Last week the nation’s unemployment rate shot up to its highest level in more than 25 years – 9.4%. Paired with this news was the latest figure on job cuts for May. That number was 345,000 – the lowest we’ve seen since September. There’s good, bad and certainly ugly in those numbers, but when you get down to it, does the slower pace of job cuts offer us a glimmer of hope? Are we starting to see the first signs of recovery?
The free fall of the job market may very well be over. A recent survey of HR execs by Watson Wyatt noted that many companies “have done what they can in terms of using layoffs, hiring freezes and salary freezes to combat the recession.”
While more than half of the companies surveyed are not planning layoffs in the next 12 months, significant cuts on hours and pay to those who remain employed are still having a negative impact on the overall economy. The average workweek in May fell to 33.1 hours, the lowest on record since 1964, and when it comes to wages there’s only one word to describe them – stagnant.
The increase we saw in the number of unemployed may also very well be a direct result of new college grads hitting the market. Nearly 2.27 million young workers (age 20-24) couldn’t find work last month. That’s 15% of them.
There’s a lot to digest and the National Association for Business Economics created a panel of 45 economists to analyze just what these stats mean. While the group predicts a decline in second-quarter economic activity, NABE president Chris Varcares concluded in a written statement, “The good news is that the NABE panel expects economic growth to turn positive in the second half of this year, with the pace of job losses narrowing sharply over the remainder of this year and employment turning up in early 2010.”
Although no one can predict the future, that’s good news. I for one am a believer in using a positive outlook to help create a positive outcome. Let’s keep that glimmer of hope glimmering for better days to come.
