Your Friday Silver Lining — Unemployment News: Better Than It Looks

Optimism, Pessimism…

Today’s Friday Humor joke goes like this:

Social scientists decided that they wanted to quantify the human traits of “optimism” and “pessimism.” After much searching through several potential populations, they finally found their test subjects — a little boy reputed by all to be the living definition of a pessimist, and a little girl whose sunny outlook was almost legendary.

The social scientists had devised what they thought would be the perfect test for their subjects. And lo, with many encouraging words, they led the pessimistic little boy into a room full of toys and told him to have at. The little girl was placed in a room full of dung.

One hour later, the scientists checked upon their subjects…

First they checked on the little boy, and found that he had sat himself in a chair in the middle of the room and had not touched a single toy!

“Why?” they asked, aghast.

“Oh, please,” the boy said. “There’s no way these toys are going to work. I bet they don’t have batteries, or they’re broken in some way I can’t see or…” and he went on to describe the many and varied ways that this room of toys was Too Good To Be True.

Rushing to the other room, however, the scientists were shocked to find the little girl on her hands and knees, digging furiously into the hugest pile of dung in the room!

“Why?” they barely managed to gasp.

“Are you kidding?” she replied, “With all of this crap, there’s GOT to be a pony in here somewhere!”

And the Pony Today? — 92.4% of Us Are Still Employed

Yes, the news is bad. According to recent reports, January saw the loss of more than half a million jobs. The nation’s unemployment rate stands at 7.6%. Consumer confidence is at an all-time low — and as we all should know by now, our economy depends heavily on consumers consuming.

But let’s look at the pony in this room that seems full of dung. In this case, the “pony” comes courtesy of a press statement by Tig Gilliam, CEO of Adecco Group North America, a recruiting firm.

According to Mr. Gilliam, while his firm sees further declines in industries such as manufacturing, construction, retail and financial services, there are sectors that show strength and grow payrolls month over month. For example:

• This month alone, the healthcare, education, and government sectors added 60,000 jobs.
• Adecco Group is currently recruiting to fill over 1,500 job openings for mortgage sales and processing professionals due to increased demand as a result of historically low interest rates and great customer demand for refinanced mortgages.

Some other important factors to keep in mind, says Mr. Gilliam:

• The job market is local -– the most recent unemployment rates coming out of some major metropolitan areas like Milwaukee, Baltimore, Boston and DC, for example, reflect much brighter employment pictures than other regions of the country. A willingness to relocate may increase a jobseeker’s chance of success substantially.
• The unemployment rate for college educated workers is 3.8%, far lower than the national average, not to mention the 12% rate for non-high school graduates.
• Finally, the proposed economic stimulus package, with its infrastructure, energy, technology, and telecommunications projects, promises the creation of a wide range of job opportunities across all skill levels.

Now, Let’s Ride That Pony!

The worst of the bad news is, of course, that our country’s citizens who lack a high school education continue to be the most vulnerable among us. Perhaps that’s why George’s sister-in-law, who teaches GED students, has seen such a spike in business! (Unemployed teachers, take note.)

Another piece of bad news is that it’s obvious that our economy is not only failing, but has some inherent and structural dysfunctions.

When our economy needs Americans to buy, Buy, BUY! to keep running — whether they have the money or not, and whether they have the need or not – isn’t that a fundamental weakness? For example, Christmas shopping has become a ritual, not of spending time with our loved ones, but of a mad dash to keep our retail sector going. I don’t like the idea that if I stop buying stuff that neither I nor my gift recipients really wants or needs, my neighbors lose their jobs.

So, to repeat something we’ve said before (again, and again…) here at George’s Blawg: Yes, times are very hard. However, we also have more than one “pony” going for us: a large majority of us are still employed, some sectors of our economy are strong, and Washington is working hard to help all of us turn this around.

In addition, this crisis has pointed out just how much it costs us to allow people to slip through society’s cracks — and it has shown us that an economy that depends entirely on ever-more consumer spending may not be the best kind of economy to have.

We now have an opportunity, before things become even worse, to make long-term changes to address the weaknesses that this recession is showing us. And that may be the real “pony” in this dung-pile we’re living through.

Photo courtesy david.nikonvscanon via flickr.