The pink slip economy

Under Bushco, this is what passes for good economic news:

U.S. employers announced 71,836 job cuts in September — little changed from the previous month — marking the end of the slowest quarter for planned layoffs since the second quarter of 2002, according to a survey by Challenger, Gray and Christmas Inc.

The Chicago-based executive outplacement firm said September's layoff announcements were 1.8 per cent higher than August's, but down 33 per cent from a year earlier when U.S. companies announced 107,863 job cuts. The transportation and retail industries led the layoffs in September, accounting for 36 per cent of all planned job cuts.

Needless to say, it's awfully tough for a lot of workers to feel particularly secure in any job. But are there enough new jobs being created to pick up the slack?

The report comes ahead of U.S. and Canadian employment figures due out Friday. In the wake of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the U.S. economy is expected to have shed 150,000 non-farm jobs in September after gaining 169,000 in the previous month. Despite the job losses, the report is not expected to dictate the direction of financial markets Friday, as it usually does...

The Canadian economy is expected to add 20,000 jobs in the month after adding about 28,000 in August.

While the hurricanes may have slammed consumer confidence, they apparently haven't hurt Canadian employment numbers just yet. The main problem for Canada seems to be the question of how long it'll take the U.S. to rebuild its consumer markets rather than issues linked to local conditions...though of course the exchange rate is causing problems for some.

Unfortunately, the U.S. situation doesn't look great: thanks to the continued aftereffects of the hurricanes, there are plenty of unplanned layoffs to make up for the drop in planned ones...and it certainly doesn't look like the reconstruction money is building anything much aside from bank accounts outside the damaged region. We'll find out all too soon whether the current good news holds up, or whether the pessimism of Canadians is justified.