Illinois, Alabama, Connecticut, Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico, Ohio, and Wyoming are the only states that still have not regained employment lost during the Great Recession or prior recessions.
The Wall Street Journal comments These Eight States Still Haven’t Regained All Their Lost Jobs.
Nonfarm payrolls in June still lag high-water marks set in 2008 or earlier in eight states struggling against headwinds like population loss and the manufacturing sector’s long-term decline: Alabama, Connecticut, Illinois, Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico, Ohio and Wyoming.
At the same time, unemployment rates were at all-time lows in six states, a mix of regions that are experiencing strong growth and other places with slower job gains and possible worker outflows: Arkansas, California, Colorado, North Dakota, Tennessee, and Washington. Records for state unemployment rates go back to 1976.
Some areas face structural challenges, such as factory employment’s long decline. Across a swath of the industrial Midwest – Illinois, Michigan and Ohio – employment peaked back in 2000 and still hasn’t recovered to that level after two national recessions and two recoveries.
For other states, the local jobs recovery has simply been much slower than the national average.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
I don’t believe today’s unemployment methods are the same as in the past. I believe it reached a new level of BS in Obama times. I think there is a 2 percent under calculation today. I call it the Obama BS factor.
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Maybe, but I think the biggest factor is replacing full time jobs with part time. We’ve lost a lot of full time jobs that have been replaced with even more part time jobs. The quantity of jobs has gone up while the quality has gone down.
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wonder what the number is when one subtracts gov’t employees ?
bet in Illinois; private sector employment shrunk by 20% since 2000. guessing that Gov’t sector employement increased by 30%
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Authorities are scared rabbits staring into the headlights, not knowing what to do.
Next recession and it will be more States that don’t recover after 10 years, then another etc. Staircase downwards.
Stagnation until some break-through in energy, or breakdown in security (or war), encourages profound change.
What’s the answer?
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Get rid of authorities?
Once liberal use of the money supply ends maybe the economy will return to its proper hands, and maybe govt. will have to justify its expense, and maybe it will not try to use force to do so. That would leave society more space to shape itself instead of looking to be provided.
Maybe.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-22/pippa-malmgren-talks-bitcoin-refugee-crisis-and-plunge-protection-team
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The federal government should stand aside and allow revolutions within states. Illinois is in the grip of a so-called Democrat Party which is little more than organized crime. A gigantic RICO case. If the feds stood aside people would be kicking in doors in Springfield and dragging the criminals out. It would be over in a day and people could have a new start. As long as criminals in state government are protected from the people they abuse by the feds nothing will ever change.
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Even those states that recovered lost jobs didn’t replace those lost jobs with jobs of equivalent value.
What good is replacing a job that paid $25.hr with one that pays $10.hr while cost of living continues to rise?
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That describes Corrupticut perfectly. Dan Malloy taxed and regulated good jobs out of the state while piling pay and benefits to state unions that have done nothing for decades. Roads and bridges are literally falling apart — CT remains the only state to have an interstate bridge (supposedly inspected months before) to fall down on a clear, windless night (and no barges or anything else hitting it). The bridge just collapsed as a newly inspected section rusted clear through.
The state engineer / inspector got a seniority based raise and then retired. The taxpayers who were killed got to hire lawyers (who kept the state lawyers employed). Local businesses got another tax increase.
And the bridge got some bubble gum and duct tape — it shakes when trucks roll over it.
After the two largest tax increases in state history — Dan Malloy now wants to raise taxes a third time.
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Worse still, in Illinois the average guy makes what he did in 1999. We have massive tax increases yet the political class doesn’t see what the hub bub is about because they get 3% raises every year, have free insurance and pensions which are two to three times the average Illinoisan’s income.
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It’s Obama’s fault, Trump is going to make America great again and create coal jobs for every American. On a more serious note, the new jobs ask for more education, more certifications, more experience than ever before. It’s much harder to find a good job than it was 10 years ago. Don’t get me wrong, there are lots of jobs out there, however, HR is very picky.
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make santa putting coal in stockings great again!
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I’m an engineer with almost 20 years experience in the field. i can tell you that despite this so-called skills gap, it’s not only harder to get a job in the last ten years, it’s exponentially harder than two or three decades ago. I talk to young boomers and older members of my generation and few of them have any concept of what’s like looking for work these days. We all see the same statistics and are using the same words from back then, but the rules have changed so none of it means what it used to.
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“it’s exponentially harder than two or three decades ago”
Truer words were never spoken. A fifty-one year old boomer in my household lost a full-time job when Obama was elected, and finally found one again after eight years, except in a different state. Fortunately for the family, the work can be accomplished mostly by telecommuting.
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You are 51 sorry to say but age discrimination (which is really discrimination against white males over 40) is rampant now. Especially millenials who are more concerned about hiring for someone who would be a ‘good fit’ (whatever that means).. However If you are in your 20s and look like the Trump kids or Mitt Romneys kids you will have a multitude of job offers.
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I didn’t say it was me, nor that I’m 51. The person was 51 eight years ago, and finally found a full time job eight years later, which would make the person 59 now. Notice the person now has a full-time job, just as Obama was leaving the scene.
Doesn’t anyone read anymore?
I maintain businesses fired their workers by the millions out of fear of what Obama’s socialist policies would mean for the country. Now that he’s out of the way, the world is safe again for hiring.
But, we’ll see, won’t we.
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From November 2007 through October 2008, there were 19.6 million first time claims for unemployment.
Not good, but nothing like what followed.
Immediately after Obama was elected, the figure jumped by over 52% in November 2008 and never looked back. For the first twelve months after Obama’s election, jobless claims jumped by 56% to 30.6 million.
The average per month jumped from 1.6 million per month to 2.6 million.
And in the first eight months since Trump was elected?
The average is 1.1 million per month.
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The skills gap is a cover for a wage gap. Companies want highly skilled individuals willing to work for minimal wages.
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“The skills gap is a cover for a wage gap.” Absolutely, and then some. One could summarize it more generally as an “expectation gap”.
It’s easier for HR to throw up their arms and say they can’t find anyone than take a risk on a (seemingly) unknown quantity. Openings remain open because the employer is looking for some specific skill; a skill which any number of candidates could have learned in a fraction of the time the position goes unfilled. And, just because someone has a specific skill doesn’t mean they are competent at it. And, even if they are, it’s ridiculous to expect them to be effective from day one. It takes time to learn to work in a new environment. Companies expect zero risk at discount price.
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I wonder if CT’s numbers reflect the people leaving it?
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Actually, Connecticut’s population is growing slightly due to foreign immigration. That’s pretty much the only factor holding up rents and housing prices just like in Western Mass. where I live. The rents have gone way up around here and there are bidding wars for houses priced under $200K. The economy around here is moribund, so the housing mania makes perfect sense (sarc). Over the border in Enfield it’s a different story as it’s being affected by the poor Hartford area job market. I remember when United Technology employed a huge number of people in CT. It was a different world then.
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This seems to be a pattern. Homes seem difficult for people to buy and rents are sky high. It is truly crazy. In Decatur Illinois, another hard hit community once an industrial giant, a double wide rents for over $1,000 per month, but you can buy a beautiful 2,500-3,000 sq. ft. home in an excellent neighborhood for $130,000. Unless you are paying cash, you may not be able to get a loan, even with more than 25% down.
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private sector employment shrunk by 20% since 2000. guessing that Gov’t sector employement increased by 30%-40%
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All employees in private industries (USPRIV) is up over 11% since August 2000. All employees in government at all levels (USGOVT) is up about 7%.
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Private sector wages flat since 1970 (in real terms)…. Government sector wages almost tripled — and that doesn’t count obscene benefits that no one in the real world gets.
Private sector productivity almost tripled since 1990… government sector is even less productive. Government corruption (local, state and federal) is off the charts
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Wages, productivity and corruption are interesting topics, but not the one I addressed.
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Working age population decreasing
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LFWA64TTUSM647S
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Definition of “working age” increasing. Employment of core 25 to 54 years has been lagging even as over 55s continues to climb.
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See:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12024230
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For over 65s increasingly working see:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LEU0252891400Q
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The US needs to improve it’s demographics and it’s skill levels if it wants to grow faster than 1%
Demographically, the percentage of people aged 25-54 is shrinking while over 55 is growing. This means there will be fewer workers to support the health and pension costs for retirees.
Plus the skill levels of the 25-54 group aren’t high enough to fill all the jobs that are being created. There are a lot of high skilled jobs going begging. Yet, like Japan, you don’t want to solve the problem by bringing in skilled immigrants. So you better start having more children and educating them for the future jobs. That should solve your problem in around 30 years.
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The people we’re importing into America aren’t a stimulus for the economy – they’re a drag. We don’t need anymore $10,hr tree pruners or gardeners. They and their families end up on welfare and don’t pay any taxes. How in Christ’s name does that solve the problem of financing pensions and social security for the old folks? It doesn’t. It only exacerbates the problem because now we don’t only have to figure out a way to fund the pension and social security obligations – we have to figure out a way to sustain all the foreign leeches on welfare too!
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Then (assuming you are correct) you are bringing in the wrong immigrants. You need more immigrants with high Skills. Yet you block them from entering the US. Or you allow them in but don’t allow them to use their skills because of restrictions from organizations within your country. Doctors, programmers, stone masons, tool and die, electricians etc. They are heading to other countries.
That’s one reason I see the US growth at 1%, other developed countries at 2-3%, and the rest of the world at 3+%.
If you don’t want these people, then you need to develop them internally. That is a long process.
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The United States has plenty of all of those. The problem, as I see it, is our corporations are not investing enough in the US economy to employ all of them at wages associated with the skill level. Except for the doctors of course.
However, given the lack of interesting new products, I’m not sure why they should.
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Hi Jon. I seem to be seeing more stories each week about unfilled jobs and a Skills shortage in the US. I admit, I can only go by these stories as I don’t live in the US. I keep reading about businesses offering higher wages, but still unable to find qualified workers.
It seems to me that it’s easy to fill the low wage jobs because there’s plenty of low skilled workers, but hard to fill the higher paid jobs.
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“You need more immigrants with high Skills. Yet you block them from entering the US.”
H1B’s have been abused. Amercans with high skills have been fired and replaced with lower wage skilled foreigners.
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If that is true, why are there still so many high skilled jobs sitting empty?
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I recall Alan Greenspan talking about bringing in tool and die makers and machinists, not to fill shortages but in order to lower wages for highly skilled labor. He called it “reducing the concentration of distribution.” Ever notice there is never talk of reducing this concentration in the executive suite or government sector? It is in my opinion an excuse for attempts to turn the US into a flop house for third worlders as they benefit corporate profits while the native population is cast off.
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Why would authorities or government want to deliberately impoverish their own citizens? Then they would have to provide them with various forms of social assistance. That makes no sense to me, yet I see that theme repeated over and over on this site.
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gov’t FT consultants ?
Feds employ 800,000 FT consultants
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Do you have a data source for the 800,000?
Consider that 2.8 million are presently employed by the Federal Government in the traditional manner. For the 800,000 figure to hold true, that would mean over 28% are consultants. I doubt that.
Consulting is often done by self-employed people, who wouldn’t be counted by the usual metrics.
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@JohnM is just clueless
SIAC
Northrop Grumman
Booz Allen
To name a few of the obvious ones.
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If the consultants to the feds are employed by the firms you listed, they are not counted as federal employees but private employees.
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Sounds a lot like mercenaries and military contractors. I know a lot of them and they are or at least were getting unbelievable six figure salaries. It is dangerous work. Almost as bad as Chicago.
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Imagine how well they will be doing when the illusion of recovery disappears.
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Ellen Brown in her latest blog has a recipe for these strapped states. It involves the Federal Government. That is a MUST. the federal government can bail out anything it chooses. It was not fazed at spending $29Trillion on the GFC bailout so bailing the states is a no brainer!
https://ellenbrown.com/2017/07/23/saving-illinois-getting-more-bang-for-the-states-bucks/
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In the 60s and 70s, nobody wanted to work for the government and if you were a professional, taking a job with the government would be the kiss of death to your career.
My father was an accountant and after being laid off in the early 70s recession, he took a job with the state of Connecticut after being unemployed for quite a while.
The pay for an accountant working for the state? Well, since I qualified for reduced price lunches throughout all my school years of the 70s and early 80s, it couldn’t have been much.
It’s only because the private sector has fallen so far that government jobs seem so desirable today. The “golden” benefits that government jobs seem to have were what every private company was offering way back when.
But don’t worry, government pay and benefits are being whittled down to match what the private sector is now offering.
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You’re completely right. Years ago when I first started reading this blog, I was amazed that everyone thought public sector wages were through the roof. So I asked for a public records request from my local Florida county (Brevard) for all employees and their wages.
For the most part, 90% were making less than $50k/year. Even some directors were making in the $70s. The County Manager was making around $180k. There were some anomalies with a few firemen who were making over $100k. 4 people as I recall. They were all managers working a lot of overtime.
Is the average pension $500k/year like everyone here says? Nope. How about $8000/year. Just enough to avoid starvation when you throw in Social Security.
I came to understand that there is something seriously wrong with how people understand the world around them.
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And the more that some of these people post, the more they exaggerate, to try to prove their position. They also try to rant and scream and throw insults at anyone who actually tries to present a realistic point of view.
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It isn’t my topic, and some would argue about the actual number and usefulness of public jobs etc., not forgetting the long contract guarantee that goes with them… a study here puts total average returns above private, but is contested. Comparing apples to oranges . Still, not good to exagerate exceptionally high pay as representative of the whole, except to show what gov. is capable of :
Search : A national survey of state government employee pay – American Enterprise Institute
As link not copiable.
Contested by :
http://www.epi.org/publication/unequal-public-sector-pay-in-connecticut-yes-taxpayers-are-getting-a-bargain/
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Looking at the state level data overnight, the eight states mentioned in the WSJ blog post have a total net shortfall from prior peaks of 512,300 jobs, that’s it. This is not a lot of jobs in a universe where just over 8 million jobs have been added to the private sector since the 2007 peak (USPRIV), and about 324,000 jobs subtracted from government employment at all levels (USGOVT) since the 2009 peak (do not count temporary Census hiring).
74% of the shortfall is in Michigan alone, 308,000 jobs, and 21% of the shortfall is in Ohio, almost 108,000 jobs. The other six states account for the remaining 5%.
Michigan and Ohio remain victims of the auto bankruptcies, not to mention the add-on effects of the banking/housing meltdown.
None of this minimizes that this has been the worst employment recovery in the post-war, only that the WSJ chose the more alarming, technically correct but lazy headline and presentation, although I couldn’t read the whole thing due to the paywall. The recovery, such as it is, has been unevenly distributed, but has especially by-passed Michigan and Ohio, which I’m sure had a lot to do with those two states rejecting Hillary in 2016.
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Interesting that the chart shows California as having the lowest unemployment since records began in 1976, yet the homeless population in L.A. was recently reported to have grown by 23% over the past year.
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Along with record breaking numbers on state health care, kids getting free or assisted lunch. In my California town vans go all over town serving free meals. There is no qualification. Packs of people gravitate to the vans, many speaking Spanish. Serfs.
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Basically, breaking down the statistics, nationwide for every person that found a job since the recession, one person retired and one person have up on working (before retirement age)
http://thesoundingline.com/the-unemployment-rate-the-devil-in-the-details/
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Reblogged this on World4Justice : NOW! Lobby Forum..
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