Take a close look at Mish Shedlock’s extensive analysis of employment and unemployment from 2008 through the present. The big winners: healthcare, finance and insurance, mining and oil, education, government. The big losers: practically everything else but especially construction, manufacturing, retail and wholesale which account among them for a loss of nearly 7 million jobs.
In my view increases in healthcare, education, and government are a disaster. They are the cars, the rest of the economy is the engine pulling them. We’ve already got far too much load for the towing capacity.
And under the circumstances increased hiring in finance and insurance is a scandal and an outrage.
“In my view increases in healthcare, education, and government are a disaster. ”
In my view, given our population, a gain of about 23,000 government workers per year is not out of line. The losses are highly concentrated in construction, manufacturing and retail. About right for a real estate collapse, with an ensuing general economic collapse.
Steve
I’d agree if the rest of the economy were growing. But it’s not. Or if we were able to increase the number of government employees while decreasing the wage per employee to keep payrolls stable which we aren’t.
As I’ve said before I think the increases in construction and retail that have taken place over the last couple of decades are what we should be questioning rather than the losses. The losses are just our chickens coming home to roost. We’ve had structural problems for decades that have been glossed over by back-to-back bubbles.
I’ve seen some local numbers recently for my MSA that I thought were interesting. Over the last ten years:
Federal Government Jobs: Down 9 percent;
State Government Jobs: Down 12.1 percent;
Local Government Jobs: Up 6.3 percent.
I’m surprised that fed jobs were down given the increase in post 9/11 military and law enforcement jobs in the area. And I have no idea where local government job increases are coming from.