Sobering Jobs Data
The September employment report was a disappointment. Not terrible, like January's horrendous 741,000 jobs slashed in the US, but the economy lost almost 100,000 more jobs than anticipated. Drilling down into the report, there are some sobering stats to absorb:
U-6 Employment (unemployed+part-time+under-employed)=17%:That's a heck of a lot of competition for very few job openings.
Average time of unemployment = 26.2 weeks: You better have a fat emergency reserve fund to weather over a half of a year without a paycheck.
7.2 million people have lost jobs since the beginning of the recession in December, 2007--'nuff said on that nugget.
The numbers tell all of us the same story: this has been a terribly painful period for American workers and it's not going to get better much any time soon. At least it's the weekend!
Image by Flickr User healthserviceglasses, CC 2.0