Predictions for 2009 Job Losses

How many jobs will be lost in 2009? No one knows for sure. But, there are some pretty scary predictions out there.

An estimated 2 million more jobs could be lost in 2009. 2.6 million jobs were lost in 2008. The Conference Board issued a report that showed exactly where its Employment Trends Index fell to. The index recently fell to 99.6 (down 1.6% from just last month).

Gad Levanon, the Conference Board senior economist said, “The continued deterioration in the Employment Trends Index signals that no turnaround in the labor market is expected in the near future.”

The Employment Trends Index has continued to decline for the past 17 months. It has dropped more than 1.6 percent in the past six months.

Many Americans wish the index would change, but the truth is that it just isn’t getting better. Wachovia’s chief economist John Silvia said, “I know that this is frustrating for a lot of people because they would like to see a change in the trend. But what we’re seeing is the same as before.”

Silvia predicts that the worst is already behind us. He continued, “A lot of companies have already cleared the decks in 2008. Given that we’ve already claimed a loss of 2.6 million jobs, we can probably expect to see another million and a half.”

However, things don’t look so good for those who are out of work. The job market continues to decline as more and more companies resist hiring. In fact, “the jobs hard to get component” of the Employment Trends Index went from 37.1 percent in November to 42 percent in December.

It is getting harder and harder to become employed as millions of Americans look for work. Silvia said, “We can expect to see a further decline in the next six months, but we’ve probably already seen the biggest number we’re going to see.”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 14th, 2009 at 8:46 pm and is filed under Economy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.