Job growth strong (288,000 in April)

Strong April report cuts unemployment rate to 5.6%; March report revised higher

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - U.S. employers added 288,000 jobs in April, a much anticipated government report said Friday, as the growth was well above Wall Street expectations.

The job growth was below the revised 337,000 jobs added in the March report. A survey of economists by Reuters put the consensus forecast at 173,000 jobs added, with a range of estimates from 60,000 to 250,000.

The Labor Department report also put the unemployment rate at 5.6 percent. Economists had been looking for unemployment to hold steady at a 5.7 percent rate seen in March.

http://money.cnn.com/2004/05/07/news/economy/jobless/index.htm

IIRC, they have to add at least 300,000 jobs to stay even with population growth.

not growth of all age brackets.

I am not familiar with so narrow a definition; especially using a figure of 300,000. Can you show me where you got it? Thanks!

people turning 17
plus immigration (of workforce age) and work visas
plus people re-entering workforce e.g. done child-rearing
~= PEOPLE ENTERING WORKFORCE

MINUS :

people who retire
plus emigration
plus people die or are disabled before retirement
plus People who otherwise leave workforce e.g. start child-rearing
~= PEOPLE LEAVING WORKFORCE

I thought the number was about 180,000. About 2.2 million jobs per year need to be added to break even. Thats assuming the jobs that are added have a similar payrate to existing jobs. If the new jobs have a lower percentage of say $25/hr jobs and a higher percentage of $8 jobs, then more people will need 2 jobs instead of one and the 2.2 million number rises. This (new jobs pay cheaper) is bound to be the case in a recovery since high unemployment means competition for jobs rather than competition for employees.

If Kerry creates 10 million jobs over 4 years, it would just keep true unemployment steady rather than driving it down. A prolonged period of high unemployment would means wage deflation means more people forced to work 2 jobs or to re-enter the workforce involuntarily = slow growing unemployment and decreasing average incomes despite a 2.5mm/year growth in jobs.

Bush's (conservatively) 3million lost jobs actually puts us behind by around 12 million jobs so we need more like 20 million jobs instead of 10 million. 420,000 per month continuous for 4 years would be pretty good target.

when we created 420,000 jobs a month for 4 years?

Over 20 million jobs in 4 years is unprecedented and unrealistic.

That high unemployment is here to stay? Throw on wage deflation and you get lower overall standard of living.


Some entrants into the work force could be delayed by making colleges more affordable and simultaneously decreasing student visas.

Immigration could be decreased to a negative value, deporting illegal immigrants and decreasing work visas.

Number of retirements might be increased, by encouraging early retirement? Raise estate taxes? Decrease age for early withdrawal penalties on retirement accounts?

There are other solutions, but they may not pass tests involving precedent and realism either :

Other decreases in population - wars, epidemics, reduced life expectancy

Reduced cost of living through societal changes - a 20 person extended family sharing stuff in a large house can live much cheaper than the same 20 people in 4 smaller houses. Decrease in birthrate since an only-child no longer means an alone-child.

Other reductions in living costs like increasing efficiency/productivity in the public sector, decreasing defense budget and de-popularizing vanity.

of course some of those would decrease public sector or subsidized jobs and otherwise shrink the economy

150,000 to keep up with population growth.

You can find the whole release here:

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.toc.htm

Employment in service-producing industries, which include retailers, banks and government agencies, rose 246,000 last month after surging 255,000 in March, according to the Labor Depart report. The increase was led by a 123,000 rise in personal and business services, which include temporary help agencies.

Manufacturers added 21,000 jobs last month, the most since July 2000. Prior to February, it had fallen every month since then. The manufacturing workweek fell to 40.6 hours from 40.9 in March and overtime declined to 4.5 hours from 4.6 hours.

The construction industry added 18,000 jobs last month after 65,000 in March.

You stated:

"Employment in service-producing industries, which include retailers, banks and government agencies, rose 246,000 last month after surging 255,000 in March, according to the Labor Depart report. The increase was led by a 123,000 rise in personal and business services, which include temporary help agencies."

Employment in "retailers, banks and government agencies" is typically at the low end of the compensation spectrum. Please take particular note of the fact that the so-called "job growth" in these sectors include temporary and part-time workers put to work by "temporary help agencies".

You then stated that:

"Manufacturers added 21,000 jobs last month, the most since July 2000. Prior to February, it had fallen every month since then. The manufacturing workweek fell to 40.6 hours from 40.9 in March and overtime declined to 4.5 hours from 4.6 hours."

How many manufacturing jobs were lost during the same time period? If there is so much additional work to be done, why the decline in work-week and overtime hours last month?

And finally, you made the comment that:

"The construction industry added 18,000 jobs last month after 65,000 in March."

Repeat after me..."Seasonal Employment". The weather is finally warm enough to complete last year's construction projects and to begin work on new projects, primarily housing. Wait until the rising raw material costs hit home and the builders try to pass that on to the consumers.

In short...move along folks, nothing left to see here.

There are a lot of numbers thrown around for population growth assumptions. Which is silly in itself because they know how many people there are in the job pool, they don't have to take average population growth.

But if your figure were true than Clinton would eb a big failure because he didn't create the 29 Million jobs it would take to keep up with your population growth estimates for his eight years.


This is a good number. A surprisingly good number.

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Who's us and why is this terrible? If the figures are accurate, how can this be bad? I see this is your first post so you probably don't know that regular posters here care about their fellow man and are happy to see jobs being created.

n/t

Or are you just trying to make DU look bad?

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The same question was asked here following publication of March employment data. Well, as you can see march Number was revised upwards by about 30k .

we still have an illiterate, illogical, indefensible, inarticulate (dysarticulate) simian as the current WH resident. :mad:

Other than the fact that I agree with you, we could have done without your "Look at me, I'm so smart!" sentence.

that you can only use the same words to describe an idiot so many times before they lose their punch. Did you have trouble comprehending the, wholly accurate, description? Do you celebrate stupidity? We should try to expand our vocabularies not contract them.

Jay

I also celebrate arrogance and pomposity, because they are so endearing.

What percentage of the population do you think knows what "pomposity means? If that ain't the pot calling the kettle black, then I don't know what is.

Jay

There is no proff that the shrub's policies are responsible for this anyway!!!

n/t

Meanwhile Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan issued an unusually stern warning Thursday that burgeoning federal deficits could threaten the economy's stability.
http://www.kansas.com/mld/eagle/8607872.htm

If that's the good news????

315,000 is the number of people who filed for first time UE insurance last week.

288,000 is the NET amount of jobs created in April.

Initial jobless claims is a weekly number and does not take into account new hires that may offset the newly cut. The payroll report is a net job creation number.

Think about what your assumption would mean even in the best of times. I think the best things got under Clinton was "new filings" of about 250k/wk. That would mean over a millon lost jobs per month and there was not a single month where the "job creation" number was as high as a million. Are you saying that nobody has ever created any jobs?


The 315k initial filing number was actually stunningly strong - Clinton didn't get ti that low until his sixth year in office. Of course that weekly number is highly variable. We'd have to see it stay low for the next several weeks before saying it REALLY matters.

Let the "jobs created" number peak now so by August, September and October the trend reverses and losses reported.

That is when we need the negative numbers the most.

I think you are using an argument that will make the freeps say that we want what is bad for America for our own nefarious purposes.

Ever see that West Wing episode where the surplus estimate comes in billions lower than expected and everyone is happy about it?

There's a difference between wanting a bad economy and looking for political advantage in a political season.

Nobody want anyone to lose there job, but when the job numbers were ugly it was perfectly reasonable to say "we're going to get Bush now!"

He's self destructing already.

All Kerry has to do is sit back and watch that part, while offering a program on issues that people care about: health care, social security, security...

If we have a good social needs program, people will flock to it. Because while jobs are being created, people are still stretched somewhat economically.

Given the inherent dissatisfaction that is evident with Bush, we need a minimalist popular program to beat him. that's all.

Now will Kerry advance such a program?

I couldn't give a rat's ass what they think of DU or any other Democrats. Like they're going to suddenly change their minds and vote Kerry.

What I do care about is getting a homicidal maniac out of office before he kills us all. If myself, or any number of others have to go through a temporary economic crisis, so be it. I view it as a small price to pay for your life.

we ** do ** not ** want ** unemployment to rise this fall just for a f*&^^%ing election and still call ourselves democrats. Dammit. We can win on a million issues without wishing a bad economy on our brothers or trumpeting national defeat in war.

...goods like milk, and the inevitable Fed action to raise interest rates to "combat inflation", the so-called growing economy is a train wreck waiting to happen.

As to your other comments about anyone here wishing for rising unemployment and a national defeat during an illegally declared war set in motion by an illegally elected government, I have but one word: bullshit. No one's "hoping", it's happening.

Bush's economic policies are an unredeemable failure, no matter what happens now. His millions of jobs he promised from his tax cuts didn't materialize.

We spun this wrong from the beginning. But by putting so much emphasis on that jobs number we set ourselves up for this fall. If things just stay on track (and don't get any better) Bush will be able to walk into the final November debate with right around 2.5 Million jobs "created" in the previous twelve months.

People will not count 9/11 job loses against him (unless someone does a much more compelling job showing LIHOP) and there isn't anything other than the tax cuts to "credit" with the growth.

It's highly unlikely the economy is going to be our issue this year.

the actual number, and even worse, the difference between the number and what Bush promised.

The only thing Bush has is more promises about future job growth, and after three years of hearing these promises, no one's going to believe him, even though the press will report them as granted.

I'm sure when Bush gets up there in November and claims 2.5Million jobs in the last twelve months it will be real effective for Kerry to shout "But... but... you promised us 3 Million!"

I never heard that number, it sounds way too high, I'm not even sure if jobs are in positive territory over the last 12 months.

But I was talking about a rough projection of where we'll be in November. We've got six more of these reports to come out before the election. Tack on this month and the previous five and you get about 2.5Million. And that assumes that the number does not continue upwards toward 400k-450k/month as it did the last time we were on this curve. It's jsut assuming that it stays about where it is through the election. Just take a look at the chart... it speaks for itself.

Let's just pick a better message. I'd rather not hope for more unemployment to improve our chances.

If we pull out of Iraq on June 30th, do you think that the sheeple will really remember it come November?

Why give the right ammunition??

If we pull out of Iraq on Jum 30th it will be the end of the Bush presidency. But I agree that the other side has the ability to control the impact of Iraq far more than we do.

I've been advocating a change in message since early in the primary season when it became clear that this was going to be "Economy and Iraq". I thought (and think) that both will be losing issues for us.

There are too many charts he can put up proving he "inherited" trouble. And the 9/11 bit is a tough sell to beat. And things have been so clearly getting better for quite a few months now.

If we had started a year ago saying "Of COURSE we're going to get job growth... this is AMERICA... we have the smartest, hardest working, most creative..(blah blah blah etc etc etc...), but the deficits you're piling on (and the income class you are most benefiting) are too high a cost!" we might have been in a better position.

Is it too late for Kerry to read the economic writing on the wall? Probably... but there's no reason not to at least TRY to spin off the message. It can't be worse than sticking to what he has.

Rumsfeld et al have already gone on the record stating that US troops will be in Iraq into 2005 at least. With the staggering failure of the US-trained Iraqi security forces in the Fallujah/Najaf fighing of April (40% refused to fight and 10% actually joined the resistance), there is no other force that could provide security for the country at the moment.

we'll be there for years.

we're not turning over the keys on june 30, just giving the nice little brown folk their own copy of one of the keys, and it won't open very many locks...

If this keeps up, people will get fat n happy again and be apathetic at the ballot box...This takes the economy off the table and leaves "war + law & order" as main issues which sadly Bush still leads on. The economy needs to putter along or get worse before people realize how devastating shrub is.

"Let's pray for a weak report next month."

You have got to be John F'in kidding me! How the hell could you possibly wish ill upon this country just to assume power? I don't care how badly I want my candidate in the White House, I'd never wish for bad news to achieve it.

irrationally giving Bush credit for FUTURE job growth. There were a couple of good months last winter and they were getting all exuberant.

The fact is, the economy sucks and Bush's policies have failed. And everyone knows it, in a profound way that a few numbers won't change.

Where were the months last winter that looked like this?

I'm not giving Bush credit for ANYTHING. I happen to think that this is how economic cycles work and presidents have very little affect on them. Of course he WILL take credit for it (with the help of all the Democrats who wanted to credit his policies for the LACK of growth.... what will they credit for the increase?).

Again - just read the chart - follow where it goes. Pay particular attention to that 12 month rolling average. There's very little Bush or Kerry can do to stop it.

picking up. but the type of job and pay is not that good. there are a lot of folks picking up second jobs, and taking jobs that pay far less then when clinton was in offic. what you have to worry about is kerry not getting his shit together, he needs to get a message, he needs to be out front, hell half the time he doesn't even need to mention bush's name. he just needs to get a message, something that sounds good.

bush is toast, and he'll only win if kerry hands it to him, and saying shit like " I actually voted for it, before I voted against it" is going in that direction.

We heard this all through the Clinton administration. Clinton would talk about the millions of jobs created and republicans would joke "I know, my cousin has four of them". It's sour grapes and it isn't supported by the statistics. For instance, average hourly earning went up at a very respectable rate (I think it annualized to almost 4%). It's pretty hard to believe that the job market is shifting toward burger flipping, but is earning more money.

only the soulless bushbots pretend otherwise

ignore them

they are soulless creeps, human scum more like it...

Fuck them!!!

under Clinton.

Actually, while bad economic news can hurt a president's chances of re-election, I'm not so sure that good economic news is always a benefit, especially if the country's general mood is still depressed.

How, for example, without the argument of improving the economy, will Bush be able to extend more tax cuts or make them permanent?

What an irony, though, that during the coming campaign, that the Repubs may be running on the economy and the Dems on the war in Iraq. So much for that disastrous Carville/Shrum strategy from 2002.

Actually an improving economy undermines his argument of why it is necessary to make the tax cuts permanent and puts the emphasis on the deficit.

First stop, US labor dept web site. Then to table B1 to check just what kind of jobs were created.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t14.htm

Look for the big gainers here folks, last column on the right.

Well looky here,

Administrative and waste services added 109k
(does anyone have a clue what the hell these people do)

Administrative and support Services added 102K
(these must be those highly paid positions)

Employment services added 60K
(temp jobs)

So 271K of 288K jobs were in the above sectors. This looks a little shaky to me. I think we have been suckered.

This administration is blowing smoke up everyones asses again.

I wish we could get inside the above 3 categorys and see exactly what these lucky 271k people do for a living and how much they make .

I personnaly believe these fukrs are attemping to pull a fast one on us and are lying their asses off.

Don't believe till you look betwen the lines.

on the Senate floor. Of course CNN would never show that and let the true nature of the "jobs" known.

Employment services rolls up into Administrative/support services which rolls up into the larger category of Administrative/waste services.

Look at the level of indentation for your guide.

L-

but 109k of 288 is like 35-40% of what was added. Just what kind of jobs are these anyways?

See my post below, but the short answer is they are contract/temp jobs and/or McJobs flipping burgers or working at Lowe's/Home Depot.

My big question is how many of these are second jobs or speculative jobs (such as sales which are all commission based) which people are taking. Looks good on a superficial inspection, but are representative of a bad economy.

L-

Excellent news for the Bush team as well as people looking for work.

When all is said and done, most people vote on the economy and their own little economic world. Most everything else is fluff.

Continued good news through October likely gives us four more years. A stalled recovery makes a race.

Since the 1920s, when the economy became the singlemost important topic of presidential elections, only 4 incumbent presidents have been defeated in their quest for a second term:

Hoover 1932-- defeated because of his absolutely stinking economy
Ford* 1976-- Remember "Whip Inflation Now"? It didn't work during his term.
Carter 1980-- Inflation problems and that crappy hostage situation in Iran
Bu$h Sr 1992-- "It's the economy, stupid"

*America's first unequivocally unelected president

Note that Johnson decided not to run in 1968 because of the way the war was going, but he did not lose an election.

What kind of jobs were created is important. Were they temp jobs? Were they low paying jobs? Were they part time jobs?

Chimpy and crew spout good numbers all the time but never explain them.

I don't believe a god damn thing they put out

104,000 of the new jobs were Administrative & Waste Management of which 60,100 were Employment services and 7,700 in management/technical consulting (all contractors).

36,000 were McJobs in the Leisure/Hospitality sector of which a 41,000 increase in the Food retail sector were offset by a loss in other leisure activities.

23,400 were Retail of which 10,400 were Building material/garden supply stores (Lowe's, Home Depot)

18,000 were in Construction (of which the 19,800 in Specialty contractors were offset by a 2,700 decline in building construction jobs).

It is interesting to note that there were the following decreases:

1,700 loss in telecomm
3,900 loss in computer systems design


So, most of these jobs are very soft.

take another look at this number:

23,400 were Retail of which 10,400 were Building material/garden supply stores (Lowe's, Home Depot)

How come that number wasn't "seasonally adjusted"? Didn't we expect that retailers like home depot, walmart etc would add people for their lawn and garden sections? And aren't a lot of those part-time or temp for college students, summer jobs etc?

I suspect it is because retailers like Home Depot are hiring two part-timers where they used to hire one to keep their individual hours below 30 hrs/week as a way to dodge insurance and other benefits.

Republicans Worst Nightmare - People Like Myself

Unemployed 4 years!

Two College Degrees:
BSEE
MBA

Special Training:
FAA Certified Commercial Pilot

Military Service:
Officer United States Navy

Professional Work Experience:
Long and Varied

Slowly becoming impoverished!

Can't get low income jobs - too much experience, too many aliens
Can't find middle class white collar jobs - outsourced or already filled

Good Jobs - Yeah Right!

My husband's company is hiring folks like you big time if you have a TS/SCI clearance. PM me.

One of my dearest friends was laid off on Monday!!!


Where are these "jobs" and what do they pay????

paying enough to keep a teenager's car filled up for most of the month.

Positive numbers like these (whether they're cooked/deceptive or not) gives legitimacy/possibility to Kerry's promise to "create 10 million jobs in his first term".

As for Bush, his albatross (as far as jobs) will be the bottom line. At the end of his term - will his job creation record be net positive or negative (Hoover II)?

Hospitality Services? No
Retail? No
Administrative Services? No

Filter out the McJobs and you've got fewer than 100,000 real jobs. And (per the discussion above) it's generally accepted that the economy needs to create 150,000 jobs per month just to handle the natural expansion of the workforce. This means that another 50,000 people in the United States this month are employed at crappy jobs that are below their desired wage. Many of those people are "settling" after losing a higher-paying job and exhausting their unemployment benefits. Chances are they're deeply in debt (charging their living expenses to credit cards while unemployed) and are thinking about filing for bankruptcy.

But, hey. It's morning in America, right?

in their world 2+2=16, until they are called on it, then they revise it to 12 then up to 29 then down to 6.
Then they bring out more bogus numbers.
Once again the fascists are counting on the lack of critical thinking skills of the American people.

I know 3 people who lost their job in this quarter- I know none who got one. The Sunday Chicago Tribune Help Wanted ads have held steady at 20-24 pages in one section, where there used to be 3-5 sections that size...something does not compute.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040507/ap_on_bi_go_ec_fi/economy_46

"The economy has rebounded strongly, but companies, under intense pressure to compete globally, have been holding down their costs by working employees harder instead of hiring new ones. That appears to be changing, though critics note that job gains are occurring in the lower-paying service sector at retailers and restaurants, and in temporary employment firms.

Other gains in April occurred in retail at building and garden supply stores, general merchandise stores and motor vehicle and parts dealers. The leisure and hospitality sector also added jobs, especially in the category of food services."

Woohoo, most of the new jobs are in low-paying retail, temp, and McJobs. All the good middle class jobs are gone and will never return. I feel so good about the economy now. I'll go throw my now worthless B.S. in the trash and run out and get a McJob.

"The job creation picture may finally be brightening, but wages are stagnating and gas prices are soaring, so we still have a long way to go before workers begin to feel the effects of this recovery," said Rep. Pete Stark of California, the top Democrat on the Joint Economic Committee."

I absolutely love stagnating wages and high gas prices. Yes, what a great recovery we have here. Welcome to the USA, where the only jobs left are minimum wage, benefitless McJobs. Employers will only offer sub-standard pay now. How can a family of 4 survive on minimum wage even with 2 people in the family working? Or even at $8 an hour? AND, the repubs block every effort to raise the minimum wage while they get all their benefits free of charge that WE pay for. Sad, isn't it?

From Jan 2001 to Jan 2004--

We lost 3,805,500.
We added 1,925,000.

Netloss was 1,880,500

What is net loss(gain) so far this year is what we need to know. Not Gross Gain.

In March with list of 308,000 new jobs the Part number climbed 300,000.

How many are receiving full time pay?

There was no 300,000 increase in part-time employment last month. That was an incorrect reading of the report.

But, if we insist on using the same figures for this month... total employment went up just under 300k and that (misread) PT employment figure went DOWN 450,000 from last month. So there are "really" ~750,000 "new" full-time jobs.

Or maybe we'll just use that figure when it's more "helpful"??

Until this fascist administration is gone, and hopefully jailed, I shall believe nothing reported by this government or any of its Wall Street shills.

One, two, three, or six months of positive job growth numbers on a macro level does not necessarily mean that the economy is booming on a micro level. There are still states that are hurting economically. It would be folly for Kerry and the Democrats to abdicate the economy as an issue to Bush. Yes, Bush will have some positive economic news, but it's not a slam dunk for him.

For Kerry to win, he needs to string together various groups, people who are hurting economically, people who are opposed to or troubled by the war in Iraq, traditional Democrats, Independents, and Bush haters.

A few months of positive economic job growth numbers DOES NOT kill the economy issue for Kerry.

From the current Bureau of Labor Statistics information, the U-7 calculated the total unemployed + discouraged workers + those working part time because no full time work is available.

The total for April 2004 in 9.3%, which is down somewhat from the 9.8% of a near ago, but still not even to have people feeling any too rosy about the future. I can't find historical tables for the U-7, but I'd be willing to bet a shiny new dime that it never cracked 9% during the Clinton Administration (except maybe in 1993).

I believe the figure you are referring to is actually U6 (a&b) rather than U7 (not sure what that is)...

But, unfortunately for your shiny new dime. Clinton did "crack 9%"

During 1995 & 1996 (while he was running for re-election) there were only TWO months that U6 was BELOW 9% (October and November 1996). In fact, shrub's 9.3% (if that's the number _ I haven't seen it yet) would beat nineteen of the twenty-four months in '95-'96 and tied two of them.

Worse... because these numbers are reported in the following month, Clinton's FIRST sub 9% U6 would have been reported just the Friday before the election (I think).

U6 was not below 9% at any point in 1994 (I don't have 1993, but I seriously doubt it had any considering the economic conditions Clinton inherited).

Includes underutilization, part time (by economic necessity) and discouraged workers. And considering the core rate was below 6% (well below, in fact), you'd have to provide me with the raw data before I'd believe that the U-7 was above 9%.

Which includes all the categories you cited. I haven't seen a "U7" anywhere. But it doesn't matter, since the successive unemployment measures always include the previous groupings, if there were a "U7" it would obviously be at least as high as the "U6" figures.

And the "core rate" was not remarkably different than where it is right now. You're making the common mistake of lumping the two terms together. Unemployment was 4.7, 4.4, 4.0, 3.9 for Clintons second term. It was 6.5, 5.5, 5.6, 5.4 for his first term.

Here's a link to a thread in December where the stats were linked.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=114&topic_id=3778

The relevant data was:

1994 12.8 12.2 11.9 10.9 10.6 11.3 11.1 10.4 10.0 9.7 9.7 9.7 10.9
1995 11.1 10.5 10.3 9.8 9.8 10.4 10.4 10.0 9.7 9.3 9.6 9.7 10.1
1996 10.8 10.7 10.3 9.7 9.5 10.0 10.0 9.3 9.0 8.8 8.9 9.2 9.7
1997 10.4 10.0 9.6 9.0 8.5 9.2 9.0 8.6 8.3 7.9 8.0 8.2 8.9
1998 9.3 8.9 8.9 7.7 7.6 8.4 8.5 7.8 7.6 7.3 7.2 7.3 8.0
1999 8.5 8.2 7.9 7.4 7.1 7.9 7.7 7.2 7.0 6.7 6.8 6.9 7.4
2000 7.8 7.6 7.4 6.6 6.8 7.2 7.2 7.0 6.6 6.3 6.8 6.7 7.0
2001 8.1 7.9 7.6 7.1 7.2 8.2 8.1 8.1 8.2 8.7 9.0 9.3 8.1
2002 10.5 10.1 9.9 9.4 9.2 9.8 9.9 9.5 9.0 9.0 9.4 9.6 9.6
2003 11.0 10.8 10.4 9.8 9.7 10.6 10.5 10.0 9.8 9.5 9.7


A link was given to the BLS data, but you need to know how to use it to produce the report you want.



You want a physical address to send that dime? I also take paypal. :-)

The pain will be so small compared to four more years of killings, debt,and destructionofsocial programs which have served us so well for decades

It's happening, and IMHO happening big time. Look at fuel prices!

I just sat in on a software design meeting on how a group of HVAC distrubutors are going to handle a surcharge being tacked on by our main supplier because of increased raw materials costs (steel, aluminum, etc.) which have gone up 50% - 70% recently because of shortages caused by a rapidly expanding building spurt in China and elsewhere.

We have to pass on a per unit surcharge of $4 - $16 a unit. In many cases our bigger customers are going to refuse to pay and we'll end up eating this. When your talking units in the hundreds that will be a big cost for us. Salespeople will see their commissions reduced. Our profit margin shrinks.

Uh huh, that's sure going to help us hire additional employees. NOT!

Consumers are going to cut back on many purchases because of gas prices. And wholesalers/retailers are going to have to pass on increased raw material and transportation costs. Ships/trains/trucks diesel prices have to be going up. Airlines/trains/buses fuel costs are going up.

I'm wondering if we're going to see truckers protest.

And this will have to hurt tourism.

I know, because I helped add a room onto a friend's house last year, and now I'm in the process of building an outbuilding for myself. At the Home Depot, basic building materials like lumber and copper tubing are far more expensive than they were a year ago. If you raise the price on a 2x4 by $2.00 and multiply it by the number of 2x4s that comprise an average home, it represents a sizable increase in price to the finished product.

And the press has been hinting that interest rates may be increasing. Mix in the exploding national debt, and the US' economic future looks bleak indeed.

Any increase in fuel prices leads to an increase in everything else. Even if you don't even have a car you will still pay more for everything you buy because part of the cost of everything goes to cover transportation to the stores. Air travel, rail travel, even costs of public transportation will have to go up to make up for the increase.

Maybe I have missed something but I have yet to hear anybody say that their company took their tax cut money and built a new facility in Hometown, USA, which employs __X__ people in permanent new jobs.

Is there anything that specifically ties these numbers to Repug economic policies--tax cuts?

Sure, tax cuts can create jobs and spark economic activity... just like government spending increases can. Or rate cuts. Add them all together and OF COURSE you get some activity.

The problem is "how much" activity and "how much" spending and "how deep" are the rate cuts and "what are the long-term consequences". This particular tax plan was quite inefficient at converting that spending to economic results (though certainly there is SOME effect).

It's just the regular economic cycle doing it's thing like it ALWAYS does.

But they picked a time when they KNEW economic recovery was coming to pass something they could use to take credit for it. And Democrats GAVE them the issue by tying the economic sluggishness in 2002-2003 to the tax plan (how ridiculous... the sluggishness caused by THIS plan won't be felt for 3-5-7 or more YEARS from now... not one year later). BOTH parties have successfully tied Bush's tax policies to whatever happens to the economy. And when things are rolling at high speed in November? We'll have only ourselves to blame.

The Recovery Has NOTHING to do with Tax Cuts. The recovery is based on the Fed's EXTREMELY LOW INTEREST policies for the past THREE YEARS, which is also feeding a surge in inflation.

Really?

You're likely right about the rate cuts having a bigger effect though. But I'm not sure how anyone will differentiate between the two.

Milk, gas, housing, etc. are all going up, and no, sadly, most Americans have no idea of how the Fed's interest rate policies affect their lives. Even educated Americans know little about the Fed. We've had historically low interest rates for three years, but now that time is passing which is why the stock market is currently on the decline.

This entire recovery is built upon a foundation of cheap debt.

as "surging" inflation. One month of slightly high PPI or CPI does not a "surge" make.


"This entire recovery is built upon a foundation of cheap debt."

Every expansion is built upon a foundation of debt. Why is that a problem? Notice where the great big jump in consumer debt is on this graph? Did we suffer some horrible consequence of the increase? (and yes, I'm aware this is not the only type of debt).

Rates have been low for the past THREE YEARS but that didn't seem to have much effect on the jobs picture UNTIL VERY RECENTLY.

So, is there anything that specifically ties these job numbers to low rates? And can Fed policy be considered the policy of this administration or that?

Also, remember for all of 2002, Bush kept hyping the coming war in Iraq which put a real chill on the economy for that entire year.

But, you're right. It's more proof of how bad the economy really is when historically low interest rates and massive federal stimuli produces a mild economic recovery. For all of the cheap debt and government spending, we should have a 0% UE rate.

I posted this on the stock market watch thread too, but it probably would be more appropriate here...


Numbers from the Employment Situation Summary (http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm )

The number of persons unemployed for 27 weeks or longer declined by 188,000

Right below that number in the table in the summary, it shows 116,000 increase in the "not in the labor force" number. Does that have anything to do with the 188,000?

The number of people listed as "unemployed" went down last month. 116,000 left the jobs market (many "giving up" but not reporting themselves as such for whatever reason) and 288,000 getting work of some sort. A large chunk of those 400k people were in the 27+ week category, but there's no way to know which way each one went.

It is, however, the first encouraging drop in that long-term unemployment figure I've seen. Until this month we've seen improvements in the overall picture, but little to no movement in long-term joblessness.

the numbers don't corelate in any specific way

116,000 left the unemployment rolls. Some got one (or more) of those 288,000 jobs, some just dropped out of sight.

Is there any such thing as a breakdown of how people leave the unemployment rolls? (i.e., found work vs exhausted benefits and quit looking.) I can't see anything like that at the bls site, so probably not... but if anybody knows, it's probably you! (Yes, that's a compliment on your powers of labor statistics data mining. :D )

To take care of growth of the labor force. A quick calculation (you can look these numbers up on the U.S. census website, as I did) - U.S. population in 2000 census = 281,421,906.
U.S. population in 2000 census = 248,709,873.
Population growth = 32,712,033
or 3,271,203 per year, on average
which is about 1.23% growth on average (from the midpoint)
Per month this is a population growth of 272,600.

But the labor force would grow faster than that for two reasons:
- immigration tends to be of people of working age
- natural growth means more people are entering the work force than leaving it at any given time (i.e. more babies being born than people dying). Even if natural growth turns negative, there is substantial population momentum, so people entering the work force will tend to exceed those leaving for a number of years.

So, I would say that job growth has to at least be in the 300,000 per month range to ensure a stable unemployment rate, unless people are voluntarily leaving the work force.

I am sure 340,000 was the magic number not long ago - the fact that 288,000 is being trumpeted is a case of managing expectations.

I just did a quick run through BLS numbers and only 9 months in the past 13 years have payrolls expanded more than 340,000.

I just recall that number being used as a tipping point number earlier in these debates. I will do a search later. Certainly, the population growth numbers I got from the census would indicate that something in the neighborhood of 300,000 is needed.

On edit - The other factor is whether growth of female employment is increasing or decreasing.

as being the number of jobs necesary to create in order to keep pace with population growth.

But, it is worth looking into a little more deeply.

Since the census showed 281 million in 2000, this would indicated that current population should be about 292 million (3 years growth at 1.25% per year or so, which was the the norm over the period 1990 to 2000). Again, using 1.25%, growth, this would yield an annual population growth of 3.64 million, or 304,000 per month. The pct of the population that is in the labor force at any time is generally between 65% and 70%, so that would indicate 203.5 thousand jobs needed (using 67%).

I believe about half of this is immigration and about half is natural growth. Immigrants tend to be drawn from populations that are both working age and who desire work (else they would not be likely to be let in), so the labor force participation rate is probably a lot higher for that half of the population growth. So, the figure of 203.5 thousand jobs is probably an underestimate, with a more likely figure being in the 225 thousand range.

Perhaps the value of 340000 that I recall being kicked around was related to the number of new jobless claims - more was bad, less was good. I did a thread search, which wasn't very helpful. I think I will do a bit of googling, and post any interesting results that I find. It would be an important number to pin down, or at least get a feel for.

We're not talking growth in the entire population, we are talking about expansion of the labor force (newborns don't need jobs), and to keep up with growth in the labor force the economy must create 150,000 jobs a month.

http://www.house.gov/appropriations_democrats/WorstJobPerformance1.pdf

This document says that jobs went from 127 million in Jan 1999 to 132 million in Jul 2000, which would give job growth of about 275,000 during that period, which was admittedly a good interval for job growth, I think, one of the Clinton boom years.

Furthermore, they claim that the strongest job growth over a 4 year period was 16.8%, during Johnson's time. The average for the 14 administrations previous to * was 8.7%, while the average during Clinton's two administrations was 10%. The worst record was Eisenhower, at 1.4% for one of his terms.

If you start with a base of 132 million jobs and calculate the monthly job growth that would be created by the various growth rates listed above you get:

- Johnson rate 16.8% would equate to 462,000 jobs per month
- average of last 14 admin's of 8% would equate to 220,000 per month
- average for Clinton of 10% would equate to 275,000 jobs per month
- average for Eisenhower's bad term would be 38,500.

So, I guess 288,000 isn't bad, as it is near Clinton's long term average. Given the dismal job growth up until now, though, Bush would have to have job creation go at an unprecedented pace to even match Eisenhower's bad term.

Is there any adjustment made for the amount of part-time soldiers and "civilian contractors" (Halburtenesse for "mercenary") who have been made full time occupiers? At my workplace of 250 employees we have 11 who have been off for most of the last 9 months.
These numbers are indeed good, but at a time when government is spending huge amounts of borrowed money every student of Keynes would expect them. What will happen when the combined stimuli of money in and workers out ends?

Also, the salary makes a difference. I know it's better than last year, as many more people ARE getting hired, but many at reduced hours/salary or as contract employees.