Posted on 05/02/2014 6:53:01 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The American economy gained steam in April, adding 288,000 jobs, while the unemployment rate fell to 6.3 percent, the lowest level since September 2008.
After a sharp slowdown in December and January, and a modest improvement since then, economists had been forecasting a healthy gain for April as consumer and business activity rose in tandem with temperatures in many parts of the country.
But the good news was tempered by a drop of 806,000 in the number of Americans in the labor force, pushing the labor participation rate down sharply. And despite the fall in joblessness, average hourly earnings did not rise at all.
The consensus among economists polled by Bloomberg before the Labor Department’s announcement Friday morning called for an increase of 218,000 in nonfarm payrolls, with the unemployment rate falling by 0.1 percent to 6.6 percent.
To be sure, month-to-month swings in hiring are a snapshot of the economy, rather than a portrait, and frequently blur.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Markets do what markets are allowed to do.
Kick the drones out of government. Get them doing anything gainful in the private sector. Even flipping the proverbial hamburgers. Or being artists. Or send them to the oil fields of North Dakota to help out. Wherever. And make the taxes small. And make the reverence of God big. Watch a miracle happen again, and nobody had to throttle business with China to cause this to occur.
Good pix. The only thing missing is the candy dropping out of the unicorn’s back side.
She means heeling... at the feet of His Barackness
"Badly need"? We are #2 in the world in manufacturing.
$3.6 T - China
$3.0 T - USA
$1.6 T - Japan
$0.9 T - Germany
$0.7 T - Russia
$0.6 T - Brazil
$0.5 T - Canada
We still top Japan, Germany, and Canada (#s 3, 4, and 7) combined.
China has 19% of the world;s population, and makes 17% of the world's manufacturing. About as one might expect.
We have 4.6% of the population, and still make 15% of the world's goods. Not what we once were, but still a global powerhouse and model of efficiency.
Japan is the only major player that can boast a better population-to-manufacturing ratio than ours (1.7% and 7.3%).
(And China has used 3+ decades of double-digit growth, plus four times our population, plus very low wages in the manufacturing sector just to catch up, even though they have the same land mass / resource base that we have.)
(Ooh! My apologies to Canada! 1/9th our population, but 1/6th our industry! They beat us too! Unexpected, eh?)
Hiring didn’t go up. Unemployment benefits ran out.
No longer collecting unemployment? No longer counted as unemployed.
It’s freakin’ magic I tell ya!
There is no more unemployment extension from the federal Government, that ended in December. So when state unemployment insurance runs out (typically 26 weeks) a person is no longer counted as unemployed. Even though what really happened is they have no income at all.
We will continue to see a drop in the “unemployment rate” as people continue to drop off the unemployment radar screen simply because we are only counted for 26 weeks.
Actually there is no connection in govt stats between unemployment rate and number on unemployment benefits. This is a common myth:
http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm
Only nine million more jobs required to fix unemployment problem oh wait some people don’t get counted it’s Obama math.
It is just going to keep falling as the Baby Boomers retire. They are going to retire regardless of their doubt. It will happen.
Funny how the New York Times failed to mention that numbers like this haven't been seen since the failed Democrat Carter administration.
Well at 4 percent we will be at “100 percent employment” or something like that. I understand they play with numbers, but it must be a little better out there. I know Maryland never really had the unemployment problems that other states have but is it getting better all over? I know that workers wanted signs all over Annapolis. I do know that not everywhere is having this.
Scrub-a-dub-dub! ???
Their gerbil garage...
Likely the method of calculation will be changed the month before, or the month any new Republican majority in Congress is sworn in.
Then there will be an 'unexpected' worsening of all statistics.
When people say we should bring jobs back to America while corporations continue to farm jobs out of America, I always wonder how people think jobs will come back here.
How exactly would this process work without imposing restrictions on corporations?
While I am all for that concept, in practice, it can be difficult. Have you picked up an LL Bean Catalog lately? ...imported...imported...imported.... as you look through the item descriptions. It is much the same elsewhere.
When things can be manufactured in the US again, without the ongoing fear of some arcane paragraph (regulation) in the Federal Register popping up to shut your business down, maybe that will happen.
Between regulations, unions, the moving targets of environmental 'standards', you'd better have really deep pockets to think about manufacturing much of anything here, and if it can be done elsewhere at a profit with little risk, as opposed to the domestic crapshoot, it will be.
Now, the private sector is beginning to get bit by the same sort of governmental attention formerly reserved for industry, simply because there is more private sector left to bite (and bureaucrats have to justify their existence at the public trough somehow), people are beginning to notice what the media has blamed on "greedy rich people" who took a path of less resistance and moved their manufacturing operations to a place where they could operate with considerably less risk.
At the core of the problem, there is too much Government from the Federal Level, and with that I include standards imposed on State Regulators from the Federal Level.
http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000
CA....
Thanks, but no thanks. We need people who are willing and able to work and who aren't used to being mollycoddled.
404 not found that document does not exist on this server.
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.