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Payrolls Up 243K, Jobless Rate Falls to 8.3%

On February 3, 2012, in Economy, by Tim

The Labor Department reported that nonfarm payrolls rose by 243,000 from December to January and the jobless rate fell from 8.5 percent to 8.3 percent. Private sector job gains of 257,000 were broad based with professional and business services leading the way and the unemployment rate fell to its lowest level since February 2009.

This data release included benchmark revisions for prior data, the net result being an upward revision of more than 250,000 to nonfarm payrolls in recent years. Payrolls for 2011 alone were revised upward by 180,000, from a gain of 1.64 million to 1.82 million.

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Federal vs. Private Sector Wages and Benefits

On January 31, 2012, in Economy, Our Culture, by Tim

The chart below from this study by the CBO (Congressional Budget Office) has had a good deal of discussion today (see here and here, though there are probably a lot more by now) and for good reason. It used to be that you took a public sector job knowing that the pay wasn’t so hot but the benefits were good. Now you get both!

The CBO apparently tried to make this an apples-to-apples comparison by controlling for the many variables that affect wages and benefits and it seems to make sense – unless you’re a doctor or lawyer, you’re better compensated working for the gubment.

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It Helps to Have Friends in High Places…

On January 31, 2012, in Economy, by Tim

Wow. That was one lucky unemployed engineer whose wife happened to be hanging out at Google+ when President Obama popped in and, to make a short story even shorter, promised to help find him a job. Details are in this MarketWatch story by Greg Robb.

President Barack Obama jumped into a new social media format on Monday and, as if he doesn’t have enough to do, ended up promising a worried spouse to help find a job for her unemployed husband.

Obama got the assignment during a live-streamed interview organized by Google Plus, the online search giant’s new social networking site.

The forum was designed to show off Google Plus’ new “Hangout” feature, where several friends can video chat together.

“Industry tells me they don’t have enough highly-skilled engineers. If your husband is in that field, we should get his resume and I will forward it,” Obama told Jennifer Weddel of Fort Worth, Texas.
…
Obama seemed surprised to hear that a semiconductor engineer was unemployed.“I will follow up on this,” Obama said.

Well, hopefully he’s a “highly-skilled” (and highly-degreed) engineer and not just one of those folks who call themselves an engineer because they once manned a technical support phone line for Microsoft or somesuch. I can’t imagine what it would be like to still be working my old cubicle job – it’s coming up on five years now since I left that behind and, as each year goes by, it seems as though it’s another three years in the past.

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“Forcibly Retired”

On January 24, 2012, in Economy, Our Culture, by Tim

Of all the new phrases heard in recent months, particularly at year-end when this sort of thing gets talked about a lot, the term “forcibly retired” to describe the plight of many jobless over the age of 50 caught my attention and it was the subject of this Guardian story.

The year 2011 will be remembered as the time when many ever-optimistic Americans began to give up hope. President John F Kennedy once said that a rising tide lifts all boats. But now, in the receding tide, Americans are beginning to see not only that those with taller masts had been lifted far higher, but also that many of the smaller boats had been dashed to pieces in their wake.

In that brief moment when the tide was indeed rising, millions of people believed that they might have a fair chance of realising the “American Dream”.

Now those dreams, too, are receding. By 2011, the savings of those who had lost their jobs in 2008 or 2009 had been spent. Unemployment cheques had run out. Headlines announcing new hiring – still not enough to keep pace with the number of those who would normally have entered the labour force – meant little to the 50-year-olds with little hope of ever holding a job again.

Indeed, middle-aged people who thought that they would be unemployed for a few months have now realised that they were, in fact, forcibly retired. Young people who graduated from college with tens of thousands of dollars of education debt cannot find any jobs at all.

It gets even more depressing the further you read, a point that should have been clear from the title – Many Americans gave up hope last year – 2012 will be worse – but, I couldn’t help think what it’s like for the millions of people my age who took a very different route through life, perhaps worsening their financial situation as a result of the housing bubble.

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Consumer Prices Flat, Jobless Claims Plunge

On January 19, 2012, in Economy, by Tim

The Labor Department reported that overall consumer prices were unchanged in December for the second month in a row as falling energy costs offset price increases elsewhere and, for the entire year of 2011, inflation came in at 3.0 percent.

Gasoline prices that fell 2.0 percent from November to December combined with household energy costs that were down 0.4 percent to push the energy index 1.3 percent lower, however, energy prices remain up 6.6 percent from a year ago with many analysts now predicting a sharp increase in pump prices this spring.

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About Those Eight Million “Lost” Jobs…

On January 18, 2012, in Economy, Housing, by Tim

Time and again you hear pundits say that what the U.S. experienced in the last decade was a terrible boom/bust cycle for the housing and credit markets. But then, almost in the same breath, they oftentimes say the nation must do whatever it can to get those eight million jobs back that were “lost” when the housing bubble burst.

But, does that make any sense?

Were those jobs really “lost” or should a good many of them have never existed in the first place?

Anyone with a rudimentary understanding of economics would conclude that, since many of the jobs created early in the decade were related to housing – construction workers, mortgage brokers, etc. – that they won’t be coming back anytime soon, at least not as long as the housing bubble remains “popped” (which is a pretty good bet over the next few years).

Of course, since the early-2000s housing boom was, effectively, the cure for the stock market boom that went bust at the turn of the century, one could argue that what the government and central bank need to do is create a new and different asset bubble.

But, so far, Fed Chief Ben Bernanke and crew seem to be shooting blanks.

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