The 190,000 jobs lost in the U.S. in October was the second lowest number of declines since August 2008. After the latest revision, August 2009 was lower at -154,000. U.S. total job losses since January 2008 now amount to 7.3 million. The level of total employment is back to where it was in March 2004. The unemployment rate has shifted above the dreaded 10% level to settle at 10.2% for the moment, with the prospect of moving still higher over the next couple of months.

Broadly speaking, firms undertake three waves of job reductions from the beginning to the end of a recession due to: 1) initial panic; 2) trying to “hang on for dear life”; and 3) re-positioning for the future. While there is still an element of No. 2 in the latest numbers, No. 3 is also starting to become more important and is likely to predominate over the next several months.

What is encouraging is that the year-over-year percentage declines in employment in many key sub-sectors are easing up. The graphs that accompany this report show the trends. Total employment started to improve on this year-over-year percentage basis in July 2009. Manufacturing has been showing improvement since early summer and leisure and hospitality since spring.

Retail bottomed out early this year and has been bouncing around a horizontal plane since then, with some upward movement in the last three months. It’s been taking transportation and warehousing along for the same ride.  

Unfortunately, construction employment is still heading downward. Its latest year-over-year figure of -15.6% is the grimmest of all the major sub-groupings. Housing starts are only just settling on a floor level and private sector projects are a no-go on account of vast amounts of excess capacity on shop floors, in stores and in office corridors.

Government stimulus money may be starting to show up in one area, however. Architectural and engineering services employment has settled down at -9% year over year after falling precipitously throughout last fall and this past spring. This should be a lead indicator for improving on-site civil construction activity ahead.

All of the office-based sectors are showing an uptick – i.e. less negative declines. That includes financial activities, professional and business services and information services. But there are discrepancies in some of the further sub-sectors. Employment in legal services is still headed downward, a trend that has been evident since 2004. Accounting and bookkeeping services employment is climbing back to 0% on a year-over-year basis. And computer systems design work has managed to avoid employment losses, just barely, right up to the present.