Where are the new jobs?

One of the hard realities being faced by the millions of people looking for work is that their old jobs aren't coming back. Many industries are in restructuring mode and they won't necessarily have a place for their laid-off workers (newspapers are one example). Of course, some businesses had been on a hiring binge that couldn't possibly be maintained. From the WSJ:

For more highly educated workers, finance may no longer offer as many high-paying jobs as it has in the past. Thomas Philippon, an economist at New York University's Stern School of Business, estimates that the financial sector's share of the economy was nearly 20% larger than it should have been. Since the start of the recession, the financial sector has lost 548,000 jobs, or 6.6% of its work force. Mr. Philippon's estimate suggests there will be further pressure on financial jobs.

In other areas of the labor market, the recession accelerated job losses that were probably coming anyway. In November, there were 36% fewer people working in record shops than two years earlier, according to the Labor Department. There were 23% fewer people working at directory and mailing list publishers, and 46% fewer at photofinishing establishments. Those are jobs that, with the advent of mp3 recordings, Google and digital photography, were likely disappearing anyway.

What's confounding about the labor market is that for all those lost jobs, there's very little in the way of new jobs (the exception being health care). Here's an unsettling stat: In November, there were 6.35 unemployed people in the U.S. for every job opening, according to the BLS (it's way higher in L.A.). Employers just don't want to hire, either because they're afraid that the recovery won't last or because there aren't enough incentives for them to take the chance.