Unemployment Rate 9.4% - So Who's Hiring?

The news of the day so far is the unemployment rate in May, which jumped to 9.4%, the highest since August of 1983 when the rate was 9.5%.

Since I like seeing things in perspective, the first chart shows the unemployment rates since 1948, the oldest data I can get at Bureau of Labor Statistics. The current spike started in May 2008, when the rate jumped to 5.5% from April's 5.0%. At that time, analysts and economists attributed it to a flood of high school and college graduates looking for jobs. (Ah those were the days.) The highest national unemployment rate during the Great Depression was 24.9% in 1933. (Toledo, Ohio's rate is said to have hit 80% at one time.)

The rate hit 10.8% in November 1982, and that is the last spike higher than the current one. To find the spike as high as the current one before 1982, you have to go back to 1941.

So is anybody HIRING?

Look no further than your government. The second chart was constructed from the data available from St. Louis Federal Reserve on employment survey. Again, the longest data that I could get.


During the current recession, just about every employment category is heading south. The severest curve is registered by Goods Manufacturing, followed by Construction. Information, which is supposed to be the place for knowledge workers of the future, has been basically flat. A tiny bump after 2000 was quickly corrected by the dot-com bust.

The exceptions are Government and Education & Health Services. Probably some of the latter dovetail with the former. As you can see in the chart, E&H Services is set to overtake Goods Manufacturing. Leisure and Hospitality has also been strong until the beginning of this recession, although the rate of decline is less severe than others.

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