Chris Lester, Senior Vice President/Business Growth
A generally disappointing year-end jobs report did offer a tiny bit of good news – revisions to the November numbers revealed that the economy actually managed to eke out a 4,000-job gain.
Consider it a footnote to economic history.
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm
The small November gain broke a 22-month streak of nationwide payroll job loss stretching back to the beginning of the Great Recession in December 2007. Here’s the toll of roughly 7.2 million jobs lost nationwide over that period of time.
http://data.bls.gov/PDQ/servlet/SurveyOutputServlet?data_tool=latest_numbers&series_id=CES0000000001&output_view=net_1mth
The November revision did little to brighten an otherwise gloomy jobs report. The prelimary estimate is that employers once again shed 85,000 jobs in December. The nationwide unemployment rate, meanwhile, remained stubbornly stuck at 10 percent.
Moreover, the headline unemployment rate would have been worse if hundreds of thousands of frustrated job seekers hadn’t dropped out of the official work force.
Closer to home, things are a little better.
Fresh metro-level numbers released this week showed that unemployment in the Kansas City region was 8.3 percent in November, down slightly from 8.4 percent the previous month. The metro area lost about 22,200 jobs over the 12 months ending in November.
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/metro.htm
Combined, the labor market reports this week suggest that while the worst of the Great Recession is over, and in fact is likely over from a technical production standpoint, employers remain very uncertain about adding new workers. And job creation is the key to a sustainable recovery.
More on that next week when we discuss the results of our year-end Regional Business Survey.
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