An economy stuck in neutral
By Kevin Smith, Staff Writer@ Pasadena Star-News, October 8, 2010
The nation's unemployment rate held steady at 9.6 percent in September, but layoffs of temporary census workers and other government employees outpaced anemic hiring in the private sector.
That pushed U.S. payrolls down by a net total of 95,000 layoffs. Equally disturbing was the fact that the number of part-time workers who would prefer to work full-time rose by almost 1 million since July, totaling 9.5 million.
When that number is added to the 14.8 million unemployed and the 2.5million who have stopped looking for work, there are 26.8 million Americans who are "underemployed."
"I think the unemployment rate will continue to increase, unfortunately," said Ahmed Ispahani, a professor of economics at the University of La Verne. "A lot depends on what is happening in other countries. Too much work is being outsourced to other countries. We need to put some temporary measures in place to curb that."
Government job losses led the declines in September. A net total of 159,000 public sector jobs were eliminated. Local governments cut 76,000 jobs last month, most of them teachers. That's the largest cut by local governments in 28 years.
Gary Kaplan, president of Gary Kaplan & Associates, a Pasadena- based executive search firm, said he's dealing with lots of corporate executives who have been laid off.
"There isn't a day of the week that I'm not hearing from someone new - clients, friends, contacts - who are still continuing to be let go," he said. "The process has not slowed down that much, and it's not about upgrading to bring in better talent because these are high-quality people in many cases."
A panel of economic experts announced late last month that the nation's recession is over, but that's hard for business owners to wrap theirs heads around when they've watched their ventures slowly erode.
"That's ridiculous," said Bruce Martineau, owner of a Pak Mail franchise on San Bernardino Road in Covina. "My business is down 50 percent - easily."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
