Posted on 07/03/2009 6:22:46 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
After nine months of explosive monetary and fiscal stimulus, you'd think economic recovery would be upon us. But the June jobs report tells a much different story.
Non-farm payrolls fell by 467,000 as the unemployment rate edged up to 9.5 percent. This isn't nearly as bad as the 700,000 monthly job losses of last winter, but it's still a rough number. Equally disappointing is the household survey -- often a key turning-point signal since it captures the health of small businesses -- which has dropped 811,000 in the past two months.
Donald Marron, a former senior economist with the Council of Economic Advisors and the CBO, calls it "a grim jobs report." Marron, digging deep into the Labor Department Statistics, says the continued decline in hours worked by private-sector employees, now 7 percent over the past year, is especially troublesome. He writes, "The economy is thus losing jobs and, for the jobs that remain, is losing hours worked. That double-whammy is bad news for the economy."
I would add that along with manufacturing and construction, the service sector continues to shed jobs, with a 244,000 drop in June. Inside that category, the important professional-and-business-services sector lost 118,000 jobs. The wage data is equally disconcerting. Over the past three months, average hourly earnings barely rose at 0.7 percent annually.
There are still some bright spots that strongly suggest the recession has bottomed. The ISM manufacturing report for June held a number of positives. Auto sales, retail sales, and home sales look to be bottoming. And May factory orders climbed as inventories crashed. So businesses, including automakers, may be increasing production in the months ahead.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearmarkets.com ...
The federal minimum wage will go up this summer boosting the unemployment rate.
Confederate money making a comeback ?
Look at all aspects of our economy and what is the best approach to making it better, bet all you have that those in Washington will take the exact opposite approach and become very rich.
Actually, I forgot what nymphomania was; my comment didn’t even make sense to me once I remembered the difference between nymphomania and necrophilia. Wotta dope!
I can not bring myself to listen to this guy. He cheered us onto the crash. Now he is trying to pick up on what’s left.
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