TeneoTalent

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

December 13, 2010

By Edwin Dean

Since I’m actually mildly optimistic, let’s reverse the order:

The Ugly

According to a release last week from the BLS, making its annual survey of the national employment experience for all of 2009:
The number of persons who experienced some unemployment during 2009 increased by 4.9 million to 26.1 million from 21.2 million in 2008.

The “work-experience unemployment rate”–defined as the number of persons unemployed at some time during the year as a proportion of the number of persons who worked or looked for work during the year–was 16.4 percent in 2009, up from 13.2 percent in 2008, and was the highest since 1985

Granted, this is a trailing indicator, but it gives a pretty good picture of the conditions the economy is fighting back from.

The Bad

Just a week ago, the economic news was dominated by the monthly release of employment results, showing that the national unemployment rate had “edged up” to 9.8% in November, with the number of unemployed at 15.1 million.

The Good

The good news is that the bad news may be slowly becoming a little less dismal.

According to last week’s JOLT (Job Openings and Labor Turnover) Report from the BLS:
“The number of job openings in October was 3.4 million, which was up from 3.0 million in September. Since the most recent series trough in July 2009, the number of job openings has risen by 1.0 million or 44 percent. This trough immediately followed the end of the recession in June 2009 (as designated by the National Bureau of Economic Research). Even with the gains since July 2009, the number of job openings in October remained 1.0 million below the 4.4 million openings when the recession began in December 2007.”

Manpower Employment Outlook Survey (quarterly): “When seasonal variations are removed from the data, the Outlook is +9%, the most promising hiring expectations reported since Quarter 4 2008. . . Following a negative Outlook in the final three quarters of 2009, U.S. employers have now expressed a positive Outlook for five straight quarters.”

Even in its depths, the U.S. economy remains dynamic, with a lot of labor turnover. If you are a sales person, and looking for a new position or willing to consider a change, please visit http://teneotalent.com/ and take our sales assessment. We are based near Denver in Boulder CO., but operate across the country.

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