Former GE CEO Jack Welch recently ignited a firestorm over his ‘tweet’ that the US September labour market data appeared to have been manipulated for political reasons. Indeed, there were some curiosities in that particular report, but they hardly end there. The fact is, much official US data are misleading in some way, if not [...]
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Recent economic data, and especially today’s unemployment numbers reveal the powerlessness of the Fed in the face of underlying economic problems that they fail to understand. The Fed has tried every trick in the book for the past 4 years to revive the economy only to see it continue to weaken. Unfortunately they only know [...] New jobless claims continued their see-saw trend, this week heading down, slightly, to 367,000 new claims vs. 368,000 the week before. Here is the trend: Last week’s employment report was much more negative in that unemployment actually rose, if you consider the shrinking labor force because of labor dropouts–people who gave up looking. [...] With today’s weak employment numbers, most economists are looking for reasons to excuse this negative trend rather than trying understand it. They blame it on the warm winter weather, or “same thing as last Spring,” or “consolidation”, anything but what is really happening in the economy. You need to look at employment in the context of [...] The employment data from the BLS this morning shocked a lot of economists and writers because it came in much lower than expected. The consensus was for around 201,000 new jobs (February was +240,000), but the report came in at only 120,000. Immediately came the expected headlines: All of the above articles [...] Jobless insurance claims for the week of December 10 came in much better than expected at 366,000, 19,000 less than the week before: Back to back declines of 19,000 in initial jobless claims are signaling sudden strength in the labor market. Claims in the December 10 week came in at 366,000, far below expectations for [...] There was some better news on the unemployment situation today as the BLS reportedthat the unemployment rate had dropped to 8.6% from 9.0% in November. (See yesterday’s article, “Another ‘Unexpected’ Unemployment Report.”) The highlight numbers improved but if one digs a little deeper the overall jobs situation in America remains relatively unchanged. While the report [...] It is fitting to publish an article on Labor Day about unemployment. No doubt you already know that the market reacted badly (-2.5%) to last Friday’s unemployment numbers from the BLS. Here is what they reported: The number of unemployed persons, at 14.0 million, was essentially unchanged in August, and the unemployment rate held at [...] “My concern right now—my singular focus—is the American people. Getting the unemployed back on the job, lifting their wages.” Those words by President Obama reflect a certain desperation as his Administration and the Fed search for answers to the problems that vex politicians the most – the economy, specifically, jobs. Add on to this the [...] The fear brought about by today’s employment report is almost palpable. Reports express “surprise,” ”shock,” and “disappointment” at the news that employers only added a net 18,000 jobs in June, the slowest pace in nine months, and that the unemployment rate increased to 9.2%, the highest level since December 2010. This is not a surprise to [...] |
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