John Crudele, the very good business columnist at the NYPost, regularly warns us to take the Labor Department’s monthly employment figures with a grain of salt; the birth/death model they employ can fudge a lot of employment stats.
The numbers that came out today are pretty depressing — a loss of 80,000 jobs, and a revised estimate of increased job losses in January and February — but Crudele points out that the April figures (to be released May 2) tend to be twice as “generous” with the number of new jobs that Labor thinks were created, but can’t prove. So we’ll probably see uninformed commentary about how the economy is turning around, about one month from today.
This NYTimes article on the unemployment report isn’t as entertaining as Crudele’s writing, although it does point out that Hillary Clinton “referred to herself as a ‘Paulette Revere’ whose calls for financial assistance have gone unheeded.”
After some harrowing stories of industrial regions that have seen tremendous job losses, the article concludes with this anecdote:
The downturn has even come to San Francisco, where highly trained workers with elite degrees flock to work for some of the world’s biggest technology companies. CNet Networks, the online media giant, laid off 10 percent of its staff — about 120 workers — this year in an effort to increase profitability and its share price. Yahoo, the search engine company, said it would cut its work force by 1,000.
Until recently, Parul Vora, 28, was earning a six-figure salary as part of an elite research team at Yahoo. Ms. Vora, who has a master’s degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, lost her job in early February.
“I had never been laid off and never imagined being laid off,” Ms. Vora said. “I was sad personally and professionally.”
But Ms. Vora has better prospects than most. She said she has already been wooed by several potential employers.
“There are a lot of jobs out there, but I’m pretty picky,” Ms. Vora said. “My biggest worry is finding a new job I like.”
Seriously: that’s the end of the article. See, the times are tough for everyone, even a 28-year-old MIT post-grad who lives in the most expensive city in the country and who counts as unemployed, but is lining up job offers and doesn’t know which one to take.
I guess they’re writing to their demographic or something.
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