Comparing Employment to Previous Recessions
The following chart, taken from NY Times blog, compares employment recovery (as well as recession recovery) rates of prominent previous recessions and the current one. Current recession seems to be the deepest and one of the longest since 1980.
Horizontal axis shows months. Vertical axis shows the ratio of that month’s nonfarm payrolls to the nonfarm payrolls at the start of recession.
It is interesting to see how USA behaves compared to the world. The next chart describes monthly unemployment rates for 10 countries (April 2009-September 2010) (Source BLS).
Foreign Labor in the USA
This topic is of special interest for us (and thanks to my FB friend who's commented on previous post).
The following chart details comparative employment data for native and foreign born population. Foreign born means those residing in the United States who were not U.S. citizens at birth (Source BLS).
Note that foreign population surveyed employment rate hasn't changed during the last year, and it has been and still higher than natives' employment rate. About 90 percent of both the foreign and native labor forces are employed.
According to critic cited in the Epoch Times, employers hire foreign workers without legal documentation, and do not declare about it. It is not completely clear from the article, which sectors most adopt such behavior. It makes sense that the actual employment rate of the foreign labor is actually higher. Reminds Israel, doesn't it?
