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FINALLY, a jobs report that is actually decent


wiegie
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The BLS just reported that nonfarm payroll employment rose by 243,000 in January (and revised the November numbers up to 157,000 from 100,000 and very slightly upwardly adjusted the December number from 200,000 to 203,000).

 

The unemployment rate fell to 8.3% from 8.5%, while U-6 (the broadest measure of labor market underutilization) slightly dropped to 15.1% (down from 15.2% in December, 15.6% in November, and 16.0% in October).

 

We only need another 3-4 years of monthly reports like this and the economy will be back to where it should be. :sigh:

Edited by wiegie
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The BLS just reported that nonfarm payroll employment rose by 243,000 in January (and revised the November numbers up to 157,000 from 100,000 and very slighly upwardly adjusted the December number from 200,000 to 203,000).

 

The unemployment rate fell to 8.3% from 8.5%, while U-6 (the broadest measure of labor market underutilization) slightly dropped to 15.1% (down from 15.2% in December, 15.6% in November, and 16.0% in October).

 

We only need another 3-4 years of monthly reports like this and the economy will be back to where it should be. :sigh:

 

4 more years, 4 more years, 4 more years...

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The BLS just reported that nonfarm payroll employment rose by 243,000 in January (and revised the November numbers up to 157,000 from 100,000 and very slightly upwardly adjusted the December number from 200,000 to 203,000).

 

The unemployment rate fell to 8.3% from 8.5%, while U-6 (the broadest measure of labor market underutilization) slightly dropped to 15.1% (down from 15.2% in December, 15.6% in November, and 16.0% in October).

 

We only need another 3-4 years of monthly reports like this and the economy will be back to where it should be. :sigh:

Do the October, November and December numbers include the influx of Christmas help that retailers hire? If so I would be curious to see how those numbers compare vs last year.

Edited by keggerz
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Do the October, November and December numbers include the influx of Christmas help that retailers hire? If so I would be curious to see how those numbers compare vs last year.

These numbers are seasonally adjusted which should account for Christmas hiring patterns. Here are the comparison number for last years numbers vs. this years numbers (I've included both the seasonally adjusted numbers and the not seasonally adjusted (i.e. raw) numbers).

 

seasonally adjusted U-6

2010-11 2011-2012

Oct 16.8 16.0

Nov 16.9 15.6

Dec 16.6 15.2

Jan 16.1 15.1

 

seasonally adjusted U-3 (the official unemployment rate)

2010-11 2011-2012

Oct 9.5 8.9

Nov 9.8 8.7

Dec 9.4 8.5

Jan 9.1 8.3

 

 

 

not seasonally adjusted U-6

2010-11 2011-2012

Oct 15.9 15.3

Nov 16.3 15.0

Dec 16.6 15.2

Jan 17.3 16.2

 

not seasonally adjusted U-3 (the official unemployment rate)

2010-11 2011-2012

Oct 9.0 8.5

Nov 9.3 8.2

Dec 9.1 8.3

Jan 9.8 8.8

 

 

Things are definitely significantly better than they were a year ago.

Edited by wiegie
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to quote wiegie from 2004:

 

Since last May, the economy has added less than half of the jobs it would have needed to add just to keep pace with population growth. And it has added less than a quarter of the jobs that the president promised it would add.

 

If you call that a dramatic improvement then you have very very low standards.

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yep--seems like a reasonable statement to me. If anybody is calling these numbers a "dramatic improvement" then they "have very very low standards"

 

Az is trying to shill down the numbers? How unexpected.

 

While the numbers could still take a turn for the worse before November, the unemployment rate (now at 8.3 percent) has been falling consistently for months - and polls show Americans are starting to see signs of economic life. That's extremely good news for a president whose biggest vulnerability in his reelection bid is his stewardship of the still-fragile economy.
Edited by bushwacked
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Az is trying to shill down the numbers? How unexpected.

I don't blame him for throwing that comment from 7+ years ago back in my face. It is true, the jobs numbers right now are not nearly as good as we need.

 

One could (pretty legitimately) argue that the economic situation is different now given that the economy is coming out of a financial crisis (c.f. this book) but the numbers are what the numbers are. And the numbers are not dramatically wonderful.

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I don't blame him for throwing that comment from 7+ years ago back in my face. It is true, the jobs numbers right now are not nearly as good as we need.

 

I get that. Just noting that if Az had a smidgen of intellectual honesty he could admit that 8.3% unemployment is better than what we had at the peak of the crash.

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I get that. Just noting that if Az had a smidgen of intellectual honesty he could admit that 8.3% unemployment is better than what we had at the peak of the crash.

the main thing to keep in mind is that back in 2004, Az was claiming that 10 months of averaging 96,000 new jobs per month was a dramatic improvement--I said it was not

 

In the most recent ten months, the economy has averaged 149,000 new jobs per month. Consistent with how I was back in 2004, I did not call this a dramatic improvement (instead, I called it decent). You might think that to be consistent with his position 8 years ago, Az would call the current situation a dramatic improvement as well, but for some unknown reason, he has not. :wacko:

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"dramatic improvement", "significantly better"

 

I have to say, even I am impressed that wiegie would try to crush that semantic nut and argue that the two are different. :wacko:

I know that I cannot win an argument about sementics with you, but I would speculate that most people would find the word "dramatically" to be stronger than "significantly". I could be wrong.

 

Further, I would expect that most normal people would find it likely to seem like more of an overstatement to say that 96,000 jobs per month is a dramatic improvement vs. saying that 149,000 jobs per month is a significant improvement.

 

Again, I could be wrong.

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the main thing to keep in mind is that back in 2004, Az was claiming that 10 months of averaging 96,000 new jobs per month was a dramatic improvement--I said it was not

 

In the most recent ten months, the economy has averaged 149,000 new jobs per month. Consistent with how I was back in 2004, I did not call this a dramatic improvement (instead, I called it decent). You might think that to be consistent with his position 8 years ago, Az would call the current situation a dramatic improvement as well, but for some unknown reason, he has not. :wacko:

 

you might also add that unemployment is over two points higher than it was then, job losses from peak is still way deeper, the labor force participation rate is lower than it's been in 30 years, and GDP growth is below 2%.

 

also, not exactly sure how you are cherry-picking the data, but for 2004 the average job gains per month was 171,000. for 2005 it was 208,000. you made the comment on april 5, 2004, a few days after the BLS released its report showing 337,000 jobs added for the month of march. just for context.

 

not saying obama is to blame for the bottoms being deeper, but when that is your baseline, a tepid recovery like we're seeing now is not much of a recovery at all.

 

in any case, I just dug the quote up because it called to mind your breathless whining back then about how the jobs numbers were falling short of "what the president promised". remind me again what the obama administration promised the unemployment rate would be now if we passed their stimulus bill?

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a tepid recovery like we're seeing now is not much of a recovery at all.

which is exactly why in my initial post in thread I wrote:

We only need another 3-4 years of monthly reports like this and the economy will be back to where it should be. :sigh:

 

Also, my whole comment about "significantly better" had to do with Keg's implicit question about whether the decent job numbers today were merely an artifact of seasonal changes or if they were real--the answer is that things are significantly better and I meant it in the sense of statistical significance (meaning that it was almost certainly not random fluctuations that caused the numbers to look better)

Edited by wiegie
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in any case, I just dug the quote up because it called to mind your breathless whining back then about how the jobs numbers were falling short of "what the president promised". remind me again what the obama administration promised the unemployment rate would be now if we passed their stimulus bill?

 

Are you employed sir?

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Gotcha, so because they put in a disclaimer like any smart company would to try to remove responsibility if it didn't work, that means that they're off the hook for not achieving the stated goals of a costly policy :tup:

 

Sorry, but that's pretty freaking stupid to deflect from the fact that the stimulus programs have not met their stated goals, just because the people who claimed to have a solution made a disclaimer that they couldn't see the "unusual" circumstances of the situation that they came up with a plan putting a bandaid on. Really inspires confidence. :rollseyes:

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Gotcha, so because they put in a disclaimer like any smart company would to try to remove responsibility if it didn't work, that means that they're off the hook for not achieving the stated goals of a costly policy :wacko:

 

The irony of your post is you're completely missing the point while trying to defend a political talking point. The economic recession was a lot worse than anyone expected an almost everyone's projections (not promises) were wrong. And while the stimulus program was far from perfect, there are many a brighter and more knowledgeable mind than you and me, that claim it prevented a disaster not unlike the magnitude of that we experienced in the 30s. That was the primary goal.

 

This graph probably looks a lot different if we had different economic policies in place.

Edited by bushwacked
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