"Jobless Rate hits four year low" So says MSN.

Hiring around the country picked up slightly in June with employers adding 146,000 jobs -- helping to push the unemployment rate down to 5%, the lowest in nearly four years. The stock market, bouncing back quickly from Thursday's terrorism-induced swoon, rose sharply.

The latest snapshot of the nation’s jobs climate, released by the Labor Department on Friday, supported the view of Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and his colleagues that the labor market continues to improve gradually.Start investing with $100.


The employment rate is at its lowest monthly level since August 2001.

With revisions, “we really have 190,000 new jobs, a 180,000 average this year, and I think we’re really on track for 2 million jobs (created) in ’05,” Ben Bernanke, new chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
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http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/invest/extra/P122828.asp?GT1=6706

That's the misleading part of stats like this. We lose tons of GOOD paying jobs to outsourcing, and pick up tons of minimum wage, burger flippin' jobs. Oh boy, now THAT'S great news.:sarcasm:

..but hey, that is just a minor detail, and the fact that people are taking jobs at a 40% cut in pay doesn't mean much either--the economy is doing great, haven't ya heard?

sarc/off

disregards how the national debt hit an all time high, and the outlook is that barrels of oil may hit $100 this winter. No one's even raising a fuss that oil is hovering at $60. The Dow and the unemployment rate are far less indicative of the overall economy, and much more reliant upon ignorance, and wishful thinking.

longer counted. I bet the real rate is well over 10%. I hate when stats are misleading like this. All of the states have found ways to get the unemployed off their rolls for the silliest things and then, voila, they are no longer counted as unemployed.

But I still can't find a job. I'm selling on eBay and doing merchandising work to pay my utilities for July. Don't know how I'll pay the rent next month tho. :-(

Gone...$20 hr job with benefits ...= one job lost

person who LOST said $20hr job, now TAKES 3 piss-ant $6.50 hr jobs with NO benefits, and ends up working 60 hours a week and burning 3 times as much gas,and if said worker was a woman,or a man who helped with family child care, their expenses in that area probably doubled..and NOW they have to pay "private medical insurance" costs..if they can get it or afford it..

SO...on paper, it would appear as though instead of that one job lost, there was actually a GAIN of two jobs filled....FALSE logic..

For "jobs numbers" to even matter, ALL factors must be shown..


also, what about all those jobs that reservists and guard members held before their deployment?? The "filling" of those jobs is a bogus use of statistics too.. Those are not NEW jobs being filled..they are just "placeholder" jobs..

as when Clinton was pres. And the stock market still, after more than four years, is no higher, in fact is not as high, as when Clinton was in office. Yes, repugs do such wonders for the economy.

of a new job needs to be included to multiply that by the number of new jobs. Include inflation and base the "Factor" on, say, a certain year.
The net benefit would then be much smaller (and so would that "multiplier" factor that supposedly generates growth) today than say 10 or 20 years ago.

Household survey shows another 240,000 people left the Labor Force last month.... We still see unemployment going down because more people are dropping out of the labor than obtaining new jobs. That's hardly cause for celebration.

U-6, the broadest measure of unemployment, actually ticked up to 9.0%. This measure includes: Total unemployed, plus discouraged workers, plus all other marginally attached workers, plus total employed part time for economic reasons.

More here

...all unemployed, that I see every day in my town is a figment of my imagination. Its really getting smaller every day.

The African-American unemployment rate is slightly double that of the national average. The national unemployment rate is 5 %....and the African-American unemployment rate is 10.3 %.

We need to have a serious conversation in this country about this divide.

this is a busy time of year.

Unfortunately those jobs will be gone by October.

the highest number whose unemployment has run out?
Hello, WalMart greeters!

People have to take into consideration that the numbers reflect SEASONAL hiring, that is, low-wage summertime positions that are typically opened up to high school and college folks. Typically, we have such seasonal hiring in the springtime and a couple of months before Christmas.

It's smoke and mirrors. Belive me, as a victim of the White Houses' "outsourcing is good for America" mentality, it is still VERY TOUGH to get a job.

In this market, you can apply for 50 jobs per month and NEVER HEAR FROM A ONE. Ah, remember the nineties. Back then all I had to do to get a job was to look at the sign on a building and send in my resume through their website.

Thank you George W. Bush. :mad:

The BLS seasonally adjusts its unemployment numbers before publishing them. This number was already seasonally adjusted. However, the post by Davis on the discouraged worker effect is absolutely right on. The phone call goes this way:

First Question: Are you currently working? If yes, then you are employed. Does not matter if you are a PhD Economist working at McDonald's. It is a binary variable, no gray area, no underemployment, etc.

However, if you say no, then:

Second Question: Do you want to work? If no, then you are counted as not in the labor force. Good for stay at home moms, retirees, etc. However if you say yes, then:

Third Question: Have you actively looked for work in the past two weeks? If no, then you are not in the labor force and not unemployed. However, if you say yes, then bingo, you are unemployed.

The discouraged worker effect occurs because people are unemployed for so long that they stop looking, i.e. they get to question three and answer no. It is also a pro cyclical variable, meaning that it gets stronger as the duration of the economic trough increases.

An interesting statistic is the difference between new jobs and the population adjusted change in the workforce. When this number is negative, then we have a strong discouraged worker effect.

:-)

The only BLS "lie" is the birth/death pretend jobs at home not yet paying payroll tax "adjustment"

Under Clinton we got 23066000 jobs in 8 yrs years, and only 1053000 jobs under Bush - but 2689000 of the Bush Jobs are pretend - meaning the increase in the birth-death adjustment! Looks like Bush is still negative as to job growth - and people wonder why the folks are discouraged and leaving the work force.

Of the 23066000 new jobs under Clinton, 273000 were the pretend work at home not paying payroll taxes yet jobs ("birth/death afjustment").

Of the 1053000 jobs increase under Bush, 2689000 were the pretend jobs at home not paying payroll tax yet jobs (THE BIRTH DEATH adjustment that is never checked or bench-marked to anything other than a curve fitting of "expectations") , meaning BUSH HAS LOST 1,646,000 JOBS SINCE JAN 1 2001.

Seasonally Adjusted Total nonfarmIndustry: ALL EMPLOYEES, THOUSANDS

Year Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Annual
1992 108313 108242 108301 108457 108584 108640 108714 108851 108888 109061 109205 109418
1993 109725 109962 109916 110223 110496 110660 110960 111119 111359 111638 111901 112203
1994 112473 112665 113133 113490 113829 114139 114498 114801 115155 115361 115786 116056
1995 116377 116588 116808 116971 116962 117189 117260 117538 117777 117926 118070 118210
1996 118192 118627 118882 119047 119376 119647 119875 120078 120296 120534 120826 121003
1997 121232 121526 121843 122134 122396 122642 122918 122911 123417 123756 124063 124361
1998 124629 124814 124962 125240 125641 125846 125967 126322 126543 126735 127020 127364
1999 127477 127873 127997 128379 128593 128850 129145 129338 129525 129947 130242 130536
2000 130781 130901 131377 131662 131882 131839 132015 132004 132122 132110 132326 132484
2001 132454 132546 132511 132214 132187 132029 131941 131803 131549 131172 130879 130705
2002 130581 130478 130441 130335 130326 130377 130277 130295 130250 130309 130315 130161
2003 130247 130125 129907 129853 129827 129854 129857 129859 129953 130076 130172 130255
2004 130372 130466 130786 131123 131373 131479 131562 131750 131880 132162 132294 132449
2005 132573 132873 132995 133287 133391(p) 133537(p)
p : preliminary

2004 Net Birth/Death Adjustment (in thousands) Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

Total
225 204 181 -80 123 44 55 9 66

http://www.bls.gov/ces/cesbdhst.htm

2005 Net Birth/Death Adjustment (in thousands) Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
Total -280 100 179 257 207 184

January 2004 – December 2004 Preliminary Estimates
Total -321 115 153 270 195 182 -91 120 39 42 54 78 836

April 2003 – December 2003 Post-Benchmark Estimates
Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec (Jan Feb Mar)
Total 128 192 164 -83 124 33 45 30 62 695

April 2002 – March 2003 Post-Benchmark Estimates
Total 45 176 156 -61 106 23 68 25 53 -391 119 151 470

April 2001 – March 2002 Post-Benchmark Estimates
Total 75 112 106 -13 53 10 -31 -23 3 -239 -4 42 91

April 2000 – March 2001 Post-Benchmark Estimates
Total 53 72 48 11 37 23 10 -5 -6 -133 31 52 193

April 1999 – March 2000 Post-Benchmark Estimates
Total 1 9 5 -6 9 4 4 6 9 -23 6 6 30


How can the media ignore the DOL stat UE rate drop being due to long term UE's dropping out? How many ways can the media ignore DOL saying UE rate drop is due to long term UE's being dropped?


The DOL http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm Friday, July 8, 2005 THE EMPLOYMENT SITUATION: JUNE 2005

"Nonfarm employment increased by 146,000 in June, and the unemployment rate continued to trend down, reaching 5.0 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today" is pushing stocks higher today and indeed the job growth on its face without analysis is good news - Employers added 146,000 jobs last month, and upward revisions to employment gains in April and May totaled 62,000, yielding an overall job increase of 208,000.

But even ignoring the effect of the pretend and never benchmarked "birth/death adjustment" in those job growth numbers, how does the media justify ignoring:

1. Over the past four months, the economy has added an average of 166,000 jobs per month while during the expansion of the 1990s, from 1993 through 1999, the economy added an average of 251,000 jobs each month.

2. Average weekly hours held steady at 33.7 hours per week in June, after falling from 33.8 in April.

3. When you drop long out of work folks from the calculation you get the share of unemployed workers who have been out of work and searching for a job for at least six months falling, from 20.1 to 17.8 percent, just like we did in this report. Indeed the average number of weeks that workers spend unemployed showing a large drop, from 18.8 to 17.1 weeks, is more proof that the DOL dropped the long unemployed out of their calculations

4. Meanwhile wage growth is less than inflation at 2.8% annualized rate of growth vs, inflation of 4.4%. Since when does this happen in a tightening labor market?

5. And the best summary of our "tightening labor market" - the labor force participation rate - fell by 0.1 percentage points last month.

Where the hell is our media?

Well, let's look at the calendar. Jobless rate hits a four year low. Four years ago, W had been in office for six months. Now, they didn't say that it was the lowest rate in 3.5 years, which would have put it right after the 9-11 attacks. The republicans are fond of blaming the economic slump on 9-11, but the data does not support this. The economy began moving south before 9-11.

So W has just now gotten back to where he started, good deal. With as much money as he is spending, it is surprising that anyone is out of work.

I have a novel idea for our politicos to consider: Spend our money on our own country. We might all be amazed at the results we see.

I just don't believe it. I know too many people unemployed, who have been looking for over a year. I know too many engineers, technical writers, software people who got laid off by IBM, Nortel, All tel, the banks,the textile industries (I live in North Carolina) and the manufacturing sectors to believe the unemployment rate is <5%.

The unemployment numbers in the tobacco states is much higher than the national average. For example, the unemployment rate for black males aged 18-25 in Alabama was 56% the first quarter of 2005.

So, if W convinced the BLS to lie, that would be news, but I think this is more of an issue of "Your numbers may vary"