Employment News Jan. 17 - 21

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News
FRIDAY
The Phantom 15 Million
Taming unemployment starts with solving the mystery of the jobs that were supposed to have been created in the past 10 years but weren’t.
A real-time look at who's hiring and where
Want to find out which companies have announced they're planning to add to their ranks? While job location, required skills and pay run the gamut, a new web resource is providing just that.
Union Membership in Companies Slumps to Record Low 6.9% in 2010
Union membership in U.S. companies slumped to a record low last year as the recession eroded employment in industries where organized labor represents the workforce, the Labor Department reported.

THURSDAY
Weekly Claims Turn Lower as Hope Rises for Jobs Market
The number of Americans filing for first-time unemployment benefits dropped sharply to 404,000 from a downwardly revised reading of 441,000 in the prior week.

WEDNESDAY
Gordon Brown to warn against global youth unemployment epidemic
Former prime minister will call for Barack Obama to take the lead in helping the 81 million people under the age of 25.

Economist Comments
THURSDAY
Why Jobs Haven't Come Back
Many laid-off workers are not being hired back because they were not adding much value to their companies in the first place.

WEDNESDAY
No Job? No Income? No Problem for Consumers
Faced with these not insignificant hurdles, what did the U.S. consumer do? Why, he spent like there was no tomorrow.

Blogs
FRIDAY
Does disability insurance discourage employment?
What's the success rate on coming out of disability and finding a decent job? What percent of the disabled, permanently unemployed are truly unable to engage in productive work? I was put onto this question by a tip from Larry Katz.
State and Local Governments: Real Wage Gains from 2000 to 2009
Here is the data of the gains and losses.

THURSDAY
Underemployed vs. Unemployed
The unemployment rate isn’t as closely tied to how rich or poor a country is as its underemployment rate, according to new international data from Gallup.
The Rise and Fall of the Labor Force
Before the 1990s, recessions seemed to have a clear pattern--jobs would be lost during the downturn, then roar back along with the rest of the economy.  Since then, we've seen a different pattern: the jobs go away, and the workers take a long time to find another.

WEDNESDAY
If They Had Asked Me
The New York Times asks various folks for their view of why jobs have not come back during this recovery. I recommend taking a longer view of the process.
Why is labor hoarding diminishing?
Paul Krugman offers three good explanations of why today's recessions are involving larger labor losses than in the past.  Bubble-based recessions are tougher to get out of, unions are weaker, and many leading firms face more volatility.  All taken together, these mean the incentive for labor hoarding is weaker than before

TUESDAY
Why Is Employment Becoming a Lagging Indicator?
Tyler's impressed that spending and output are up, but employment isn't.  But the simplest story is just that employment is becoming a lagging indicator.*  Consider: After the last "jobless recovery," the unemployment rate still fell to 4.9% by the end of 2005. 
Unemployment Rates, A Detailed Look
In 2010, the Labor Dept. tracked unemployment rates for more than 500 occupations--from travel agents (11% unemployed) to taxi drivers (10.7%). See how each occupation stacks up.
Mind the gap
Any discussion of continued high unemployment in America would be incomplete without bringing in this piece of data:

Reports
FRIDAY
Declining Unionization Calls for Re-Envisioning Workplace Relations
Union membership has fallen because traditional collective bargaining does not appeal to most workers. Polls show that only one in 10 non-union workers want to organize. This makes sense: in the competitive private sector, unions can do little to raise their members’ pay. Additionally, most workers like their jobs and believe they are on the same side as their employers.