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Economists Say 'Not Yet' to Second Helping of Stimulus
Tweet Share on Facebook July 9, 2009 CommentAny Calvin and Hobbes fan knows how much Calvin loves Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs--sometimes three (or, say, five) bowls worth. His first bowl is eaten in anticipation of his second, which is then consumed before the first has even been digested.
It's not unlike calls for a second stimulus now, before the effects of the first have been felt. Warren Buffett today called for a meatier second stimulus. Paul Krugman has argued for the same. But a WSJ survey shows the majority of economists are opposed to a second round of spending before the country has seen the fruits of the first. From the WSJ:
"The mother of all jobless recoveries is coming down the pike," said Allen Sinai of Decision Economics. But he doesn't favor more stimulus now, saying "lags in monetary and fiscal policy actions" should be allowed to "work through the system."
Like most respondents, Mr. Sinai said the bulk of the stimulus wouldn't be felt until 2010. When asked how much the stimulus has helped the economy, 53% of respondents said it has provided somewhat of a boost but that the larger effect is still to come.
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Initial Unemployment Benefit Claims Plunge
Tweet Share on Facebook July 9, 2009 Comment (2)Last week, 565,000 people filed inital claims for unemployment benefits--a drop of 52,000 from the previous week, when 617,000 claims were filed, the Labor Department reported this morning. The four-week moving average, used to smooth out this volatile weekly data, fell by 10,000.
It's good news, but don't read too much into it, says Joshua Shapiro, chief U.S. economist at MFR, in a morning note.
From Shapiro:
The median forecast for the current week’s seasonally adjusted result called for a decline to 603,000. The reported outcome was therefore considerably lower than market expectations. However, as we warned, results in holiday weeks are often substantially skewed by imprecise seasonal adjustment, and we would caution against reading much (if anything) into this report.
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7 Lessons From a Successful Job Search
Tweet Share on Facebook July 8, 2009 Comment (63)For the past few months, I've been helping someone look for a job. By that I mean that I have been offering my advice by the bucketload to a receptive, if discriminating, job seeker who then had to do the actual work of finding employment. Last week, this job search ended with some of the greatest words in the English dictionary: "We are pleased to extend to you an offer of employment." Here are seven lessons from the hunt:
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Twitter-Based Job Schemes Promise Work-From-Home Cash
Tweet Share on Facebook July 7, 2009 Comment (10)It's no surprise, really, that the Better Business Bureau's newest job scheme alert is all about Twitter. As a BBB spokesman puts it: “Twitter is the newest bright shiny object online and a perfect hook for yet another work-at-home scheme."
Multiple sites are promising easy routes to daily paychecks with Twitter. A couple of sites that the BBB spotlights persuade users to sign up for seven-day free trials for informational materials, then charge nearly $50 to $100 a month at the end of the trial period.
From the BBB:
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5 Things to Know About Hiring Right Now
Tweet Share on Facebook July 7, 2009 Comment (3)The Labor Department released its report on May's hiring, firing and job openings today. If you'll recall, May's job numbers were a burst of good news when reported last month--as employers had cut their rate of job shedding in half for the month.
The number of people hired in May held pretty steady at 4 million. The hires rate--total hires as a percent of total employment--dropped significantly in retail, however.
The job openings rate--a measure of the number of job openings on the final business day of the month as a portion of the total employment plus openings--jumped for the retail industry in May. The job openings rate fell significantly in accomodation and food services, and state and local government.
Between May 2007 and May 2008, the job openings rate has dropped significantly for nearly all industries save for the federal government, which hired many temporary Census 2010 workers.
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Why You Shouldn't Fear a Job Interview Shrink
Tweet Share on Facebook July 6, 2009 Comment (2)I talked with Washington, DC's WTOP News this July Fourth about job interviews--namely, my recent story on psychologists at job interviews. More and more companies are turning to industrial-organizational psychologists for help filtering the best executive and managerial candidates from the piles of resumes on their desks (and in their E-mail).
Why a Psychologist Might Be at Your Next Interview
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Why the Worst Jobs Numbers Sometimes Aren't
Tweet Share on Facebook July 6, 2009 Comment (3)Recessions are really about people--losing jobs, missing mortgage payments, starting new businesses, and closing businesses that have failed. But you can't dismiss the numbers. The unemployment rate rises, the gross domestic product slips, home sales fall, advertising dollars fade. While the stories about people are easy to sensationalize, at least the numbers make our circumstances objectively measurable. After all, numbers can't be made to appear as anything other than what they are, right?
Let's take a look at employment. The workforce of 2009 is huge. Consider that nearly 4.2 million Americans were hired in April, and an additional 4.1 million were hired in March--all while in a recession. Despite the downturn stripping about 7 million jobs from the nation's payrolls, the number of employed workers has more than tripled in just seven decades.
[See more on surviving long-term unemployment]
You'd be forgiven for thinking that the numbers hadn't changed that much, given the flurry of headlines and news reports that have been comparing the absolute numbers of job losses during this recession with those of the past.
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The June Jobs Report and Long-term Unemployment
Tweet Share on Facebook July 2, 2009 Comment (5)The bad news in June's jobs report is slightly insidious. From the outside, it doesn't look so bad. It's not like we had the kinds of job losses we had earlier this year. But there are many, many ugly things in this report. A list:
- Job losses were a good deal higher than expected: 467,000 vs. 365,000
- The average workweek hit a record low, thanks to employers slashing payroll hours.
- The U6 measure--an alternate measure of unemployment that includes part-timers who want full-time jobs, and discouraged people who are unemployed but have stopped looking for work--hit 16.5 percent.
- The teen unemployment rate hit 24 percent. (That does not mean that 24 percent of teenagers aren't working. That means that 24 percent of teenagers who want jobs cannot find them.)
- Hourly earnings were flat, but hours have been cut, so weekly earnings fell in June.
- Male v. female unemployment rate: 10 v. 7.6
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Why the Unemployed Need to Find Peace of Mind
Tweet Share on Facebook July 1, 2009 Comment (1)It's a fairly cruel fact of life that the people most in need of a career coach, a massage, a vacation, or, say, a nutritious variety of fruits and vegetables, are the least likely to be able to afford them. Stress often accompanies a drop in income, so right when you need better methods of dealing with stress, you're unable to afford them.
There's a well-supported correlation between job loss and decreased longevity. Not only does a laid-off worker suffer the acute stress and earnings disruption at the time of the job loss, but over the course of a lifetime, the worker's earnings may be negatively affected by the setback. A recent study by Daniel Sullivan of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and Till von Wachter of Columbia University found job loss among high-seniority male workers resulted in a mortality rate between 50 percent and 100 percent higher than normal in the year following the job loss. The effect declines over time, according to the economists' research, but life expectancy still seemed slightly affected by the job displacement.
One remarkable point from the Sullivan-von Wachter study: The economists found that younger workers—under 55—are much more affected by the side effects of job loss than older workers. They experience a much higher percentage increase in "mortality hazards." For one thing, the researchers point out that older workers have the advantage of access to Social Security, their company's pension plans, or Medicare coverage.
Poorer health is not only a threat to those losing their jobs, but those who fear they will. As Tom Jacobs writes in the most recent issue of Miller-McCune, research increasingly suggests that "a nagging, persistent fear of losing one's job is also detrimental to one's health." (Some of the research involves self-reported health, which may or may not be the same thing as actual health.) A study earlier this year found that layoff survivors tend to experience poorer health for as long as six years.
