American Unemployment: the hidden figures.

Think 7.2% unemployment doesn't sound too bad? ... think it sounds really bad? Well, whatever, it get's WORSE. Facts and figures from:

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

"In December, the number of persons who worked part time for economic reasons (some-times referred to as involuntary part-time workers) continued to increase, reaching 8.0 million. The number of such workers rose by 3.4 million over the past 12 months. This category includes persons who would like to work full time but were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find full-time jobs. (See table A-5.)"

In America, if you are employed part-time, you are not unemployed! BTW, 8 million is around 5%, and 3.4 million is about 2.2% of the labour force. So, from another perspective, this can be seen as a hidden 2% jump in unemployment.



"About 1.9 million persons (not seasonally adjusted) were marginally attached to thelabor force in December, 564,000 more than 12 months earlier. These individuals wanted and were available for work and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weekspreceding the survey. Among the marginally attached, there were 642,000 discouraged work-ers in December, up by 279,000 from a year earlier. Discouraged workers are persons not currently looking for work specifically because they believe no jobs are available for them. The other 1.3 million persons marginally attached to the labor force in December had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey for reasons such as school attendance or family responsibilities. (See table A-13.)"

That's not too bad in a way: only another 0.2% unemployment jump there. On the other hand, it means that discouraged workers went from 363k +279k = 642k. That's a huge percentage change. Still, it's only to be expected...
In fact, what that means is, when Obama's stimulus comes in, you might see unemployment go UP temporarily... since a large number of these 642k people will probably try to secure some of these newly created jobs, they will on paper change from "not trying to find employment" to "unemployed" (temporarily) before becoming "employed"


"In December, average hourly earnings of production and nonsupervisory workers on private nonfarm payrolls rose by 5 cents, or 0.3 percent, seasonally adjusted. This followed gains of 8 cents in November and 6 cents in October. For all of 2008, average hourly earnings increased by 3.7 percent and average weekly earnings rose by 2.2 percent. (See table B-3.)"

This, however, is a sudden positive, a huge light in the middle of darkness. It means that the average worker's pay was still going up! It might not seem like a lot, but it's better than being stagnant, trust me.
The gap between +3.7% per hour and +2.2% per week is because The index of aggregate weekly hours of production and nonsupervisory workers on private nonfarm payrolls fell by 1.1 percent in December and 4.0 percent since peaking in December 2007.
That means people were working less but earning more. That's good! More free time, and more money!

Though of course, it's not so good for company cost:production ratio. Oh well. It's always workers vs company profits, I guess.

...


Now, let's jump to Malaysia and Singapore.

Well, in most Asian countries... we don't have unemployment benefits. However... Singapore appears to be trying to get around that, by telling companies to put workers on paid leave, and Singapore government will cover 75% of their salary. VERY interesting...

So, what does so much paid leave mean? ... IMHO, it means that you're going to get a number of people with money in their pockets and a lot of free time. ... very interesting. Personally, I think that gambling income will go up, and perhaps travelling will increase too... hmm. Hard to say how people will react. I suppose they will be happy in the short term, but start getting worried for job security in the long term.

Anyhow, paid leave is the current solution because Malaysia and Singapore are hoping for a V-shaped recovery. However, it looks like American firms are looking at an L-shaped recession, based on their hiring/firing policies.

Personally, I think that Malaysia is being overly optimistic. As usual.

BTW, to update on that Legoland Johor idea: ... I'm going to HK in March. And I noticed, after checking on Wiki: Disneyland HK has NEVER made a profit... it has eaten up government money, year after year after year. (because Disney is smart, they knew the enterprise was not a good idea, so they let HK government be the main shareholder)
HK, prosperous as it is, simply cannot sustain a theme park the size of Disneyland. It's annual visitors is far below projected levels.
Disneyland in Japan and America? They're doing GREAT.

How about Legoland in the rest of the world? ... doing BAD. All losing money.

What does that say about Legoland Malaysia? ... ... ... Er... Personally, I think that this is one of those "no way in hell will it work" sort of ideas. According to some figures we were discussing, Legoland in Johor would need over RM75million a year in revenue just to breakeven. Or about RM200k per day. Which would be... maybe they are hoping for 2k visitors a day, and charge them RM100 each?

...

Anyhow, I don't think it's going to work. Frankly, Lego DOES NOT SELL WELL in Malaysia. I don't think Lego itself generates annual sales of RM75 million in Malaysia, though I could be wrong there.