[Romans:] Six hundred sixty three thousand jobs lost in March alone. There are signs, though, of a pull in this economy, there really are. But so many of you want to know is when will we see the turnaround in the job market? Ali Velshi is holding down the fort for us in the West Coast. And in the studio with me is Lakshman Achuthan, managing director of the Economic Cycle Research Institute. Let me ask you, first, here; you just said something in the break that I find very, very fascinating. This horrific jobs report.
[Lakshman Achuthan, Economic Cycle Research Institute:] Yes.
[Romans:] The worst employment situation in 25 years. People running scared about some sort of permanent down shifting in the American labor market. And you say, yes, but we see little signs that a recovery could be beginning.
[Achuthan:] Absolutely. The updated jobs numbers are telling us what we suspected, which is that this is a horrible recession. It's the most severe we've seen since World War II and it's not over. And it helps us understand and confirm that. But in order to understand where we're headed, including the job market, we need to look at forward-looking indicators. And our longest leading indicators of the economy, which anticipated this recession which covers the entire country, bottomed in November. We couldn't see that in November, because you had to wait to see it rise, but it actually bottomed in November. Shorter looking weekly leading indicators bottomed in December. They're now at a 23-week high in their growth rate. And after that, you have the stock market. It looks like it bottomed in March.
[Romans:] For the people who don't know, it's been up 19 or 20 percent over the past four weeks, the best four seek performance I think since 1938.
[Achuthan:] Yes and the problem is, right, you're not sure, because the stocks can give you false signal. They've done it before. But what is very telling is that sequence. The long leading index bottoms in November. The weekly leading index bottoms in December. Then, shortly thereafter, we see a bottom in the stock market. That sequence, one, two, three, we don't see that much as a growth rate cycle.
[Romans:] Are you ready to make a call that we've seen the bottom? Or you need to see more monthly data?
[Achuthan:] No, no, no, the bottom hasn't happened yet. It's in the next few months. But the point is that once you see the sequence occur, you're going to have the worst of the recession occur shortly thereafter. And that precedes a business cycle recovery somewhere between the next two or three months after that. So there's a business cycle recovery in 2009. That's a big deal.
[Velshi:] Lakshman, let's talk about how these job numbers break down. We've seen this every month. But when we break the unemployment numbers down by gender and by race. Let's take a look at gender, first of all. The national employment number is 8.5 percent. But for men it's higher, it's 8.8 percent. For women it's seven percent.
[Achuthan:] Right.
[Velshi:] Now let's talk about that and let's look at it by race. Whites have an unemployment rate of 7.9 percent, lower than the national average. Blacks, 13.3 percent; Hispanics, 11.4 percent. Tell me a bit about these numbers? Are they unusual or are they typical?
[Achuthan:] They're generally typical. The fundamental basis of job losses during recessions is that the blue collar worker takes it on the chin every time. They never, ever dodge a recession. They always are on the front lines. And they get hit the most. And what you see is that will end up meaning a lot of men, because men tend to work in these cyclical industries like manufacturing or construction, where women might work a bit more on education or health care, a little bit less cyclical. When you look at race, you may have minorities working in some construction or other things a bit more than others. In this cycle, what's been unusual is that the white collar worker is losing jobs right alongside the blue collar worker, because of how this has been a Wall Street recession, too.
[Romans:] Let me bring in Brad Karsh. The perfect point to bring in him, the president of Job Bound. And he's going to help us try to figure out how to keep that job safe. Brad, thanks for joining us. You heard the dirty details of the numbers. It's a very complicated and frankly, actually, it's not that complicated. It is pretty much a dismal picture for people who have a job here, whether you are, as Lakshman said a blue collar job, a white collar job or whether you've been looking for a job for a long time. What are the things people need to do to preserve their job right now?
[Brad Karsh, Job Bound:] Sure. It's never easy and there's certainly no foolproof way to do it. But there are a couple of thins you want to start doing now, if you haven't done them already, to make sure you keep that job. One, you want to try and make yourself indispensable. That is going to mean different forms to different companies, but maybe that means you tie yourself to something that's very important to the company. So maybe Jan is the person in accounting who knows how all of the processes work, and we couldn't possibly get rid of Jan because we wouldn't be able to bill our clients. Or Gus is the guy who understands exactly how the inventory control works. We wouldn't be able to get products out to the people we need to get them to unless we have Gus around to make sure we do that. Make yourself indispensable. If you can tie that to some kind of money issue, allow your company to make more money, even better. That's the first thing. The second thing you want to think about is go ahead.
[Velshi:] I was going to say, I know you want to talk about volunteering. Tell us about that.
[Karsh:] Yes, I was going to say, at this point you want to have what I call sort of a bunker mentality, because what's happening is departments of 15 are becoming departments of five. And a lot of the work isn't going away. So when they're deciding who is going to get let go and who isn't, they're looking at people who can take on a lot of work. So when they do say, hey, we need somebody who is going to pitch in and help with this assignment, with this project, you want to have your hand up immediately. When they say the work hours are nine to five, you're in there at 8:00 and you're leaving at 6:00. Now is not the time to be asking for extra vacation. Now is not the time to be asking for extra benefits, or a raise or perks. You want to have that mentality of I'm here and I'm going to do whatever it takes.
[Romans:] You say be positive. It's hard when you see your unit of 15 is now five. And a lot of people have survivor's guilt and the like. But you have to plow forward.
[Karsh:] You have to plow forward because, again, it's a tough time for every company. And you don't want to be hanging around with a lot of team who have poor attitudes, people who are talking about potential layoffs, or talking about how miserable the situation is, because, again, as I said, it is like that bunker. Who do you want in the bunker with you? People looking forward and in advance, not looking at the past and looking at bad things.
[Romans:] Brad Karsh, president and founder of Jobs Bound. Thank you so much. And Lakshman Achuthan, Economic Cycle Research Institute. Thank you both.
[Velshi:] Well, the president's patience wears thin for General Motors and for Chrysler. What does it mean for your car payment, your warranty, you community and your job?