Two ways to look at the current jobs situation

Both of these are thanks to Ian Welsh. The first is a chart from Calculated Risk. Ian asks, "Does this look like a recession to you?" Notice the dotted line near the end that takes out census hiring.


And here's an animation of the jobs picture, month-by-month and county-by-county.



The creator of the map, Latoya Egwuekwe, is interviewed on CNN here. It's interesting to see the stain spread — I'm not sure I knew that up-the-Mississippi would be a path.

Your county may be different, but mine went dark awfully fast. Time for governments to sell off that pesky infrastructure and plow under some old roads.

And a tip for you — in these weird times, what's bad for the country is good for the individual. If you really think things are headed further down, pay off debt, reduce expenses, and stock up on cash and cash equivalents, to the extent you can.

GP