Thread: Think Tank: Decades Before We See Pre-recession Joblessness

Think Tank: Decades Before We See Pre-recession Joblessness

Friday, 02 Dec 2011 01:26 PM
By Forrest Jones

It will take at least two decades until unemployment rates return to pre-recession levels, says Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank.

The November unemployment rate fell to 8.6 percent from 9 percent in October not due to a surge in hiring but due to a shrinking labor force, as more people are giving up looking for jobs.

While declining. the rate is still high. It remains well above the 4.7 percent recorded in November 2007.

"At this pace of job growth, it will be more than two decades before we get back down to the pre-recession unemployment rate. Moreover, a shrinking labor force is not the way we want to see unemployment drop," Shierholz says, according to CNBC.

"At this rate of growth, we are looking at a long, long schlep before our sick labor market recovers."

The economy added 120,000 net nonfarm payrolls in November, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which others view as lackluster.

"Overall, the continued modest employment gains reflect an economy that plods along at an uninspiring pace," Kathy Bostjancic, director of macroeconomic analysis at The Conference Board, says in a statement, CNBC adds.

"These modest job gains are still not enough to propel economic growth to a sustainable 2 percent-plus growth path."

Some say the rate will rise in the coming months as more people tiptoe back into the job market.

"I won't be surprised if the official unemployment rate creeps up as people start looking for work over the next few months," says Stephen Bronars, senior economist with Welch Consulting, ABC News reports.

"So, although it's counterintuitive, an increase in the official unemployment rate over the next few months wouldn't necessarily be bad news."

http://www.moneynews.com/StreetTalk/Dec ... /id/419804

Study: Most Jobless People Will Likely Stay That Way

Friday, 02 Dec 2011 08:25 AM
By Julie Crawshaw

Despite expectations that the Labor Department will report that employers added more than 100,000 jobs in November, a new study shows that most jobless will likely remain that way for the foreseeable future.

The study, conducted by the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University, says just 7 percent of those who lost jobs after the financial crisis have returned to or exceeded their previous financial position and maintained their lifestyles.

Researchers also found that most people who have found new work say it is less lucrative, and 15 percent say that reduction has been "dramatic" and most likely permanent.

"The news is strikingly bad," Cliff Zukin, a professor of public policy and political science at Rutgers who compiled the study, told The New York Times. The numbers represent "a tremendous impression of dislocation and pain and wasted talent."

The study, which began in August, 2009, followed a nationally representative sample of American workers who lost a job at the height of the Great Recession.

The study is further supported by figures from the Labor Department, which show that, more than two years after the recovery officially began, American employers have reinstated less than a quarter of the jobs lost during the downturn.

Of the 13.1 million people still searching for work, more than 42 percent have been unemployed for six months or longer. About 8.9 million more are working part time because they cannot find full-time work.

MarketWatch reports that its most recent survey of economists estimates that companies hired a net 125,000 workers in November, which would equal the average monthly gain over the past 12 months.

The U.S. unemployment rate is expected to remain at 9.0 percent.

http://www.moneynews.com/StreetTalk/Job ... /id/419750

The perfect liberal plan. If this continues and unemployment benefits are not extended then those people would be removed from the workforce. Removing 300,000 per wk plus actually removing jobs themselves should reduce unemployment well below 7% before the election. Barry could claim victory and the masses would eat it up. He was just on this morning saying that we were starting to see positive results. It would be best for them if they continued the gridlock and blamed the effects on the Republicans while claiming success at lowering unemployment.