Half a Million Jobs Lost in November 2008

The United States’ Bureau of Labor Statistics released its “Employment Situation” release for November 2008, and the numbers were nothing but bleak. According to the BLS, over 500,000 jobs were lost in November, following declines of over 400,000 in September and 300,000 in October. This represents the largest decline in employment since 1974.

Over 10 million people are recorded as being unemployed, which equals 6.7% of the nation. The number is expected to increase. Since the start of the recession, which, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research began in December 2007, the number of unemployed people increased by 2.7 million. Two thirds of the job losses in the past year have occurred in the previous three months.

Unemployment numbers break out as follows:

Adult men – 6.5%
Adult women – 5.5%
Teenagers – 20.4%
Whites – 6.1%
Blacks – 11.2%
Hispanics – 8.6%
Asians – 4.8%

The number of persons working involuntary part-time jobs for economic reasons continues to increase, rising to over seven million. According to the BLS, this category includes people who would like to work full-time but can only work part-time because either their hours had been cut or they were unable to find full-time jobs.

While industries such as health care edged up, there were widespread cuts across manufacturing – over 600,000 jobs lost in the past eleven months. The retail trade lost 91,000 jobs in November alone. Within professional and business services, the employment services industry lost 101,000 jobs over the month, with 10,000 losses in architectural and engineering services. Of course, lack of architectural need means lack of construction jobs – thus proliferating the cycle.

As has been widely reported in the media, the financial services sector continues to decline. Within that industry, job losses occurred in credit intermediation and related activities and in rental and leasing services. Job losses in financial activities have accelerated over the last three months, bringing the total decline for the year to 142,000.

Health care employment grew by 34,000 in November. Over the past twelve months, health care has added 369,000 jobs.