Archives: October 2009

GDP and Engineering Layoffs

Posted by: Peter Coy on October 29, Categories: Growth, Innovation, Labor Market

Posting for Michael, who’s traveling: If you care about R&D, product design, worker training, or any of that other good stuff, you might want to look at my new cover...

Hard Times for Nonprod Workers in Manufacturing

Posted by: Michael Mandel on October 26, Categories: Manufacturing

Here's a bit of a good news-bad news chart. The rate of job cuts for production workers in manufacturing has slowed dramatically in the past few months, as companies start...

Nutty Manufacturing Productivity Statistics

Posted by: Michael Mandel on October 22, Categories: Manufacturing

This morning the BLS released its "International Comparisons of Manufacturing Productivity and Unit Labor Cost Trends, 2008". And guess what? According to the BLS, the U.S. manufacturing sector had the...

Wanted: Unemployed Scientists and Engineers

Posted by: Michael Mandel on October 19, Categories: Labor Market

I'm looking for a bit of help for a story I'm doing on problems in the labor market for 'knowledge workers'. I'd like to talk to scientists, engineers, designers, etc...

The Jobs Deficit

Posted by: Michael Mandel on October 18, Categories: Employment

I will be speaking Tuesday in DC. The conference? The Jobs Deficit: The Challenge of Putting America Back to Work, put on by the New America Foundation. I'm going to...

BusinessWeek sold to Bloomberg

Posted by: Michael Mandel on October 14, Categories: Journalism

People probably already know that BusinessWeek, after 80 years with McGraw-Hill, has been sold to Bloomberg. I'm hoping to be able to continue this blog--I'll let you all know how...

Surprising Nobel in Economics

Posted by: Michael Mandel on October 12, Categories: Nobel

I have an admission to make--I had never heard of Elinor Ostrom before this morning's Nobel prizes in Economics were announced. Ostrom, the 2009 winner along with Oliver Williamson of...

Trade Picture Worsens in August

Posted by: Michael Mandel on October 09, Categories: Trade

Yes, the headline number on this morning's trade report improved. But that was misleading. In fact, the non-oil trade deficit widened for the second straight month (19.8 billion in June,...

Non-Pecuniary Benefits to Schooling

Posted by: Michael Mandel on October 05, Categories: Education

I've written a series of blog posts arguing that real earnings of young college grads have been falling since 2000, not just in inflation-adjusted dollars, but also relative to less...

Two-Year Occupational Winners and Losers

Posted by: Michael Mandel on October 05, Categories: Labor Market

As the labor market continues to deteriorate, the topic on the top of everyone's mind is: Where are the growth areas for the future? That question is unanswerable, but we...

Record Drop in Education Jobs

Posted by: Michael Mandel on October 02, Categories: Education

Today's employment report shows that the recession has finally hit education. With the new school year starting, September education jobs fell by 0.9%, or 121K jobs, compared to September 2008....