Grubb & Ellis Montana Commercial, LLC

The Trend Is Your Friend

Job losses remain severe, but the trend is in the right direction. Employers eliminated 345,000 net payroll jobs in May, less than half of the 741,000 jobs eliminated in January at the trough of the labor market downturn. The education and health services sector added 44,000 jobs, of which 36,400 were in health care and social assistance. The leisure and hospitality sector also was a net gainer with 3,000 jobs created. The unemployment rate rose from 8.9 to 9.4 percent partly because more people, including recent graduates, entered the labor force looking for work. The labor market is a lagging economic indicator. Forward-looking indicators such as consumer confidence and the index of Leading Economic Indicators (covered in last week’s Good News Friday) already are pointing toward recovery. Expect job losses to dwindle gradually in the second half of 2009, setting the stage for a modest rebound next year.

Robert Bach

SVP, Chief Economist

Grubb & Ellis

This entry was posted on Friday, June 5th, 2009 at 8:48 am and is filed under Good News Friday. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.