Sacramento Forecast Project	Nonfarm Employment in the United States	California State University, Sacramento
	revised January, 2008
United States Forecast Page

The indicator, 12-month percentage change in US Total Nonfarm Employment, turned positive in December, 2003, and increased consistently through 2004. The positive pattern in 2005, 2006 and 2007 has been been drifting down from a high of 2.14% in March of 2006 to the most recent 0.92% in December. The current positive pattern is 49 months old - still young in comparison to positive patterns of the past; while the previous negative pattern that ended in November, 2003, lasted for 29 consecutive months and was a longer period of negative growth in the indicator than the 27 month stretch from March, 1944 to May, 1946 that marked the end of WWII.

The graphs above and below shows the 12 month percentage change in the Manufacturing Sector (just production jobs) employment turned negative in December 2006 and stayed negative through out 2007, ending a 13 month string of positive results that started in November, 2005. It followed the seven month negative period that started in April of 2005, and the nine month positive string that began in July, 2005 and was the end of the longest string of negative months on record that began in November 1998, reached a low of -2.11% in April, 1999, recovered, in a manner of speaking, to -0.27% in June, 2000, before sliding to a nineteen year low of -10.14% in January, 2002. The indicator improved during 2002 and was relatively flat in 2003, ending the year at -4.47% in December. The negative pattern ended in July, 2004 with the first positive move since October of 1998. The negative growth period lasted 6 years (72 months) and exceeded the decline in the early 1990's in both length and depth and is the longest period of negative growth going back to at least 1920. Even the depression of the 1930's did not last as long (December, 1929 to April, 1933 equals 41 months)!!!

The cumulative effect of all the increases and decreases in the number of production jobs in manufacturing over the last 84 years is that the number of production jobs in Manufacturing in the United States has declined to the point where there were 248,000 FEWER production jobs in the Manufacturing sector in 2002 than there were in 1941, and the decline continued in 2003 with another 578,000 jobs lost and again in 2004 with a loss of 117,000 jobs, and -10,000 jobs in 2005 before showing a gain (112,000 jobs) in 2006, and losing 89,000 jobs in 2007 but still less than in 1941.

The optimist could say that it is a good thing that Manufacturing employment is less than 20% of our total employment base and that we have become a service economy. The Service-Providing Employment Sector (minus Government Employment) turned negative in September, 2001 and reached a bottom in February, 2002, at -1.1%. The growth turned positive in November, 2002. The positive pattern is now in its 62th month which, given previous positive patterns still is in a very young stage.

Back to United States Forecast Page Update: January, 2008 Next Revision: July, 2008 Arthur N. Jensen, Emeritus Professor of Marketing jensena@csus.edu College of Business Administration California State University, Sacramento Disclaimer: Professor Arthur N. Jensen takes full responsibility for the information posted. The information on this page represents that of Professor Arthur N. Jensen and not that of California State University, Sacramento. [as required in PM BA 96-13 Policy on CSUSInfo World Wide Web]