December 5, 2009

Encouraging jobless data provides hope for 2010

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Call it an early holiday present. Or look at it as another empty statistic. No matter how you interpret the numbers, it was hard not to feel a little yuletide cheer yesterday after reading the latest national unemployment report and seeing only a five-digit number representing national job losses for November. After nearly two disheartening years of monthly reports showing more than 100,000 jobs lost (peaking at 741,000 in January 2009), the 11,000 jobs that the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) said had vanished last month almost--almost -felt like good news.

Of course, no loss of employment could ever be considered good in this economy, with one out of every 10 American workers sitting idle. The best we can do with the information right now would be to call it "encouraging." I almost shrugged off the BLS data as just one of many positive economic indicators that had no real influence on job growth, until I saw another report the same day from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM).

Culling data from 500 manufacturing firms and 500 service firms, SHRM released its Leading Indicators of National Employment (LINE) report, which makes predictions on nationwide hiring trends each month. For this December, the report said, responding companies said they would hire more people than they planned to lay off. In the manufacturing sector, a net total of 10.7 percent of companies surveyed said they would increase hiring, while in the services sector a net total of 18.8 percent said they would add new jobs.

Will any of this help get you a job in Seattle on Monday? Probably not. But before the employment situation can rebound, the hemorrhaging has to stop. The BLS report from yesterday is yet another indicator that job losses have been slowly declining since the darkest days of January. The LINE report shows that many manufacturing and service companies are starting to consider hiring again after a long period of contraction. These aren't solutions to the problem, but they are undeniably steps in the right direction.

The real measure of local progress on the local job numbers may not be seen until Dec. 15, when the Employment Security Department releases its local unemployment data for November. If the trend over the last 11 months are any indication, however, the country--and perhaps the Puget Sound area--can look forward in the next couple of months to a possible net increase in job creation. Only then can we break out the party hats and start talking about a true recovery.

Randy Woods writes about job-search tools, networking techniques and other tips to help you land your dream job.

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