Dollar Falters as Jobs Fail to Inspire

Aha! The moneychangers tell the truth!
"It's not a terrible number, but it's not spectacular".

Sure...tell it to the headline writers today who are absolutely wetting themselves over a jobs number mediocre in every respect but that it exceeded forecasts.

The media whores can shill, but the moneymen are only interested in math-which does not lie.
And, yes, THINGS ARE BETTER THAN EVER HERE IN PARADISE!!!!!!!!!!!!
LONG LIVE THE CHIMP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
:crazy: :silly:

What sort of economic growth is this? You'd think it was still a recession reading those job numbers.

Show me a recession when we've had 5.4% unemployment.

All the increase in unemployment means is that previously discouraged workers have reentered the labor force.

when it was climbing after the close to full employment numbers we had with Clinton (remember, the 3.9% rate?).

Not that we are in a recession now. Just that things aren't always fine and dandy as they may seem on the surface of things.

Was the economy incredibly shitty, yes.

But there have been no two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth since 1990-1991.

Tell that to all the people who forced out of work around that time.

There were three consecutive quarters of negative growth in 2001:

http://www.ombwatch.org/article/articleview/1747/1/18/

in Asia becore the USA started dominating.

Recent revisions show that there was contraction in Q3 2000, growth in Q4, contraction in Q1 2001, growth in Q2, contraction in Q3, and growth since then.

http://www.bea.doc.gov/bea/dn/nipaweb/TableView.asp?SelectedTable=1&FirstYear=2003&LastYear=2004&Freq=Qtr

I agree with you that the economy was in bad shape, but months after the official recession ended, we had nearly a year of horrible job losses.

As a side note, I don't know where that post I made from last night came from...

262,000 jobs added in February, yet unemployment rate climbs from 5.2% to 5.4%.

The most usual (and accurate) answer is that a brightened jobs outlook brings discouraged unemployed workers back to the pursuit of jobs, so they are again counted as "unemployed" (which means "not currently employed but have looked for a job in the last 4 weeks" -- if you have not looked in 4 weeks you are not counted as "unemployed").

The other possibility is the 262,000 new jobs just released are not real. Starting in April of 2003, the BLS started incrementally estimating new employment by guesstimating jobs added by newly formed businesses. The guess is based on modeling past actuals and projecting that onto current numbers (dynamic modeling, linear regression, that kind of thing). How accurate these guesstimates are is anyone's guess, but considering that they started under this Yellow-Cake, "we know where they are, they're north and south, west and east of Baghdad and Tigrit" administration I wouldn't be too confident in their accuracy.

Overall, in 2004, about 1 million guesstimated jobs were added to the actual jobs surveyed by the BLS. How many, I wonder, were real?

Then again we've always been at war with Eastasia... and 2 + 2 does not equal 4... but, hey, Gee Dubya is always telling us that choco rations are about to be increased!

First off, the birth/death number that you see released every month is not compatible with the seasonally adjusted nonfarm payroll number that is released monthly.

The data from birth/death is applied to non-seasonally adjusted numbers to come out with the final number that is released.

So take note of the fact that while 262k seasonally adjusted jobs were created in February, 856k non-seasonally adjusted jobs were created, and 100k from the net birth/death model may or may not have been directly applied to the non-seasonally adjusted number.

It is incorrect to say that the net birth/death model accounted for 1 million jobs in 2004.

Either way this has nothing to do with the unemployment rate.

Nonfarm employment is measured by the Current Establishment Survey (CES) that covers over 160,000 businesses, while the unemployment rate is calculated through the Household Survey, which surveys via telephone and in person 60,000 households. The two reports are unrelated.

It has nothing to do with the unemployment rate. The rate is based on surveys which ask the question of the unemployed, did you look for work in the last 4 weeks? If the answer is no, they are not counted as unemployed (and are removed from the denominator as well -- they are not considered part of the "workforce").

The most usual reason for a simultaneously rising rate and rising overall employment is the brightened job outlook. It motivates the discouraged worker to again look for work so when the survey is conducted they are again counted as part of the workforce, albeit an unemployed part.

I raise the questions about CES birth/death guesstimates, but I defer to your knowledge. But pardon me if I'm distrustful these days of terrorists-under-every-bed and Orwellian death marches into foriegn nations kinda' presidential administrations!

On edit: I guess you missed the point in my original post; I did not tie the two surveys together. Read my second paragraph, above; it's redundant to a point in my previous post.

:)

No, it never is. Aren't these figures just about always "revised" downward a few weeks after the splashy number is trumpeted?

I think you're right... when the traders are willing to let a little bit of the truth slip, THAT'S news!

after each report comes out.

http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_15565.shtml

At an international economic meeting in Davos, Switzerland on January 26, the director of a Chinese National Economic Research Institute announced that China has lost faith in the stability of the US dollar. "Now people understand the US dollar will not stop devaluating," said Fan Gang.

The long term jobs deficit is huge and wages have fallen behind inflation and the CRB is breaking out, meaning trade balance numbers going forward will be horrid and more unbalanced.

One of the last lines in the article...

well, I guess that's good if the media isn't bothering to report
on Snow's snow job anymore.

That's $240,000 dollars per hour, or 46,602 times the minimum wage. Good work if you can get it.

Trans-generational Financial Terrorism

By Jeff Gates, AlterNet
Posted on August 10, 2003, Printed on February 20, 2005

http://www.alternet.org/story/16573

how great and strong the numbers were.

BUHWAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

200k jobs don't effin impress me...

It didn't impress the traders either. They know whassssup.

WHY IS CNN SHILLING FOR THE BFEE BELOW PAR NUMBERS!!!!!!

Roaring US economy generates 262,000 jobs, but jobless rate edges up

How's this for a rosy lead-off?

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US economy showed signs of revving higher in February, generating 262,000 new jobs in February, the Labor Department said in a report suggesting a self-sustaining economic expansion.

The report on job growth, a key to maintaining economic growth, was much better than the 225,000 new jobs predicted, on average, by private economists.


I'll listen to the money-traders.

HE still died.
I'll never understand how things have become the way they are. The media is straight up fucked.

It boggles the mind.

growing economy in the world". Also said that when Bush cut the tax rate, "The economy turned around and we got a lot more jobs."

Ought to know better than to listen to Greenspan.
I doubt Mrs. Greenspan lets him carry the checkbook anymore.

Whatta couple, eh?!

This is good news for all Americans looking for work. However, I must caution that it will take another five or six months of 250K+ jobs to be created to finally alleviate the recession that we're coming out of.




http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid=%7BD4F32763%2DCDC2%2D4D16%2D9BD6%2DCF2280A962E5%7D&siteid=mktw&dist=

US Employment Soars, Oil Down Modestly, Stocks Up By Barry Wood
Washington
04 March 2005

The U.S. economy created 262,000 new jobs in February, the best showing in four months. This good news combined with a slight decline in oil prices from near record highs sent the stock market soaring. The increase brought total employment in the United States to just under 133 million. However, because the labor force grew during February even more than the jobs that were created, the unemployment rate rose slightly to 5.4 percent.

All major sectors of the economy added jobs in February with even the hard-pressed manufacturing sector creating 20,000 jobs. Construction added 30,000 and the service sector added over 200,000 jobs. Jim Smith, an economist at the business school at the University of North Carolina, believes the economy will continue to add jobs throughout 2005. He says the recovery from the job losses associated with the collapse of technology boom of the late 1990s is more or less complete.

"When all those people got laid off as a result of the dot com bust (the stock market and economic decline that began in 2000), it just took a long time to get payroll employment back," he said. "But, the good news is it is back and every month this year ought to be a new record."

The employment data combined with last week's report of economic growth of 3.8 percent reflects overall strength. Even with oil prices near record levels, inflation remains under control at under four percent. Oil prices Friday retreated slightly from the $55 a barrel level reached earlier. This news, combined with the employment report, sent stock prices on Wall Street sharply higher. In late morning the Dow Jones industrial average reached a 3.5 year high. In a separate report, a closely watched gauge of consumer sentiment registered a modest decline in February. Consumer sentiment is an early indicator of consumer spending, which accounts for two thirds of U.S. economic activity.

http://www.voanews.com/english/2005-03-04-voa55.cfm

I just read last night that hourly earnings for the 4th quarter of 2004 were $16.50. Looks to me like wages are falling and we're still not really adding jobs.

This reminds me. The last time African-Americans achieved anywhere near close to full employment was when they were non-citizens of the Confederate States of America.

be revised to reflect reality by the 3rd and 4th quarters.

www.jobwatch.org

Since the start of the recession 46 months ago (March 2001), a negligible 62,000 jobs have been added in the U.S. economy. Private sector jobs are still down by 703,000, a contraction of 0.6%. Both represent the worst job performance since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began collecting monthly jobs data in 1939 (at the end of the Great Depression).

To put this performance in historical perspective, in every previous episode of recession and job decline since 1939, the number of jobs had fully recovered to above the pre-recession peak within at least 31 months after the start of the recession. (The average, excluding the 1991 recovery, has been a full recovery of jobs by the 21st month). In the three downturns since the early 1970s, the economy had not only recovered all the jobs lost during the recession but had also generated 5.7% more jobs than existed at the start of the recession. If this historical standard had prevailed, the economy would have had a positive job gain of 7,568,000 by what is now the 46th month of recovery, or 7,502,000 more jobs than we have today.