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Each month in the United States, about 4.5 million jobs are created and about 4.5 million jobs are destroyed. Or, to put it another way, the amount of “job churn” in our economy amounts to the creation and destruction of about fifty million jobs per year. For reference, the size of the entire labor force is only about 150 million.

One Response to “Fun Facts to Know and Tell: Jolt You Out of Your Seat Edition”

  1. Harry says:

    I’m wondering about the details of that, WC, and not to be argumentative or to implicitly give you a homework assignment. For example, if someone’s job is eliminated by a promotion to a bigger job, saying for example, the Vice President of Guns and Butter, and the previous Vice President of Guns is fired, does the US Department of Labor count that as two jobs eliminated and one created? Net, it is a labor productivity improvement to the Acme Guns and Butter Company.

    A related subject is the natural rate of unemployment, which when Paul Krugman was in high school was thought to be six percent, since people are changing jobs, just starting to look for jobs. During the Decade of Greed, we learned that a prosperous economy could tolerate a much lower rate of unemployment without setting off a wage-price spiral that was predicted in college textbooks and worshipped by central bankers. I know you don’t want us to go off on a tangent when replying, but I do not find your fun fact surprising or alarming, given the pace of change in a free economy.

    The other question I would have would be the effect from the government sector (all levels), where they are constantly hiring people and hardly ever laying off anybody.

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