Gist: The average number of new unemployment claims have been on the decline since mid-August, where it peaked.
Nigel Gault, Group Managing Director of the North American Macroeconomics Service of Global Insight, says that economists want a much larger decline in new unemployment claims to declare this as the economy recovering. Companies are still adding jobs slowly.
James Galbraith, American economist, says the economy lost over 8 million jobs in this recession. This is more than twice the number lost in the previous two recessions. The rate of job creation will have to increase dramatically to get us out of that hole.
With companies pursuing increased productivity so much it does not seem likely that they are looking to hire a lot of people.
(Why are companies so hesitant to hire more people? Labor too expensive? Not enough sales? What is the real cause of new unemployment claims?)
Once a person is hired, there are lots of costs to the organization. Big factors are Social Security and Medicare taxes (about 7%) and unemployment tax. Also labor laws governing hiring, firing and working conditions...
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