Recent unemployment numbers have undermined confidence that we might be nearing the bottom of the recession. The appropriate metaphor is not the green shoots of new growth. It's better to view the total of jobless people as a prudent navigator perceives an iceberg.
What we see on the surface is disconcerting enough. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimate of 467,000 jobs lost in June increases to 7.2 million the number of unemployed since the start of the recession.
The cumulative job losses over the past six months have been greater than for any other half-year period since World War II, including demobilization. What's more, the job losses are now equal to the net job gains over the previous nine years, making this the only recession since the Great Depression to wipe out all employment growth from the previous business cycle.
That's bad enough. But here are nine reasons we are in even more trouble than the 9.5% unemployment rate indicates:
1. June's total included 185,000 people assumed to be at work but many of whom probably were not. The government could not identify them; it made an assumption about trends.
But many of these mythical jobs are in industries such as finance that have absolutely no job creation. As official numbers are adjusted over the next several months, some of the 185,000 will likely be added to the unemployment totals.
2. More companies are asking employees to take unpaid leave. These people don't count on the unemployment rolls.
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4. The number of workers taking part-time jobs because of the slack economy, a kind of stealth underemployment, has doubled in this recession to about 9 million, or 5.8% of the work force. Add those whose hours have been cut and the total of unemployed and underemployed rises to 16.5%, putting the number of involuntarily idle workers in the range of an overwhelming 25 million.
5. The inside numbers are just as bad. The average workweek for production and nonsupervisory private-sector employees, around 80% of the work force, dropped to 33 hours. That's 48 minutes a week less than before the recession began, the lowest level of activity since the government began tracking such data 45 years ago.
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A recovery slow and painfulThere are signs the recession may end in coming months, but recovery is likely to be so listless that many won't feel the difference, says The Wall Street Journal's David Wessel.
6. The average length of official unemployment increased to 24.5 weeks. This is the longest term since the government started to track these data in 1948. The number of long-term unemployed (those out of a job for 27 weeks or more) has now jumped to 4.4 million, an all-time high.
7. The average worker saw no wage gains in June, with average compensation running flat at an average of $18.53 an hour.
8. The jobs report is even uglier when you consider that the sector producing goods is losing the most jobs -- 223,000 in the last report alone.
9. The prospects for job creation are equally distressing. The likelihood is that when economic activity picks up, employers will first choose to increase hours for existing workers and bring part-time workers to full-time status.
Continued: Sweeping structural changes
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