Rosie on Forthcoming Job Losses

This is important.

[W]e could see a situation where another 4 to 5 million jobs could be shed in the United States — and in the three sectors that were, and remain, the most affected by the housing crisis and financial collapse.

For example, historically, the construction industry employed three workers for every housing start. Today, that ratio is closer to 10. This could easily mean that we see 3 to 4 million construction jobs being lost going forward, barring a major revival in the housing market, which isn’t happening.

The ratio of employees in the financial sector to outstanding private sector credit is at a new and lower level that would warrant around a workforce 500,000 lower than is the case today — just to get to productivity ratios that prevailed in the pre-bubble era.

And the third sector, which is the fiscally-challenged state and local government segment, for payrolls there to mean revert to the level commensurate with the ever-declining level of public spending would also mean roughly 500,000 employment cutbacks.

No doubt there are other sectors that will provide some offset in health and education and even manufacturing, but it took 25 years for these areas combined to rise five million and something tells us that the downsizing that is left in the housing, financial and state/local government sectors will occur in a much shorter period (and the latter too, if what happened recently in New Jersey is any indication, the social contract with public sector unions will soon go the way of the dodo bird).

Job losses will be part of the next leg down.