Recession Drives Workers to Trucking

Employment picture likely to remain grim for years, and predicting winning industries is a challenge

(NEWSER) - The job market is likely to be grim for years to come—economists expect that even if job creation returned to the brisk pace of the ‘90s, unemployment wouldn’t return to 5% until 2017. And for many of the unemployed, the numbers belie the real problem: The positions they're trained for may be gone forever. The real estate and finance industries, for example, will probably never support as many employees as they did before the recession. More»

Men have lost 3 times as many jobs as women since Dec. 2007

(NEWSER) - The US job market is closer than ever to gender equality because the recession has most heavily affected male-dominated industries, USA Today reports. Women held 49.83% of the nation’s jobs as of June. Since the recession began in December 2007, 74% of the 6.4 million jobs lost have been positions held by men. In local government, the inequality is particularly striking: regional authorities have fired 86,000 men while hiring 167,000 women. More»

(NEWSER) - Top law school grads are competing this fall for just half the number of entry-level positions big firms offered last year, in what the New York Times calls the most difficult employment season in half a century. One of New York's biggest firms has cut its hires by more than 50%, while a respected Philadelphia firm has foregone hiring completely. At top-ranked Yale, many leading law firms aren't even bothering to recruit. More»

(NEWSER) - If the downturn has you considering a “recession-proof” job like teaching or medicine, think again, Greg Burns writes in the Chicago Tribune. The recession has affected all sectors, from layoffs and lower enrollment at educational institutions to dwindling state budgets choking civil servants. “It’s a question of degree,” one expert says. “I really don’t believe there is any such thing as recession-proof.” More»

Weak labor market expected to cause longer recession

(NEWSER) - So much for those so-called green shoots of recovery. Yesterday's worse-than-expected unemployment report has far more red flags of warning on the jobs front, writes Moira Herbst in BusinessWeek. Among them: the average work week shrank to 33 hours, the lowest on record; hourly earnings remained flat; long-term unemployment rose to an all-time high; and temp workers, an important harbinger, took a big hit. More»