The Job Market, in Charts

You may have heard by now that the unemployment rate reached 9.8 percent in September. There are lots of other ways to gauge the health of the job market, however. Here are a few graphs that show how tough it is out there.

First we have a chart showing a breakdown of monthly job losses (or, in some cases, gains) by industry, from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta:

 

Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta

Following any single color through the graph can help you track how its corresponding industry did. Note, for example, that the yellow bar — which represents the change in government jobs — switched from being above zero for many months in the beginning of the recession to below it in recent months. On the other hand the blue bar — which represents professional and business services, and rests below the zero marker — was ominously long around the turn of this calendar year, but has shrunk in recent months.

Also from the Atlanta Fed comes this beauty, which shows how many workers are part time but would prefer to be full time:

 

Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta

As you can see, the portion of workers employed part time for economic reasons has risen sharply in this downturn, relative to prerecession levels.

This chart, from the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, shows a similar trend line: the broader measure of unemployment — the so-called U-6 rate, which includes both those working part time for economic reasons and people who want to work but have given up looking.

 

 Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland

The Cleveland Fed also recently published this chart, showing the number of Americans who are employed as a fraction of the total adult population:

 

Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland

 

Note the long slide in the very last gray bar of the chart, which represents the current recession. The share of Americans working has not been this small since the 1980s, when fewer women were in the labor force.

- Via NY Times