November's job numbers: It's worse than you think

[Crossposted from Sugar Land is Dreaming]

Over at my other blogging home, Comments From Left Field, Macswain posted about November's job losses... "A Kick to the Gut":

The Bureau of Labor's monthly job report is out and its filled with bad news. From the payroll report (the best indicator of labor health, in my opinion), we get the news that the economy dropped 533,000 jobs in November, bringing the total for the year to a loss of 1.9 million jobs. That's the biggest one-month decline in nearly 34 years...

Mac has more to say and you should definitely read the whole post.

Despite how bad this news it, it gets worse. There's one point which cannot be overstated: During the holiday season, retail is supposed to gain jobs. Lots of them. All those temporary retail holiday positions traditionally added during November and December are supposed to swell employment numbers. But this year, even those temporary positions don't exist as retail joins all the other economic sectors dropping employment like its a hot potato. So to hear that November experienced not only job losses but, as Macswain said, "the biggest one-month decline [of jobs] in nearly 34 years," is more alarming to hear about November then, say, January or February when all of those temporary retail positions disappear -- this makes half a million jobs lost in November outright shocking. As I previously mentioned, this cannot be overstated.

I'm also forced to file this economic news under the "I hate it when I'm right" category. A month ago, I said this on the topic:

Placing this in larger context, we’re less than two weeks away from the start of Christmas shopping season — the time when retail businesses earn the majority of their profits. We could be seeing desperation from businesses here: Circuit City can’t keep many stores open despite the profit to be made in a couple weeks, and DHL can’t keep shipping despite the Christmas gift packages that will surely flood the market. Or are the upcoming retail sales projections from these companies just so weak that they don’t see enough demand to justify maintaining full time operations? Is this desperation or foreshadowing?

The case for foreshadowing is grim but accurate. The US economy shed 1.2 million jobs this year. A real test will be November’s job growth (or lack thereof) numbers — will they receive a bounce from retail’s traditional hiring of temporary labor for the holiday season… Or is retail not hiring right now? We’ll know in December.

Indeed, now we do know. The economic forecasts that retail stores had at the beginning of November must have been horrible; we’re seeing that reflected in today's November job numbers.

One now wonders just how big of a mess faces Obama on January 20th.