63,000 Jobs Lost in February and Many Workers Giving Up Looking For Jobs

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2008/03/07/63000-jobs-lost-in-february-and-many-workers-giving-up-looking-for-jobs/

by Tula Connell, Mar 7, 2008

The number of jobs plummeted in February, down by 63,000, the deepest dive in five years, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Yet the unemployment rate theoretically improved, from 4.9 percent to 4.8 percent.

The conflicting figures out this morning on the nation’s latest jobs data highlight why some pundits and analysts have for months been insisting the U.S. economy is strong while most of America’s workers know otherwise. Such contradictory results are more apparent than real, however. The decline in unemployment reflects the fact that more people have given up looking for work, rather than more people on the payrolls.

Manufacturing employment continued to decline in February, losing 52,000 jobs, for a total loss over the past 12 months at a stunning 299,000. Construction jobs, hard hit by the bursting of the housing bubble, decreased by 39,000 in February and have fallen by 331,000 since its most recent peak in September 2006. A report out yesterday by the National Urban League highlights how the nation’s weak economy hits African Americans especially hard. The report found three times as many U.S. blacks as whites live below the poverty line, defined as an income of $20,000 for a family of four. The disparity between the races on unemployment narrowed slightly, but blacks were still twice as likely to be jobless.

In a fine column analyzing whether the current measures used by BLS accurately reflect the actual number of those without work, David Leonhardt writes:

Various studies shown that the new noenemployed are not mainly dot-com millionaires or stay-at-home dads.

Instead, these nonemployed workers tend to be those who have been left behind by the economic changes of the last generation. Their jobs have been replaced by technology or have gone overseas, and they can no longer find work that pays as well. West Virginia, a mining state, is a great example. It may have a record-low unemployment rate, but it has also had an enormous rise in the number of out-of-work men.

FULL story at link.

[Vincardog]

1. More people have given up looking for work? Anyone who is not receiving Unemployment is thrown in to

this category. Enough of this Bullshit spin already.

[DainBramaged]

2. What a legacy for Booshe, the economy plummets into recession on his departure

due to his failed pResidency, just like Dad.