Unemployment down, but local jobs outlook murky

Jul 29, 2010 — St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Steve Giegerich

Jul. 29, 2010 (McClatchy-Tribune Regional News delivered by Newstex) -- Seasonally adjusted unemployment in the St. Louis metropolitan area dropped to 9.6 percent in June, a one-tenth of a percentage point decrease from May.

And while the overall picture appears comparatively brighter than the eight times over the past year when unemployment rate leaped past 10 percent, the numbers are somewhat misleading.

"Everything here seems to be tracking the country as a whole with the unemployment rate drifting down," said Howard Wall, vice president and director of the Center for Regional Economics with the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. "But the big story is that people are leaving the labor market rather than finding jobs."

Nationally, unemployment stands at 9.7 percent.

The adjusted figure from the Federal Reserve piggybacks the initial monthly metropolitan jobless report released Wednesday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In the BLS's survey, the local unemployment rate jumped from 9.2 percent in May to 9.9 percent in June. The initial BLS data is not adjusted for seasonal jobs.

Cumulatively, the BLS calculations reflect a loss of 2,000 nonfarm positions across the region in the 12 months beginning in June, 2009. Workers in the mining, logging and construction (-5,000) and transportation and utilities (-2,800) took the biggest hits.

Those losses were mainly offset by gains in government (+5,200) and education and health services (+3,300).

The prognosis for St. Louis rebounding from 2 1/2 years of net job losses, however, remains murky. And the reason can be traced to the region's parallel with nationwide employment trends.

Wall recently analyzed the national numbers and determined that 837,000 Americans have been added to payrolls over the past nine months. That's the upside. The downside is that 58 percent of those jobs were for temporary positions.

"It's a shocking number and it's unprecedented, over the last two recessions, to see this type of rise in temporary workers. It tells me that employers don't want to hire workers that they need to commit to over the long-term," said Wall.

The culprit, he added, is uncertainty over the direction the government is taking the economy. The impact of the health care bill, Wall points out, is but one of the great unknowns. "Employers are telling me they are waiting to see what the government does next and they have a feeling it won't be good."

Newstex ID: KRTB-0187-47421860