Further Employment Trends in the USA

This post is the 2nd in the series. Start here.

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.

International Comparison
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?

Current Employment Trends in the USA

Employment Overview

According to the BLS survey recent report, as of October 8th, 2010, Nonfarm payroll employment edged down (-95,000) in September, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 9.6 percent. Government employment declined (-159,000), reflecting both a drop in the number of temporary jobs for Census 2010 and job losses in local government. Private-sector payroll employment continued to trend up modestly (+64,000). The images below are taken from the BLS report.

Since many of the unemployed are leaving the workforce, the actual number of the unemployed is much higher. Therefore it is more than probable that the unemployment rate was, in fact, increased.

Employment by State

The lowest unemployment rates were found in North and South Dakota and Nebraska. The highest rates were reported in California, Michigan, Nevada and Puerto Rico.

Employment by Industry

The following chart displays employment over-the-month change during the last year by industry. Employment is steadily improves in private service providing industry and especially in business, professional, education and health services. There is also a reasonable basis for assuming that part of the unemployed are recently moved to the service providers sectors as self-employed, small businesses.

I've also made a small research for updated current employment data and found some further interesting details (all images were generated by indeed.com). The data is based on current job postings.

Salaries by Position

Currently CMO and CTO suggested salaries are higher than for CEO and COO positions. It seems that during the deepest recession times CMO and CTO positions were perceived as the more required and essential ones.

Salaries by Location

New York is one of the best paid States to work at – about 18% higher than average CEO salaries for job postings nationwide.

Big Company is better. Is it?

Surprisingly Early Stage companies suggest much higher salaries, 71% and 63% higher than the Fortune 500 and Fortune 1000 salaries, correspondingly. Although early stage companies are considered as less "safe" workplaces, higher salaries serve as "risk" compensations.

See further trends here.