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BALTIMORE, MD (3/20/09) – Maryland jobseekers
continued to experience the backlash from the
recessionary tremors reverberating through both the
national and statewide economy. The number of seasonally
adjusted unemployed rose to a record-setting high in
January, pushing the seasonally adjusted unemployment
rate up from a revised rate of 5.4 percent in December
to January’s preliminary rate of 6.2 percent. This is
the first time since 1993 that Maryland’s unemployment
rate has topped the 6.0 percent mark. Nearly 185,300
Marylanders were counted among the unemployed in
January, surpassing a record previously set in January
1982. The difficulties faced by Maryland jobseekers were
magnified by increasing reports of impending layoffs and
by job losses resulting from the mounting number of
business closures, both statewide and nationally.
According to officially filed WARN notifications, the
number of businesses either scaling back their
workforces or ceasing operations all together has
steadily increased. Included among the list of reported
closures during January were Circuit City, Brunswick and
DHL – closures which impacted workers in multiple
regions across the state.
The monthly upturn in Maryland’s unemployment rate,
of 0.8 percentage points, was noticeably higher than
that of 0.4 percentage points which raised the national
unemployment rate to 7.6 percent in January. Even so,
Maryland’s unemployment rate has, during the downturn,
been slower to rise than that of the nation; since
December 2007, the unemployment rate nationally has
risen by 3 full percentage points compared to that of
2.6 percentage points in Maryland.
The movement of Maryland’s seasonally adjusted
industry payrolls during January countered expectations,
with preliminary data showing a slight upturn in the
number of jobs. The seasonally adjusted increase,
however, could be described as a “false positive”
resulting from a statistical blip created by the
seasonal adjustment methodology.* Comparing industry
movements over the past year (January 2008-January 2009)
tends to be more reflective of the path and pace of
spiraling economics. Since January 2008, an estimated
39,000 jobs have vanished from industry payrolls. Within
the private sector, all major business sectors, with the
exception of professional/business services and
education/health services, have lost employment. Cuts
have been the deepest in trade/transportation/utilities
where just over 22,000 jobs have been shed. Construction
has declined at the fastest pace, dropping by 9.5
percent over the past twelve months.
The normal seasonal upturn in local non-seasonally
adjusted unemployment rates anticipated this time of
year was exacerbated by the deepening recession.
Locally, unemployment rates, both over-the-month and
over-the-year, were higher in each of the state’s
jurisdictions. Monthly employment declines produced rate
increases of a full percentage point or more in all
jurisdictions with the exception of Charles, Howard and
Montgomery counties. Worcester County’s rate climbed
higher on the double-digit scale, moving up to a
statewide high of 16.9 percent in January. Baltimore
City and Dorchester County joined Worcester on the
double-digit scale with rates for January climbing to
10.0 percent and 11.2 percent, respectively.
* In the seasonal adjustment process, factors are developed for each industry
supersector based on historical seasonal patterns and magnitudes. These factors
are then applied to unadjusted data which are derived from sample based estimates.
If sample based estimates behave atypically, applying historically derived seasonal
adjustment factors can sometimes skew data.
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