The Pathetic Payroll Gains of March 2013

The BLS unemployment report shows total nonfarm payroll jobs gained were 88,000 for March 2013, with 20,300 of those jobs being temporary.  February was revised up by 32,000 to 268,000 jobs gained and January was also revised up by 29,000 to show payrolls gained 148,000 employees for that month.   Probably the worst news of the March job figures is how the sequester layoffs have not hit yet.

 

 

The BLS employment report is actually two separate surveys and we overview the current population survey in this article.

The start of the great recession was declared by the NBER to be December 2007.  The United States is now down -2.847 million jobs from December 2007, five years, three months ago. The ongoing employment crisis is past the half decade anniversary.

 

 

The below graph is a running tally of how many official jobs are permanently lost from the establishment survey since December 2007.

 

 

We broke down the CES by industry to see what kind of percentage changes we have on the share of total number of payroll jobs from 2008 until now. Below is the percentage breakdown of jobs by industry for January 2008.

 

ces payolls jan 2008

 

Below is the breakdown of jobs growth per industry sector for March 2013.  We expected to see construction jobs shrink relative to total payrolls and it did, by 1.1 percentage points.  The financial sector, only shrank 0.2 percentage points as it's share of payroll jobs, in spite of being the maelstrom behind the recession.   Manufacturing, of which the auto industry is a part, has contracted 1.2 percentage point as share of total jobs.  While some will blame technological advances, we suspect offshore outsourcing continues.   Our manufacturing sector erodes and the only real growth field is in health care for over five years.   From these two pie charts we can see the job market has changed into more crappy, low paying service jobs.  Comparing the two pie charts is also a reality check.  The press will tout Science & Technology jobs as well as manufacturing for growth areas.  We can see professional services, of which Science and Technology is a smaller part, has grown by 0.5 percentage points over five years, yet education and health has increased by 1.8 percentage points.  Manufacturing employment contracted so severely, worse than construction, that job gains from such lows haven't made that much of a dent in the great manufacturing job loss slaughter of 2009.

 

ces payrolls march 2013 pie

 

Below is a bar chart showing the payroll growth since January 2008.  We see health care jobs, part of education and health sector, is the only real growth sector. .

 

payrolls growth since recession

 

For the year, the United States has gained 1,910,000 payroll jobs.   In the year previous, the U.S. had gained 2.42 million jobs.  This tells us jobs have been growing at lower pace for this year so far and not fast enough to employ the 11.7 million official unemployed, never mind the estimated 19-24 million Americans who really need a good job or any job.

Just to keep up with population growth, we need at least 100,000 jobs per month or 1.2 million a year and this estimate assumes the current low labor participation rates.

Private Sector jobs, or jobs not in government gained 95 thousand in payrolls.  For those claiming all job growth is in the private sector, the United States is still down 2.336 million private sector jobs from December 2007.  Good producing jobs, which usually have higher paying ones, grew by only 16 thousand for March.  Service producing jobs, which includes our fast food and big box mart workers, increased by 79,000.  Below is a graph of just the private sector payroll losses since December 2007.

 

 

Below is a bar chart of the payroll gains by industry sector for the month of March.  We can see all of retail trade, not government jobs, really took a hit.

 

employment gains March 2013

 

This month manufacturing shred -3,000 jobs with durable goods manufacturing adding 4,000 jobs while nondurable goods lost -7,000 employees.

 

unemployment rate

 

This month the auto & parts manufacturing gained 800 jobs and since December 2007, the auto manufacturing industry is still down -167.200 jobs.  This is an industry sector which only employs 789,800 people in the United States.  Elsewhere, such as China, is another story.

 

automotive manufacturing jobs

 

Government overall lost -7,000 jobs for March with -14,000 job losses at the Federal level.  The U.S. Postal service alone lost -11,700 jobs.  State government, on the other hand, gained 9,000 jobs, with 8,400 of those jobs being in education.  Local governments shed another -2,000 jobs.

 

 

The construction housing bubble collapse jobs slaughter is over for now it appears, although what will happen when the Fed stops quantitative easing is another story.   This month construction gained 18,000 jobs.  Rebuilding from Hurricane Sandy is still ongoing.

 

 

This month the financial sector lost -2,000 jobs overall with -2,900 jobs lost in commercial banking.

 

 

Retail trade, which are your retail sales outlets like big box marts, direct mailing and anything retailing merchandise, lost -24.1 thousand jobs this month.   These were mainly low paying jobs.  Clothing stores alone lost -15.3 thousand jobs and our building supply retail outlets shed -10,100 jobs in a month.  Electronics & appliance retail stores lost -5,700 jobs for the month.

 

 

Education and health services has consistently been increasing and this month was no exception 44,000 additional jobs.  Of those jobs, 27.9 thousand were in health care while 16.1 thousand were education jobs.  A total of 1.413,600 jobs have been gained in health care since December 2007.  Clearly health care should not be a profitable industry, or has much to do with the real economy.  Making money and jobs off of sick people is no way to be an economic leader.  Yet most of the job growth is in this sector.

 

 

Professional & Business services contains management, career professionals, science & technical, administrative and support and finally waste services and this month gained 51 thousand jobs.  While this sounds great, 20,300 of those jobs are temporary positions.  Additionally, 25.5 thousand of these jobs are in waste management and administration.  The sectors which could be anything technology and management related, payrolls added 12.2 thousand jobs, but bear in mind this includes management, consultants, architects, engineers, IT.  These figures include the gamut of tech, which is in every sector these days.  To be clear, there is no tech worker shortage and for a reality check, accountants and bookkeepers added 10.7 thousand jobs in March.

 

 

Wholesale trade lost -1,000 from last month and information gained 5,000 jobs.  Transportation and warehousing lost -2,800 jobs this month and below is the graph for this industry sector's payrolls.

 

 

Let's talk Leisure & Hospitality.  This sector has the lowest paying jobs of them all.  This month the sector gained 17,000 jobs with 13.000 of those jobs being in food services and drinking places.  Food service can even pay below minimum wage and from December 2007 this subsector has gained 479,100 jobs.  For the year, the United States has created 262,000 crappy jobs in restaurants and bars.  Jobs which require one to say do you want fries with that is not the kind employment growth needed to support a family and a production economy.

 

food service jobs

 

Bottom line, the employment crisis casts a long shadow for America's workforce and just continues unabated.  Congress is busy trying to flood the U.S. labor market with more foreign workers via comprehensive immigration reform, more bad trade treaties and draconian budget cuts which will cause more Americans to lose their jobs.  For over half a decade this Congress has focused on the wrong things when America is clearly suffering from a lack of good jobs.  It is positively despicable to see millions of Americans slip into poverty because they cannot get a decent job and behind March's employment statistics are real people with no job, living in quiet desperation.

Here is our overview of the unemployment statistics, which also put numbers to our terrible job crisis tale.

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this shows

This shows how badly the US needs a govt funded jobs program... go back to the '30's... this is what we need but ... But barring world war III, it's unlikely we will ever get it and thus.... the long depression will continue

Congressional deaf ears

or worse, corrupt ears.

Look for jobs and it's apparent profits destroy quality/care

Huge fan of craigslist. Not because there are gems for jobseekers, but because it really shows how bad the situation in this country is. Search any major city and it's pretty scary the wages people are willing to pay for most jobs out there. And these jobs aren't picking up bubble gum wrappers. I'm talking driving tour busses, trucks, security at airports and banks and office buildings, reviewing medical records, etc. Some companies are specifically seeking recent medical grads from overseas for jobs that don't pay anything for months. Security companies that make people pay for training themselves and then pay them $8/hr.
And obviously this goes on in many jobs in many professions. You can literally find ads for interns in areas such as cleaning all the way to doing jobs people used to earn $100,000+ for. And will those people busting their asses for nothing or wasting their brains while unemployed be thinking happy thoughts? Maybe, but then again, probably not. Nor should they.

So, in the quest for profits, I hope the 1% enjoy the security guard at their front door that is working three jobs that pay him $8 each. Perhaps the 1%ers' medical records are getting reviewed by medical school dropouts from other countries (is that cancer or just dirt, oh well, not paid enough to care). Maybe someone that has to work 80 hours/week to feed his family is manning the security gate at his private airport and will look the other way for $1000 as drugs are placed on board - goes on all the time in other countries. Etc., etc.

Oh yeah, this will end well! Enjoy 1%ers, you ordered it, you got it. I wonder, does that waiter know it's Blankfein or Dimon he's serving? Sure hope he likes banksters.

Craigslist

Just a FYI, some of the scum of the earth advertise on Craigslist for jobs these days. The real jobs seem to be spread out, with many posting on specialty mailing lists for say the skill set or on niche sites talking about that particular sector and work area. Craigslist is a problem because it's not a national job board and just any asshat can run an ad on there it is either so cheap or free, so you get the scum of the earth trying to pay skilled professionals below minimum wage.

Can say that same about those bid project sites, front loaded with ripoff, trying to get some smuck in Russia or India to write their code for them for $100 bucks.

Of course the EEOC won't do anything about discriminatory job ads and ads trying to pay workers less than minimum wage.

It's all a disaster - newest scam is crowdsourcing for $0 pay

I'm sick of crowdsourcing too. Sounds like a good idea. But then you see massive multinationals (Fortune 100) posting jobs that people used to be paid actual wages for ($50-$100,000+), with health care, etc. Nope, now they post it on a site and ask people to do the work/research. Sure enough they get 250+ people doing the research and work for free. And these projects run the gamut to very complex R & D in health sciences, engineering, etc. If the big corporation chooses their work as the "winner," they might get paid say $10,000. How much would the MNC make from their work? Many, many, many multiples of that. Of course the MNC gets to choose who wins and determine how they won. And if someone submits an idea that they swore was the same as the winning idea but didn't receive credit and pay? Well, best of luck, go sue the MNC in a court of law and let us know how it works out 20 years from now after the MNC has made billions off the idea someone might have made $10,000 off of but didn't even receive that.
Crowdsourcing - yet another race to the bottom of labor compensation. Just more ripping and raping of labor.

And yet they never quit trying to snow us...

Washington state is perpetuating a meme that there are 25,000 high-tech (biology, science, etc) jobs unfilled, so we need to spend more tax money on different forms of higher ed.

They must be invisible as well, because you can look at the Worksource site, where it shows that there are only 31, 575 jobs available today, available online even in the city of Spokane, which just made Forbes most recent WORST PLACE TO GET A JOB list. Te vast majority of jobs, (phone banks, carpet cleaning, home health care aide), are only related to STEM by virtue of being housed next door to a hospital.

Maybe, instead of more tax money, they just need to post them. Or quit lying.

Maybe foreign corps. for nuclear cleanup/export in Washington?

Rumor has it Washington is having some nuclear cleanup issues. Normally that would suck for normal Americans that cared (i.e., us). But I'm thinking some shrewd outsourcers and profit lovers (remember, patriotism is useless to these folks) can figure out a way to make $ off nuclear cleanups. See, foreign corporations and US corporations bring in foreigners to clean up nuclear waste. Forget the background checks - those are just meant for law-abiding Americans meant to make sure they never get hired. Anything the foreign employees find they keep. Now, if Pakistan or India or Syria or North Korea can pay them lots of $ for the nuclear material they recover, oh well, that's CAPITALISM baby! Who are we to stop them or regulate them?! Regulations bad. Patriotism bad. $ and nuclear arms trafficking in the name of crony capitalism so good. There are STEM jobs right there for Washington (granted, it will be enemies of the US temporarily working in Washington, but those are the breaks). Get Gates on it and make sure he gets his PR machine to post more BS "editorials" in the Seattle Times supporting it. STEM, international trade, nuclear cleanup, and the military-industrial complex in DC and abroad cleans up figuratively and literally as we will have to fight the nuclear armed enemies once they are armed with our waste. It's a win-win, see?

Whatever you do, don't think about it, thinking bad, crony capitalism good. Before I run for Congress or try to enter a corporate boardroom I will be sure to hit myself with a hammer repeatedly in the head - it's the only way I can pass muster.