News Admin August 25 2010 07:45:00 AM
In its annual Labor Day outlook, global outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas reports that the U.S. job market is well on the road to recovery and is actually rebounding sooner and faster compared to the jobless recoveries that followed the previous two recessions (1990-1991 and 2001). Here are some highlights:
1. At this point in the previous two recoveries – following the 1990-1991 and 2001 recessions – the job market was actually getting worse. Many people are so caught up looking at the weekly and monthly numbers, that they fail to look at the bigger trends, which indicate just how much the job market has improved over the last 12 months. The statistics indicate that the job market has made great strides over the last 12 months and appears to rebounding sooner compared to the previous two recessions.
2. Monthly job cuts have numbered fewer than 100,000 for 14 consecutive months, a streak that has not been achieved since 1999-2000. The current 12-month moving average, which stands at 52,778 as of the end of July, is already well below the lowest annual average achieved during the last period of economic expansion, when the moving average bottomed out around 64,000 (see chart above).