Firms scramble when staff leaves for active duty

A reader called the other day with an interesting question.

We have a lot of people in the National Guard or a military reserve unit who have left their regular jobs and gone to Iraq or somewhere else overseas, he noted, asking, What effect has this had on the economy and the jobless rate?

The short answer is, I don’t know.

Neither does the Washington State Employment Security Department.

The agency’s Donna Thompson, Snohomish County labor economist, was nice enough to make a few calls for me last week just to see if employment security had any statistics or special reports.

"We don’t have any numbers," she said.

I asked Thompson whether employers were hiring lots of folks to fill the jobs left by the reservists. Employers are required to give reservists or National Guard members a job back when they return, so any of the new employees would likely be in temporary positions.

"There are no records on how many businesses would actually hire a temporary person in their place," Thompson said. "We do know there’s anecdotal evidence that some companies are just doing without and shifting those responsibilities to other people."

That makes sense, especially since businesses all over the place have been adding more responsibilities to their workers as a way to keep costs down during a bad economy.

"Business have been doing that even without people going to National Guard," Thompson said.

At any rate, Thompson said she doesn’t think that the numbers are large enough to have much of an effect on the unemployment rate.

"It’s not enough of a factor to even move it," she said. "I’d be surprised if its even two-tenths of a percentage point."

I did find some numbers from the Department of Defense on Washington state reserve or national guard units that have been called to active duty.

It looked like by late February, there were at least 6,300 Washingtonians who were called up.

In January, officials estimated that there were 225,600 people unemployed across Washington state.

So even if employers hired temporary replacements for half of the active reservists, it wouldn’t be much of a number. Certainly not enough to significantly change the jobless rate here.

In Snohomish County, the rate was 7.3 percent in January. That’s high but the county’s unemployment rate has been falling in recent months.

February’s rate should be available on Tuesday. Let’s hope it keeps falling.

Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan said last week that job creation is "lagging badly," behind an improving economy.

But he expects job growth to pick up soon as businesses reach the limit on boosting output through productivity gains and start rehiring laid off workers.

Wouldn’t that be nice. Not only would our soldiers in the guard and reserves get their jobs back, but the temporary workers might find themselves with a permanent job.

Let’s hope he’s right.

Mike Benbow: 425-339-3459 or benbow@heraldnet.com