New Jobs data

[Eastoff]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambr...hiring-surged-in-august-with-201000-new-jobs/

 

[maxiep]

If true, it's very good news indeed. However, here's the key message:

“August shows an encouraging number, and it could be consistent with the national unemployment rate falling,” says Joel Prakken, Macroeconomic Advisers chairman. “But as I’ve said, it’s really not adequate to put unemployment on a sustained downward trend…there is still a long way to go before we could categorize the labor market as substantially healed.”

Remember, the quoted unemployment rate is the U3, not the U6. The U3 can rise if people feel more confident, as discouraged workers come back into the market. Also, it is just over the number to keep steady with population growth.

Even if this number is true, we need (and past recessions would indicate we should have) better.

 

[BLAZER PROPHET]

I'll take all the good news I can get on the economy.

 

[Denny Crane]

The economy needs to add well over 300K jobs (350K even) a month just to keep up with population growth. Considering sub 300K new jobs for 40+ months, that's a deep hole to climb out of.

And the article does state a big disparity between ADP's jobs figure and the one coming out after the DNC is over, which is likely to be sub 150K and unemployment rate > 8.2.

 

[Eastoff]

Remember, the quoted unemployment rate is the U3, not the U6.

Could you describe these two figures, please?

 

[Denny Crane]

U3 is unemployed workers.

U6 includes underemployed, discouraged/left the workforce, and so on.

U3 is on the order of 8.3% and 10M people. U6 is on the order of 24% (thanks Obama!) and 30M.

 

[Eastoff]

U3 is unemployed workers.

U6 includes underemployed, discouraged/left the workforce, and so on.

U3 is on the order of 8.3% and 10M people. U6 is on the order of 24% (thanks Obama!) and 30M.

Could you give some U6 comparison numbers to the end of GWB's time in office?

 

[Denny Crane]

U6

 

[Denny Crane]

U3 (FWIW)

 

[RoyToy]

 

[The_Lillard_King]

U3 is unemployed workers.

U6 includes underemployed, discouraged/left the workforce, and so on.

U3 is on the order of 8.3% and 10M people. U6 is on the order of 24% (thanks Obama!) and 30M.

That U6 number sounds low . . . 100% people I know think they are underemployed AND underpaid.

 

[chris_in_pdx]

U3 is on the order of 8.3% and 10M people. U6 is on the order of 24% (thanks Obama!) and 30M.

How the fuck can you say "thanks Obama!" when it's been in a steady (albeit slow) downward path since the fall of 2009? Your own post of the chart proves your bullshit.

President Clinton put it perfectly: “In Tampa the Republican argument against the president’s re-election was pretty simple: We left him a total mess, he hasn’t finished cleaning it up yet, so fire him and put us back in."

 

[Denny Crane]

How the fuck can you say "thanks Obama!" when it's been in a steady (albeit slow) downward path since the fall of 2009? Your own post of the chart proves your bullshit.

President Clinton put it perfectly: “In Tampa the Republican argument against the president’s re-election was pretty simple: We left him a total mess, he hasn’t finished cleaning it up yet, so fire him and put us back in."

He rammed through an "emergency" stimulus package and promised unemployment would be much better than it is if we spent the money. When you consider the debt is > GDP now, just passed $16T, it's Obama that's making a mess of gigantic proportions.

 

[mobes23]

I've said it before, but if you're running serious debt when the economy is doing well, it shouldn't be a shock that the budget deficit goes up when the economy tanks and tax revenue goes down drastically. The federal budget doesn't turn on a dime and can't automatically drop to match tax revenues.

In other words, if you weren't complaining about the budget deficit when Bush was president, you'd better not be complaining now. Denny, I think you may not have liked the big spending Bush did, but I think you're overhyping the spending that Obama has done and making it sound like a problem that suddenly materialized when Obama became President.

 

[maxiep]

I've said it before, but if you're running serious debt when the economy is doing well, it shouldn't be a shock that the budget deficit goes up when the economy tanks and tax revenue goes down drastically. The federal budget doesn't turn on a dime and can't automatically drop to match tax revenues.

In other words, if you weren't complaining about the budget deficit when Bush was president, you'd better not be complaining now. Denny, I think you may not have liked the big spending Bush did, but I think you're overhyping the spending that Obama has done and making it sound like a problem that suddenly materialized when Obama became President.

It would be one thing if spending stayed steady while receipts decreased, but government has grown by 20%. How about a little cost control?

 

[Denny Crane]

I've said it before, but if you're running serious debt when the economy is doing well, it shouldn't be a shock that the budget deficit goes up when the economy tanks and tax revenue goes down drastically. The federal budget doesn't turn on a dime and can't automatically drop to match tax revenues.

In other words, if you weren't complaining about the budget deficit when Bush was president, you'd better not be complaining now. Denny, I think you may not have liked the big spending Bush did, but I think you're overhyping the spending that Obama has done and making it sound like a problem that suddenly materialized when Obama became President.

Aside from what maxiep wrote, I wouldn't complain if the deficits were $400B and govt. spending was $3T at this point.

I'm not exactly for a balanced budget. The govt. does have needs to borrow - like to build a bridge or a stadium or other public work. Any established institution that borrows to pay its bills is in deep shit.

 

[BrianFromWA]

I've been saying since 2005 that I think it's BS that we're borrowing from China to pay for the wars on terror. Every American (including ones who don't pay income taxes right now) should be ponying up to pay some part of the difference b/w the budgeted DoD/DHS cost and the "war costs" (OCO, increases in funding to accelerate TRLs, etc). If they don't want to pay, don't go to war (and don't keep voting for people who are borrowing from China to pay for it).

The reality, though, is that we've increased government spending on entitlement programs that aren't self-sustaining. When you pay $700B more in Medicare payments than you bring in with Medicare taxes, you're not doing something right. If you want people to get health care, suck up paying more in payroll taxes to do so. And if you don't want to pay a bunch more in payroll taxes, stfu about not drastically cutting Medicare.

Just the interest payment on our debt would fund almost half of the entire DoD. Or, to put it another way, we could cut half of our entire military expenditures and it would barely cover the interest payment on the debt we've rung up. Just that interest and the Medicare/Medicaid overruns (just under $1T) take up 90% of the personal income tax receipts ($1.09T). And yet those who want a "return to normalcy" are considered to have a War on Women/Old People/Military/Poor/Hardworking Middle Class/Etc.

 

[Eastoff]

He rammed through an "emergency" stimulus package and promised unemployment would be much better than it is if we spent the money. When you consider the debt is > GDP now, just passed $16T, it's Obama that's making a mess of gigantic proportions.

Whoa! That's like when a kid goes to college and then gets a job. but he still owes more than he makes in a year and has to pay it off slowly.

 

[Denny Crane]

Whoa! That's like when a kid goes to college and then gets a job. but he still owes more than he makes in a year and has to pay it off slowly.

The better analogy is it's like when a person makes $1,000 a month and spends $2,000 a month, charging the difference on the credit cards. The problem is the payments on the cards seem fine enough when they're $100 a month, but once you've borrowed enough the payments become $900 a month and you can't afford much in the way of rent and food. And yeah, "rent and food" in this analogy is all the things you actually want the govt. to spend on, like military, roads, and actual obligations like entitlements.

It's even better for the person when the introductory rate on the charge cards is 0%, but really fucked up when the rates jump to 15%.

To give you an idea of the size of the debt (it's not that we have debt, it's the size)... This person has a $100K salary and $600K in credit card debt.

 

[Denny Crane]

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/payroll-growth-seen-tepid-may-072622785.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Jobs growth slowed sharply in August, setting the stage for the Federal Reserve to pump additional money into the sluggish economy next week and dealing a blow to President Obama as he seeks reelection in November.

Nonfarm payrolls increased only 96,000 last month, the Labor Department said on Friday. While the unemployment rate dropped to 8.1 percent from 8.3 percent in July, that was because so many Americans gave up the hunt for work.

The survey of households from which the jobless rate is derived showed a drop in employment. The lackluster report keeps the pressure on Obama ahead of the November vote in which the health of the economy looms large.

 

[Eastoff]

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/payroll-growth-seen-tepid-may-072622785.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Jobs growth slowed sharply in August, setting the stage for the Federal Reserve to pump additional money into the sluggish economy next week and dealing a blow to President Obama as he seeks reelection in November.

Nonfarm payrolls increased only 96,000 last month, the Labor Department said on Friday. While the unemployment rate dropped to 8.1 percent from 8.3 percent in July, that was because so many Americans gave up the hunt for work.

The survey of households from which the jobless rate is derived showed a drop in employment. The lackluster report keeps the pressure on Obama ahead of the November vote in which the health of the economy looms large.

Yeah, so much for good news =[

 

[BrianFromWA]

Help me if I'm not understanding this:

1) there need to be around 250k new jobs each month to make up the difference b/w new people entering and old people leaving the work force?
2) there were *only* 96k jobs last month, so it's a net loss?
3) Unemployment dropped to 8.1% because the article is using the U3 number, but Denny's saying the U6 number (which iirc was around 20-25%) went up because people "gave up" looking for work?

If the answers to those were "yes", can someone help me understand what measures the present administration/Congress is taking to change those, if they were surprised by these numbers, and if the vision pitched by the President et al this week will change these somehow?

 

[maxiep]

Help me if I'm not understanding this:

1) there need to be around 250k new jobs each month to make up the difference b/w new people entering and old people leaving the work force?
2) there were *only* 96k jobs last month, so it's a net loss?
3) Unemployment dropped to 8.1% because the article is using the U3 number, but Denny's saying the U6 number (which iirc was around 20-25%) went up because people "gave up" looking for work?

If the answers to those were "yes", can someone help me understand what measures the present administration/Congress is taking to change those, if they were surprised by these numbers, and if the vision pitched by the President et al this week will change these somehow?

Brian, there's nothing the government can do. The Fed will push for a QE3, but it won't work any better than the first two. The positive job growth over the past 29 months were the recovery. Now we're going back into recession.

It's going to get worse before it gets better. See what Volcker had to do with interest rates to squeeze inflation out of the economy from 81-84; we're going to see a repeat over the next few years. We have been monetizing our debt and have been destroying the savings of people by massively devaluing the dollar.

 

[BrianFromWA]

IF there was (from either party) a thought that there'd be massive cuts to the government spending to reduce the budget (and/or a tax raise to make up some of the deficit, or both) would that have an effect on either ability to maintain low borrowing rates or "confidence" that would grow business (and thus jobs)?

And didn't we have a debt ceiling somewhere?

 

[maxiep]

IF there was (from either party) a thought that there'd be massive cuts to the government spending to reduce the budget (and/or a tax raise to make up some of the deficit, or both) would that have an effect on either ability to maintain low borrowing rates or "confidence" that would grow business (and thus jobs)?

And didn't we have a debt ceiling somewhere?

Businesses are sitting on hordes of cash and not hiring right now because they don't know what the future holds. Productivity numbers are extremely high; there's no slack left in the rope.

If Romney is elected, it will be a signal that we're going back down toward government expenditures being roughly 20% of GDP. You'd see huge hiring figures. If Obama is re-elected, then we're heading toward a future that looks more like Sweden and businesses will adjust accordingly.

 

[maxiep]

By the way, if the labor participation rate were the same as it was on January 20, 2009, the U3 rate would be 11.2%. That is 3.1 percentage points or 38% higher than the released data show. Words can't express the kind of damage that has been done to the economy since TARP by well-meaning bureaucrats.

 

[maxiep]

Holy shit. It just keeps getting worse as I read more of this report from the BLS.

“The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for June was revised from +64,000 to +45,000, and the change for July was revised from +163,000 to +141,000.”

That's a downgrade of 19,000 jobs, or almost 30% for June and 22,000 jobs, or over 13% for July. For the record, I now have real concerns about the BLS. For the past couple of years, they have consistently adjusted downward the job figures for previous months. It defies data error. If it were accidental, there would be some months when it went upward and some when it went downward. It demonstrated either an error in the way the figures are gathered, or more likely, they are massaging the data to put the best face on them. The BLS is supposed to be non-partisan. There's something rotten in Denmark.

 

[PapaG]

Interesting that while 96k jobs were "created" in August, that the overall labor population rate declined by ~110k.

Since when is a net loss of those working a good thing?

Thought this was worth noting as well, given the "we inherited a mess/just give us more time" begging we saw at the DNC.

Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 96,000 in August. Since the beginning of
this year, employment growth has averaged 139,000 per month, compared with an average
monthly gain of 153,000 in 2011.

 

[maxiep]

Another way to look at the jobs data vs. the promise of the stimulus

http://img.ly/n30L

 

[3RA1N1AC]

Or, to put it another way, we could cut half of our entire military expenditures

good idea, kudos