While the market bounces on a less than forecast (36,000) drop in U.S. payrolls and the headline unemployment rate held steady at 9.7 percent, the underemployment rate in the U.S. rose to 16.8 percent in February (from 16.5 percent the month prior).
∙ Payrolls in U.S. Fell 36,000; Unemployment at 9.7% [Bloomberg]
The best employee I ever had e-mailed me two weeks ago. She’s about to get laid off. She’s looking, but not finding, anything at he current salary.
She offered to come back for a litte more than 60% of her current salary.
I’m going to hire her back. She won’t be unemployed, but she’ll be making far less. The unemployment stats won’t reflect any of this, except to show one more person hired, and to not show one person unemployed. She’ll be working full time and will not show up as underemployed.
@tipster: Salaries are not static, and they reflect supply/demand dynamics, just like housing. So good for you for getting the same resource at 60%, but I would guess she will always be looking elsewhere for something at a higher salary.
Anyone know when the government starting hiring Temp/part-time workers for the 2010 census and how many?
I was in Atlanta yesterday, and I saw a census van on the road (which was completely decked out in advertisement), so I guess they are hired already. I also saw an article saying once again the government wasted millions of dollars hiring people who haven’t worked a single hour.
Tipster, the unemployment information is just one report. There are separate government reports that measure her situation. Just because what is happening to her will not be captured in the Real Earnings Report does not mean the Employment Report isn’t useful. It measures what it measures and if you want to see the effect of people taking wage cuts to find work look at a report that measures that.
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/realer.nr0.htm
Next Real Earnings Report (for Feb 2010) is due out March 18th.
Whoops, that middle sentance should be:
“Just because what is happening to her will be captured in the Real Earnings Report does not mean the Employment Report isn’t useful.”
A friend who has done work for the census in the past was approached almost 2 years ago for work that’s just about to start. The fed’s hiring process is quite slow.