Where Will Unemployment Be by the End of 2010?
NEW YORK (
) -- Many colorful words can be applied to the describing the U.S. job market: uncertain, tenuous, stagnant come to mind -- and those are the nicer ones.
Granted, the year started off on a high note, with the January unemployment rate surprisingly falling to 9.7%, as employers shed a mere 20,000 jobs in the month. This represented the first drop in the figure in seven months; unemployment was at 10% in December.
And then, in a rather surprising turn, came February's unemployment report, which showed the rate holding steady at 9.l7%, despite the hits the economy took as a result of the major snowstorms throughout the month. Experts had expected that the jobless rate would likely rise -- if not for that month, then during the coming months -- as those chronically unemployed workers who had placed themselves on the sidelines come flocking back to the job market at the first sign of hope.
Indeed, some economists call for unemployment to climb as high as 11%. Despite a gradual improvement in the economy, most companies are not only loathe to hire new workers; many companies are still
putting jobs, by the thousands, on the chopping block
.
On Monday, more than 1,500 of
IBM's
(IBM) - Get Report
400,000 worldwide employees
received a pink slip
. The layoffs came from a number of divisions, but no specifics were revealed.
And in late February, ABC News, a unit of
Walt Disney
(DIS) - Get Report
, announced a restructuring plan that will lead to massive job cuts by the end of the year. The company did not specify how many jobs would be lost, but warned that the figure could be as high as 25% of its 1,400 staffers.
Also in late February,
Sears
(SHLD)
announced that it would eliminate some 1,000 jobs as it closes 21 stores, while
Continental Airlines
(CAL) - Get Report
said it is letting go of 600 people at its reservations centers and
Boeing
(BA) - Get Report
sent out more than 1,000 employment notices.
Also worth noting is the catch-22 that a jobless recovery -- according to virtually all economists -- can only proceed so far before it grinds to a halt, without the personal liquidity needed to provide the gas for the internal economic engine. Indeed, fears of a double-dip recession continue to circulate among the economic cognoscenti.
Bearing all of these horrors in mind, we ask the readers of TheStreet to peer into your economic crystal ball, and play
for a minute. We ask: Where do you think the unemployment rate will be by the end of the year?
Will unemployment really top 11%, as some economists forecast? Or are the pessimists missing the more buoyant realities, like the renewed spending power in the wake of the recent unprecedented period of savings and a reduction of consumer credit? Could unemployment continue to fall, to back below, say, 8%? There's only one real way to know, of course: Take our poll, and learn the consensus of
TheStreet
. Because
TheStreet
always knows.
-- Reported by Jeanine Poggi in New York.
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