Far Lower Than Expected
By Oak Leaf ~ June 5th, 2009 @ 6:34 am
Expected job losses for May;
the 500,000 expected by economists surveyed by MarketWatch.
Actual…….
in May as 345,000 payroll jobs were lost, the Labor Department reported Friday.
The icing;
Payrolls in March and April were revised higher by 82,000.
Just like your garden in the spring, there remains much dead brush, but the crocuses are definitely in bloom.
Should be another nice day in the markets.
Oh, do you credit the Obama Stimulus? That money has yet to hit the economy. This improvement has nothing to do with it.
Now do you admit the recovery is happening now or do you wait until September 2010?
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June 5th, 2009 at 6:49 am
From Frank Bass–Associated Press—
Because of the surge of hiring for the census, April unemployment only rose to 8.9 percent – a much slower increase than had been feared.
But consider these numbers:
_The 8.9 percent April unemployment rate was based on 13.7 million Americans out of work. But that number doesn’t include discouraged workers or people who gave up looking for work after four weeks. Add those 700,000 people, and the unemployment rate would be 9.3 percent.
_The official rate also doesn’t include “marginally attached workers,” or people who have looked for work in the past year but stopped searching in the past month because of barriers to employment such as child care, poor health or lack of transportation. Add those 1.4 million people, and the unemployment rate would be 10.1 percent.
_The official rate also doesn’t include “involuntary part-time workers,” or the 2 million people like Noel who took a part-time job because that’s all they could get, plus those whose work hours dropped below the full-time level. Once those 9 million workers are added to the unemployment mix, the rate would be 15.8 percent.
All told, nearly 25 million Americans were either unemployed, underemployed or had given up looking for a job in April.
(Your crocuses are dandelions!)
June 5th, 2009 at 6:56 am
Oak Leaf – Stop being a hypocrite. You did nothing but trash George Bush when employment was much better in America and now your excited because we only lost 345k jobs!?!??!
The recession is far from over. AND what’s worse, is that as we recover, oil and commodities will recover too making it all but certain that we will have inflation. To deal with inflation, interest rates go up. Raising interest rates halts the recovery.
I wish to God Polipundit would move your socially/economically ignorant views off this site. You should go work for Mike Huckabee or some other backwards Republican.
[So the big tent is not big enough for social conservatives? If I am so wrong concerning economics, there are millions of others investing billions of dollars that happen to agree. OL]
June 5th, 2009 at 7:02 am
Actually, Kudlow agrees with you “From Real Clear Markets” today:
“With clear signs of economic recovery on the horizon, some are now calling for an end to the unnecessary stimulus package and a de-TARPing across-the-board. Along with a big rise in the money supply, there’s been a rebound in commodities, a stabilization in housing, falling unemployment claims, a booming stock market, narrowing credit spreads, and rising ISM manufacturing reports. All this is telling us that additional stimulus is unnecessary”
Certainly not great at the moment, but positive. So, again, I ask: what are Obama’s policies going to do for the future? Poli could indeed be correct with the stagflation post earlier, because this is how Kudlow concludes:
“Here’s the moral of this story: Excessive Fed pump-priming and over-the-top federal spending is what matters, not the budget deficit. If we keep paying people not to work by piling on more transfer payments and government subsidies, economic growth will suffer mightily. And if the Fed keeps buying bonds issued by Uncle Sam, inflation will ratchet higher…”
[Thanks for the link, I had not seen it. Kudlow is saying what I have been saying for months. And yes, I agree that the Obama stimulus should be shut down because of what I have been saying in so many posts, the economy is on the mend!! So how do you shut it down? Pointing out that it is not needed is a good way. If thre are others, let me know. Anyone thinking they can shut off the Obama Stimulus by singing "Herbert Hoover Time" will never succeed because the public will not accept that. Oak Leaf]
June 5th, 2009 at 7:33 am
I think that Oak is here as part of a deal deal with msnbc for the ad they must be paying for on the home page. Think about it: A site with a conservative bent has the most liberal network advertising on it?
June 5th, 2009 at 7:53 am
Tom Coburn proposes ban on tobacco.
June 5th, 2009 at 8:00 am
Hey Poli, send the leaf to the compost heap please.
June 5th, 2009 at 8:02 am
What a shock–Oak Leaf the tool dutifully reading out the talking points and MSM spin.
I gues when you lose all self-respect and coherence there really is no bottom.
This very public and ongoing mental fragmentation would make an interesting dissertation topic for an enterprising cognitive psychology student.
June 5th, 2009 at 8:50 am
Good science article
June 5th, 2009 at 9:08 am
Ummm…
http://michaelscomments.wordpress.com/2009/06/05/the-may-unemployment-numbers-are-here-and-worse-than-predicted/
You want to rethink this smarm, or are you applying for a Huffington Post opening?
[Riddle me this, if my observation is incorrect, why is the data sending markets up? Had these numbers sent the market down and I came out as saying it was good news, you could have taken issue with that. OL]
June 5th, 2009 at 9:17 am
Oak Tree is part of the GOP that I have the least time for. Cry about the economy under President Bush, cheer lead worse problems under President Obama. Take Bush to task on immigration, remain silent on Obama. Bash gay marriage. Trash Sen. Burr over his valid comments on Ms. Duckworth.
Oak Tree is part of the problem and should be removed from this site. Polipundit’s site is DEAD in large part to misguided folk like Oak Tree.
June 5th, 2009 at 10:25 am
Oak,I trust yoiu will be donating to Specter’s campaign,as well as Kendrick Meeks in Florida.
June 5th, 2009 at 10:25 am
Poli, since September 2004 I have visted this site a few thousand times-you really are going to need to do something because this site is fading fast. Dump Oakleaf and try and get back the contibutors that left over the immigration policy disagreements.
June 5th, 2009 at 10:41 am
Oak,,
It would be great if things were just around the corner from A Miracle. But the GM and Chrysler dealer closings are just getting started. The State of California will be laying off at least 20,000 employees. What do the finances of NY, NJ and MI look like? How about the billions the State of CA can legally “borrow” from counties and cities? This borrowing will cause additional job losses on local levels. Many other states and localities have budgetary problems. They’ll solve those with a combination of reduced spending and tax increases. The green shoots some see now require rain from a recovering economy. It’s more likely to be a long, dry summer.
June 5th, 2009 at 10:46 am
Poli does not need to bring back amnesty lovers. Sheesh
Besides, Oak Leaf’s behavior and style reminds me of Drummond’s and that’s not a good thing.
Poli does need to get rid of Oak Leaf or this site will continue to degrade.
June 5th, 2009 at 10:56 am
The first poster, MI, gave a good analysis of what I read and see is going on. The unemployment numbers seem manipulated and airbrushed to be more optimistic than they really are.
Granted, the stock market keeps ticking up, but so does the crude oil prices. The fed chairman doesn’t sound too encouraged about the state of our economics either, as he is warning Obama about the by-products of just printing money and running up deficits to curb and contain our existing problems.
Most people I talk to, OL, don’t have the glee you do about the markets reconstituting themselves, or the economy showing signs of stabilization. And, I don’t think it is all because of the doom-and-gloom being produced in their heads. It is the state of affairs generated among the people at large which are created observations of non-recovery!
[Jan, if the economy is not on the mend why have markets staged such a magnificent recovery since March 8? How well have investors done that fell for the political slogan "Obama Bear Market?" And by the way, Larry Kudlow agrees with me. OL]
[Jan, one more thing to think of. 401k statements go out to millions in July. When they see year to date gains, what are they going to think? OL]
June 5th, 2009 at 11:58 am
Probing beneath the 9.4% headline number, we find that the Govt’s “alternative measures of labor utilization” number – the number which more closely tracks an actual bona fide count of jobs lost – shows the real unemployment rate for May is now 16.4%. Here’s the link:
Link
The birth/death model – that nefarious “plug” estimate that Government uses to “fix” the headline reported jobs loss number, added 220,000 jobs to private sector payrolls. If you really want to laugh, you can comb thru the data here:
Link
You’ll be amused to see the Govt “estimated” that 77,000 jobs were created by new leisure and hospitality enterprises and 43,000 jobs were added by new construction firms. Those estimates, of course, are completely contrary with the actual economic realities being reported by the very firms who are slashing jobs in those sectors.
George Orwell is smiling in his grave.
June 5th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
OL
I do not profess to be an economic guru. However, my financial instincts have served me well over the years, as has my common sense and reasoning powers.
That said, I don’t look at that current rise in the markets as necessarily an indication of “recovery.” Instead, I see it more as a burp of “hope,” very similar to the essence of Obama’s rhetoric when he is trying to concoct economic strategies for public consumption.
People are “hoping” that the worst is behind them, as the government is now saying as much, in soothing sound bites that come out ever so ofter. This is contrasting all the dire indicators they put out, prior to getting the bailouts and budget through, which ironically (a few short months ago) painted the picture that the “sky was falling ” any minute, unless Obama’s agenda wasn’t passed….and, no time to read it either!
Quick fixes do not equate to fix mends, in my book!
BTW Kudlow, like others, have been wrong before. And, yes my portfolio has gone up, but I am not placing much value on such an upward trend, except maybe it might be time to sell off some of the weaker stocks.
I still, though, think our approach to this problem has been superficial and wrong. And, therefore it is going to take more than a few tender shoots of so called “growth” to convince me otherwise.
June 5th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
As predictable as the sunrise.
June 5th, 2009 at 1:44 pm
Oak Leaf – the Obama adminstration got caught fudging the deficit numbers earlier this year. What makes you think that they are putting out real economic numbers this time?
Plus the Dow has changed it components by roughly 10% just recently since fall of last year. They got rid of the companies that was dragging it down. So it isn’t like that what the real numbes would say if the old companies were in there.
In defense of Oak Leaf, I thought that it was fair for him to back the auto bailout since the financial industry got an even bigger bailoout. The auto companies only got a fraction of what they were actually asking for so no wonder the bailout didn’t work. It would help if the stupid elected officials quit trying to regulate it out of busiiness. I find it hypocritical of GOP Senators complain about closing dealerships that sell 50 – 100 cars since they didn’t back the bailout to begin with.
To bring back the amnesty contributors would be an even bigger disaster for those that want to bring them back.
June 5th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
yersinia pestis
Phineas, the genus name is always capitalized!
June 5th, 2009 at 3:19 pm
Consumer borrowing fell $15.7 Billion in April.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_CONSUMER_CREDIT?SITE=MIDTN&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
June 5th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
“The Federal Reserve said Friday the April decline was the second largest ever in dollar terms following March’s drop of $16.6 billion. March’s decline originally was reported as $11.1 billion, which had been the most on records dating to 1943.”
It looks like the original numbers were off around 50% in March. Real nice of Obama’s administration to put out such accurate numbers the first time once again.
June 8th, 2009 at 10:14 am
What a loon. Does anyone believe unemployment is slowing? Its gone up at the fastest rate since records have started being kept. Obama has created a crisis and is busy drilling holes in the Titanic. Obama’s policies are making us the Weimar Republic.
Hope you enjoy the consequences.
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September 27th, 2009 at 6:01 pm
I think you made some good points in your post.