cross-posted from Working America's Main Street blog where I am a featured guest blogger
The July jobs report released today showed a virtually stagnant private sector adding only 71,000 jobs last month, less than the 100,000-plus needed to simply keep up with historical additions to the labor force from population growth. According to the Labor Department, government job losses totaled 202,000 in July, including the loss of 143,000 federal Census workers and another 48,000 among state and local workers, with 30,000 jobs lost in education. Total non-farm payroll employment declined by 131,000 in July.
The official unemployment rate remained unchanged at 9.5 percent, but would have risen were it not for a decline of 181,000 in the size of the labor force. The number of people not counted in the labor force increased by 381,000 in July alone. That number has increased by 2.8 million since July 2009.
Piling worse news on top of bad, June employment numbers were revised down by 96,000. June job losses were first reported to be 125,000. But the revised number released today put June's job losses at 221,000.
The overall job losses for both June and July were fueled by the winding down of employment for the federal Census. Removing the Census jobs numbers for July produces an "ex-Census" net job increase of only 12,000 jobs nationally. Doing the same for the revised June figures yields a mere 4,000 net increase.
When we need to be adding on the order of 400,000 jobs a month to generate a sustained recovery for American workers, the jobs situation continues to resemble something more like a stagnant pool.
And the lines on those iconic job loss graphs from Calculated Risk are now looking worse instead of better.
click here for larger image at Calculated Risk
click here for larger image at Calculated Risk
The top graph shows jobs losses in recessions aligned for the month of maximum employment. The bottom graph displays job losses aligned for the month of maximum job loss at the bottom of the recession.
What's striking is the correlation of the recent declines with the confluence of public sector job losses, virtually stagnant private hiring, and the sado-economic calculus of the Republican Congressional minority to thwart, block and oppose absolutely everything that could help the economy, American workers, and especially those suffering from unemployment. During June and July, for example, a Republican-led filibuster in the Senate kept a total of 2.8 million long-term unemployed workers from receiving any unemployment insurance benefits.
Several other deeply disturbing elements emerge from an analysis of today's jobs report.
One is that the number of persons counted as unemployed for 27 weeks or more declined by 179,000 in July -- the first time the number of long-term unemployed has dropped since the start of the recession. Why is that disturbing? Because that number virtually matches the 181,000 decline in the labor force and the estimated 200,000 jobless workers now exhausting all their extended unemployment benefits each month. It's the '99ers' falling off a cliff.
Second is the fact that the number of newly unemployed workers has been increasing for each of the last four months. Those jobless for less than 5 weeks increased by 70,000 in July, according to the seasonally adjusted numbers in today's report. And while initial unemployment claims dropped significantly during the last half of 2009, those claims have leveled off at a still-elevated rate for the last eight months, and have recently risen again. These are signs that the jobs market is not improving, and may in fact be worsening.
Lastly, since the start of the so-called recovery in GDP in July 2009, there has been no real change in the massive unemployment crisis. The number of unemployed Americans remains nearly 15 million and, according to every available measure, has been virtually unchanged in the last year. In fact, according to today's report, the measures of unemployment designated U-3, U-5 and U-6 are all actually up slightly from a year ago.
With today's jobs report showing a virtually stagnant private jobs market, and with deflationary expectations increasing, no further evidence should be needed to show that the private sector needs a public jobs stimulus.
The author is the winner of the 2010 CREDO Mobile/Netroots Nation award for Blog Activist of the Year.