Dow Chemical Co. Chief Executive Officer Andrew Liveris said Friday that U.S. unemployment will stay close to current levels until the country develops new industries that compensate for the weakness in construction.
U.S. employers added 18,000 workers last month, the fewest in nine months, and the unemployment rate unexpectedly climbed to 9.2 percent, Labor Department data showed Friday. Economists expected a gain of 105,000, the median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey.
“We are going to be around these numbers for some years,” Liveris said in a telephone interview from Dow’s headquarters in Midland after the data was released.
“The absence of a construction sector and a building sector is really hurting this economy,” he said. “Until we find its replacement, which will take some time, we are going to have joblessness of this type.”
Liveris last month was appointed by President Barack Obama to co-chair the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership, which is tasked with increasing U.S. manufacturing competitiveness. Dow, the world’s second-biggest chemical maker, employs 25,0000 people in the United States and plans to add 6,000 more jobs this decade, mostly in Michigan, Texas and Louisiana, Liveris said.
“A jobless recovery is the bane of all of us right now,” Liveris said. “It is going to take this sort of crisis to engineer the solutions in the medium term.”
Dow is “selling well” to overseas markets, he said. Smaller U.S. companies with a regional focus aren’t doing as well, Liveris said. The path of economic recovery is “jagged,” somewhere between “anemic” and “robust,” he said.
The United States needs to build a consensus on policies for taxes, trade, education and regulation that boost exports of goods made using advanced technology, similar to policies that help the aerospace and defense industries, he said. The United States is falling behind the European Union and China in passing trade agreements, he said.
“I think we are going to have the right conversations that will get us out of this jobless rate,” Liveris said. “We are going to have to have the courage to create some new sectors through a vision.”
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