About what we were expecting, actually

The BLS has pubished its report on the employment situation in January, and it is, I think, in line with expectations.

Unfortunately, we were expecting bad things. And we got them. Establishment employment, done 598,000 from December 2008, and about 3.5 million since January 2008. Over the past year, that's about a 2.5% drop in total employment. Aggregate hours worked are down about 3.5% over the past year as well.

Two industries of particular importance to where I live and work, are motor vehicles and parts, and steel. Employment in the manufacture of motor vehicles and parts is down about 30,000 from December (about 4%) and nearly 200,000 (about 22%) since January 2008.

Not surprisingly (motor vehicle manufacturing is, of course, a major customer for the steel industry), employment in iron and steel mills has also experienced significant employment declines. Data are not available for January, but the December 2007 to December 2008 decline is more than 5%; I will be extremely surprised if employment in iron and steel mills does not fall significantly in the next few months. (Data for primary metals manufacturing is available; it fell by about 2% between December 2008 and January 2009, and is down by about 9% since January 2008.)

The overall unemployment rate rose about as expected, from 7.2% in December to 7.6% in January. Here are the changes (January 2008 to January 2009) in the Labor Force Participation Rate, the Employment-Population Ratio, and the Unemployment Rate, for adult men (white, African-American, and Asian separately) and for adult women (for the same ethnic groups:

Adult Men
White:
..............LFPR, down from 76.4% to 75.4%
..............EPR, down from 73.5% to 70.2%
..............UR, up from 3.9% to 6.8%

African-American:
..............LFPR, down from 71.3% to 70.7%
..............EPR, down from 65.4% to 60.7%
..............UR, up from 8.3% to 14.1%%

Asian-American:
..............LFPR, down from 79.2% to 77.9%
..............EPR, down from 76.5% to 72.5%
..............UR, up from 3.5% to 6.9%

Adult Women:
White:
..............LFPR, up from 60.2% to 60.4%
..............EPR, down from 57.9% to 56.9%
..............UR, up from 3.8% to 5.8%

African-American:
..............LFPR, down from 64.4% to 64.1%
..............EPR, down from 59.7% to 58.2%
..............UR, up from 7.4% to 9.2%

Asian-American
..............LFPR, down from 61.6% to 59.7%
..............EPR, down from 59.9% to 56.8%
..............UR, up from 2.8% to 4.9%