Job Watch -- September 16, 2011

On September 6, 2011, I linked the story that Illinois will soon lay off thousands of state workers. Today, ten days later, I see there is a headline story that the unemployment rate in Illinois has "risen sharply" (in another report, the phrase "shot up" was used). Regardless what modifier is used, the unemployment rate in Illinois is up another half-percentage point.

Illinois' unemployment rate shot up almost half a percentage point in August to 9.9 percent. It was a fourth straight month of diminishing job prospects that state officials blame on weak consumer confidence and the struggles of the national economy.
Even the state's manufacturing sector, which had been a bright spot even as other types of employers shed jobs the past few months, cut employment in August.

Illinois' unemployment rate surged up from 9.5 percent in July but has been increasing since it was at 8.7 percent in May, according to the Illinois Department of Employment Security. The national jobless rate held steady in August at 9.1 percent.

The biggest job losses in August were the 2,800 jobs cut by government employers and the decrease in manufacturing employment by 1,000 jobs.

Meanwhile, California's unemployment rate edged up to 12.1 percent from 12 percent, which I doubt is either statistically significant or reproducible.

"Businesses are very reluctant to hire people," said Sung Won Sohn, an economist at Cal State Channel Islands in Camarillo. "The last thing they want to do is hire people and then fire them again a few months later." [Comment: why would they fire them a few months later? Does the economist know something we don't know? Do economists predict a new recession?]
California has the second-highest unemployment rate in the nation, after Nevada, where 13.4% of the people in the labor force are out of work.

And even the rate in Texas edged up from 8.4 percent to 8.5 percent, again, probably not statistically significant and probably not reproducible.