Posted on 01/09/2015 8:03:17 AM PST by SeekAndFind
WASHINGTON -- The United States capped its best year for hiring in 15 years with a healthy gain in December, and the unemployment rate hit a six-year low. The numbers support expectations that the United States will strengthen further this year even as overseas economies stumble.
The Labor Department said today that employers added 252,000 jobs last month and 50,000 more in October and November combined than it had previously estimated. The unemployment rate dropped to 5.6 percent from 5.8 percent in November. The rate is at its lowest point since 2008.
Yet wage growth remains weak. Average hourly pay slipped 5 cents in December. And the unemployment rate fell partly because many of the jobless gave up looking for work and so were no longer counted as unemployed.
Nearly 3 million more people are earning paychecks than at the start of 2014. That's the largest annual job gain since 1999. Gas prices have also fallen sharply, which will give consumers a further boost in the coming months.
Most economists forecast the U.S. economy will expand more than 3 percent this year, which would mark the first time in a decade for growth to reach that level.
(Excerpt) Read more at dispatch.com ...
“Yet wage growth remains weak”
So does the labor participation rate but the pressholes are on a roll so I won’t interrupt.
Right......./sss
The article leaves out the part about another 400K people being eliminated from the workforce. I’m sure you can make employment numbers look pretty good when you quit counting almost 100 million people without jobs as unemployed.
I guess all the relatively high paying, and productive, oil workers getting laid off over the past few months are now working for MacDonalds, along with their spouses so they can pay the bills. So, that is two for every one let go and a benefit in the eyes of the Pravada Press. Earnings went up pitifully but that along with the price of gas drop is portrayed as a great stimules for the economy. Happy Daze sic. are here again.
“Unemployment rate” is like “Nonprofit”.
It doesn’t mean what people think it means. “Nonprofit” is nothing more than a tax term. Unemployment rate has nothing to do with how many people are unemployed. It addresses how many people are accepting unemployment insurance payments.
If this administration told me the sun was going to rise in the east I would not believe them. Talk about “creative accounting”!
More people quit trying, that is all.
“The article leaves out the part about another 400K people being eliminated from the workforce.”
THAT.......is exactly right.
Doesn’t non profit mean that a business does not pay out dividends? I know a non profit organization can earn a profit on operations, but I thought the distinction is that they aren’t allowed to pay out dividends if they do have a profit. Is that correct?
My point is that a lot of people see non-profits as “morally superior” to normal business. I don’t. I see them as getting special tax status.
Let’s not overlook the weak spots in this morning’s report: After overall hourly wages rose noticeably in November, they DROPPED by almost the same amount in December.
Hourly wages wages went up just 1.7 percent in 2014, before adjusting for inflation. That translates into a very small real increase in earnings per hour.
And as you guys notice, the labor-force-participation rate dropped 0.2 percentage points in December (all these numbers are seasonally adjusted), which suggests that that number still hasn’t bottomed out.
That is a constant battle, of course, because the population is aging so fast — but higher wages should draw many inactive Americans back into the labor force. That’s what a great recovery would look like.
All of this is good reason to be skeptical of the idea we’ve entered an “Obama boom.”
Well who would be unhappy collecting “funemployment” ?
/s
Bet they’re all part time....i.e., they let one full time go and hired 2 part time with no benefits. It’s like all the contract work done at home...no benefits!!
Was this extra help at Christmas?
Just got a financial email that says “Buffett says to buy now!”
OK, that couldn’t be a clearer signal that things are about to crash.
Sure, commie, I’ll buy into the market in order to run the price up right before you sell and get out leaving me holding the bag.
Right. I’ll get right on that.
RE: Was this extra help at Christmas?
People have been asking this question since Obama became President. It inevitably occurs after Thanksgiving and goes all the way to after the New Year.
Like Rush says, “It’s hard to compete with Santa Claus”.
How many Americans got jobs?
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