Where Jobs Have Been Lost

Slate has an interactive graph to show where jobs have been gained and lost in the U.S. since '06:

Shiftiness at Bank of America

Can't give exorbitant bonuses to bankers on the taxpayers dime? How about raising base salaries instead? Bloomberg reports:

"Bank of America, which has received $45 billion of taxpayers’ money, may raise the annual base pay for some managing directors to about $300,000 from $180,000, said the people, who declined to be identified because the final numbers are still under discussion. Salaries for less-senior directors would climb to about $250,000 from $150,000, and vice presidents would get $200,000, up from about $125,000, the people said."

I'm sure this will sit well with the public:

“We’re in an economic downturn, the government is pouring billions into banks, and these guys are boosting their salaries,” said Jason Kennedy, chief executive officer of London-based recruitment firm Kennedy Associates. “There’s an issue of public perception.”

The AIG Perspective

Maybe this is just a natural reaction whenever the media and public goes so overboard in anger, but I feel a degree of sympathy to some of the employees at AIG. That's why I found an uncovered internal blog entry from an exec at AIG so compelling. Below is an excerpt, but I recommend reading the whole thing here:

"It's amusing to hear people say we should be fired, or that the job isn't all that hard, or there's 50 people willing to do any of our jobs. To all of those folks, here's a clue: This is not a going concern, we have been working ourselves out of a job for the last 6 months, we will not have jobs when we are done, and any replacement will be doing it slower than we can, and is very likely to screw it up much worse than it already is. Oh, and a replacement might not get paid at all, if the government changes its mind again. The only reason I stayed was because I was told that I was a valued member of the team and I was promised a payment. Nobody ever actually tried to renegotiate the terms. It was never a secret, the ERP (Employee Retention Plan) was disclosed many times. Anybody telling you otherwise is lying. Anybody - Geithner, Cuomo, Blumenthal, Dodd, all of them and also those guys in Congress - they all had that information back in October. Cummings has been railing at Liddy about it since at least October."

NY Times on the Portland Economy

The New York Times profiles my second favorite city, using the scaled back expansion plans of its famous book store as a microcosm of the nation's economic woes:

"Portland, a metropolitan area of 2.2 million people, affords an ideal window onto the spiral of fear and diminished expectations assailing the economy. The area has long attracted investment and talented minds with its curbs on urban sprawl, thriving culinary scene and life in proximity to the Pacific Coast and the snow-capped peaks of the Cascades. In good times, Portland tends to grow vigorously, elevated by companies like the computer chip maker Intel — which employs 15,000 people in the area — and the athletic clothing giant Nike.

But in recent months, Portland has devolved into a symbol of much that is wrong. Housing prices have fallen more than 14 percent since May 2007, according to the S.& P./Case-Shiller index. Foreclosures more than tripled last year, according to RealtyTrac. The unemployment rate for the metro area surged from 4.8 percent at the end of 2007 to 9.8 percent in January 2009, according to the Labor Department."

Recession Update 2009, We Are FUBAR

The unemployment number was released today. The US Department of Labor reported the jobless rate hit 8.1% in February, a 25-year high with more than 12.5 million people claiming unemployment. What does this mean you ask? Quite simply, we are fucked. The economy is in such steep decline that not even the largest dose of stimulus Viagra intravenously injected into the arm of our whiskey dicked economy could get it up at this point. And what’s worse is that this number is in fact, complete bullshit. The actual unemployment number is much higher than the Department of Labor is reporting but is circumvented using the same shady number manipulating tactics that are commonly used by our most prestigious Fortune 500 companies.


Shortly after the 9/11 attacks in 2001 and subsequent stock market fall off, the Bush Administration changed the criteria for what constitutes an unemployed person. People who are not receiving unemployment benefits because they are no longer eligible due to a longstanding period of unemployment (most states permit benefits to be paid for 26 weeks) were not factored into the report. They are technically not considered part of “the workforce”. The reason this was done was to give the illusion of a more positive economic outlook during those times in order to help boost the market.

To break down the numbers, this group of “Not in the Workforce” accounts for as many as 7.6 million people. So, in actuality, there is a real unemployment rate of 13%.

12.5 mm = unemployed receiving benefits
7.6mm = 5.6mm persons who currently want a job + 2mm persons marginally attached to the workforce and are not looking for a job because of discouragement over prospects and other reasons
154.2mm= Total workforce

13% = {(12.5mm + 7.6mm)/ 154.2} * 100

Once the savings and unemployment runs out, people are now beginning to take “survivor jobs”- working part time at restaurants, providing janitorial services, etc. just to get by. And now these jobs are becoming increasingly difficult to obtain. This goes from former executives to blue collar workers. Where does it all end people? Pretty soon we will all be immigrating in steamboats to China to work in sweatshops sewing together Nikes.

Jbones OUTRO