South By North Strategies, Ltd.

The State Of Working North Carolina

Lat week, the N.C. Budget and Tax Center published a detailed report on the state of North Carolina’s labor market. Among other finsings, the report notes that “more than 24 months after the official end of the Great Recession, North Carolina’s working families continue to struggle with a lack of job opportunities, staggering loss of earnings and wealth, and the continued transformation of the state’s economy.”

Furthermore, the report found, as the graph below shows, that nearly half of North Carolina’s unemployed workers had been out of work for more than six months.

Job Openings In July 2011

From the Economic Policy Institute’s analysis of the July version of the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) …

In July there were 3.2 million job openings and 13.9 million unemployed workers (unemployment data are from the Current Population Survey), resulting in a 4.3-to-1 ratio of unemployed workers to job openings. This is an improvement from the revised June ratio of 4.4-to-1. However, July marks two years and seven months—134 weeks—that the “job seeker’s ratio” has been substantially above 4-to-1, a level that means there are no jobs to be found for three out of four unemployed workers. By comparison, in December 2000 the job-seeker’s ratio was 1.1-to-1, and the highest it got in the downturn of the early 2000s was 2.8-to-1. The figure shows that unemployed workers vastly outnumber job seekers in every major industry, reflecting an across-the-board shortfall of demand for workers rather than a structural mismatch between unemployed workers and job openings.

Around The Dial – September 9, 2011

Economic policy reports, blog postings, and media stories of interest:

• The New York Times reports on the future of the postal service.
• Fed Watch has answers to your economic questions.
• E.J. Dionne wonders about “the last Labor Day.”
• The Charlotte Observer notes that NC’s economy is moving the wrong way.
• The PBS NewsHour reports on “a tough year for [organized] labor.”
• David Leonhardt see the US on “the verge of a double dip recession.”

The European Debt Crisis: Lego Version

Felix Salmon points out a recent effort by analysts at JP Morgan to explain the European debt crisis with Legos.

A Tale Of Two Economies

The New York Times recently illustrated several economic trends between 1947 and the present and compared how they unfolded in two radically different periods: 1947-79 and 1980-present.