Unemployment's Little 2009 Gift?

It may be that I am a little slow in the brain because something just now struck me which has probably already been thought of by the vast majority of people on this board. Based on the way we now calculate unemployment in this country, anybody with even a part time job is not head counted on the unemployment charts. One thing which can be counted on, even in a recession, is that during the months of November and December retail stores hire part time or temporary staff by the droves to handle increased holiday shoppers. Even with the economy in T.J. Crapper's most famous invention, we've seen reports about how temp hiring may not be as robust as in good years, but it is still in effect during this year's holidays. I've also seen articles discussing stores like Circuit City who are, due to "Store Closing" sales, hiring quite a few short term employees to run registers, monitor shoppers, and be of assistance on the shopping floor.

Here's where my pea brain kicks in. We just saw an extremely bad unemployment report. What in the blue hell is this thing going to look like around mid to late January when retail employees get hit with an almost unprecidented quadruple whammy of seasonal layoffs, store closures, retail industry bankruptcies, and stores switching to shorter operating hours in an effort to weather this storm (which would mean more people get laid off as the stores would likely keep fewer employees, but try to switch most to full 40 hour weeks rather than partial weeks worked)? Why did this just now dawn on me? In previous recessions, we've seen rising unemployment numbers of course, but they have been largely boosted by job losses on the lower end of the spectrum. The jobs we're seeing lost right now, today, would almost have to be in the mid to upper tier of wage earners... Office jobs, if you will. This thing is going to rain down on the economy like a bad mother if I'm right and we start seeing the real job losses hitting right after Christmas.

Absolutely...

I'd be willing to bet that we're already closer to 10% in REAL unemployment, not the fake numbers from .gov.....

By April 15% and then after the Summer From Hell, 20% and beyond...

I have been on Unemployment since late April.There are jobs out there but they all have to do with non-union skilled personell, tradesmen and the like.Jobs dealing with luxuries are not going to be as plentiful as it once was.it's Recession time folks, time to hunker down.

I've always had one major problem with the unemployment reports. They only represent the number of people actually on the books and do not include those whose benefits have run out. They still don't have a job but can no longer receive a check due to the time limit on benefits have run out. In NY it used to be 26 weeks, not sure now (retired).
I know first hand about having the benefit period expire. I was "downsized" (God I love that term) back in the late '90's from a senior engineering position and never went back to work for 13 months after finally falling back to an earlier profession in the municipal water field (with a 40% reduction in pay).
Thankfully I was able to rob my retirement accounts to pay my mortgage and put food on the table, paying taxes and penalties by the way for early withdrawal. TPTB didn't care that I was unemployed and I certainly wasn't reported as receiving any benefits.
Sure wish I had some of that retirement money back. Things are tight.

OCTOBER 2008 UNEMPLOYMENT DATA

Total: 21.8 million (13.6% of the labor force)

www.njfac.org...

reply to post by warrenb


Thank you for that link, Warren. I was looking at the BLS web page & pdf files over lunch, trying to piece that information together, and wasn't having much luck decyphering it. The truly sick thing about them not counting anyone who's been unemployed over 27 weeks is that as we get deeper into this pit more and more people will fall under that umbrella, meaning they have stacked the deck in such a way that it will be almost impossible for us to reach an accurately reported on Depression era unemployment rate, even though the reality fo teh situation is that if the numbers were calculated using the depression era methodolgy, we'd probably be seeing comparable numbers with the first year of that event.

reply to post by warrenb


Good link. 13% seems like a more accurate count of the unemployed than the BS government numbers that come out.

I agree, we haven't seen it really hit yet.

I was laid off 2 weeks ago - a 30% cut at my office.

However, in the opening post, you are wrong about one thing--- retailers etc. won't keep a few full time people, they will cut full timers down to part timers so that they don't have to pay medical benefits. In most places, I would bet that at least half, if not more, of the staff will be cut to 30 hrs a week from 40, eliminating some full time positions.

Government never tells the real numbers of anything....including the status of energy, employment, war, peace, economy, global warming, space anomalies, black project dollars, just about everything..they dress it up with flowers and chirping birds because the public cannot handle the truth and if the truth were told...chaos would follow.


Cheers!!!!

One stat I would love to see is how many of the unemployed were former federal workers!!!