[Ali Velshi, Cnn:] Welcome to YOUR MONEY. I'm Ali Velshi.
[Christine Romans, Cnn:] And I'm Christine Romans. Barack Obama has a new job, but will you keep yours. Another month of staggering job losses provided a sobering backdrop for a week in which the presidential election finally ended and the transition to power began.
[Velshi:] In the next 60 minutes, we'll examine the huge economic challenges facing this new president-elect, what, if anything, he can do to get the labor market growing, and what you can do to keep your job or survive a pink slip. To tell you about this job market that we keep talking about.
[Romans:] 1.2 million jobs almost lost so far this year, Ali, and half of those coming in just the past three months. That means that the deterioration is quickening here in the labor market. Something is happening in the economy right now and there are expectations that losses like these will continue into next year.
[Velshi:] We expected to see 200,000 jobs lost in October. We got the news that it was 240,000 in that September number which was a 159,000 was revised to 284,000. This is pretty serious. We will talk about what this means and whether these job loses will stop. The problem here is when you start to see numbers of this magnitude. Some of you already know lots of people who have lost jobs depending on where you are in the country. But now it's starting to permeate. People are starting to fear about what's going on happen to them.
[Romans:] Let's talk about where we have seen the job losses mounting. Ten months in a row, no surprise that manufacturing leads the way here, and another 90,000 jobs lost there, construction 49,000 jobs lost. Business services 51,000, retail, finance, anything that touches the consumer. Car dealers, travel agents, restaurants, airlines, those are all
[Velshi:] Anything that you have an opportunity to spend on, if you don't have to spend on it, you're not spending. Let's talk about where the gains have been seen in October. They tend to be the same sectors we're seeing over and over again. Healthcare which relates to our aging population added some jobs and government-added jobs and while that's good news you don't tend to want to see your job creation being led by government and mining added new jobs. That had something to do with the energy sector, the amount of work that's being done over there. There are issues about places in the country being better off than other.
[Romans:] There are. You have a couple of states that always lead. Michigan and Rhode Island have like 8 percent plus unemployment rate. Look that the map. The green there are states that have better than average unemployment situation. The red states is where you are seeing the jobless rates higher than the national average and then sort of the gray are holding on to the average, but you look at where you can see some of those mountain states you see a better situation. South Dakota, Wyoming only having 3 percent, I think, unemployment rate in that area, but some of these other states you're talking 6, 7, 8 percent unemployment rate.
[Velshi:] Some of the areas are benefiting from technology, Virginia being green, lower than average unemployment. Texas is another one of those states, but they are few and far between and when it comes to manufacturing jobs, virtually no state is adding manufacturing jobs.
[Romans:] The job is the backbone of your economy. Let's talk to some experts about what you can do about jobs and what you can expect in the job situation going forward. Lakshman Achuthan is the managing editor of the Economic Cycle Research Institute. "Business Week" senior writer Diane Brady and Ben Dattner organization sociologist and founder of Dattner Consultants. In short, he is our workplace consultant today. Let's start with Lakshman and get the big sort of overview of this economic situation. We have just painted a pretty grim picture.
[Lakshman Achuthan, Economic Cycle Research Institute:] You have and your unemployment map was very interesting. Another aspect that is holding up the middle of the country was the boom in oil prices and food prices that is right down the center of the country.
[Velshi:] Oil and on the higher end they have the corn and the wheat.
[Achuthan:] You see the recession is pervasive job losses. So it's squeezing in from the coasts and now it's gripped the entire country and the numbers are showing that. Today's numbers are also showing us really the third chapter of this recession. It started off at the beginning of the year as a very mild recession, job losses below 100,000. By summer we saw, because of the global economy going into recession, all of a sudden the manufacturing exports started to collapse.
[Velshi:] The rest of the world was doing OK and they could buy the products that we were manufacturing.
[Achuthan:] Which kept everything kind of mild and we saw a shift in the summer and from September and October we've had this big jerk downward and it spread to business services, consumer services and all of these things.
[Romans:] Diane you say that it's even worse than we see on the surface because there are people dropping out of the labor market that are so discouraged.
[Diane Brady, Senior Writer, "business Week:] " They have a concept called under employment. You see people being forced into part-time work and full time work and hours are being cut. There are also people out there who are technically able to do jobs much higher than what they end up getting. So, for example, if you were in financial services, you are now folding sweaters at Gap, that's not necessarily a bad job but you really would prefer to be back in financial services so I think the whole underemployment situation has
[Velshi:] And switched to freelance workers in many cases and workers without benefits.
[Brady:] Contract work. Exactly.
[Velshi:] We also saw an up tick in the unemployment rate from 6.1 to 6.2 percent but that speaks to what you and Christine often says, 6.2 percent is a measure of those people who are either working or
[Romans:] I think it is 6.5 percent.
[Velshi:] I still haven't been able to register that.
[Romans:] The highest in 14 years. Well 14 years ago, we were in the midst of another ugly time.
[Achuthan:] We were recovering from a nasty recession. We were starting to get to see better numbers. So that also tells us essentially that these numbers are going get worse. You are not necessarily seeing the heart of the recession here. It will get worse.
[Velshi:] Ben let's ask you this. You are a workplace guy. You're an organizational psychologist. We keep hearing about things you should do, being nice to your boss. Bottom line is these kinds of numbers are not about individuals being selected to be laid off. These are in many cases mass layoffs. October saw the biggest number of mass layoffs in five years. You can be as nice as you want; you're a number at this point.
[Ben Dattner, Workplace Consultant:] Absolutely right. As my high school social studies teacher used to say. If you have a job there's 100 percent employment, if you don't there's 100 percent unemployment. It is important to be focused on your job and do not get distracted by organizational politics and let's not get caught up in gossip.
[Romans:] Don't panic, too. It is not the time to be panicking. The other thing is how do you know if you are at your job, how do you tell the writing on the wall that you might be one of these people that is going to be laid off, or your whole division should people be looking around to get an idea that hey, it might be me and I need to be doing something about it?
[Dattner:] Unfortunately in today's world, the old psychological contract between employees and their companies has totally eroded. So even before the crisis hit people cannot count on lifetime employment or job security. Unfortunately, I think people always have to be looking around, developing their skills and thinking about what their next move might be.
[Velshi:] What does this mean? Avoid unemployed word?
[Dattner:] I coined the term intra employed which I think is a lot more positive then unemployed, when people ask you what are you currently doing, if you say I'm intra employed.
[Velshi:] If someone told me they were intra employed the first thing I'd tell them is stop talking nonsense. You're not going to get a job.
[Dattner:] It would have broken the ice.
[Velshi:] I suppose that's true, but I don't think are you suggesting there's a stigma to be unemployed in this market? I think people think there is. With so many people unemployed you are now
[Dattner:] That's an important point. In some ways this is the best time to be looking for work because nobody will think you're a poor performer. They'll think there were massive layoffs at your company.
[Romans:] There are a couple different ways to look at it, there are poor performers this is the reason anybody with head count in this country, I've said this for weeks. Anybody who was in charge of head count in this country knows they're top and bottom performers and their boss probably knows them at this point, too, but there are some people who are going to lose their job through no fault of their own and that's a really hard part to come to grips with because when you lose a job, you've lost, it can be depressing and it can lower your confidence.
[Velshi:] When you're seeing a company laying off 500 or 1,000 or 2,000 people or 3,000 at a time as we've seen over the last few weeks. At that point there's not necessarily a sense that they're going through and selecting individuals. It could be just everybody under a certain level.
[Romans:] The other thing, too, a lot of advice we get from work places consultants says makes sure that you have a good relationship with your boss. Well if your boss gets canned and you have a relationship with your boss, you need to know your boss's bosses too. We just saw from Ford just cutting a bunch of white collar jobs, management jobs. A lot of management kind of jobs that will be lost, too. Everyone, stick with us. We'll talk about this in a minute. The election is over. Obama has his dream job. It's time for you to find yours.