3% of the total). That's the bad news. The good news is that manufacturing jobs have continued to rise: 189,000 over the last year.

The more comprehensive measure of labor underutilization is the BLS U6 unemployment rate which measures people who have stopped looking for work or who can't find full time jobs. That rate has been declining from a high of over 17% to its current level of 15.9%. That is a good number and probably reflects, at least in part, the exceptional levels of corporate profitability currently being reported.

More off putting are the numbers for workers who have been unemployed for more than a year: 4.2 million people (30.4% of the unemployed). That's an all time high. That has to reflect some of the jobs that have been permanently eliminated.

Most economists would agree (although I may have overassumed here that they can agree on anything - and probably, if they did agree on something, I would disagree with them) that net hiring has to get over 300,000 per month for a prolonged period of time if the economy is going to come back.

So far, we're in another jobless recovery, but at least the numbers are getting better rather than worse. Let's see if we can get to the 300,000 plus per month net hiring number for a sustained period of time.