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Yep. If the markets are going down, they find all the doomsayers to predict that the end is nigh. When it's going up, they put on the rah-rah guys that claim the sky is the limit. People need to pay attention to data and not to prognosticators who often are pushing a line that helps their own positions in the market.
The data, by the way, are still very good. I was especially encouraged that the quality of the jobs in this report was better than it has been and that finally, finally, we are seeing wage growth. That latter is the key to improving conditions across the spectrum. To those who are still struggling to find employment, the word is "move". There are jobs galore out there that are going unfilled but if you live in rural America, you may have to go somewhere else to find one. It's an uneven recovery, but it is real.
No it wasn't . In fact, this "recovery" has been extraordinarily weak.
Even the "full employment" picture was so full of holes you can drive a truck through it...
Government numbers "don't show the quality of the jobs. They don't obviously pick up the anxiety that workers are feeling," said Joseph LaVorgna, chief U.S. economist at Deutsche Bank. Concerns over job security, particularly about being displaced by technology disruptors, "may also be adding to economic jitters and uncertainties," he added. LaVorgna said he believes the economy actually is near full employment, though it doesn't seem that way to many in and out of the labor force.
Indeed, January's numbers highlighted a long-standing trend: Despite a bump in average hourly wages, many of the jobs are still weighted toward the lower end of the pay scale, and that comes nearly seven years into a recovery. Bars and restaurants, for instance, have added 384,000 of 2.6 million jobs created over the past year.
Still, President Barack Obama was there Friday praising the numbers, even though the total of 151,000 new positions was well below the 190,000 that wall Street economists had anticipated.
...
The president may have bragged about the unemployment rate's decline below 5 percent, but he knows the number doesn't tell the full story. The decline in the jobless rate has accelerated due to a generational low in labor force participation. Though the one-tenth point drop in January came with a slight rise in the LFP rate, a more encompassing measure that includes those who have left the workforce as well as the underemployed remained unchanged at 9.9 percent.
...
"The problem with the optimist narrative is that so much of total private sector gains are in low-wage industries — hardly the broadening of employment the Fed is looking for," Steve Blitz, chief economist at ITG Investment Research, said in a note to clients. "Most industry sectors still employ fewer people than they did when the recession began."
Which is why candidates like Trump and Sanders have become so popular lately.
Gosh, you mean less people have jobs in January than December? And that doesn't happen every year?
Ignore that troll. They're looking at the seasonally unadjusted numbers, and only posts about them when they're negative. When they come in at +800,000 as they do at least one month out of the year? Never a word. Seasonally unadjusted unemployment takes a pretty big leap every January, without exception, then winds back down one the weather gets warmer:
Ignore that troll. They're looking at the seasonally unadjusted numbers, and only posts about them when they're negative. When they come in at +800,000 as they do at least one month out of the year? Never a word. Seasonally unadjusted unemployment takes a pretty big leap every January, without exception, then winds back down one the weather gets warmer:
Bah..we've been stagnant for years. It was the Fed and other central banks around the world propping up economies.
Follow things like the BDI and container cargo which can't be manipulated and this is no surprise that it's finally coming to a head.
Yep.
And over those years, we've been saddled with how many more tens of millions of people (Medicaid babies and their poor mothers, and illegals) who are incapable of supporting themselves? Hmmm...?
Trillions and TRILLIONS created out of thin air by the Fed in order to feed corrupt financial institutions and corporations, some not even American, yet not a peep out of the "no waste, no welfare" crowd. It has done nothing for the overall economy but cement the financial power structure, and give greater market share to the banks already deemed "too big to fail". Crash, consolidate/monopolize, inflate-rinse, repeat. It's insanity, and corrupt as HELL.
I guess only the American children and old ladies being given $184 a Month to feed themselves get them angry and riled up. Reckless monetary policy by the Fed doesn't draw a peep.
Can anyone say negative interest rates? We are well on the way.
Confused here
The article from Washington Examiner you posted says:
"New Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that there were 665,000 jobs lost in January, a blunt finding that confuses the heralded report that 151,000 jobs were created in January in non-farm payrolls."
So we lost way more jobs than we gained -- more people became unemployed than gained employment, right?
Then why did the unemployment rate go down today?
I must be missing something here.
No it wasn't . In fact, this "recovery" has been extraordinarily weak.
I agree that it's been weak, but look at the recession that preceded it. Also, compare this recovery to the one that began in 1933 after the bottom during the Great Depression. That one was much weaker. This would have been on par with that had it not have been for the heroic actions of Ben Bernanke and Barack Obama.
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