July 03, 2003 October is Koufax Pledge Drive month

A closer look at the numbers..

Here are some highlights from today's employment situation report, with some additional tidbits added from my own research:

  • The unemployment rate for adult men increased to 6.1%, the highest rate since the BLS began reporting that statistic in 1994.

  • The unemployment rate for teenagers is 19.3%.

  • African-American unemployment increased to 11.8% from May's rate of 10.8%.

  • 21.4%, or 2.0 million job-seekers (versus discouraged workers) were unemployed for 27 weeks or more. That compared with 20.3% at the conclusion of 1992.

  • The number of individuals "marginally attached" to the labor force, i.e., unemployed, but not counted as they didn't actively job hunt for the past 4 weeks, increased from 1.4 million to 1.5 million.

  • The manufacturing sector lost 56,000 jobs in June, for a year-to-date total of 309,000. Under George Bush's watch, more than 2.4 million factory jobs have been lost.

  • Jobs in the temporary help industry increased by 38,000, on top of May's gain of 58,000, while permanent employment in the sector which utilizes such help, accounting and professional services shed 34,000 jobs over those two months. That means temp jobs, with generally no benefits, replaced one out of every 3 jobs lost in that sector.

  • The dot.com/telecom bubble is showing no signs of re-inflation, as growth after the nearly half million jobs lost since 2001 remains non-existent.


    • Overall, things are not looking very positive. Two of the three areas which are showing growth, residential construction and financial/credit services are directly related to the Fed's interest rate cutting policy, and have shown little evidence thus far of spilling over into other sectors. The third bright spot in job growth, healthcare, may actually have a negative impact on other industries, as such growth usually indicates an increase in healthcare costs which eats into business profits and government funds.

    Posted by MB at July 3, 2003 11:42 AM | TrackBack
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