October 23, 2003

Are we there yet?
Posted by noseworthy@bostonworks.com">Nicole Noseworthy at 3:02 PM -

There is some interesting economic/job market news in the Oct. 27, 2003 issue of BusinessWeek. While we've been hearing for several months that the market has hit bottom and we should be in a job market upswing, many have been asking "so where are the jobs?" The BusinessWeek article "Jobs: The Turning Point is Here" examines the discrepancy between the growing economy numbers and the weak job market:

Economists predict the Commerce Dept. will announce on Oct. 30 that gross domestic product grew in the third quarter.... Job growth, however, has been the missing link. Although the U.S. economy created a modest 57,000 jobs in September, it lost jobs in the third quarter as a whole. In fact, the third quarter was a spectacular anomaly: the only time in at least 40 years in which the economy actually shed jobs while growing at a rate of 5.5% or better.

The article indicates that the strength of the job market recovery will be dependent not only on a strong increase in demand for new supplies but also innovation resulting in new industries:

How strong will the job recovery be? It's hard to tell, because more than ever before, employment growth comes from the creation of brand-new jobs. Creating work from scratch takes considerably longer than rehiring people to old ones.... Employment won't really go gangbusters until innovation spawns new industries.

Additional pieces of interest linked to this article are:
A Bit More for the Coffers
Commentary: All the World's a Call Center

...