jobs

State, City Government Job Losses Estimated 400,000-900,000 Due to Budget Shortfalls

Moody's has estimated 400,000 jobs from State, City and Local governments will be lost next year due to budget cuts.

Up to 400,000 workers could lose jobs in the next year as states, counties and cities grapple with lower revenue and less federal funding, says Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody's Economy.com.

The Center for Budget and Priorities has the estimate much worse, a total of 900,000 jobs affected.

it will slow the economic recovery and raise the risk that the nation will fall back into recession as the loss of Americans’ spending power ripples through the economy. States’ actions to close their $140 billion gap without more federal aid could cost the economy up to 900,000 public- and private-sector jobs.

More estimates:

Wells Fargo economist Mark Vitner expects state and local governments to cut about 200,000 workers this year if Medicaid benefits aren't extended. That's largely why Wells Fargo cut forecasts for third-quarter economic growth to 1.5% from 1.9%.

Even if Congress extends Medicaid subsidies, Zandi expects 325,000 job cuts the next year, though Vitner says losses could be far less.

The Oil Slick From Hell - Why isn't this an Immediate Federal Direct Jobs Program?

As the oil spill from hell looks to coat all of the Gulf coast and kill every breathing thing that cannot run or fly away, why isn't the Federal Government immediately setting up a direct jobs program to clean up and deal with the disaster?

Some jobs are appearing:

Hundreds stood in a line that wrapped around Workforce Escarosa in Pensacola this morning to apply for positions on a cleanup crew for the oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico.

Brittany Bailey, business services outreach representative, said Escarosa is recruiting 300 to 500 Gulf Coast workers for a Texas-based workforce development company called Advanced Employment Solutions.

"They need the manpower immediately," she said.

Fishermen in Louisiana are being contracted by BP to help with the mess:

Reuters: An economic puzzle Bernanke can't solve

link to Reuters

This should be a no-brainer for Economic Populist readers...

(Reuters) - It's a mystery that has puzzled even Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke: if the U.S. economy is growing rapidly, why isn't it creating jobs?

 

Perhaps we should send Bernanke the link to the site?

 Bernanke offered two possible explanations.

A Decade of Lost Jobs

The Washington Post shows the United States has not had any job growth for a decade. In Aughts were a lost decade for U.S. economy, workers:

unenmployment decade

There has been zero net job creation since December 1999. No previous decade going back to the 1940s had job growth of less than 20 percent. Economic output rose at its slowest rate of any decade since the 1930s as well.

Not only was there no job growth, middle incomes shrank and retirement funds shrank.

GAO report on Stimulus

The GAO has released a new report on the Stimulus.

GAO's review of prime recipient reports identified the following: Erroneous or questionable data entries that merit further review:

  1. 3,978 reports that showed no dollar amount received or expended but included more than 50,000 jobs created or retained
  2. 9,247 reports that showed no jobs but included expended amounts approaching $1 billion
  3. Instances of other reporting anomalies such as discrepancies between award amounts and the amounts reported as received which, although relatively small in number, indicate problematic issues in the reporting.

Pretty astounding huh. Believe this or not, 75% of the reporting was supposedly reviewed by a Federal Agency, while only 1% was reviewed from the recipient of the funds.

We Are Waiting, Mr. President

We are facing the possibility of not a "jobless" recovery but a "JOB LOSS" recovery. Possibly a new normal for low economic growth and high structural unemployment. But policy makers in Washington, particularly in the White House, are silent on what to do about this state of economic purgatory. And it could be that they decided that nothing needs to be done or nothing politically can be done. Both are big mistakes.

Where are the Jobs? - BLS JOLTS August 2009 report

The BLS JOLTS report for August 2009 was released earlier this week and it's just damning on job creation in the United States.

The hires level was little changed at 4.0 million in August but has declined by 1.6 million, or 28 percent, since the most recent peak in July 2006. The hires rate was low in August at 3.1 percent and little changed from July. The hires rate was little changed in August in all industries.

JOLTS job openings 09-09

The Wall Street Journal Argues for Brown Weeds

Here on the Economic Populist, dueling posts of green shoots, i.e. the recession is at a bottom and recovery will happen and brown weeds, i.e. it's getting worse and is most assuredly not a recovery, has been going on for some time.

Well, the Wall Street Journal, that holy bible of finance readers everywhere has stepped in and pronounced the ground salted and barren.

In the article, WSJ points out the average length of unemployment is higher than it's been since government began tracking the data in 1948.. The article then goes through the jobs numbers and shows why the real rate is much worse than what is being reported.

The Stimulus is a Farce - Swank Enterprises

It's a farce, it stinks of politics and big special interests. - Dewey Swank of Kalispell's Swank Enterprises.

Swank is referring to the way Obama's Stimulus Bill is squeezing out national, local and regional businesses in favor of special interest and very large multinational corporations for Stimulus dollars.

Remember how the Stimulus was supposed to create local jobs?

Montana's Billings Gazette has one plain talking, calling it as it is report on Stimulus funds being given to special interests and large multinational corporations. Literally local and smaller firms are squeezed out. They cannot even get in to bid. No wonder our taxpayer money is going offshore to create jobs in.....India and China.

Where the Stimulus Jobs are not

Earlier we asked, Where are the Stimulus Jobs? USA Today has quite a tidbit on where the Stimulus jobs are not.

States hit hardest by the recession received only a few of the government's first stimulus contracts, even though the glut of new federal spending was meant to target places where the economic pain has been particularly severe.

USA Today reviewed details in the Federal Procurement Data System and this is what they found:

Pages