TUESDAY, December 12 Employment prospects will plummet even further in early 2002, according to projections from 208 respondents to BNA's latest quarterly employment survey. Production/service workers and technical/professional employees will see a sharp drop in their job opportunities in the first quarter of the new year, while office/clerical prospects will hover near the four-year low reached in the second half of this year. In addition, workers in all three employee groups face greater risk of job loss, and reports of workers on layoff have increased from three months ago (Daily Labor Report, page D-1).
Those job-losers not on temporary layoff accounted for 42% of the unemployed in November, compared with 29% a year earlier, says the Bureau of Labor Statistics (The Wall Street Journal, page A1). Employment fell sharply for the second month in a row in November, raising the unemployment rate to 5.7% ( Graph in The Wall Street Journal, page A1). Just two weeks ago, a recession was officially declared to have begun in March. Now a small group of bullish economists is declaring that it already is over, or nearly so. The group, led by Ian Shepherdson at High Frequency Economics and Ed Hyman at ISI Group Inc., is decidedly out on a limb. Most other economists are forecasting that the economy will continue to contract during the current quarter, and a recovery will begin in the spring or summer at the earliest. The Federal Reserve, meeting today, is expected to cut its target for short-term interest rates for the eleventh time this year to 1.75% from 2% amid concerns over economic weakness. With unemployment rising and the global economy on the ropes, Fed officials are expected to indicate they remain more inclined to lower rates than raise them. There was little reason to be optimistic after Friday's release of the employment report for November. Among other things, the report said the unemployment rate jumped to 5.7% last month--the highest level in six years--while the economy lost 331,000 jobs. But the bulls, while acknowledging that the employment situation may grow worse before it gets better, note that employment is a lagging indicator and have latched on to other economic data to support what they see as signs of recovery (The Wall Street Journal, page A2). DUE OUT TOMORROW: U.S. Import and Export Price Indexes--November 2001
<<application/ms-tnef>>
