Brad Delong pointed this out:
Louis Uchitelle Looks at the Long-Term Unemployed:
Not since World War II has long-term joblessness – the percentage of the unemployed out of work for six months or more – been so high for so long after a recession has ended…. Several factors seem to be contributing to the rise in long-term unemployment. The swelling cost of company-paid health insurance is “inducing business to be less aggressive in its hiring,” said Mark Zand…. The baby boomer bulge working its way through the labor force also plays a role; as this large group of workers ages it becomes harder for some who lose their jobs to find new work suited to their skills….
“It looks like employers are very hesitant about the future of the economy,” said Lawrence F. Katz, a labor economist at Harvard. “It may be that we will fall into another weak economic period before we get a good recovery and really robust hiring.” After World War II, when traditional industries dominated the economy, the usual pattern was for long-term unemployment to surge during recessions and die away quickly as recoveries took hold. That changed during the early 1990’s and is even more evident in the current recovery, which began in November 2001. Rather than subside as growth resumed, long-term unemployment as a share of total joblessness continued to rise, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It peaked 17 months ago at 23.3 percent and has only gradually tapered off since then, to 21.2 percent in April….
Toyota Motors of North America, whose sales are rising more rapidly than other automakers in the United States, is holding back on hiring although its plants are operating flat-out. Its payroll, said Dennis Cuneo, a senior vice president, has grown by only 600 jobs this year – all of them at newly opened plants – to a total of just over 32,000 employees. Existing factories continue on two shifts a day. Overtime and reconfigured work schedules help to squeeze out more production, without adding third shifts and the hiring that the additional shifts would require. “We are reluctant to bring people on immediately,” Mr. Cuneo said. “We are going to wait and see what we can still get from improvements in productivity. If the demand is sustained, there will come a point where you have to add a shift.”…
Sixty-six percent of the working age population was in the labor force in April, down from 66.7 percent at the start of the recovery. That is 1.6 million missing people, enough to raise the unemployment rate to 6.2 percent from its present 5.2 percent – if they all showed up….
That’s a real problem with unemployment stats: they don’t count everyone.
And it’s hard to look at that penultimate paragraph and think there’s a lot of job growth: there may be productivity gains and increased sales revenue, but that ain’t the same thing.
Some time earlier today, a friend passed this my way:
Mike Davidson: We’re Hiring In a Pretty Big Way:
[T]he Walt Disney Internet Group is looking to fill over 80 positions in our North Hollywood and Seattle offices right now. These are mostly technical positions ranging from the creative side of things to the engineering side of things, and I can tell you from the over four years I’ve worked here that it’s a great place to get your groove on.
To list every position available in this blog entry would take quite some time, but just in the Seattle office, I know we’re looking for engineers, technical producers, designers, managers, Java people, SQL people, project managers, and a handful of other positions.
So perhaps there are some opportunities out there. But it’s hard for me to keep up the pretense I am employable in technology any more: 4 years away is a long time. I think I still understand the business aspects of it all well enough, but the tools and coding landscape has changed more than I care to think about.
And of course, I couldn’t consider anything til September anyway, unless I could bring the kids to work or work from poolside. Ah, well.
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[composed and posted with ecto]