Private Payroll Workers are Working Longer Hours

After hitting a low in number of hours worked in  October 2009, the 68% of workers in production and nonsupervisory positions have slowly been increasing their hours of work.  From October to May, the number of hours have increased by 2.2%.  Unfortunately, those hours are still 11% lower than they were at their maximum in March 2008.

As workers work more hours, the pressure to hire new workers tends to go up.  But, given that workers managed to work many more hours in March of 2008 than they are now, there is also generally plenty of room to increase the number of hours worked by presently employed workers before hiring new workers.  Some industries and some companies are working their employees more than the average and such new hires as will occur will be in those industries and companies.

Overall, the newest hiring figures for May, showed that the only hires were the multitudes being hired by a profligate federal government to work for the Census bureau.  For some unknown reason, many more workers and many times as much money is needed to take the Census this year compared to the last Census of 2000.  The last Census was taken by George Bush.  Apparently Obama is much less efficient with the taxpayer's dollars.  As the number of government hires skyrockets, the number of private sector hires dwindled.  The Obama-planned erosion of the private sector continues with a renewed vigor in May.

The good news is that this swarm of officials spreading over the country and intent upon eating out its substance is largely composed of temporary Census workers.  They will be unemployed again soon.  The bad news is that the private sector has understood that the federal government hates all private sector commercial employers.  Consequently, those employers are reluctant to take the many risks that come with hiring new employees.