The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently released its data for the month of July and the numbers were as flat as everybody expected. Oh, there was some giddiness in the press, but I read that as more a response to the poor economic (and governmental) news of late than as an honest assessment of the employment situation. Because, in fact, the employment situation has not really improved at all.

Here are the important numbers with a bit of commentary:

* 9.1% is the most common “unemployment rate” you’ll hear. It’s down from 9.2% last month which is, to my mind statistically insignificant. The good news is that the news isn’t worse. An unemployment rate trending flat is better than one trending up. As always, the government is not factoring in those Americans that have just stopped looking for work!!

* 117,000 is the “adjusted” number of jobs added in July. Basically, that means that it doesn’t include agricultural employment, which goes up and down seasonally. Revised figures for May and June say that another 56,000 jobs were added in those two months than previously thought, leaving the growth rate at about 50,000 per month. This is really, really slow growth – maybe even insignificant growth. 

* 154,000 is the total private sector jobs added, which means that government entities shed 37,000 jobs last month. Unfortunately, I think we are just at the beginning of a bubble of federal, state and local government layoffs over the next 12 months.  I don’t like to hear about anyone losing a job, but this is reasonably good news.

* 6.2 million is the number of long-term unemployed people, which means people who can work and who want to work but have not been able to find a job for at least 27 weeks. Yikes. Until this number goes down significantly, don’t tell me that we’re in robust recovery mode.

President and Obama and both parties in Congress have said that job creation is their #1 priority now that the debt ceiling crisis is over (for now). I’m glad to hear that, but I’m not getting my hopes up. First of all, the politicians in Washington have not shown that they can get much of anything done. Secondly, it’s doubtful that politicians can do a whole lot to actually improve the employment situation. At this point in time and for the next 18 months, ONLY companies will be able to do the hiring, not government.  Even if they could inject a lot of money into the economy (which they can’t), that money wouldn’t necessarily translate into solid, long-term, private sector employment growth.

All that said, the staffing and recruiting industry is still busy. It’s just too bad we can’t find a job for everyone who wants one.

Maybe we should turnover the responsibility for the Unemployed to the staffing companies like Manpower, Adecco, Kelly and the other 9,000 staffing firms in the U.S..   My guess is that they could do a much better job than the federal and state governments in retraining and placing the nation’s unemployeed into temporary, contract and full-time jobs !! 

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