The Great Recession officially began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009, making the upcoming release of December 2013 employment and unemployment data the six-year anniversary of the Great Recession’s beginning and the four-and-a-half-year anniversary of its . Worse, the indicators that really matter to the living standards of the vast majority of working-age households—jobs and wages—have seen agonizingly slow progress toward full recovery.
As marketers, it’s our job to have a pulse on consumer attitudes that could influence their behavior. We can’t keep looking for “the light at the end of the tunnel”; we have to ensure our marketing adapts to the new frugal consumer.
Here are some sobering facts about our economy..
- The total “jobs gap”—the number of jobs needed to return the U.S. economy to pre-recession health—is 7.9 mil- lion jobs (3.6 million for women and 4.3 million for men).
- At 200,000 jobs per month, pre-recession labor market conditions would not be regained for another five years. To regain pre-recession labor market conditions in two years, we would need to add 400,000 jobs per month.
- Most of the improvement in the unemployment rate since its peak of 10.0 percent in the fall of 2009 has not been driven by increased employment, but rather by potential workers dropping out of, or never entering, the labor force because job opportunities are so weak. If all of these missing workers were actively seeking work, the unemployment rate would be 10.3 percent instead of 7.0 percent.
- Workers with jobs are also doing much poorer than they would be if job opportunities were plentiful. This is because when the labor market is weak, employers do not have to pay substantial wage increases to get and keep the workers they need. In today’s weak recovery, real wages have dropped for the entire bottom 90 percent of workers.
- Because today’s weak job growth is due to businesses not seeing demand for goods and services rise rapidly enough to necessitate increased hiring, the economy needs policies that will stimulate demand.
Source: ECONOMIC POLICY INSTITUTE
Great post. Now more than ever marketers and strategists need to know their customers. Whenever possible companies need to provide solutions for their customers, not just products.