Posted on 01/10/2014 12:54:38 PM PST by Jim Robinson
Friday's December jobs report was a major disappointment, showing the economy gained just 74k jobs last month. Economists had expected the economy to gain around 200k jobs. The unemployment rate, however, dropped to 6.7% as 347k frustrated job-seekers gave up and left the labor force. We are in an upside-down world where a drop in the unemployment rate is a bad sign for the economy.
The overall labor force shrunk dramatically last year. In December 2012, 155.4 million workers had a job or were actively looking for one. Last month, though, 154.9 million were in the labor force, a drop of over 500k Americans.
It is important to remember that the population grew last year. The US adult population grew by around 2.5 million people. If the labor force were the same percentage of the adult population as last year, 2 million more adults would have jobs or be actively looking for employment. Their disappearance is a drag on the economy.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Membership has its rewards.
This time, we really do have a jobless recovery, if you can call this miserable economy a recovery, and I don't recall seeing the phrase once in the media.
Bush’s Fault! [/sarc]
There is no recovery. Just the fed propping up the markets with counterfeit money trying to prevent total collapse on Obama’s Marxist watch. The bill will come due in full when the phony money bubble inevitably bursts.
Good one...
Gross Domestic Product (ref. 1929 dollars in millions) Year GDP 1929 101,444 1930 91,513 1931 84,300 1932 70,682 1933 68,337 1934 74,609 1935 85,806 1936 95,798 1937 103,917 1938 96,670 1939 103,736 1940 112,961 1941 126,237 Source: National Bureau of Economic Research, NBER Series 08166.
| Year | Unemployment rate |
|---|---|
|
1923-29 |
3.3 |
|
1930 |
8.9 |
|
1931 |
15.9 |
|
1932 |
23.6 |
|
1933 |
24.9 |
|
1934 |
21.7 |
|
1935 |
20.1 |
|
1936 |
17.0 |
|
1937 |
14.3 |
|
1938 |
19.0 |
|
1939 |
17.2 |
|
1940 |
14.6 |
|
1941 |
9.9 |
|
1942 |
4.7 |
How did U.S. exports do during this same period?
Rush Limbaugh: I want him to fail.
Looks like Limbaugh is NOT getting his wish.
Our exports are dwarfed by our imports. So it doesn't really matter if exports get hurt some.
At the start of the Great Depression, exports were equal to 4% of GNP. Volume dropped by less half. However because world wide prices had crashed for all products, the dollar value of the decrease was greater. Also note that throughout the roaring 20's, a period of great economic progress, our tariffs were about 22%. The Smoot Hawley tariff was on top of that.
During the Jeffersonian trade embargo, in which almost all international trade was stopped. The price of goods normally imported rose by 30%. But the price of goods normally exported fell by 30%. So there were offsetting price effects in the economy.
US LOST 2 MILLION WORKERS IN 2013
__________________________________
How careless...
isn’t it a good thing the US gained 1.3 Million under 30 illegal alien DREAMers ???
do I really need to /s ???
Right, so export powerhouse that we were, when the dollar value (note, not %of GDP) fell by two thirds, it was insignificant.
During the Great Depression prices fell, which means the dollar value increased. The dollar bought more, just nobody had dollars.
During the Great Depression prices fell, which means the dollar value increased. The dollar bought more, just nobody had dollars.
I’m one of them.
I simply was wondering if you thought that the crash in U.S. exports was insignificant also.
Yes, again volume only decreased by less than 50% so we are talking about GNP being down 2% due to exports. But GNP was off 46% in industrial production. So exports were not significant.
The drop in exports did get blamed a little for being the straw that broke the camels back with the banking failure. Banks had been weak and growing weaker ever since the stock market crash in '29. Some blamed the failure of loans to exporters for being the final straw. But we didn't have any lender of last resort like the Federal Reserve or any thing to prop up the banks during a liquidity run. A liquidity run started in Europe and quickly spread to the U.S. and the banking system collapsed, taking many businesses down with it. The fact that a small proportion of loans went bad due to the drop in exports was more coincidental than a serious impact.
If you decrease the “volume” of your weekly paycheck by “less than 50%” (whatever that means), will you notice?
One bad economic report and the Fed called off the talk about “tapering” the money machine.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.