Jobs recovery reverting to jobs recession in Wichita area

What seemed to be a slow recovery in the number of people working in the Wichita area has turned into a recession this year.

In August, about 6,000 fewer people in the Wichita area were working than in August 2014, according to the Kansas Department of Labor.

It’s the latest point in a downward trend that started late last year when the number of people working peaked at nearly 300,000. Since then, the numbers have fallen and in August fell below 290,000.

This is drawn from a monthly survey of households in Sedgwick, Butler, Harvey, Sumner and Kingman counties and is the same measure from which the unemployment rate is drawn.

Economist Malcolm Harris, a professor at Friends University, said the decline in people seeking work is a serious problem. A large percentage have retired, but many have lost jobs, stayed out of work and can’t figure out how to get work again.

“One of the consequence of such a weak recovery is that they are out of the labor force so long that they are no longer employable, which is a tragedy,” Harris said.

The state reported Friday that despite declining numbers of people working, the area’s unemployment rate fell to 5.1 percent from 5.6 percent in July. Because the number is not seasonally adjusted, the drop reflects seasonal factors, such as teenagers’ leaving the workforce and returning to school where they are no longer counted in the rate.

Wichita’s woes are spilling over into Kansas as a whole, which is also seeing job losses. There were 15,000 fewer people working in Kansas last August than in August 2014 on a not-seasonally-adjusted basis.

“A survey of Kansans shows that the number of people in the labor force declined over the summer months, leaving many employers with positions to fill. This has led to an increase in hours worked by existing employees in order to perform the work needed,” Tyler Tenbrink, the department’s Senior Labor Economist, said in a statement.

The U.S., on the other hand, has seen the opposite trend. The number of jobs has been growing steadily, including last year, and there are now 2.6 million more people in the U.S. working than there were in August 2014.

Non-farm job survey

Harris noted the sharp contrast between the August household survey and a related monthly measure also released Friday called the non-farm jobs survey, which draws information from employers rather than households.

In the non-farm survey, the Wichita area was down from a year ago, but only by 500 jobs. The survey offers insight into which parts of the economy are hiring and which are shedding jobs.

The segment hardest hit by job loss was government – under pressure from budget cuts and freezes in recent years – which was down 2,000 jobs from a year earlier. The great majority of the loss was among local governments, which includes public schools.

But the number of private sector jobs in the Wichita area was up 1,500 from a year earlier. The biggest gainers were segments containing construction and oil and gas, and restaurants and hotels.

The Kansas Department of Labor also highlighted that, on the non-farm survey, the number of private sector jobs in Kansas was up 6,300 jobs, more than off-setting the 3,300 government jobs lost statewide.

That left the entire state 3,000 jobs in the plus column from a year ago.

This story was originally published September 18, 2015 at 9:59 AM with the headline "Jobs recovery reverting to jobs recession in Wichita area."