What makes you say that? Is it because last month many thought the decrease was due to people leaving the workforce? Or was it because of the difference between the two surveys? An article I read today talked about how it turns out that people leaving the workforce last month wasn't the reason for the drop, and that in the last couple months it's quite possible that the establishment survey has been missing some jobs and reporting lower than accurate job growth. That's not to say we should be putting a ton of stock into this single number, but I'm not sure you can say with such certainty that not a lot of people are being hired. Unfortunately, being that it has been nearly six months since that post, I don't think any response is forthcoming, muddled or not.
I think the biggest reason for revolution is not necessarily human rights, freedom, etc I think it is jobs and lack there of. The real unemployment now is between 10.7 and 16 percent. The government needs to do everything possible to fix this. Other industrialized countries are managing to do better and it is time our government tried to look elsewhere to figure out some answers.
Because only 36,000 jobs were added. We need to pick up that pace to over 200,000 per month (and keep up that pace) to start making a real difference.
I'd be curious to see the demographic breakdown of people who quit looking for jobs. One of the reasons the unemployment rate spiked so high in the first place was that people near retirement had their savings wiped out in the stock market crash and were forced to delay retirement - thus, keeping the labor force larger than normal. If those people have recovered their savings with the booming stock market and finally retired, that's a good thing. Over the long haul, these people need to get out of the labor force allowing younger workers to take over their jobs. It's possible that some of them simply worked through the end of 2010 and stopped, in which case you'd see this effect in January employment data. But I have no idea if that's the case here, or if younger people who actually need jobs were simply giving up and dropping out.
Cool - I hadn't seen that. So of the 300k, the question is how many don't want/need jobs anymore (retired, died, left the country, married a sugardaddy/mama, etc) vs. how many need jobs but just gave up. If it's more of the former, then the unemployment rate is actually improving in a good way despite the lack of jobs. If its mostly the latter, then the unemployment rate is likely to go back up when we start getting more job creation, because those people are going to re-enter the work force. I thought this part was interesting as well: The Household Survey numbers themselves had huge adjustments this month: the BLS revises its population numbers every year based on the latest Census Bureau estimates. This year, that pulled 500,000 people out of the labor force. I think the revision is a good thing - without it, the BLS would have reported that 590K people moved from unemployed to employed.....in a month where the Establishment Survey tells us that only 36K jobs were added. [The unemployment rate is based on the Household Survey, but the Establishment Survey (industry survey) is considered to be a more accurate gauge of how many jobs are added or lost.] There may be a spot of good news in this report. The number of people employed part-time dropped by 780K, which would indicate that at least some of these job were converted to full-time positions. The number of part-timers has been swinging wildly lately, with fluctuations larger that those entering and leaving the workforce. It was increasing reasonably steadily over the last quarter of 2010, so seeing it drop is good news. But we'll see next month, w/o the effect of the adjustments to muddy the data. So some potential good news in there, but also it seems like the main conclusion is that these numbers are fairly useless and fluctuate a lot in general. So it's hard to say what the +36k / -0.4% numbers this month mean yet - could be a good sign or a very bad sign.
some more good signs -- The U.S. economy added 192,000 jobs last month, and the unemployment rate dipped to 8.9 percent. That is the fastest pace of hiring in almost a year, and it is the lowest rate since April 2009. http://bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Unemployment-dips-to-89-pct-apf-797302123.html?x=0&.v=8
There's more to this than most people would give credit, especially in the oil business. A lot of producers that had shelved projects due to uncertainty about the regulatory climate have started work on those projects. It's not that they think that Republicans will make it better for them, but rather that gridlock will ensure that they can predict the regulatory environment for a while. My company has bid on more projects recently than anytime since probably 2007. (Lost almost all of them, but that's a problem with my company, not the economy in general.)
You're wrong. If you campaigned on job creation, you get to take credit when jobs appear, regardless if you've enacted any job creation bills or not. And if unemployment rises because of budget cuts you make, you blame the Democrats. "So be it."
Interesting, tabling the micro-to-macro extrapolation you're making here for a second with respect to the February employment numbers, can you tell me what share of the rebound in oil exploration/extraction/etc in the last few years is due to the Republican congress' 60 days in power and, what share is due to the fact that the price of oil has more than tripled in the last 2 years?
Wow. That's a very specific number - not what I expected at all. Can you give some specific examples and tie them into the recent employment data points?
