A Small Silver Lining in 2010 Employment Stats

As you might expect, employment statistics released yesterday for the third quarter of last year show an economy still healing from the wounds of the financial crisis that began in 2008.

Private sector job gains were up significantly from the lows of early 2009, but showed a dip from earlier in the year.  Gross job gains for the third quarter of 2010 came to 6.6 million.  The quarter before, 6.9 million jobs were added.  That’s a promising increase from the first quarter of 2009, when only 5.8 million jobs were gained.  But these are gross gains, from new businesses, or expansion of existing businesses, and do not include job losses.

Job losses for the same time period mirror the gains, with a rise in job losses in the third quarter as compared to earlier in 2010.  In the second quarter of the year, 6.2 million jobs were lost, either from contraction in employment at existing companies or from the closing of some companies.  In third quarter, the number of job losses went up to 6.4 million.

Net job growth or loss is the difference between the two, and unfortunately, the net gain for the third quarter of 2010 was only 0.2 million jobs (6.6 million gained minus 6.4 million lost).  At least the economy is no longer hemorrhaging jobs.  But net job growth will have to increase if we hope to get back even a fraction of the millions of jobs we’ve lost over the last few years.

The one bright spot in all this is in the manufacturing sector which has recorded two consecutive quarters of net employment increases after 15 consecutive quarters of net decreases from third quarter 2006 to first quarter 2010.