Labor market is recovering – unless it’s not
Just before I took my Christmas hiatus from being blogging about being unemployed I was encouraged by the unemployment figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The unemployment rate actually fell. It was only a couple of tenths but it was moving in the right direction. In fact the Labor Department reported that the economy added 4,000 jobs in November breaking the streak of consecutive losses that started two years before. In a reversal of that trend December lost 85,000 jobs. The unemployment rate remains at 10%. The fact that there is so much talk about such relatively small numbers, there are over 14 million unemployed workers after all, shows how sensitive the economy and the markets are about unemployment. Because our economy relies so heavily on consumer spending, the unemployment rate is a critical statistic for the economy.
What does this mean for all of us unemployed? As I said before this is going to be a very slow recovery. While the pundits are saying the recession is over businesses are being very cautious about hiring workers. We need to just hunker down and not give up. Companies are hiring some new employees. We just need to focus on becoming of of them.
