No Occupation Spared By Great Recession: Unemployment Up For All Jobs

Unemployment is up for all. The Great Recession took down ALL occupations, even those supposedly in demand.

A new study from the Economic Policy Institute shows how unemployment increased for all occupations during the five years from 2007 to 2012.

This parallels a lack of new jobs following the recessions.

Slack demand for American workers seems to be at the root of lack of new job openings in the United States and not a purported “skills gap,” a new economic analysis shows.

This low demand for demand for American workers is somewhat conspicuous in light of what appears to be an economic recovery.

The lack of demand for new workers seems to cross all sectors of business and even all levels of education.

Here’s a new analysis from the EPI showing that no occupation was spared when major financial institutions crashed the economy.

Unemployment Up For All Occupations

By HEIDI SHIERHOLZ, Economic Policy Institute— The figure below shows unemployment rates by occupation in 2007 and 2012.

While some occupations have higher unemployment rates than others, there is a job shortage in all occupation categories relative to before the recession started.

Legal occupations and food preparation and serving occupations are doing the best with respect to where they were before the recession began, but unemployment rates in those occupations are still 1.2 times and 1.4 times as high, respectively, as they were in 2007.

All other occupations have unemployment rates more than 1.6 times as high as before the recession began.

In other words, we are not seeing any occupational categories where demand for workers isn’t substantially lower than it was five years ago.

Contrary to frequent claims, our unemployment rate doesn’t remain high because employers can’t find the workers they need to fill jobs in particular occupations.

Instead, unemployment remains high because of a general weakness in demand for workers.