Unemployment ticks up to 7.9%

[PsyOps (Premo)]

Economy added 157,000 jobs in January; unemployment rate up to 7.9% - latimes.com

Of course the spin masters on the left continue to spew their false propaganda:

Reid: The GOP really needs to stop bad-mouthing this recovery we’re in « Hot Air

Just a brief comment on my friend, the Republican leader’s, statement. He continues bad-mouthing the recovery. We are in a recovery. The moral of the fourth quarter is a repudiation of the Republican playbook. Growth went down in the fourth quarter because of reduced government spending, and a reticence in the private sector as government fought over the fiscal cliff. And that fight came as a result of the Republicans being so unreasonable. - Harry Reid

The democrats had full control of congress from '07 to '11, two of those years with a democrat president. All the opportunity in the world to implement policies that would get our economy on track. Yet their biggest achievement is Obamacare; the biggest destroyer of this economy. Yet Reid and his liberal comrades continue to act like prepubescent juveniles and blame the GOP.

[Chris0nllyn]

*Waitsfortommyjototellyouhowwrongyouare*

[Baja28 (Premo)]

Go Obama!

[PsyOps (Premo)]

Originally Posted by Baja28

Go Obama!

you win.

[Tilted (Premo)]

In fairness, when it comes to the employment data, I've seen a lot more spin and BS and nonsensical comments from so-called conservatives than I've seen from the left. I've seen people making comments about what this means or that means or how this or that works and so on that were ridiculous - as in, if the people making the comments actually understood what they were talking about (i.e. bothered to understand the data and what it means) they'd have to be embarrassed about how silly they were making themselves look.

This was a pretty decent report actually. The household numbers are always subject to fluctuations around reality because of the way that data is collected / accounted for. You really need to look at those numbers over a period of time to get a fair sense of the story they are telling. Even with that said, this uptick in the headline rate wasn't the result of less people being employed, it was the result of more people returning to the labor force - i.e. it represents a small bit of unwinding of the dynamic I've described before which had previously resulted in the unemployment rate falling faster than it should have based on what was really going on. The broadest measure of unemployment (i.e. which includes those people that have fallen out of the labor force because they aren't looking for work) actually ticked down from 9.4 to 9.3%.

I'm not suggesting this report and reports in general of late have been gangbusters - for the most part, they haven't been. The employment recovery could obviously be better, but the reports have been fairly decent. Had it not been for the positive consumer spending growth from Wednesday's GDP numbers, I would have been quite (pleasantly) surprised with the establishment numbers from this report, considering the fiscal cliff concerns we experienced in December. At any rate, those establishment survey numbers haven't been blockbuster but they've consistently been enough to represent real improvement in the employment situation (i.e. not just enough to maintain based on organic growth in the size of the work force).

[SamSpade]

Originally Posted by Tilted

In fairness, when it comes to the employment data

In fairness - the employment (or unemployment) data are the worst I've seen in my adult life that has run as LONG as this has. The data that is the most compelling are the numbers which show how long the duration of unemployment has been. The previous times I can recall - during Reagan's first term, and under Bush I - the unemployment spikes were brief.

Maybe it is because I am older - and I realize anecdotal data proves little - but I know a lot more people now who have been unemployed for a long time, who have given up finding gainful employment mostly because they are middle-aged and have found that after being out of work a year, NO ONE wants to hire them back on at anywhere NEAR their previous salary. In previous years, I don't ever recall talk of the "new normal" - a description meaning "this is just the way things are going to be from now on".

So maybe I don't see it the same way when, after yet another month or quarter or year, the data just doesn't get any better and SOMEONE tells me how good it is getting. It's like having the flu for four years and someone telling me my fever is starting to go down - again.

[Baja28 (Premo)]

Originally Posted by Tilted

In fairness, when it comes to the employment data, I've seen a lot more spin and BS and nonsensical comments from so-called conservatives than I've seen from the left. I've seen people making comments about what this means or that means or how this or that works and so on that were ridiculous - as in, if the people making the comments actually understood what they were talking about (i.e. bothered to understand the data and what it means) they'd have to be embarrassed about how silly they were making themselves look.

This was a pretty decent report actually. The household numbers are always subject to fluctuations around reality because of the way that data is collected / accounted for. You really need to look at those numbers over a period of time to get a fair sense of the story they are telling. Even with that said, this uptick in the headline rate wasn't the result of less people being employed, it was the result of more people returning to the labor force - i.e. it represents a small bit of unwinding of the dynamic I've described before which had previously resulted in the unemployment rate falling faster than it should have based on what was really going on. The broadest measure of unemployment (i.e. which includes those people that have fallen out of the labor force because they aren't looking for work) actually ticked down from 9.4 to 9.3%.

I'm not suggesting this report and reports in general of late have been gangbusters - for the most part, they haven't been. The employment recovery could obviously be better, but the reports have been fairly decent. Had it not been for the positive consumer spending growth from Wednesday's GDP numbers, I would have been quite (pleasantly) surprised with the establishment numbers from this report, considering the fiscal cliff concerns we experienced in December. At any rate, those establishment survey numbers haven't been blockbuster but they've consistently been enough to represent real improvement in the employment situation (i.e. not just enough to maintain based on organic growth in the size of the work force).

UFB you can call this a good report.

How old are you? Were you around when unemployment was in the 4-5% range and work was booming? I'm guessing you were not.

And you're going to count the people who stopped looking with a straight face???? UFB!!

[Tilted (Premo)]

Originally Posted by SamSpade

In fairness - the employment (or unemployment) data are the worst I've seen in my adult life that has run as LONG as this has. The data that is the most compelling are the numbers which show how long the duration of unemployment has been. The previous times I can recall - during Reagan's first term, and under Bush I - the unemployment spikes were brief.

Maybe it is because I am older - and I realize anecdotal data proves little - but I know a lot more people now who have been unemployed for a long time, who have given up finding gainful employment mostly because they are middle-aged and have found that after being out of work a year, NO ONE wants to hire them back on at anywhere NEAR their previous salary. In previous years, I don't ever recall talk of the "new normal" - a description meaning "this is just the way things are going to be from now on".

So maybe I don't see it the same way when, after yet another month or quarter or year, the data just doesn't get any better and SOMEONE tells me how good it is getting. It's like having the flu for four years and someone telling me my fever is starting to go down - again.

You think current employment data is the worst you've ever seen? Seriously, worse than it was 4 years ago? I'm not suggesting that the economic recovery has been impressively fast, in fact I've repeatedly made it clear that's not what I'm doing. But the employment situation has been improving and that is a good thing - better than if it were just maintaining or getting worse. It boggles my mind that you can claim this is the worst employment data you've seen in your adult life when we are actually adding jobs and unemployment is coming down. There have been numerous times in your adult life when we were losing jobs and unemployment was going up.

As for how long the employment recovery is taking, of course it's longer than at any other time in your life. You didn't live trough the Great Depression did you? That's the only event in our history that's even remotely comparable to what we experienced. Things have been improving, why are people so invested in denying that? Obviously not everyone is finding employment, but some people are - and for those people, that represents improvement.

[Tilted (Premo)]

Originally Posted by Baja28

UFB you can call this a good report.

How old are you? Were you around when unemployment was in the 4-5% range and work was booming? I'm guessing you were not.

And you're going to count the people who stopped looking with a straight face???? UFB!!

In relative terms, yes, it was pretty decent. We added jobs rather than losing jobs, and during a month when the jokers in Washington were doing everything they could to wreck the economy (well, maybe not everything they could do, but they weren't doing the economy any favors).

i'm 40 years old. Are you old enough to have been around when we were losing 500,000 or 600,000 or 700,000 jobs a month? We've come a long way since then. The situation is improving in aggregate, why can't people accept that for what it is? I'm not saying everything is peaches and cream - I've been very clear in qualifying my assessments. But when things are improving, it's appropriate to note that things are improving. And when people make ridiculous statements about what the reports say or don't say, what they mean or don't mean, it's appropriate to point out that they are wrong (e.g. with regard to that silly notion some of you all were floating a few months ago about California not be accounted for being the reason the unemployment rate had fallen so much).

I'm not sure what you're trying to say with the last sentence. I thought you wanted the people that are no longer looking for work to be counted? I thought that was one of the criticisms of the headline unemployment rate, that it didn't count those people? (I was probably the first person around here to point that out, btw.) So, are you now criticizing me for referring to the rate that does count them? Do you now (because it happened to tick up) think we should just be paying attention to the headline rate that doesn't count them?

We're adding jobs. That's good. All other things being equal, would we like more? Sure. But that doesn't negate that we are adding jobs and that is a good thing - and it's more than enough jobs to sustain (though some have mistakenly asserted otherwise), it's enough to slowly eat into unemployment. What makes this even better is that it has been happening in an environment where the government hasn't been particularly helpful (e.g. by getting the hell out of the way). If it's 10 degrees outside (and you don't like the cold), it's a good thing when the temperature moves to 15 degrees and then 16 degrees and then 18 degrees and then 19 degrees. It's a whole lot better than it falling to 5 degrees.


EDIT: It's worth noting that I'm not the only one that recognizes that, in relative terms, this was a decent report. Equity markets are up big this morning, and they weren't up that much when the employment data hit. Go check the spike in equity market futures at 8:30 am. I for one don't place a lot of stock in short term equity market movements, but plenty of people here like to point to any drop and say 'see, see, this is bad news / this person is to blame.'

[SamSpade]

Originally Posted by Tilted

You think current employment data is the worst you've ever seen? Seriously, worse than it was 4 years ago?

THIS, meaning, the current trend of high unemployment - you know, the one which began about 5 years ago and hasn't really ended yet.

And it is one thing to be unemployed (not referring to myself specifically) but it is quite another to STILL be unemployed years later. My dad, for instance, has more or less given up.

Kind of like being in the hospital recuperating from cancer, and saying this is the worst health I've ever had - and hearing someone say "you're not as bad as you were five years ago" and I have to remind him that I've lived a lot longer than five years, and I am comparing the last five years to the previous fifty.