An interesting county-by-county map from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:
http://stats.bls.gov/laus/maps/twmcort.gif

Unless one knows more about the particular places, it's hard to draw conclusions from that map.

Those big yellow states in the middle with low unemployment are primarily the Plains states. Their unemployment might be low, but most teenagers who graduate from high school leave for college and the military and never come back. They aren't creating new jobs, and people leave when they're young and mobile. That's why their populations are declining.

The Mississippi Delta has a high unemployment rate. It's always been one of the poorest areas of the country. Weren't the gambling boats supposed to change all that?

About the only thing I can say about that map is that if you looked at one published six months before there'd be a lot more yellow and a lot less black and purple.

If you look really, really close at Houston, Texas... you can see me waving.

Hi everybody! Hi there!

Quote:Originally posted by frazzledspice

About the only thing I can say about that map is that if you looked at one published six months before there'd be a lot more yellow and a lot less black and purple.

You got me curious.

Here's the same map featuring the averages for the year of our Bill 2000. .

Looks about the same.

But, I live in NH, and it's really yellow there, so I'm probably just seeing the glass as a little more than half full.

The two maps look pretty much the same to me also. It is surprising too considering all the layoffs that have taken place this year. (And remember, most of the layoffs were announced last year, but taking effect this year for anyone who wants to blame Bush.)

I think the latest figures I heard from Lucent (which was a company that my husband was talking to when we were still in the military) had 150,000 employees 18 months ago. They were down to 80,000 by January of this year and planning on reducing that number to around 55,000 by the end of this year. We are talking almost 100,000 people from this one company alone that lost or will lose their jobs.

The job my husband has now is with an unstable company. They are in the process of filing Chapter 11 and are planning on letting a bunch of salespeople/customer service people go. Hopefully hubby's job is a little more stable - as he is one of three techs that work a very large radius. (they cover Upstate NY, Vermont and parts of Mass) Their problem is that they bought out way too many struggling telecommunications companies and took on a huge debt load. Stock that used to be worth $60 has taken a terrible dive and is now going for 5 cents a share.

Quote:Originally posted by cristina1
I think the latest figures I heard from Lucent (which was a company that my husband was talking to when we were still in the military) had 150,000 employees 18 months ago. They were down to 80,000 by January of this year and planning on reducing that number to around 55,000 by the end of this year. We are talking almost 100,000 people from this one company alone that lost or will lose their jobs.

Don't remind me. I work there. Tons of fun.

Janice

Quote:Don't remind me. I work there. Tons of fun.

Sorry - it must be a hard thing to be dealing with. My husband got offered a job at Lucent, but we would have had to move to Mass for him to take the job. I wanted to remain close to family, so he turned down the offer. I am so glad he did or we might be sitting in a different state with no job right now.

No, I'm not calling anyone here "stupid." But I am getting extremely tired of the so-called "sages" in government telling us that the economy is "fine" and that this was just a "minor bump"and everything will be back to normal in a few months. And that the tax refund will magically "solve"all our ills. Then I flip to CNBC and they tell us that Agilent is laying off another 4,000 people, that new jobless claims just (to economists' "surprise") reached a 9-year high, and that retailers had a disappointing back-to-school season (also to economists' "surprise"). In this household, 2 of 3 people have been laid off this year and have been unable to find jobs. And when that tax refund shows up? It'll be going straight to those past due credit card bills....

Dunno, but strikes me more people are getting laid off than are being hired...

Though it might be scary, regionally terrifying and less than hopeful, it would be wrong for economists and hence the media responding to the economists to call this a recession -- yet.

There are specific definitions for the term "recession" -- this article from the Dismal Scientist in Economy.com quotes the most common one: two consecutive of declining GDP -- and discusses the more thorough one.

http://www.dismal.com/thoughts/article.asp?aid=1183

I'm sorry for what your household is going through. If you look at that map, your region just might be in a local recession. Austin (that's where you are, right?) is like a neo-Silicon Valley that also suffered from the dot com bust.

Hmm... now this is interesting..
My home county is a little dark purple spot in East Texas surrounded by lighter color.. In other words, we have a high unemployment level...
Now this pisses me off because I am trying to hire about 25 people and it is IMPOSSIBLE to find anyone.. qualified or not..

Sometimes I wonder how these unemployment figures are calculated... For example, there was a entire year that I was unemployed.. but it had nothing to do with the economy, or layoffs.. it was by choice, it was financially not necessary to work at the time (due to some inheritance and investments that I cashed in..) I wonder if I would be considered unemployed?

Also, look at Alaska.. I wonder how many people are counted unemployed because of a lack of a 'formal' job, even though they have a more native lifestyle, living off the land...

My parents live in an almost black area in California, but that county is with out question not poor, it is just full of rich retired people.. (it is actually one of the wealthiest counties in the country..)

Just some questions that seem to arise from the map...

Quote:Now this pisses me off because I am trying to hire about 25 people and it is IMPOSSIBLE to find anyone.. qualified or not..

ROFLMAO!

I did the same thing! I went to my area, which isn't dark purple, but isn't white either, and had the same reaction.

Yeah, well where the hell ARE THEY?

It is a little, tiny, tiny bit better now than it was a year ago, but South Jersey is just booming. I see the news in the media about the recession and I'm like, :confused:

Everybody I know is still scrambling to try to find people.

Andrea

Where are they? I suppose it depends which field you're in. I looked at a couple of technical writing jobs. One had about 30 applicants for one position, the other had over 200 applicants for three openings. I know a couple of HR managers who say tht a year ago they couldn't fill ANY spots; now they have dozens of people for EVERY spot. Except the hourly ones with low pay. Those a still impossible to fill. And why not? $6.50/hr works out to less take-home than unemployment, at least in this state.

Actually Peter, we are probably an anomoly. It so happens that there is a huge, national mortgage company located just a few miles from us. They continue to boom during these times because interest rates are falling and the home market (strangely) is still booming.

Their profile for potential employees is very similar to our profile..and they hire sometimes hundreds of people in a month. They do cast people off, occasionally, but the people they cast off aren't the people we want (if the employee didn't make it in their fast paced environment, they won't make it in ours.)

One of my best friends happens to be a Senior VP over there and I'm constantly hassling her about draining our labor pool.

So, any info I have is FWIW. She has trouble finding people, I have trouble finding people, but we're competing with each other so that certainly skews it.

Andrea