Speaking at a high school in Arlington, Va., Obama called the report “good news,” yet stuck to his long-time argument that more federal help is needed to fully recover from the financial meltdown that happened almost four years ago. He criticized House Republicans for not reaching an agreement with Democrats on stopping interest rates on government subsidized student loans from doubling.I fear for us all if Obama gets re-elected.
This is the Obama economy. Vote accordingly in Nov.Any way you slice or dice it, the April jobs report was terrible — and terribly disappointing. Employers added just 115,000 workers to their payrolls last month, way below the 180,000 Wall Street economists were expecting. Hiring has now slowed in three straight months. Job growth in March and April averaged 135,000, down from an average 252,000 per month in the three months to February. As IHS Global Insight explains: “Prior job gains at over 200,000 per month were inconsistent with the modest pace of recovery in overall output – GDP was up only 2.2% in the first quarter. It now appears that jobs have decelerated into line with GDP, rather than GDP accelerating to catch up with jobs.”Sure, the official unemployment rate dipped a tenth of a point lower to 8.1%, but that’s only because people continue to drop out of the workforce at an alarming pace. That workforce shrinkage, as measured by the labor force participation rate, totally distorts the true unemployment picture. In fact, the participation rate is now at its lowest level since 1981!
The number of Americans filing for jobless aid rose last week to the highest level since January, a development that could raise fears the labor market recovery was stalling after job creation slowed in March.President no-fault and his policies can't be involved...
Some economists blamed the Easter holidays for the spike in claims and expected applications to trend lower in coming weeks.
Lovely."It's very difficult to know the extent to which that's driven by seasonal effects from Easter or not," said Eric Green, chief economist at TD Securities in New York.
NFP 227,000 on expectations of 210,000; Previous revised from 243K to 284K; Unemployment Rate (U-3%) at 8.3%, U-6 at 14.9%. While for the first time in a long time those not in the labor force declined (from 87,874 to 87,564) and the participation rate rose as a result from 63.7% to 63.9%, here is what the market is focusing on currently: "Professional and business services added 82,000 jobs in February. Just over half of the increase occurred in temporary help services (+45,000)."
Gallup finds U.S. unemployment, as measured without seasonal adjustment, to be 9.1% in February, based on almost 30,000 interviews with a random sample of Americans. When Gallup applies the 0.5-percentage-point seasonal adjustment that the government applied to its unadjusted data for February last year, it produces an adjusted unemployment rate for February 2012 of 8.6% -- a substantial increase from the 8.3% adjusted rate the government reported for January.I will be curious to see how this administration will come up with better numbers, but I bet they do.
"Can someone tell me how employment in the black community has improved at a rate three times the national average in just a few months?? With numbers like today, urban communities should be well on their way to economic recovery then! There is something suspicious about the job numbers released today and it has me very concerned," West wondered Friday. "Is this dramatic supposed decrease in black unemployment a result of job creation or is someone playing around with the census numbers??"I wonder too...
Yet the unemployment rate trickery still continues, with labor force participation (prior revised), now at a 27 year low of 64%, and the labor force itself declined by 50K from 153,937 to 153,887. In fact, persons not in the labor force have increased by 7.5 million since January 2007!Change is our only hope...
