70% Of The Elderly Aren’t Retiring Because They Can’t Afford To Anymore

by ilene - March 3rd, 2010 1:00 pm

Following up on our earlier article by Tom Lindmark, Can Americans Work Longer? While working longer has many positives on an individual basis, when jobs are scarce, there’s still the problem of more competition for fewer jobs. - Ilene

70% Of The Elderly Aren’t Retiring Because They Can’t Afford To Anymore

Courtesy of Vincent Fernando at Clusterstock/Business Insider

A new survey from Career Builder exposes what will be an increasingly common trend as America ages demographically — older workers are being forced to keep working and postpone retirement for financial reasons.

CareerBuilder:

More than seven-in-ten (72 percent) workers over the age of 60 who said they are putting off their retirement are doing so because they can’t afford to retire financially, according to a new survey by CareerBuilder.

The good news is that many older workers are putting off retirement for positive reasons as well.

About 70% of workers delaying retirement said they are doing so partly because they enjoy their jobs according to CareerBuilder. Hence there are many Americans who are, yes, putting off retirement for financial reasons, but at the same time are pretty happy to do so since they enjoy working.

Such job satisfaction will become necessary for most young Americans, since fully supporting retirees from ~60 years onwards will be simply untenable as an increasing proportion of America becomes old due to demographic change and extended life expectancies. Already, in 2012 about 1 in 3 American workers will be over 50 years old according to The Economist.

Thus the financial crisis may have delivered an unwanted wake-up call. Americans will need to quickly learn how to work longer into their silver years.

Miniature Businessman Walking Across Newspaper Stock Page With Briefcase

Luckily, as the satisfaction rates in the survey above show, this situation might not be as bad as you’d expect. Let’s hope.

Massive Layoffs Coming in NYC, Nevada, California, Colorado, Arizona, Everywhere

by ilene - February 1st, 2010 2:21 pm

Massive Layoffs Coming in NYC, Nevada, California, Colorado, Arizona, Everywhere

Courtesy of Mish

Cities, states, and municipalities are sinking by the minute. And unless unions agree to concessions (which they won’t) massive layoffs are coming everywhere you look. New York City is a prime example.

Please consider NYC May Lay Off 19,000 Workers If State Cuts Aid

New York City will have to lay off more than 10,000 public workers, in addition to 8,500 teachers, if the state legislature approves the $1.3 billion of cuts the governor proposed in his deficit-closing budget, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said on Monday.

The mayor, in a speech to the legislature, estimated 3,150 police officers would be cut, reducing the force’s "operational strength" to 1985 levels.

About 1,050 firefighters would have to be let go, along with 900 correctional officers, and the city would have to cut its daily inmate population by 1,900, he said. The number of at-risk children that service workers monitor would fall to 2,700 from 9,000, Bloomberg said.

The mayor, an independent, said Governor David Paterson’s budget "utterly fails the test of fairness." He told lawmakers: "You can’t lose control of the streets in terms of safety or cleanliness. You can’t lose control of the streets in terms of an ambulance or a firefighter showing up."

NYC mayor: State budget would force city layoffs

Check out the spin in this version of the same story: NYC mayor: State budget would force city layoffs

The proposed state budget would force thousands of layoffs and could reduce New York City police staffing to the level of 1985, before the city emerged as a terrorism target, Mayor Michael Bloomberg warned legislators Monday.

Gov. David Paterson’s proposed 2010-11 budget would cut $1.5 billion in funding to the city, Bloomberg said — forcing layoffs of 9 percent of the city’s police officers; layoffs of 1,050 firefighters and the closing of some firehouses; and 8,500 teachers as part of what Bloomberg says is a $500 million cut in school aid.

In addition, aid for other services such as soup kitchens, homeless shelters and transit cards for students will be sapped with no way for the city to make up the funding.

"This executive budget would have devastating effects on essential services in New York City," Bloomberg said.

Pointing The Finger

It appears mayor Bloomberg does not have the courage to point the finger where it belongs.

Not a single public servant needs to be laid off. All they have to do is take…

Tags: Economy, GDP numbers, inventory rebuilding, Job losses, massive layoffs, Recovery, states, unemployment, unions

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Not a Positive Economic Picture

by Chart School - January 12th, 2010 1:35 pm

Not a Positive Economic Picture

Courtesy of Michael Panzner at Financial Armageddon

For months now, there’s been considerable debate about whether the U.S. economy is on the road to recovery.

Bulls point to the massive monetary and fiscal stimulus that’s been pumped into the economy, the sharp rebound in share prices, and the relative improvement in certain indicators as a reason for optimism.

Bears — like me — note the persistent negative sentiment on Main Street and in many corporate boardrooms, the steady increase in foreclosures, personal bankruptcies, and the ranks of the long-term unemployed, and the numerous imbalances — including still-very-high levels of public and private debt — that remain unresolved.

So who’s right?

Chances are that we won’t know the right answer for some time. Historically, sustained economic recoveries have not been fully recognized until well after the fact.

But one way to get a sense of where things stand is to look at how things are playing out relative to the past. On that basis, the notion that the economy is back on track leaves a lot to be desired.

To cite one example, Calculated Risk regularly updates and publishes a chart, "Percent Job Losses in Post WWII Recessions," which reveals that the current pace of job losses is more severe and persistent than during all prior postwar downturns.

Another chart featured in a recent report by the Rockefeller Institute of Government, "Recession or No Recession, State Tax Revenues Remain Negative," (hat tip to The Business Insider) paints a similarly disturbing picture of the recent trend of real — inflation-adjusted — retail sales.

In fact, using data from Bloomberg, I put together several graphs that show how key economic indicators — including new home starts, industrial production, durable goods orders, and consumer credit outstanding — have fared during every downturn — including the present one — since April 1960.

>

As you can see, the pattern in each chart resembles the one apparent in the earlier examples: things are generally worse now than they were at the same point during prior episodes.

Interestingly, when you compare the current trend of the stock market — an indicator that many bulls have been fixated on — to those that unfolded during past recessions, it has also come up short, despite the near-70 percent rally we’ve seen in the S&P 500 index since the March 2009 lows.

Of course, there’s more to reading the economic tea leaves than charts alone.

Or so many of the bulls seem to think.

…

Tags: Economy, Job losses, Recovery

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

-85K

by ilene - January 8th, 2010 8:40 am

-85K

Courtesy of Joe Weisenthal at Clusterstock/Business Insider

fired The non-farm part of the economy whacked 85K jobs in December, which is worse than the no jobs lost economists had been expecting.

The unemployment rate came in at 10%, which is unchanged from last month.

But November was revised upward from its loss of 11K to a small gain, so that’s a positive.

Average hourly earnings were up .2%.

Here’s the full announcement from the BLS:

——

Nonfarm payroll employment edged down (-85,000) in December, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 10.0 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment fell in construction, manufacturing, and
wholesale trade, while temporary help services and health care added jobs.

Household Survey Data

In December, both the number of unemployed persons, at 15.3 million, and the unemployment rate, at 10.0 percent, were unchanged. At the start of the recession in December 2007, the number of unemployed persons was 7.7 million, and the unemployment rate was 5.0 percent. (See table A-1.)

Revision of Seasonally Adjusted Household Survey Data

Seasonally adjusted household survey data have been revised using updated seasonal adjustment factors, a procedure done at the end of each calendar year. Seasonally adjusted estimates back to January 2005 were subject to revision. The unemployment rates for January 2009 through November 2009 (as originally published and as revised) appear in table B, along with additional information about the revisions

Unemployment rates for the major worker groups–adult men (10.2 percent), adult women (8.2 percent), teenagers (27.1 percent), whites (9.0 percent), blacks (16.2 percent), and Hispanics (12.9 percent)–showed little change in December. The unemployment rate for Asians was 8.4 percent, not seasonally adjusted. (See tables A-1, A-2, and A-3.)

Among the unemployed, the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over) continued to trend up, reaching 6.1 million. In December, 4 in 10 unemployed workers were jobless for 27 weeks or longer. (See table A-9.)

The civilian labor force participation rate fell to 64.6 percent in December. The employment-population ratio declined to 58.2 percent. (See table A-1.)

The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) was about unchanged at 9.2 million in December and has been relatively flat since March. These individuals were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job. (See table A-5.)

About 2.5 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force in December, an increase of 578,000…

Tags: Economy, Employment, Job losses, Jobs, Recession, unemployment

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Still Shedding Jobs

by ilene - December 2nd, 2009 11:54 am

Still Shedding Jobs

Courtesy of Econompic Data

Bloomberg reports:

Companies in the U.S. cut an estimated 169,000 jobs in November, according to a private report based on payroll data.

The drop, the smallest since July 2008, compares with a revised 195,000 decline the prior month, data from ADP Employer Services showed today. The figures were forecast to show a decline of 150,000 jobs, according to the median estimate of 32 economists in a Bloomberg survey.

The report signals the job market is still deteriorating and unemployment will probably climb further even as the economy is emerging from the worst recession since the 1930s. After overestimating payroll losses by 103,000 on average in the five months to September, ADP’s initial estimate for October was in line with the government’s payroll figures.

“Our economy is still a long way from adding jobs,” Guy LeBas, chief fixed-income strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott LLC in Philadelphia, said before the report. “Labor markets remain the one area where significant improvement in economic conditions has yet to manifest.”

ADP includes only private employment and doesn’t take into account hiring by government agencies.

ADP job gains/losses

Optimists will say this report shows "The Bleeding is Slowing‘, but the fact is that after shedding THIS many jobs and we are still losing 150k+ jobs per month is simply stunning.

Source: ADP

Tags: ADP Payroll Report, Job losses, job market

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Reader Emails on Birth/Death Model and Unemployment Rate

by ilene - November 24th, 2009 10:58 am

Reader Emails on Birth/Death Model and Unemployment Rate

Elevated view of an elderly man sitting at a table reading a newspaper

Courtesy of Mish

I have gotten many question about revisions to the Reader Emails on Birth/Death Model and Unemployment Rate.

In case you missed it the BLS has admitted that its Birth/Death Model has overestimated jobs by about 800,000. The New York Times talked about this in Jobs Vanish.

The Labor Department said that it planned to revise the job figures by subtracting more than 800,000 jobs that it had wrongly estimated were filled by workers.

The so-called “benchmark revision” that was announced today will not formally be incorporated into the job figures until February, and could be revised. But the figures indicate that last March the government overestimated the total number of jobs by 824,000, or 0.6 percent. Its overestimate of private-sector employment was even greater — 855,000 jobs, or 0.8 percent.

The culprit is probably the much maligned birth-death model, although Victoria Battista, an economist at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, said the bureau was looking into other possible issues, such as changing response rates to the questionnaire sent out by the bureau to employers each month.

That model adds in jobs assumed to have been created by employers who are too new to have been added to the survey, and subtracts jobs from employers assumed to have failed and therefore not responded to the bureau’s survey.

I have been complaining for years that the Birth/Death model was on Mars.

I include in every monthly jobs post a statement similar to this one: "At this point in the cycle birth death numbers should have been massively contracting for months. The BLS is going to keep adding jobs through the entire recession in a complete display of incompetence."

At least they finally understand there is a problem, years after it was obvious to anyone using some semblance of common sense.

Birth Death Model Revisions 2009

click on chart for sharper image

Given those fantasyland projections I have serious doubts that 800,000 take aways is enough.

Short Comings In BLS Birth Death Model

Inquiring minds are reading Recession shows shortcomings in U.S. economic data.

The U.S. government is having a tough time guesstimating how many small businesses failed in this recession, casting doubt on the reliability of vital data on employment and economic growth.

The formula the U.S. Labor Department designed to help it deliver timely, thorough monthly employment reports broke down in the heat of the financial crisis, miscounting the number of jobs by an estimated 824,000 in…

The Next 7 Millions Jobs That Will Be Lost

by ilene - November 17th, 2009 4:41 pm

Charles, Of Two Minds, walking around Santa Monica and San Fransisco, with his two eyes open, estimates another seven million jobs are on the verge of destruction. - Ilene

The Next 7 Millions Jobs That Will Be Lost

santa monica Courtesy of Charles Hugh Smith Of Two Minds

The hype is that the "recession is over." Has anyone touting this line actually walked around the real world? The next 7 million jobs to be lost are already in the pipeline.

The divergence between the reality easily observed in the real world and the heavily touted hype that "the recession is over because GDP rose 3.5%" is growing. It’s obvious that another 7 million jobs which are currently hanging by threads will be slashed in the next year or two.

According to the latest Employment Situation Summary (Bureau of Labor Statistics) dated November 7, 2009:

Total nonfarm payroll employment declined by 190,000 in October. In the most recent 3 months, job losses have averaged 188,000 per month, compared with losses averaging 357,000 during the prior 3 months. In contrast, losses averaged 645,000 per month from November 2008 to April 2009. Since December 2007, payroll employment has fallen by 7.3 million.

Civilian labor force: 154 million
Employment: 138.3 million
Unemployment: 15.7 million
Sept-Oct. change in employment: -589,000
in unemployment: 558,000
Not in labor force: 82,575,000

It is staggering that 7 million jobs lost out of 145 million (the total prior to the financial meltdown) has created a 10.2% unemployment rate. The numbers here don’t add up–"only" 190,000 jobs were lost in October, but then employment fell by 589,000–huh?–but the point missing is how many jobs are hanging by a thread.

I recently traveled to Los Angeles to be interviewed by my polymath friend and media maven Richard Metzger, creator of the Dangerous Minds website which has rocketed to 50,000 page views a day since he launched it a few months ago. (The topic was of course Survival+; look for the interview in about a week on Dangerous Minds.)

(Richard also manages the L.A. Time’s hot blog Brand X which will have you humming Randy Neuman’s I Love L.A. in short order.)

Has anyone noticed that airports are commercial dead-zones peopled by zombie clerks suffering from terminal boredom?

One desperate young man had taken the unenviable job of hawking Chase credit cards via a weak pitch for a free ticket on Southwest Air (retail value $59). Since I like to arrive early for flights (perhaps scar-tissue remaining from being on TSA’s "watch…

Tags: Economy, Job losses, Recession, Retail

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

FOMC POLICY STATEMENT & MARKET WRAP

by ilene - November 4th, 2009 4:05 pm

Courtesy of The Pragmatic Capitalist

FOMC POLICY STATEMENT

fed policy It looks like no material changes to the statement. The Fed is continuing their ridiculously predictable dollar destructive/ asset bubble policy. As we suspected, the dollar is getting crushed, bonds are tanking, stocks are soaring and gold is higher. I would be a seller of this priced-in news.

Release Date: November 4, 2009

For immediate release

Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in September suggests that economic activity has continued to pick up. Conditions in financial markets were roughly unchanged, on balance, over the intermeeting period. Activity in the housing sector has increased over recent months. Household spending appears to be expanding but remains constrained by ongoing job losses, sluggish income growth, lower housing wealth, and tight credit. Businesses are still cutting back on fixed investment and staffing, though at a slower pace; they continue to make progress in bringing inventory stocks into better alignment with sales. Although economic activity is likely to remain weak for a time, the Committee anticipates that policy actions to stabilize financial markets and institutions, fiscal and monetary stimulus, and market forces will support a strengthening of economic growth and a gradual return to higher levels of resource utilization in a context of price stability.

With substantial resource slack likely to continue to dampen cost pressures and with longer-term inflation expectations stable, the Committee expects that inflation will remain subdued for some time.

In these circumstances, the Federal Reserve will continue to employ a wide range of tools to promote economic recovery and to preserve price stability. The Committee will maintain the target range for the federal funds rate at 0 to 1/4 percent and continues to anticipate that economic conditions, including low rates of resource utilization, subdued inflation trends, and stable inflation expectations, are likely to warrant exceptionally low levels of the federal funds rate for an extended period. To provide support to mortgage lending and housing markets and to improve overall conditions in private credit markets, the Federal Reserve will purchase a total of $1.25 trillion of agency mortgage-backed securities and about $175 billion of agency debt. The amount of agency debt purchases, while somewhat less than the previously announced maximum of $200 billion, is consistent with the recent path of purchases and reflects the limited availability of agency debt. In order to promote a smooth transition in markets, the Committee will gradually slow the pace of its purchases…

The Catastrophic Economic Impact of Cap and Trade

by Zero Hedge - October 28th, 2009 7:07 pm

Courtesy of Cheeky Bastard

Here on Zerohedge the main goal is to present the readers with facts that remain hidden under the radar of the traditional ( soon to be dead ) information providers. Also, we try to provide information which is useful to our readers, and from which our readers can learn something new.

So i decided to present to you a specialist view on the economic impact of Cap and Trade legislation. Based on scientific facts which are, at least, contingent in their nature, this legislature will not only impact every single part of your life, it will also limit your basic freedoms, and not only that; it will put a price on that which makes you a human being, which makes you a living organism. I will not give my personal opinion on this topic, but i think that the article which i will post here will give you a clear picture of what my opinion on this matter is.

Testimony before
The Energy and Commerce Committee
U.S House of Representatives

April 22, 2009

My name is David Kreutzer. I am the Senior Policy Analyst in Energy Economics and Climate Change at The Heritage Foundation. The views I express in this testimony are my own, and should not be construed as representing any official position of The Heritage Foundation.

I want to thank the members of the Energy and Commerce Committee for this opportunity to address you concerning the economic impacts of cap-and-trade policies.

What Is the Problem with Carbon Dioxide (CO2)?

Carbon dioxide is not a toxin, is not directly harmful to human health, and is not projected to become so–even without legislative or regulatory action. CO2 is fundamental to all known forms of life. Indeed, studies show that increased CO2 levels are beneficial for crop production.

Nevertheless, driven by concern that increasing levels of CO2 (and other greenhouse gasses) will lead to a warmer world and cause environmental damage, there have been calls to significantly restrict emissions of all greenhouse gasses, but especially CO2. Among the proposals to reduce CO2 levels are carbon taxes and cap and trade.

The Costs

The typical cap-and-trade proposal seeks to reduce CO2 emissions by 60 percent to 80 percent by 2050 where the comparison year is usually 2005. The Center for Data Analysis at The Heritage Foundation did an analysis of the costs of meeting the goals of the Lieberman-Warner bill, S. 2191, last spring. The report on this analysis is attached.

Our…

Tags: Cap and Trade, David Kreutzer, Energy and Commerce Committee, Job losses, manufacturing

Posted in Immediately available to public | No Comments »

Unemployment numbers still point to partial recovery

by ilene - October 2nd, 2009 4:13 pm

Unemployment numbers still point to partial recovery

unemployment Courtesy of Edward Harrison at Credit Writedowns

In July, I blogged on an interesting take on how employment affects equity returns during cyclical recoveries by Van Hoisington and Lacy Hunt. Their thesis was that a recovery in which employment lags the overall upturn significantly is bearish for stocks. Since then, employment has indeed lagged other economic indicators. Witness the most recent employment situation summary released earlier today.

Nonfarm payroll employment continued to decline in September (-263,000), and the unemployment rate (9.8 percent) continued to trend up, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The largest job losses were in construction, manufacturing, retail trade, and government.

Household Survey Data

Since the start of the recession in December 2007, the number of unemployed persons has increased by 7.6 million to 15.1 million, and the unemployment rate has doubled to 9.8 percent…

The civilian labor force participation rate declined by 0.3 percentage point in September to 65.2 percent. The employment-population ratio, at 58.8 percent, also declined over the month and has decreased by 3.9 percentage points since the recession began in December 2007.

Establishment Survey Data

Total nonfarm payroll employment declined by 263,000 in September. From May through September, job losses averaged 307,000 per month, compared with losses averaging 645,000 per month from November 2008 to April. Since the start of the recession in December 2007, payroll employment has fallen by 7.2 million.

In September, construction employment declined by 64,000. Monthly job losses averaged 66,000 from May through September, compared with an average of 117,000 per month from November to April. September job cuts were concentrated in the industry’s nonresidential components (-39,000) and in heavy construction (-12,000). Since December 2007, employment in construction has fallen by 1.5 million.

Employment in manufacturing fell by 51,000 in September. Over the past 3 months, job losses have averaged 53,000 per month, compared with an average monthly loss of 161,000 from October to June. Employment in manufacturing has contracted by 2.1 million since the onset of the recession.

In the service-providing sector, the number of jobs in retail trade fell by 39,000 in September. From April through September, retail employment has fallen by an average of 29,000 per month, compared with an average monthly loss of 68,000 for the prior 6-month period.

Government employment was down by 53,000 in September, with the largest decline occurring in the non-education component of local government (-24,000)…

In September, the average workweek for production and nonsupervisory workers…

Tags: Job losses, nonfarm employment, Recession, Recovery, revision, unemployment

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
« Feb			«-»
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	9	10	11	12	13	14
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27	28
29	30	31

For immediate release

By Andrew Wilkinson

As Seen On:

About Phil:

About Ilene: