Tag: unemployment

Tweet of the Day, THAT’S An Alarming Unemployment Trendline edition.

There’s absolutely no argument from me that you don’t want to read too much into a dramatic graph.

At the same time, sometimes dramatic things do happen. Certainly it’s significant enough looking that people on the Left are there and starting to push back on it in earnest.  And why is it so difficult for the Left to admit that minimum wages have a negative impact on employment, anyway? It’s economics that even non-economists can understand.

Reid retreats on amendment tree for unemployment benefits extension.

Heh: “Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) says he is now open to considering Republican amendments to a bill extending emergency unemployment benefits through most of 2014.” Yeah, I understand that fighting on quicksand can be tricky. Especially when you hadn’t previously realized that it was quicksand. Continue reading Reid retreats on amendment tree for unemployment benefits extension.

@BarackObama decides NOT to be the adult in the room wrt unemployment insurance extension.

You can tell by the fact that he’s demanding here that the House simply agree to allocate the money for another ‘temporary’ three-month extension of unemployment benefits for people unemployed past 26 weeks.  The GOP is not adverse to extending benefits, by the way: but the House is fairly insistent that this spending be offset by an equivalent amount of cuts.

Continue reading @BarackObama decides NOT to be the adult in the room wrt unemployment insurance extension.

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.

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

Hey, maybe good news in tomorrow’s job report?

We could use some.  From Gallup:

The U.S. Payroll to Population employment rate (P2P), as measured by Gallup, was 44.5% for the month of April, up from 43.4% in March. This is the highest P2P rate so far in 2013, but is still more than a percentage point lower than the 45.7% seen last October, the highest P2P rate Gallup has measured since it began tracking employment in 2010.

Via Hot Air, who also is finding some other indications (jobless claims down, trade deficit down) that suggests that we’re hopefully going to have a good jobs report tomorrow.  Well, good by current definitions. Still.  Every little bit helps, right?

[pause]

Come on, I’m trying not to be completely gloomy right now.  The sun’s out, and everything…

Moe Lane

BLS: 88K jobs in March (gulp), 63.3% labor force participation rate (GULP!).

Oh, dear.

Nonfarm payroll employment edged up in March (+88,000), and the unemployment rate was little changed at 7.6 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment grew in professional and business services and in health care but declined in retail trade.

[snip]

The civilian labor force declined by 496,000 over the month, and the labor force participation rate decreased by 0.2 percentage point to 63.3 percent.

…That’s not good. And, in case you were wondering: Continue reading BLS: 88K jobs in March (gulp), 63.3% labor force participation rate (GULP!).

White House job council closes as unemployment rate increases.

…Oops?

Andrew Malcolm is quite blunt:

As the Labor Department today reported more disappointing hiring news for January, including an unexpected jump in the unemployment rate, President Obama joined thousands of other American employers and let his own White House jobs council go.

The President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness expired in obscurity Thursday in an unmarked bureaucratic grave. Created two years ago to display the Chicagoan’s alleged concern with high unemployment, whatever its PR showcase value had long since ended.

Continue reading White House job council closes as unemployment rate increases.

Need a job? Go. To. North. Dakota.

After reading this plaintive essay by the New York Times about young voters discovering what happens when they vote against their class interests by voting Democratic (short version: they end up on the street), my first reaction was simply to shrug. But that’s not nice. What is nice is offering these people actual advice, because passages like this:

Two months ago, Mr. Tano gave up an apartment in his native Dallas after losing his job. He sold his Toyota and sought opportunities in the Pacific Northwest.

Continue reading Need a job? Go. To. North. Dakota.

Reminder: jobs report in two days.

Keep in mind the following:

  1. We do not actually know if the number of reported expected layoffs and bankruptcies and retrenchments that we’ve seen over the last month will actually be reflected in this month’s job report.  They may; then again, they may not.  And, for that matter, they may, but they may not have made a significant difference yet.
  2. I suspect that a bunch of people on Capitol Hill and in the White House are waiting to see if Friday’s report will give them any leverage.
  3. The administration knows the numbers before anybody else does.
  4. The big question is going to be Recession in 2013? anyway.
  5. Is Right Out.