Economic Double Dip: Here’s Your Sign

While technically The Great Recession has been over since June 2009, the United States has never recovered from it’s massive job losses.  September 2011 was the highest announced layoffs in the past two years in a year that has been steadily creating 400,000 new employee unemployment filings a week.  This marks a very good sign that we are currently sitting in a jobs recession and looking close to an official recession.

September employment numbers were considered to be “mixed” as employers possibly added 60,000 workers to payroll.  Keep in mind retailers who traditionally hire seasonal workers in the fall have been starting the Christmas season earlier than ever.  Walmart started selling Christmas gear in September.  Toy’s R Us has also started to hire seasonal workers.  It is probably safe to assume that many of the jobs added are in fact low paying seasonal jobs.  Even scarier is that retailers are pulling their Black Friday fourth quarter Christmas sales up into the third quarter.  A sign that retailers are scared you will run out of money before you buy your gifts for the year.

Of the planned job cuts 70% or 80,000 jobs came from Bank of America and the Military.  As John Challenger put it “Neither of these cuts is directly related to recent softness in the economy.” Which is scary to think that more “unplanned layoffs” are lurking out there for the fourth quarter and beyond.