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April Jobs Report: 211,000 Jobs Added, Unemployment At 4.4 Percent (npr.org)
An anonymous reader shares an NPR report: The U.S. economy added 211,000 jobs to nonfarm payrolls in April, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says. Both the unemployment rate, at 4.4 percent, and the number of unemployed persons, at 7.1 million, saw only incremental changes in April. The new data follow disappointing results from March, when the Labor Department initially said less than 100,000 jobs were created. In April, some of the biggest job gains came in leisure and hospitality, health care and social assistance, financial activities, and mining, the agency says.
https://www.bls.gov/news.relea...
Yes, unemployment is open to interpretation and yes, there are different ways of presenting the data. The "usual" figure is U4, but for others U6 might be more meaningful. I think U6 is probably a better estimate, but that's just my opinion. What ISN'T my opinion is that no matter what number you use, unemployment is creeping downwards.
We really need to stop with this U3 garbage. It is a meaningless number. It was contrived for the sole purpose of LYING to the American People about the health of the economy. Here are some economical chickens that Trump is going to bring home to roost:
#1 It is being projected that there will be more than 8,000 retail store closings in the United States in 2017, and that will far surpass the former peak of 6,163 store closings that we witnessed in 2008.
#2 The number of retailers that have filed for bankruptcy so far in 2017 has already surpassed the total for the entire year of 2016.
#3 So far in 2017, an astounding 49 million square feet of retail space has closed down in the United States. At this pace, approximately 147 million square feet will be shut down by the end of the year, and that would absolutely shatter the all-time record of 115 million square feet that was shut down in 2001.
#4 The Atlanta Fedâ(TM)s GDP Now model is projecting that U.S. economic growth for the first quarter of 2017 will come in at just 0.5 percent. If that pace continues for the rest of the year, it will be the worst year for U.S. economic growth since the last recession.
#5 Restaurants are experiencing their toughest stretch since the last recession, and in March things continued to get even worse: Foot traffic at chain restaurants in March dropped 3.4% from a year ago. Menu prices couldn't be increased enough to make up for it, and same-store sales fell 1.1%. The least bad region was the Western US, where sales inched up 1.2% year-over-year and traffic fell only 1.7%, according to TDn2K's Restaurant Industry Snapshot. The worst was the NY-NJ Region, where sales plunged 4.6% and foot traffic 6.3%.
This comes after a dismal February, when foot traffic had dropped 5% year-over-year, and same-store sales 3.7%.
#6 In March, U.S. factory output declined at the fastest pace in more than two years.
#7 According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, not a single person is employed in nearly one out of every five U.S. families.
#8 U.S. government revenues just suffered their biggest drop since the last recession.
#9 Nearly all of the big automakers reported disappointing sales in March, and dealer inventories have now risen to the highest level that we have seen since the last recession.
#10 Used vehicle prices are absolutely crashing, and subprime auto loan losses have shot up to the highest level that we have seen since the last recession.
#11 At this point, most U.S. consumers are completely tapped out. According to CNN, almost six out of every ten Americans do not have enough money saved to even cover a $500 emergency expense.
The US Economy is NOT ok
Too many people work without paying taxes, therefore count as unemployed or they are too comfortable living with mommy, daddy or sugar daddy.
You got too many alternative facts mixed up in that statement. Just focus on one. No need to do three at a time.
But the same people who want them to lose their coal mining jobs also want to make sure there's no opportunity for them in these other industries
Hillary offered a job training program assistance. When George W. signed a similar law after 9/11, I used the $3,000 tax credit to go back to school, get out of my dead end video game testing job and into my career in IT Support.
The most common remedy the left seems to offer them is for them to hurry up and die.
That's the Republican healthcare bill.
I wonder why they listen to someone like Trump instead?
Trump promised to bring back coal mining jobs. Which he has no plans to do.
The we don't give a shit about unemployed miners attitude isn't really working out as a political strategy.
Speaking hard truths is "giving a shit". The people that really don't give a shit are the politicians exploiting these people for votes by promising to bring back coal mining.
"Job training" isn't the answer either. Appalachia is a terrible place to locate any business other than resource extraction. The infrastructure is terrible, the schools are substandard, the people are close minded and uneducated.
By far the best solution is to give these people some financial assistance to pack up and move somewhere else.
I grew up in a coal mining county in eastern Tennessee. My grandfather died of black lung disease. I have plenty of relatives back there collecting welfare and living in trailer parks. My ticket out was a bus ride to Parris Island after enlisting in the Marines on my 18th birthday. I have other friends and relatives that left, and they are ALL doing far better than those who stayed.
It's much worse than that. The unemployment rate is a jiggered number. What's significant is the labor force participation rate. (I'm not sure what it's currently called.) The way unemployment is figured you can have been out of work for a year and not be counted. And if you see the labor force participation rate, try to determine what population that the figure is based on. And who gets counted as participating. (E.g., if an H1B worker is counted as participating, is he also counted as a part of the population used in calculating the rate.)
Governments play all sorts of tricks with their economic numbers to make them look good. Even when the numbers are honest you can't trust them without looking at the details.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
This is still mostly Obama economic territory, but that's shifting, and will be affected by the recent budget deal. By October, it will be pretty squarely in Trump's court, especially if a new budget can get passed before then. Presidents don't have a lot of ability to affect the economy upward, but they can do a lot to send it downward.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
It's the lowest unemployment rate since before the Great Recession. That's pretty exceptional in my book.
That might be exceptional, but it isn't true. It is the lowest level in a decade. Here's a graph of the unemployment rate since the 1960s:
http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/560e8af3ecad046c04212250-1200-900/sept-2015-unemployment-rate.png
where you can see the rate dropped below 4.4% many times.
Here's a graph (from six months ago) looking just at the last 15 years:
http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/560e8af3ecad046c04212250-1200-900/sept-2015-unemployment-rate.png
and you can see the rate was below 4.4% right until the 2008 economic crash hit. You can also see that 4.4% is nothing exceptional, simply the continuation of the trend.
I wasn't a big Trump supporter, but you have to admit the guy is coming thorough 'bigly.'
Since he's only been in office a hundred days, it's unlikely that any economic effects of his presidency have hit yet. From the graph, I'd say that this unemployment news is "more of the same, nothing exceptional."
It's not a "trick"... it's exactly how Unemployment is calculated, always: 100 * (# people with jobs) / (# people in the workforce). This is not a number that requires you to look at the details at all, just the most basic understanding of what the hell it actually means.
To be in the "workforce" you have to be actively looking for a job (it's not just "after a year"). If you spend 3 years actively looking for a job but remain without one, you will still be counted as "in the workforce". If we didn't do this, then "Unemployment" would be calculated much higher than it really is, with all the children, people in school, stay-at-home parents, retirees, etc. who shouldn't be counted as part of the workforce.
The Labor Participation Rate is a different number, with a different meaning, and is not a "replacement" or "better version" of Unemployment. In the same way GNP is not meant to "replace" GDP, they represent different (albeit related) things.
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
You're partially right (you can have been out of work for ten years but if you were actively looking, you're considered to be unemployed), but underemployment numbers have been declining, too. The U-6 number is down to 8.6%, the lowest it's been since November 2007. The lowest it's been on record (going back to 1994) is October 2000, when it reached 6.8%. The unemployment rate (U-3) was 3.9% at that time; most economists consider employment around the 4%-4.5% range to be full without overheating the economy, and the Fed had raised interest rates by about a percentage point since mid-1999.
Note: U-6 is defined as "Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force." Basically, everyone willing to work full time but not getting it. (Full time doesn't mean a single full-time job. If you work two part-time jobs that add up to 35 or more hours per week, you're considered a full-time worker.)
The LFPR is pretty clear on who is involved, though you need to understand a few definitions.
I snipped the definitions slightly for space, but they're all at this BLS link if you need more details.
So the H1B worker is counted as participating, as is the illegal immigrant construction worker. It's all persons, not all citizens or all permanent residents. If you're 93 and retired, but living on your own and not looking for and not wanting a job, you're part of the civilian noninstitutional population, so you factor into the LFPR, but not into the unemployment or underemployment rates. If you're 15 and working a part-time job, you're not counted in the LFPR or employment or unemployment status.
The LFPR, though, has a great deal of downward pressure on it from retiring Baby Boomers. That will level out eventually, and the LFPR may begin to climb as they die off, but the highest that it ever got was 67.3% in early 2000. Don't expect to see something above 70% unless there's a mass die-off of old people.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.