Real estate is dying on Long Island. That's a very bad sign. Long Island was supposed to be a special case: "they're not making any more land".

What is happening is that existing homes have been on the market for months with no hint of a buyer.

I found the steady retail employment graph w trough mid 2003 interesting. The recovery looks like it really starts there ignoring that there are other facets (manufacturing etc) to the economy, and plateaus mid 2005. ARMs have high incidence during this period as well as sub-prime loans, no?

The retail sector employment is better documented than the construction sector I believe. The 810k jobs "found" from employer tax filings I believe come from this area. It won't be until March that this is "discovered" (and while there may be 'advance', 'preliminary' and 'final' and 'revised' in some BLS areas, this is not one of them.).
So, I'm here to improve your picture (naive -> cynical) of the residential construction employment by penciling in a dotted line above the one shown starting mid 2002 and building to atleast a 600,000 higher peak at mid 2005 and coming back down but perhaps remaining still above the current Oct 2006 line as shown.

When I go to "regular" department stores, not "big boxes", I have almost always perceived a scarcity of floor staff. But I'm not shopping often, so I don't have a consistent picture.

I don't do much online shopping because I want to inspect the merchandise at close range, not have to trust pictures, and I don't want to wait who knows how long for the mail. Most of my few online purchases have been stuff I simply cannot get in stores.

From Kevin Depew at Minyanville:
"In Nov. 2000, jobs growth was 216k, above consensus of 140k. Unemployment rate dropped to 3.9%, below the expected 4.0%.
One month later the Fed cut rates 50 bps."

Remember-- employment is a lagging indicator.

Steve,

Thanks for posting that interesting jobs data. In fact if you look at the second half of 2000 you start to see intemittent months with basically zero job grow. It indicates we should have a six to nine month lead time at least where the job market starts to struggle.

But if you go back to the early 1990's it looks like the job growth suddenly stalls without giving a recession warning by previously touching the 0 line several times.

Here is an article I found:

" All that is only a taste of the layoffs that would come if the economy were to slip into a recession. In the last downturn, for instance, which began in July, 1990, businesses used the weak economy as an opportunity to shed workers and make their operations much more efficient, slashing more than 1.7 million jobs. The cutting was especially deep in Corporate America. As a result, productivity growth at nonfinancial corporations actually accelerated during the 1990-91 recession.

The 1990 downturn also suggests that the current strength of the labor market is no grounds for complacency. Unemployment is considered by economists to be a ''coincident'' indicator, meaning it doesn't rise until the economy starts contracting. In 1990, unemployment fell to a low point in June, the month before the official start date of the recession. But once the recession began, layoffs snowballed, getting bigger and bigger as the downturn went on."

Commentary: The New Economy's Cruel Math

"Residential construction employment decreased by 15,500 jobs in November and is down 110 thousand, or about 3.3%, from the peak in February. This is the beginning of the loss of several hundred thousand residential construction jobs over the next year or so."

In California, much of that job loss is being felt by the illegal immigrant(alien?)population. Depending on your point of view, that may not be bad thing realive to it's possible affect on the economy (spending) since much of that money has been flowing out of the country.

Nice note 'producer' about those under-registered (nevamind the docs, we know there are 12M, we just know) workers sending those pay checks back to Mexico. Good money leaving the country.
Only some, (not quite so good I'm afraid in St Peter's Book) money staying behind by way of 30% margins on developments that include that labor, yes? [My apologies to all those who know St Peter much better than this non-practicing Christian.]

Now that my point of view is dynomite clear, about who the scoundrels are, and the liklihood that the residential construction job losses will be reported as accurately as the usual black-market aspects of our economy, the question remains whether this exodus will be out of the country (saving us the trouble of The Wall) or merely to other sectors. Does one translate the US housing slowdown as merely a sector phenomena or does one translate this as a relatively improving Mexican economy? The path these immigrants take will let us know, I bet.