In light of the flurry of recent economy-related news (the debt ceiling deal, new jobs data, our national credit rating), I thought I would post a few graphs that summarize our current jobs situation. Laura E. sent in a link to the Off the Charts blog by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. They posted a set of charts highlighting ongoing unemployment in the U.S. Overall, the private sector has been adding jobs, but at generally very low levels:
But we lost so many jobs relative to the overall working-age population during this recession that the slow job growth simply isn’t enough to significantly alter the unemployment rate, which is still hovering around 9.1% (though much higher for some groups, particularly young people and racial and ethnic minorities):
The increased labor force participation we saw during the 1990s and 200s have been erased:
The CBPP has a collection of recession-related charts, including this graph of the number of individuals needing a job per each available job opening, a ratio that remains quite discouraging:
In the last few days since the debt ceiling fiasco, a number of economic experts have once again begun discussing the possibility of a double-dip recession and, as you may have heard, last night Standard & Poor’s downgraded the U.S. debt rating. Overall, it’s not an encouraging picture of our immediate economic future.
Particularly not encouraging for those of us going on the job market this fall. Seems like we could see a repeat of when many job searches were canceled and lines frozen.
My sister-in-law works in HR and she says that she's getting over 600 applicants for each position. These are not high-end positions either. Most don't make but $15/hr.
My wife graduated with a master's degree in May and hasn't found a job yet. She's beginning to apply at Target and Sears. sigh...