More Worker Shortage News

One state workforce investment board just completed a draft annual report. In it they declared that the media has been spending too much time covering such events as increasing unemployment rates and large layoffs instead of the really important story of the ongoing worker shortage!

Also in the report they said that this particular state faced a massive shortage of college educated professionals. However, after a little bit of investigation it was learned this shortage only existed if you compared all expected job openings with the expected number of grads from just three of the state's largest universities. Left out were all of the state's regional colleges and smaller liberal arts schools. Together these likely produce just as many grads as do the three they included.

They also left out the community colleges as well while almost a fourth of the job openings only required a two-year degree.

DD

Pay Caps?

Should the Obama administration put exec pay caps on firms who took taxpayer money to say afloat?

Yes!

I am pretty conservative in my politics and economics. I think the owners of a company should be able to pay their manages anything they want. Right now however, the taxpayers are in effect the owners. So the exec pay should collapse down to public sector level.

DD

New Jolts Data

Job Openings continue to slide. Nearly at all time low for the time series.

Wonder how the WIA consultants explain this decline in job openings given their silly labor shortage ideas?

Any comments, Ed?

DD

Big Surprises in State Employment Coming?

Hearing rumors that the BLS may be putting new review procedures in place regarding state employment numbers. This change could cause some states to see large downward revisions in employment for Nov and Dec. Could also cause these same states to see unemployment rate increases.

DD

Red Light, Green Light (Nov employment)

The map shows how each state has fared in terms of year over year employment growth. States in red are seeing significant employment declines, yellow shows states around zero, while the greens are still growing well - well kinda well.

DD

New posts coming...

Hope to have posts about the new JOLTS data up by the end of the day. Also looking ahead at post(s) about the state employment data releases at the end of this week.

DD

Volvo! Say it aint so!

Just saw a story about Volvo's new truck orders in Europe for the third quarter. Last year they had in excess of 40,000 and this year orders fell to 115.

Absolutely stunning. This does not look good.

DD

A "jolt" from the JOLTS program!

Job openings continue to fall according to the most recent numbers from BLS.

DD

Map of Sept 08 Employment Report

Map shows the year over year employment change for each state from Sept 07 to Sept 08.

DD

State Employment: Sept 08

BLS released Sept establishment survey report today. On a year-over-year basis using non-seasonally adjusted data...

Nine states had employment growth rates of 1.0% or more. States were mostly in the Great Plains and Mountain West although D.C. and Maryland also made the list. 73 Electoral Votes.

Fifteen states had employment growth rates of less than 1.0% but still saw employment increase for the past 12 months. 127 Electoral Votes.

Twenty-seven states saw employment declines. 338 Electoral Votes.

Hope to have either a map or list up soon.

DD

Equity Market Bottom?

Gee, guess I was wrong about the possible equity market bottom two days ago.

Starting to regret not selling a couple of months ago.

DD

State Employment: Aug 08

States with y/y nonfarm employment growth of 1% or more: Nine states worth 79 elec votes.

States with y/y nonfarm employment growth of less than 1%: Twenty states worth 164 elec votes.

States with y/y nonfarm employment decline: Twenty-two states worth 295 elec votes.


Most states east of the Mississippi River and along the West Coast are now showing year over year employment declines. With the exception of Texas, New York (how much longer?), Mass, and N.Car. all of our more populated states are showing y/y job declines.

DD

Worker Shortages and Voting Yourself a Portion of the Treasury

The number of vacant jobs is falling. The cycle high in Jan 2007 (4,307,000) was lower than the historic high (4,580,000) in Dec 2000.

Consultants have been telling govt officials and private industry that the next few years will see an explosion of impossible to fill jobs. However, as the data shows the number is less now than it was 7.5 years ago.

The great coming worker shortage is slow in getting here.

Why then do we see all this "buzz" about the shortage? Perhaps there is money in it.

One state recently passed a bill giving a tax credit to firms hiring occupations where workers are seen to be in short supply. Think about that. The firms say that want to hire more workers and can't find them so the govt gives the firms a tax credit to do what they say that want to do anyway. Perhaps the firms have figured out that they can vote themselves a portion of state revenue by yelling about coming shortage.

DD

May 2008 State Employment

BLS released the state CES data for May today.

There were fourteen states showing Y/Y declines in SA employment. These states are now nearly in all regions of the county with the exception of the Great Plains. They are as follows:

Arizona, California, Delaware, Florida, Idaho, Michigan, Indiana, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, Ohio, Rhode Island, Tennessee, and Wisconsin.

States with Declining Employment: 14 (203 electoral votes)
States with growth under 1%: 22 (221 electoral votes)
States with growth of 1% or more: 15 (electoral votes)

DD

Royal Bank of Scotland: Beware of Coming Crash!

While I am surprised that economic conditions are not presently weaker than they seem to be right now, I am hopeful that this "alert" from the RBS will be seen in hindsight as much too fearful.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/06/18/cnrbs118.xml&CMP=ILC-mostviewedbox

In any event the article makes for an interesting read and it may prompt me to make some changes in my own retirement accts.

DD

JOLTS: Better News on the Labor Market

This past week the BLS released the newest JOTLS data and for a change it was a little better.

Job openings (SA) increased for the first time in many months. Still showing a Y/Y decline.

Saw similar good news on the layoff and hiring results (if I recollect correctly).

One month of data of course is not a trend but not wanting to be a perma-bear (at least all the time) I must admit that it was better than I expected.

DD

Oil:Supply/Demand or Bubble?

A lot of folks are asking the question. Is the current run-up in price a result of supply & demand (fundamentals) or a bubble fueled (sorry about the pun) by speculation.

The general thrust of the fundamental story does seem right to me. Increasing wealth in BRIC nations leading to shifts in the demand for oil leading to higher prices.

However, would we see such a huge increase in oil prices given the slower and gradual increase in BRIC wealth? Perhaps so. Markets are not perfectly efficient and can sometimes rally to catch up to real world facts they should have taken into account months and even years ago.

However one of the smartest guys I know (my dad) thinks it is speculation and the price is about to fall dramatically. He is not an economist but he is not wrong about much of anything very often.

DD

Not Much Better...

Even though today's employment report was a little better than expected the growth of unemployment over the past few months still looks like a recession.

DD

The Long Term Picture of Unemployment

This graph shows the annual rate of increase in our national unemployment. The number of months that we have grown unemployment on a Y/Y basis and the percentage growth we are now seeing strongly suggest that we are in a recession.

DD

Decline in Job Openings

Data from the BLS JOLTS program shows the number of vacant jobs in the nation declining. Just another indicator that our economic activity is likely contracting.

Also of note is the fact that the cycle high (around the end of 2006) was below that of 2000.

Looks like we may have to wait a while before the onset of the great labor shortage predicted by so many"futurists"!

DD