Another Fine Mess You've Gotten Us Into
Livejournal pictures seem to be down, so until such time as they are up, you will not get to see the traditional Calculated Risk graph of employment percentage unless you go here.
The unemployment rate went down, way down, from 9.0% to 8.6%. And the underemployment rate went way down too, from 16.2% to 15.6%. But the percentage of employed people isn't going up; in fact it's going down slightly. The labor force participation rate is at 64%, down from 64.1% in June, and way down from what used to be considered normal at 66% - 67%. So people are either retiring, or going to school, or just giving up. Such are the paradoxes of economics.
120,000 new jobs were estimated as created (140,000 by the private section, -20,000 by the public sector). And estimates of new jobs created in the previous two months were revised upwards.
The economy still has 6.2 million fewer jobs than at peak, unnormalized to population increases. Currently, 5.7 million Americans have been unemployed for more than six months. To politicians on paper, perhaps, things look like they are improving: unemployment has declined from a peak of 10.2% to 8.6%, after all. But
While numbers matter in election campaigns, it’s people who vote. And they vote based on their own personal experiences, rather than on macroeconomic statistics. And the fact is that if you’re a person in America, the likelihood that you have a job was unchanged this month...
-- Felix Salmon via Andrew Sullivan
And perhaps the worst statistic of all:
Inflation in the past 12 months has risen 3.6 percent; wages have risen 1.8 percent. Via Daily Kos
The unemployment rate went down, way down, from 9.0% to 8.6%. And the underemployment rate went way down too, from 16.2% to 15.6%. But the percentage of employed people isn't going up; in fact it's going down slightly. The labor force participation rate is at 64%, down from 64.1% in June, and way down from what used to be considered normal at 66% - 67%. So people are either retiring, or going to school, or just giving up. Such are the paradoxes of economics.
120,000 new jobs were estimated as created (140,000 by the private section, -20,000 by the public sector). And estimates of new jobs created in the previous two months were revised upwards.
The economy still has 6.2 million fewer jobs than at peak, unnormalized to population increases. Currently, 5.7 million Americans have been unemployed for more than six months. To politicians on paper, perhaps, things look like they are improving: unemployment has declined from a peak of 10.2% to 8.6%, after all. But
While numbers matter in election campaigns, it’s people who vote. And they vote based on their own personal experiences, rather than on macroeconomic statistics. And the fact is that if you’re a person in America, the likelihood that you have a job was unchanged this month...
-- Felix Salmon via Andrew Sullivan
And perhaps the worst statistic of all:
Inflation in the past 12 months has risen 3.6 percent; wages have risen 1.8 percent. Via Daily Kos