Jobs

Orange County loses 3,100 jobs over the month and 53,000 jobs over the year

The unemployment rate in the Orange County was 9.4 percent in November 2009, down from a revised 9.7 percent in October 2009, and above the year-ago estimate of 6.1 percent. This compares with an unadjusted unemployment rate of 12.2 percent for California and 9.4 percent for the nation during the same period.

Between October 2009 and November 2009, total nonfarm wage and salary employment declined from 1,417,500 to 1,414,400, a decrease of 3,100 jobs.

? Leisure and hospitality recorded the largest decline over the month, losing 2,100 jobs. Arts, entertainment, and recreation accounted for 67 percent of the decline, with all the losses coming from amusement, gambling, and recreation industries. Accommodation and food services also took a dip, losing 700 jobs.

? Professional and business services posted the second largest decline, dropping 1,200 jobs over the month. Losses occurred in many sectors within this industry.

? Trade, transportation, and utilities registered the largest month-over gain, adding 1,900 jobs. Losses in wholesale trade (down 500 jobs) and transportation, warehousing, and utilities (down 200) offset the seasonal gain in retail trade (up 2,600 jobs).

? Declines were also recorded in construction (down 1,100 jobs), manufacturing (down 1,000 jobs), financial activities (down 600 jobs), other services (down 400 jobs), and information (down 100 jobs). Mining and logging and educational and health services remained unchanged over the month.

Between November 2008 and November 2009, total nonfarm wage and salary employment declined by 53,000, or 3.6 percent.

? The biggest loss over the year occurred in trade, transportation, and utilities, which declined by 12,600 jobs. Retail trade accounted for nearly 63 percent of the loss, with losses within all its sectors. Wholesale trade (down 3,600 jobs) and transportation, warehousing, and utilities (down 1,100 jobs) also posted declines.

? Construction recorded the second largest decline over the year, as it dropped 11,700 jobs. Specialty trade contractors was responsible for 75 percent of the decline. Losses were also recorded in construction of buildings (down 2,500 jobs) and heavy and civil
engineering construction (down 400 jobs).

? Ten of the eleven industries posted losses over the year. Mining and logging was the only industry not to decline as it remained unchanged.

This is the most dismal report we have seen all year. Not a single positive remark, NONE. Ricky Bobby Jr. aka RoLar said that professional and business services had increased in the previous month, and that professional services lead us out of recession. Not only was he wrong about that growth, but it is trade, retail and transportation that signal a positive sign out of a recession. Which, according to this report was rather dismal. Especially when looking at the YOY numbers.

Don't get too excited about the unemployment rate decreasing either, because the labor force shrank by 25,300. Where or where did those people go? Detached workers maybe? If you take the Nov. 2008 labor force and increase it by 1% for natural population growth, then that means there are really 193,900 people unemployed, and that means that the unemployment rate really is closer to 11.7%.

Overall, not a good sign going into the holiday season.

Thanks Graph....Even the Hospitals in this area are laying off big time!!

In Arizona the grocery stores are laying off people.

When will this end.. when will this end! I am tired of looking at a list of Linkedin contacts who are independent consultants at their First Name-Last Name.

Irony of life: 10.2% don't have a job, many are underemployed, some are self-employed without much to do, and Tiffany's stock has almost doubled this year, so has the number of people seeking aid from Salvation army. Will we see a huge/ much wider rich and poor divide? Will middle class vanish with few of them being poorer than they are nad few ending up richer?

[quote author="Cubic Zirconia"]When will this end.. when will this end! I am tired of looking at a list of Linkedin contacts who are independent consultants at their First Name-Last Name.

Irony of life: 10.2% don't have a job, many are underemployed, some are self-employed without much to do, and Tiffany's stock has almost doubled this year, so has the number of people seeking aid from Salvation army. Will we see a huge/ much wider rich and poor divide? Will middle class vanish with few of them being poorer than they are nad few ending up richer?[/quote]

Unfortunately the answer is that it won't end soon. I'm going to pull a few quotes from a news letter from John Mauldin. You can subscribe to this free weekly newsletter at www.frontlinethoughts.com . He won't spam your email address, though each newsletter typically contains a small pitch at the start for various investment services that John is involved in.

Anyway, the following snippets are from http://www.frontlinethoughts.com/article.asp?id=mwo111309

All this is, of course, going to put continued pressure on employment. As I noted last week, the number of unemployed actually soared by 558,000, to 15.7 million, as measured by the household survey, not the 190,000 you read about in the mainstream media. Unemployment is sadly continuing to rise by significant amounts.

In August, I did an interview with CNBC from Leen's Fishing Lodge in Maine. The unemployment numbers had just come out. I did a back-of-the-napkin estimate that we would need about 15 million new jobs over the next five years just to get back to where we were when the recession started.

That works out to a need for about 125,000 new jobs each month to handle new workers coming into the market (which comes to a total of 7.5 million over five years), plus the 8 million and rising jobs we've lost. That is a daunting number. It amounts to 250,000 new jobs a month every month for five years. And we are still losing more than that number a month, let alone adding the needed 250,000.

Look at the chart below. It shows the establishment survey employment figures for the last ten years. Only once, in 1999, did we actually add over 250,000 jobs a month for a whole year. And that was during the internet boom.

Later in the same article:

What would it take to get back to 5% unemployment? I played with the spreadsheet and came up with the following numbers, which get us below 5% by 2020. I assume no recessions for the next ten years, and 2 million new jobs a year after 2011, which I start off with almost 1.5 million jobs. Of course, we have never done that, but let's be optimistic.

Want to get to 5% within five years? Add 3 million jobs a year starting now. With no housing recovery, a smaller auto industry, and financial firms getting leaner.

When I called the last two recessions about a year before they happened, it was not all that hard. We had inverted yield curves, falling leading indicators, and a lot of other data that pretty much pointed to a recession. Believing that we had a housing bubble and a looming credit crisis also helped my conviction in calling the last recession.

I think we are in for a double-dip recession in 2011, yet I readily admit there will be little if any statistical evidence in advance this time. This is more of an instinct call. I have serious doubts that we can have what amounts to the largest tax increase of all time in what will be a very weak (albeit growing) economy, without putting us back into recession. And Speaker Pelosi thinks it is a smart thing to add another 5.4% surtax on what will already be a rising capital gains and dividend tax.

Taxing small businesses, and that is what the tax increase amounts to, is a very bad idea in a weak economy. Small businesses are where the job growth comes from. Taking money from productive businesses and giving it to government is a fundamentally flawed concept.

Now, if they decide to postpone the tax increase, or phase it in slowly, then maybe we avoid the double dip. But right now it doesn't look like that will be the case. So, let's quickly see what a double-dip scenario might look like. Let's be optimistic and assume we only lose another 1.2 million jobs in the next recession, since we have already lost so many in this one (8 million and counting). And then the economy comes roaring back in 2012 with 1.5 million jobs and continues to grow rather smartly for the rest of the decade. No further recession. We absorb the tax increases and move on with our economic lives.

Unemployment under such a scenario would rise to just under 13% and stay above 10% for 8 years.

[quote author="Cubic Zirconia"]When will this end.. when will this end! I am tired of looking at a list of Linkedin contacts who are independent consultants at their First Name-Last Name.

Irony of life: 10.2% don't have a job, many are underemployed, some are self-employed without much to do, and Tiffany's stock has almost doubled this year, so has the number of people seeking aid from Salvation army. Will we see a huge/ much wider rich and poor divide? Will middle class vanish with few of them being poorer than they are nad few ending up richer?[/quote]

It's worse than that.

Keep in mind, the unemployment is a measure of the civilian workforce. There are only 153 Million in the civilian workforce. 10% are unemployed. Another 82 million adults are NOT part of the workforce. The majority of the remainder are children.

All told, there are nearly 100 million adults that do not work...

It was nice that "mining and logging" jobs stayed the same.... but what mining or logging jobs are there in Orange County???? I suppose if oil/natural gas counts as "mining" there might be some jobs associated with the oil wells around Brea.

Hard times... After Christmas many people will lose UE benefits (Is Dec 31st the date?), and many will lose their temporary holiday jobs. I don't know how it will affect the numbers. Thanks for the article link Winex. I didn't know about the website. Did read Roubini religiously for a few months, but then the doom and gloom just became too much to tolerate.

NSR- right..the reality is way worse than that projected number..

Cubic Zirconia, I think you will like John Mauldin. He is naturally an optimist, but at the same time he has a realistic view on the economy. I view Roubini as being more of a "one-trick pony".

Jesse James said "I dream of the Day when being a Blue Collar worker becomes cool, when People actualy make stuff"

I agree, and I don't think an economic turn-around will happen until that Day...

I know I keep repeating myself but the only way to create real wealth is Mining, Manufacturing and Agriculture...

The rest is just shuffling numbers around.

We need Apprenticeship and Engineering programs like 20 years ago....

[quote author="peteruk"]
I know I keep repeating myself but the only way to create real wealth is Mining, Manufacturing and Agriculture...

The rest is just shuffling numbers around.

[/quote]

There was a time when I would have agreed with that statement without question. But I believe that certain areas of information technology turn that argument on its head.

For example, I have worked for several manufacturing firms designing Manufacturing Execution Systems and Engineering Data Analysis Systems ( Statistical Process Control and Design of Experiment ) Though I work in the world of electrons, not atoms, the work I do helps eliminate the hidden factory in any manufacturing organization that produces scrap and rework.

Perhaps it would be fairer to include certain parts of the service sector that involve innovation (as opposed to services that simply involve processing) in the list of creators of wealth.

[quote author="nosuchreality"]
[quote author="Cubic Zirconia"]When will this end.. when will this end! I am tired of looking at a list of Linkedin contacts who are independent consultants at their First Name-Last Name.

Irony of life: 10.2% don't have a job, many are underemployed, some are self-employed without much to do, and Tiffany's stock has almost doubled this year, so has the number of people seeking aid from Salvation army. Will we see a huge/ much wider rich and poor divide? Will middle class vanish with few of them being poorer than they are nad few ending up richer?[/quote]

It's worse than that.

Keep in mind, the unemployment is a measure of the civilian workforce. There are only 153 Million in the civilian workforce. 10% are unemployed. Another 82 million adults are NOT part of the workforce. The majority of the remainder are children.

All told, there are nearly 100 million adults that do not work...
[/quote]

It's actually worse than that because only people who have been actively looking for work for 6 months or less are on the unemployment roles. I believe that the actual number of unemployed people is closer to 17.5%

[quote author="winex"]
[quote author="peteruk"]
I know I keep repeating myself but the only way to create real wealth is Mining, Manufacturing and Agriculture...

The rest is just shuffling numbers around.

[/quote]

There was a time when I would have agreed with that statement without question. But I believe that certain areas of information technology turn that argument on its head.

For example, I have worked for several manufacturing firms designing Manufacturing Execution Systems and Engineering Data Analysis Systems ( Statistical Process Control and Design of Experiment ) Though I work in the world of electrons, not atoms, the work I do helps eliminate the hidden factory in any manufacturing organization that produces scrap and rework.

Perhaps it would be fairer to include certain parts of the service sector that involve innovation (as opposed to services that simply involve processing) in the list of creators of wealth.[/quote]

Winex, if it wasn't for IT and of course our IT Dept, I wouldn't beable to get into the Plant, I wouldn't get Paid, most of our Production machinery wouldn't run, I wouldn't beable to communicate with outside Vendors, send Blueprints within seconds etc, communicate with different divisions of our Organization....and we couldn't ship product...

That's how much I agree with you...

Then of course, we need Nurses, Doctors, teachers..the list is endless...

But look around you, the Computer your on right now and all it's components came out of a Tool, the Car you drive came out of a Tool, your TV, Toaster, Cell Phone etc etc all came out of a Tool, and the thing that bothers me is that the Toolmaker, and skilled hands-on Artisans are a dying breed, there is no one to replace them when they retire and I think one of the reasons is, Kids don't think it's "Cool" to work with their Hands, they want to sit at a Computer all Day, which is fine, we need IT (see above) .

I'm just sick and tired of the generic phrase "Blue Collar worker" and how they (we) are viewed by the General population and Media...

I admire Jesse James so much because He is showing the younger generation that if you become skilled and work hard you can make anything out of anything, you can create Custom Bikes and become a celebrity...and by the way, He has worked very hard...his work ethic is absolutely amazing. There are so many like Him but they never get to be on TV...they're just labeled "Blue Collar Workers" and don't get the respect they deserve...

Manufacturing, Mining and Agriculture...that's what we need to focus on to create a real economy and we need to teach and train the next generation to take over....

But yeah, IT is vitaly important but I think we have enough IT People right now... <!-- s --><!-- s -->

Your turn.... <!-- s --><!-- s -->

Just for clarity, I'm not talking about jobs that are beneficial to society. I'm talking about creation of wealth.

The fundamental characteristics of your original example (manufacturing, mining, agriculture) is that people in these trades take raw and/or processed inputs, apply labor (and skills) and in the process the resulting product is valued by society at a level that exceeds the cost of the source inputs - hence they create wealth in the process.

Within the IT world, I wouldn't classify database administrators, systems administrators, network administrators, or PC technicians as creators of work. These are all members of the service economy who earn a living largely by processing stuff as opposed to creating stuff.

But if you look at developers and architects within the IT world, they take some basic inputs ( mostly ideas and labor, but they depend on equipment as well) to produce products that cumulatively sell for more than the cost of source inputs - hence they create wealth in the process.

Yet people in the innovative areas of IT are classified as part of the service industry because we work with electrons instead of atoms. Therefore, while philosophically correct, there are some corrections that need to be made to the list of trades in an economy that create wealth. (Either that, or the innovative positions in a service economy need to be reclassified as part of manufacturing)

I do understand your concerns about the graying of human capital in certain areas of the manufacturing economy. (I'm currently working in the design and development of computerized portions of advanced weapons, but in the past I've worked in a lot of defense manufacturing environments. Though I can't talk about specifics, you would be frightened to hear about how many pieces of critical weapons systems are dependent on a single person with certain skills)

But being a capitalist, I believe that demand will create supply. In your example of toolmakers, I believe that as the people with the skills to create the tools that allow us to create products become scarcer, companies that depend on these people will be forced to pay more for the available talent. As this occurs, more young people will be drawn into the market. (I've seen the same happen with software developers in the 90's. Back in the 80's, scarcity abounded. But with the demand created by the internet, the Y2K problem, and growth of PCs reached a critical point, people flooded into the field. The majority weren't didn't have the right education or mental capabilities to be successful, but that's a topic for another thread.)

"Just for clarity, I'm not talking about jobs that are beneficial to society. I'm talking about creation of wealth".

Yes I know, we're on the same Page...I guess I was focusing more on the People and skills to help one or two of the key elements of the economy - Mining and Manufacturing - to propel us into a more stable and sustainable economy.... a real economy that is less dependent on the shuffling of numbers...

I agree completely. People that have been attracted to financial engineering and law have raw abilities that could be put to much more productive uses. The shortage of qualified engineers will ultimately lead to a lower standard of living for everyone in this country. Of course the flip side of that coin is that as someone born at the very tail end of the baby boom, there are going to be a lot of vacancies for people with my skills throughout the remainder of my working career. Given the laws of supply and demand and their impact on prices, it's not a bad position to be in.

Thanks winex, you just gave me another opportunity to whip this out....