BLS jobs report: 7.5% / 165K / 63.3%.

Remember how I was hoping for good news this morning?  Yeah, well, we didn’t get it.  From the National Journal:

The federal government’s latest snapshot of the unemployment rate offered few bright spots on Friday. The economy added 165,000 jobs in April—slightly better than March’s revised number of 138,000 jobs. Unemployment went down one percentage point to 7.5 percent, and health care, retail trade, and the food services industry added positions.

The glaring caveat to this jobs report is the huge number of Americans who remain out of the workforce. Called the labor force participation rate in wonk speak, that number held steady in April at 63.3 percent: the lowest level since 1979.

That last number simply has to go back up.  Just… not necessarily in the way that the National Journal thinks that it should.  The NJ thinks that throwing money at the problem might solve it; frankly, I think that we’d be infinitely better off by taking a meat axe – or possibly a claymore mine – to the regulatory thicket that prospective business owners have to navigate these days.  Which most assuredly includes Obamacare.

Moe Lane

Via

15 thoughts on “BLS jobs report: 7.5% / 165K / 63.3%.”

  1. The numbers have been bad for so long, that I don’t even know what is good any more. I guess that is the whole I idea.

    Lefties try to tell me the economy is doing well and I should look at the stock market for proof. I see that, but I also have eyes. I see my kids day care is half empty. I see almost entirely empty strip malls. I see the cost of bread has gone up a lot to the point where I make note of it with every shopping trip. What I can’t see anymore is my doctor–who has stopped practicing.

  2. well when you toss out all the people out of work month after month, year after years, sooner or later the unemployment rate will look pretty damn good.

  3. IIRC, we saw – following the Great Depression – that a significant percentage of those who are unable to find work for an extended period *never* re-enter the labor market.
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    Long-term, this creates … issues.
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    Mew

      1. I was thinking more of family-created “make-work” jobs like “Uncle Jerry looks after the summer cottage” …
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        Also, of how these folks are an added stress on government-created welfare programs that are already within a straw or two of collapse.
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        Mew

        1. Those are true enough. World wars come in a bit longer term than that.

          1. Historically speaking, the big, noisy, kinetic events do not trump the small, quiet ones.
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            The northern migration of southern blacks, or the acceptance of women entering the workforce *permanently* are not the result of a world war.
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            They are the result of cultural changes that made a rather large difference in our country.
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            Europe’s wars happened every 25-35 years, whether we were involved or not; we just called the last two hot ones “world wars” because we got more directly involved. They’re significant, but .. the changes caused by the cultural shifts are – in my opinion – more significant.
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            Mew

          2. @acat Again what you say is true. And I still believe that economic devastation tends to result in war. The cultural shifts are indeed more significant over time but that will not make a “noisy, kinetic event” less destructive to life or property.

  4. Some of the people who have disappeared have gone into the underground economy the one the Government can’t see and can’t tax. Some of it is Grey (i.e., cash for the job) and some of it is Black (selling what the government doesn’t want sold).

    1. Yep, and they won’t be coming back either.
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      Once a person is free of the chains, why would they willingly put ’em back on?
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      This is especially true as the current 20somethings didn’t grow up hearing about civic duty and patriotism as good things .. the genie won’t go easily back into the bottle.
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      Mew

  5. I just saw Scott Pelley announce what great news the BLS report is for the economy, especially those stock market numbers…. but it seems to me that the stock market just might be inflated by all the quantitative easing that’s been and is being done. In any event, I don’t believe a single word of it. My personal experience is that the economy is getting worse.

    1. Eh, should be “along with those stock market numbers”.
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      Edit function, please?

    2. See Darin_H above – the stock market is a poor choice of proxy for the economy.
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      It’s like using number of manufacturing jobs (instead of widgets produced or gross revenue of all manufacturing companies) to determine the size and health of the manufacturing sector ..
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      Poor proxy choice seems to be a habit with the Dems, eh? Pick one that feeds *their* issue, never mind it ignores reality.
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      Mew
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      p.s. yes, the economy is getting worse.

      1. So it isn’t just me…
        Is “poor proxy choice” another way of saying “lies”? If so, then, yeah, that’s the dem’s s.o.p., for sure.

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