The rate of job losses has decreased more than expected last month and the the unemployment rate dropped for the first time since April 2008. This is yet the most obvious sign that the recession is easing.
Unemployment is typically a lagging indicator, continuing to increase even as recession ends with markets rebounding, home sales picking up, and consumer spending increasing. So this was hugely expected with many experts forecasting 9.6 to 9.8%, some predicting it to reach double digit, i.e. 10%. Expect the DOW to react positively today and consumers, well, who knows what they are going to do?
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Comments: 27
That's the natural truth.
It will take a while for unemployment to reach 5% 4%. However the trends are pretty clear and the rush to evaluate the stimulus is plain silly.
NO you're wrong. The percentage of people unemployed did not rise. It declined by 0.1%.
YES, you are right, 247,000 (additional) people lost their jobs. Some 0.1% additional or 242247 found work, making the drop from 9.5% to 9.4%
The number of people unable to find work is expressed in the unemployment rate, go look at the definition.
You seem to be confusing the unemployment rate and the unemployment numbers. The rate has never been in the 500k range. The rate is expressed as a percentage.
The most important thing that you fail to mention is that PEOPLE STILL LOST JOBS.
People lose jobs even in the best of economic times. But the net effect, which is what's really important from a macro scale, has been that the U-3 unemployment rate dropped by 0.1% and the broader U-6 dropped by 0.2%.
We had about 2 million people lose their jobs in the past month. However, roughly 2.3 million got jobs! (For a net of 300,000 or about 0.2% of the civilian work force) Somehow, that's looked over.
Rates are percentages, or millionth, 1/100, 1/1000, not 100s and 1000s.
Nasr gave you the explanation. I hope it registers, LOL.
my apologies for not getting that PhD in economics that I should have sought in order to understand that a drop in unemployment rate must be temporary because deficit has increased. They did not go that far in my only 2 macro econ courses that I took as electives since I was no econ major.
You have to explain this stuff to us. It's kinda complicated.
When the debt bubble pops and a full scale depression sets in, unemployment will likely rise quite a bit. Anyone recall what happened in Germany between 1918 and 1923?
Jack E. just posted "Entering the Greatest Depression in History" a few hours ago and it echos what I am saying.
Did I get the essence of the lecture correctly?
You are so full of BS. There is little to none correlation between unemployment rate and deficit. In our system in particular, jobs come from the private sector and the deficit is all about government spending.
You can make the argument that this will be short-lived because the government instead of private sector is creating many jobs (which is not accurate by the way). But to link unemployment to spending, debt, deficit? Unless you are talking about consumer and private sector debts. Hope you are not because they did not increase their debt.
Re my son-in-law finding a new job. Not only has it been a financial burden on them, but my daughter says that it's the 1st time she's seen him smile in a long time. Too often we fail to understand the emotional and psychological burden in being jobless.
Unemployment rxte wxs expected to climb for mxny months. I hope thxt there is improvement now.
Every dxy I see smxll improvements in the economy when I rexd the newspxper.
Recovery will be slow , but it is beginning.
Remember thxt only one fourth of the stimulus money hxs been distributed xnd much of thxt not spent yet.
Pxtience!
get it?
Glad to hear it.
Hey -- tell your boy Obama that we don't want any more socialization of America, and stop spending money he doesn't have.