Did recession in St. Louis start early?
By one important measure – jobs – the St. Louis economy has been shrinking since May 2007, well before the national recession began.
That sunny spring month is when employment last peaked here, according to new seasonally-adjusted jobs numbers supplied by the kind folks at the St. Louis Fed. It’s been downhill ever since.
In May 2007, local companies employed 1.362 million people, and the unemployment rate was 5.06 percent and stable.
Since then, we’ve lost 27,000 jobs – to 1.335 million, and unemployment has jumped to 8.05 percent, with the losses speeding up since September.
Compare that to national figures, which show employment peaking in Dec. 2007, the same month the National Bureau of Economic Research says the current recession began.
Maybe we St. Louisans got into this economic mess a little sooner than everyone else did, despite not having had the big real estate bubble that brought us all to this point.
Here are the local numbers, courtesy of the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank (employment figure is in thousands):
Month Employment Unemployment rate
| May.2007 | 1362.3 | 5.06 |
| Jun.2007 | 1357.2 | 5.32 |
| Jul.2007 | 1355.5 | 5.36 |
| Aug.2007 | 1359.2 | 5.42 |
| Sep.2007 | 1357.4 | 5.58 |
| Oct.2007 | 1356.5 | 5.60 |
| Nov.2007 | 1358.3 | 5.49 |
| Dec.2007 | 1357.9 | 5.83 |
| Jan.2008 | 1357.5 | 5.92 |
| Feb.2008 | 1355.7 | 5.71 |
| Mar.2008 | 1351.4 | 6.38 |
| Apr.2008 | 1351.4 | 5.73 |
| May.2008 | 1352.2 | 6.48 |
| Jun.2008 | 1352.1 | 5.97 |
| Jul.2008 | 1349.9 | 6.76 |
| Aug.2008 | 1346.4 | 7.04 |
| Sep.2008 | 1345.0 | 7.02 |
| Oct.2008 | 1345.1 | 7.29 |
| Nov.2008 | 1340.5 | 7.71 |
| Dec.2008 | 1335.1 | 8.05 |
8% is so horrible. This is a real problem…..
My stockbroker at A. G. Edwards (Wachovia now) told me that recessions start earlier in St. Louis and stay longer than anywhere else in the country, that it’s been like this for years. They don’t know why, they’ve studied it, and still haven’t got an explanation for it. Bad feng shui? Who knows, that’s just St. Louis for you.
I realize that many jobs are lost due to the “times” but I am really becoming suspicious of some companies layoffs and blaming it on the “times”.
I can speak from personal experience, my company let 15 people go at the end of January, their work was spread over 10 other people. Funny thing is I see these 10 people still in their cubes at 6 or 7 o’clock at night and before the lay offs they were all leaving at 5. HMMMM. Can you say greed?
My sister-in-law just lost her job, there were 15 in her department and they cut down to 3!!! She was kind of relieved she was one of them let go, she said there is no way 3 people can do the job 15 were doing without working 12-14 hour days and then it won’t get done or won’t get done properly. By the way the business I am in saw a small decrease of 2% last year from the previous year and things are still on the same level as last year and my sister in law said the same thing.
if 1,362,000 is 95% of people employed then 1,335,000 is 93.2 % employed
which = 6.8% unemployednot 8.05% is my math right or is this some new math?
You know, I don’t think it was just Mark H., I think it was management and employees. I’m just glad they chose me to layoff, I was hurt seeing my co-worker’s in tears though, Love yall, and God Bless you .
Back again! So it is true-KV Pharma did lay off!!!!!!!!!!
http://exkvemployees.blogspot.com/
There has always been layoffs, they just never made the news everytime it happened.. I think many of these companies just needed to downsize anyway and are just using the “recession” as the excuse…. Which is good planning of their part really… They had 10 people doing a job that one of two people could have done on their own… Sorry its the recession.
Karen,
KV had never laid off employees prior to February 2009. The company had experienced steady growth for the last decade. It had many issues in the past, and still had them. But when anyone pointed them out, or tried to suggest ways to correct the problem, it all fell on deaf ears.
I hope my former colleagues can pull the company from the wreckage and turn it into what we had all hoped it could be. But for me, I don’t think I ever want to go back. Ever.