This graph shows new job losses per month, not cumulative job losses:
Even when job gains per month rise above zero, the unemployment rate is likely to keep increasing, because it takes about 100,000-125,000 new jobs per month just to keep up with population growth.
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Its kind of amazing that the rosy scenario of the recession ending in Q4 2009 is the ONLY one constantly being harped by the Fed (always wrong) and the media. My guess is more like Q4 2010 if we are lucky.
ReplyDelete"because it takes about 150,000 new jobs per month just to keep up with population growth. "
ReplyDeleteCan you cite a source? Does this take the massive retirements/deaths of the baby-boom generation into consideration?
I suspect there will be a significant drop in the retirement rate of boomers given their retirement funds have withered. Any adjustment in jobs required should take that into account, if the stuff I'm reading in AARP (about boomers staying on the job) is even half right.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous said...
ReplyDelete"Can you cite a source? Does this take the massive retirements/deaths of the baby-boom generation into consideration?"
I got the 150,000 number from back during the Bush years when Bush would brag about creating roughly 100,000 jobs per month, and the press would give him a hard time about that not keeping up with population growth.
A brief search of the Internet turned up this, which is a slightly lower number:
"The U.S. economy needs to add some 100,000 to 125,000 jobs a month to keep pace with population growth. That means the unemployment rate probably will continue to climb even after job losses abate."
What about the unprecedented change in the birth death adjustment?
ReplyDeleteRitholtz has a good post here about the change in the BDA.
Ah, before you start wishing the baby boomer away to the great beyond ....
ReplyDeleteThe baby boom generation extends from 1946 to 1964. If you were born in the middle, 1954 or so, you are today 55 and presumably have 10 years left in the workforce regardless.
President Obama, born in 1961, is technically a baby boomer, although there are arguments that people born post mid-1950s and beyond really aren't part of the true baby boom generation that came of age during the 1960s, such a President Clinton or Al Gore for that matter. But that's a side issue.
Many baby boomers will remain in the workforce not because of financial hardship but because they are in good health and get a lot of meaning from work.