Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Some job sectors doing just fine

Others still depressed, keeping jobless rate up

Kevin G. Hall McClatchy-Tribune

WASHINGTON – To fix the sluggish job market, it’s important to first understand the nature of the problem. The high unemployment rate dogging the nation is a symptom of complicated underlying causes.

Roughly 7.9 million jobs were lost during the Great Recession, which spanned a period from December 2007 to June 2009. About 4.5 million jobs have been created since the economy stopped shedding them and began a long and slow recovery. The turnaround date was somewhere around March 2010.

A McClatchy analysis of sector-by-sector hiring since 1998, as recorded by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, finds that some sectors of the economy are doing rather well, while others remain stuck in the dumps, dragging against better employment numbers. These downers have been keeping the jobless rate stubbornly above 8 percent since February 2009.

The winners tend to be in health care and educational services and, more generally, are white-collar professionals. In the broad category of professional and business services, there were 16.8 million Americans working when George W. Bush took office in January 2001. That grew to just over 18 million when the Great Recession began. It fell sharply and stood at 16.4 million when the recession ended during the fifth full month of Barack Obama’s term.

But in August 2012, the latest reporting period, almost 18 million Americans were employed in this largely white-collar category. That’s a gain of about 1.5 million jobs in the category since the recession’s end, and a total about where it was at the start of 2001.

About 1.8 million Americans were employed as managers of companies and enterprises in January 2001, a number that grew to more than 1.9 million at the recession’s start. At the end of the Great Recession, the number of managers had fallen to 1.86 million, but by August 2012 it stood above 2001 levels at 1.95 million. Some of that is thought to be reclassification of managers at financial firms.

The story differs for jobs that require less formal education, such as construction and some types of manufacturing. The fate of both sectors was strongly tied to the housing bubble, which led to soaring home prices and strong demand for everything from homes and additions to carpets, cabinets and lawn care chemicals.

More than 6.8 million Americans were employed in the construction sector in January 2001, and the number soared to 7.5 million at recession’s start in December 2007. By recession’s end, construction employment had fallen to just over 6 million, and despite a federal stimulus effort designed to boost employment in the sector the number of employed Americans working in construction has fallen to 5.5 million.

“The shortfall in hiring is due in significant part to the real estate bust, including housing and commercial construction,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist for forecaster Moody’s Analytics.

“The good news is that this will soon change given the recent revival in the housing industry and improving conditions in commercial real estate,” Zandi added.