Even in a recession, some companies are hiring

by Christopher S. Rugaber - Mar. 9, 2009 04:38 PM

Associated Press

Help wanted: pharmacists, engineers and nurses. Believe it or not, even some banks are hiring, at least for their technology teams.

While the recession has claimed 4.4 million jobs, the economy has created others, many of them for highly trained and specialized professionals. More than 2 million jobs openings now exist across a range of industries, according to government data.

Job seekers beware, though. An average of nearly five people are competing for each opening. That's up sharply from a ratio of less than 2-to-1 in December 2007, when the recession was just starting and nearly 4 million openings existed.

Human resources executives say companies that are hiring are benefiting from a top-notch talent pool as applications pour in from a larger base of job seekers. The number of unemployed Americans has soared, to 12.5 million last month, from 7 million when the recession began.

Broadly, jobs are being added in education, health care and the federal government, the Labor Department said, with the government adding 9,000 new jobs last month alone.

But beyond those areas, jobs can be found in a variety of sectors. Some places that are hiring, such as companies that make nuclear power equipment, haven't been hit that hard by the recession. Others, such as discount retailers, are actually benefiting from the downturn as shoppers turn thriftier.

Even some businesses at the center of the economic meltdown are managing to add a few employees. Banks involved in recent mergers, for example, are hiring information technology specialists to help integrate companies, said Tig Gilliam, chief executive of the Adecco Group North America, a human resources firm.

Some mortgage lending companies, notably those never involved in subprime or other exotic loans, are actually growing and hiring as larger competitors have folded.

"We've been busy," said Terry Schmidt, chief financial officer of Guild Mortgage Co. in California, whose company has doubled in size, from around 450 to close to 900 employees, in the past year and a half.

The new hires originate home loans and process them, among other duties.

"We're finding that the talent pool - the level of talent and experience - is much better than we've ever had," Schmidt said.

Mortgage servicing companies - those that collect payments for the lenders that originated them - are also hiring as lower mortgage rates fuel mortgage refinance applications.

Marina Walsh, associate vice president of industry analysis at the Mortgage Bankers Association, said servicers "are just scrambling for workers."

The nuclear power industry, meanwhile, doesn't seem to have noticed the economic downturn. It is adding thousands of jobs as it gears up to build as many as 26 new nuclear power plants in the next decade.

Corporations such as Pittsburgh-based Westinghouse Electric Company and GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy are hiring engineers and adding other workers as they expand manufacturing facilities, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute, a trade group. (GE Hitachi is a partnership between General Electric Co. and Tokyo-based Hitachi Ltd.)

Engineers of all kinds are in demand and are facing a rock-bottom jobless rate of about 3 percent, according to Gilliam of the Adecco Group North America.

That compares with a nationwide unemployment rate of 8.1 percent last month.

Adecco is trying to fill about 1,200 engineering jobs, Gilliam said. They include product engineers who test the next generation of computer equipment, he said.

Other bright spots in an otherwise dismal labor market:

- Pharmacists: An aging U.S. population is taking more medicine and pharmacists are taking more time helping patients with chronic diseases manage their dosages, said Douglas Scheckelhoff of the American Society of Health System Pharmacists.

There is a 6 percent shortage of hospital pharmacists, Scheckelhoff said, while many drug stores are also looking to hire new pharmacists and pharmacist technicians, he said.

- Nurses: Hospitals also need more nurses to care for the aging population and to replace those nearing retirement, said Cheryl Peterson, director of nursing practice and policy at the American Nurses Association. Hospitals added 7,000 jobs of all kinds last month, even as the economy overall shed 651,000.

- Veterinarians: "There's a tremendous demand" for veterinarians, particularly to serve livestock growers in rural areas, said Dr. Ron DeHaven, chief executive office of the American Veterinary Medical Association. The government is also short of veterinarians needed to inspect slaughterhouses and undertake other food safety measures, he said. The Labor Department projects that the number of veterinary jobs will grow by 35 percent by 2016, DeHaven said.

Some companies are benefiting from the recession as shoppers shift to lower-priced stores. The economy has lost more than 600,000 retail jobs since the slowdown began, but discount retailer Family Dollar Stores Inc. is hiring.

The company plans to hire new workers for 200 stores it expects to open this year, said spokesman Josh Braverman, and will also add employees at some of its nine distribution centers. Family Dollar saw its sales at stores open at least a year rise by 6.4 percent in the three months ending in February.

Other companies prospering amid the economic gloom include liquidators - firms that sell the assets of troubled businesses.

Bill Angrick, chief executive of Washington, D.C.-based Liquidity Services Inc., which operates the Web site Liquidation.com, said his company expects record profits for the first quarter. Among the items his company liquidates are vehicles and networking and communications equipment.

Julie Davis, a spokeswoman for the firm, said it has openings for at least 10 people in its sales, marketing, operations and finance departments.

"We are absolutely in hiring mode," she said. The company employs about 700 people worldwide.

 

Dow 5000? / 36 Month Recession

US Recession Could Last Up to 36 Months: Roubini

09 Mar 2009 | 03:52 PM ET SOURCE: http://www.cnbc.com

The man who predicted the current financial crisis said the US recession could drag on for years without drastic action.

Among his solutions: fix the housing market by breaking "every mortgage contract."

"We are in the 15th month of a recession," said Nouriel Roubini, a professor at New York University's Stern School of Business, told CNBC in a live interview. "Growth is going to be close to zero and unemployment rate well above 10 percent into next year."

Echoing a speech he made earlier in the day, Roubini said he sees "no hope for the recession ending in 2009 and will more than likely last into 2010."

Roubini, who is also known as "Dr. Doom," told CNBC that the risk of a total meltdown has been reversed for now but that the economy is going through "a death by a thousand cuts." He also said that "most of the U.S. financial institutions are entirely insolvent." 

"We could end up ... with a 36-month recession, that could be "L-shaped stagnation, or near depression," Roubini said. He puts the chance of a severe U-shaped recession at 66.7 percent, and a more severe L-shaped recession at 33.3 percent.

Finally, while he says there will be "a light at the end of the tunnel", it'll probably get worse before it gets better. Those who believe in a second half recovery this year "are delusional" he says.

In fact, based on Roubini's calculations, we could conceivably see the S&P 500 at 500, the Dow at 5000.

Dow 5000? There's a Case for It

Strategists Still See Rally, but Earnings Point to 1995 Levels for Stocks

March 9, 2009 

SOURCE: http://online.wsj.com

Just how low can stocks go?

Despite Friday's small gain, the Dow Jones Industrial Average marked its fourth consecutive week of losses as it tumbled through the 7000-point mark and spiraled to new 12-year lows. The Standard & Poor's 500-stock index is trading below 700 for the first time since 1996.

As earnings estimates are ratcheted down and hopes for a quick economic fix fade, the once-inconceivable notion of returning to Dow 5000 or S&P 500 at 500 looks a little less far-fetched.

Between April 8, 1932, and July 8, 1932, stocks fell 34% -- a little more than what it would take to get the S&P to 500.

A level of 500 would take declines for the S&P to 68% since its October 2007 high, compared with the peak-to-trough depression-era slump of almost 90%.

Plunging Markets, Then and Now

March 5, 2009, 6:50 PM

http://norris.blogs.nytimes.com

Here are the rankings for worst two-year periods, again assuming 2009 ends at today’s prices:

1. 1930-31, down 69%

2. 1931-32, down 64%

3. 2008-09, down 50%

4. 1929-30, down 45%

5. 1973-74, down 40%

6. 1906-07, down 39%

7. 2007-08, down 30%

8. 1940-41, down 26%

9. 1916-17, down 22%

10. 1920-21, down 25%

Here’s another indication that investors feel more or less the way they did during the last disaster:

It has been 513 calendar days since the stock market peaked on Oct. 9, 2007. Since then, the S.&P. 500 is down 56 percent and the Dow is off 53 percent.

On Jan. 29, 1931 — the identical number of days after the 1929 market peak — the S.&P. 500 was down 49 percent and the Dow was down 56 percent. The 1929 crash got off to a much faster start, but we have now more or less caught up.

Ever Closer to 1982

Ever Closer to 1982

By DAVID LEONHARDT

The job market is getting ever closer to the depths that it reached in 1982.

Since the start of 2008, the economy has lost jobs at a steeper rate than at any other point in 50 years. That hadn’t been true until today’s report. But the 651,000 job losses in February — together with 161,000 additional job losses in previous months, a result of Labor Department revisions announced today — means that the decline is worse than it was at any point during the deep recessions of the mid-1970s and of the early 1980s.

The economy has now lost 3.2 percent of its jobs since January 2007. It lost 3.1 percent between the summer of 1981 and the end of 1982.

BB

The job market still is not in as bad shape as it was in 1982, because unemployment entering this downturn was somewhat lower than it was in 1981. But it’s getting close.

The government’s broadest measure of unemployment and underemployment was 14.8 percent in February. That includes some of the people who have stopped looking for work because they don’t believe they can find jobs. It also includes part-time workers who want to be working full time.

The Labor Department did not keep such a statistic in the early 1980s. But it likely would have been in the neighborhood of 17 percent then. (Awhile back, I created a similar — though slightly narrower, for reasons of historical consistency — measure, with help from Labor Department economists. It peaked in 1982 at 16.3 percent in December 1982; it was 14.1 percent last month.)

So it’s still too early to call this the worst recession since the Great Depression. But it’s bad, and it’s still getting worse at a rapid rate.

More on the jobs report, from Economix, is here and here.

SOURCE: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/06/ever-closer-to-1982/

Broader Unemployment Rate Hits 14.8%

March 6, 2009, 10:52 am

Broader Unemployment Rate Hits 14.8%

If a half-percentage-point increase in unemployment rate isn’t ugly enough for you, there’s more from your government statisticians: almost a full percentage point jump in a broader measure of unemployment.

The Labor Department reported today that its most comprehensive measure of joblessness hit 14.8% in February, from 13.9% in January. That’s just about 1 out of 7 Americans who are either unemployed and looking for a job, want a job but stopped looking, or part-timers who want full-time jobs.

We’ve already blown through the prior high point of the data series, which the Bureau of Labor Statisticsstarted in 1994. An even broader (since discontinued) series hit 15% in late 1982, and we’re likely to fly right through that one next month.

The 8.1% official unemployment rate, up from 7.6% in January, only counts people who are available for work and actively looked for a job in the prior four weeks. The 14.8% figure (known as the “U-6” by the BLS) includes everyone in the 8.1% figure, plus people who say they want a job and looked for work recently, along with people working part-time because they couldn’t get a full-time schedule.

How high can the U-6 go? Just looking at forecasts for the main unemployment rate, the broader measure would hit 17% by the end of next year. Some economists say 18% to 20% — 1 out of 5 peopleunemployed in some way — wouldn’t be terribly surprising. If employers aren’t hiring, job hunters would be more likely to give up hope and stop looking even if they do want jobs. After the 2001 recession, employers took roughly two years to resume meaningful hiring and competition was stiff for the jobs available. Anyone searching for a job during this recession is already aware of that grim reality. –Sudeep Reddy

SOURCE: http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2009/03/06/broader-unemployment-rate-hits-148/