"The U.S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness,
only the pursuit of it.
You have to catch up with it yourself."
Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American statesman, scientist & printer
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
The "No Jobs" Myth -
Recently the news media, economists and any pundit who could get space in a newspaper, on TV or on the radio talked about the US losing over 500,000 jobs in the month of November. For those who lost jobs, as we know, these are difficult times, financially, socially and emotionally.
We do not minimize that loss for anyone.
As we consider what this means to our company (and the unemployed we continue to help), it is important to keep things in perspective. Compared to the media's version of our job market, the real data is encouraging when we consider our economy's: 1) total jobs and, more importantly, 2) overall hiring activity.
First, consider the number of jobs lost in November – 533,000. We're told that: "It was the most jobs lost in one month since December 1974." That's a nice sound bite if you are writing a newspaper article. Another accurate sound bite is: "In the month of November, we lost 34 one hundredths of one percent of the total jobs in America." And it looks like this:
And consider that in each month of the first 10 months of this recession over six times as many people were hired. How does that make sense? How can we be hiring millions and be losing jobs at the same time? The answer is employee turnover and what economists call "churn".
Churn refers to the natural number of businesses failures and startups. Employee turnover refers to such things as employee quits, relocations, deaths, terminations and retirements. Even when there is not economic growth, both churn and turnover lead to job openings, which in turn lead to hires. And the number of hires each month is a more relevant and meaningful number for both the unemployed and the staffing industry.
So how many hires do we normally have and how has this recession affected the number of hires? In a good economy such as September 2006- September 2007 the number of hires was 58 million. In our current recession the following year (2007-2008) it has fallen by only 8% to 54 million according to the latest data. And it looks like this:
So, even in the middle of this recession, though you wouldn't know it from the media, there were 54 million hires. This means that if you were in an average US town of 100,000, employers hired 17,500 people in the last year. In the year before, they would have hired 19,000 people. Fortunately, for our company and the job seekers we place, employers keep hiring, even in a downturn.
Staffing has grown to be a great solution for employers who need people to keep their businesses healthy as well as for job seekers who need jobs to keep their lives and families healthy. Staffing companies save both employers and job seekers time and money and are a key in keeping our country healthy in this economic downturn. Instead of stepping back and waiting for a recovery, this is a time to step forward and help make it happen.
We do not minimize that loss for anyone.
As we consider what this means to our company (and the unemployed we continue to help), it is important to keep things in perspective. Compared to the media's version of our job market, the real data is encouraging when we consider our economy's: 1) total jobs and, more importantly, 2) overall hiring activity.
First, consider the number of jobs lost in November – 533,000. We're told that: "It was the most jobs lost in one month since December 1974." That's a nice sound bite if you are writing a newspaper article. Another accurate sound bite is: "In the month of November, we lost 34 one hundredths of one percent of the total jobs in America." And it looks like this:
And consider that in each month of the first 10 months of this recession over six times as many people were hired. How does that make sense? How can we be hiring millions and be losing jobs at the same time? The answer is employee turnover and what economists call "churn".
Churn refers to the natural number of businesses failures and startups. Employee turnover refers to such things as employee quits, relocations, deaths, terminations and retirements. Even when there is not economic growth, both churn and turnover lead to job openings, which in turn lead to hires. And the number of hires each month is a more relevant and meaningful number for both the unemployed and the staffing industry.
So how many hires do we normally have and how has this recession affected the number of hires? In a good economy such as September 2006- September 2007 the number of hires was 58 million. In our current recession the following year (2007-2008) it has fallen by only 8% to 54 million according to the latest data. And it looks like this:
So, even in the middle of this recession, though you wouldn't know it from the media, there were 54 million hires. This means that if you were in an average US town of 100,000, employers hired 17,500 people in the last year. In the year before, they would have hired 19,000 people. Fortunately, for our company and the job seekers we place, employers keep hiring, even in a downturn.
Staffing has grown to be a great solution for employers who need people to keep their businesses healthy as well as for job seekers who need jobs to keep their lives and families healthy. Staffing companies save both employers and job seekers time and money and are a key in keeping our country healthy in this economic downturn. Instead of stepping back and waiting for a recovery, this is a time to step forward and help make it happen.
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