This may be the first time I’ve seen news reports on increasing joblessness in which the worsening of the job market was not declared to be a “surprise.” (See here and here.) The fact that this lousy jobs report wasn’t declared “surprising” may be a sign of people coming to terms with reality.
Just as a reminder: Total employment in the United States is still down more than 6 percent from its November 2007 peak, which means there are now 8.5 million fewer jobs than there were in late 2007.
This assessment does not take into account underemployment or declines in wage rates.
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Interesting yet oddly enough the equity markets are still rallying. What a shell game.
The equity markets are rallying becuase that’s mostly the only place that can absorb the additional $600 billion being conjured up from nothing by the Fed.
How does the counterfeit operation work? Print funny money, then funnel it through the credit market (in other words, give it to your buddies!).
Typically through bond brokerage firms that sell the Treasuries in the first place. They get fees for the sale.
Gold is up as well. So the market may be up in nominal terms but not in real terms.
Yeah but the stimulus worked! GDP increased! /sarcasm
That’s weird, I just got this News Alert from NYTimes.com:
U.S. Economy Added 151,000 Jobs in October; Unemployment Rate Steady at 9.6%
The United States economy added 151,000 jobs in October, a
welcome change after four months of job losses but still not
enough to make a significant dent in unemployment, which
remained at 9.6 percent.
Private companies have been slowly expanding their payrolls
throughout 2010, according to a Labor Department report
released Friday. This private job growth had been overwhelmed
by the elimination of temporary decennial Census jobs and
state and local government jobs during the summer and early
fall, until October.
The report also offered revised figures for August and
September that showed substantially lower job losses for
those months than previously reported.
That’s not terribly inconsistent when you think about it. How many new college students entered the job market? Additionally, we can say the same thing about the census effect back when they were hiring workers and the jobs were still vanishing. Job losses may be overstated today, but they were understated by the exact same amount 6 months ago. Other factors include a long stretch of significant job loss figures while the unemployment statistic remained static. Unemployment numbers ignore individuals that fall outside the unemployment insurance range. Discouraged workers are ignored and a not insignificant portion of the declining unemployment numbers are coming from individuals who are simply exiting the job market.
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