Job Losses Continue

Here at Career Purgatory we’re not economists (but they do stop by from time to time), though it is an interesting subject which I’ve taken a couple of classes and read other related books in my free time.  Which is why it is fascinating to me that 38 economists were betting we’d see a rise in private sector employment of about 24,000 jobs.

My guess is their jobs are in fact to study employment, and since a bunch of stimulus jobs have just been terminated, we have Blockbuster Video literally evaluating every store and property it owns that has employees to be closed, and merger mania on our hands, what are these guys looking at?  The current economic situation is great for corporate profits, but at the expense of increasing worker productivity through layoffs and outsourcing.

So not only were the economists surveyed wrong about growth, we found out that employers actually cut 39,000 private sector jobs in September, after they had revised the number up.  So the new rate for unemployment in September has been revised up to 9.6% at the U-3 level and 17.1% for the U-6 level.  If you are not sure what the different numbers mean check it out here.