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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.
So, the unemployment news is "nothing particularly exceptional happened in the jobs and unemployment statistics this month, according to the Labor department".
What about the 92 million unemployed Americans who are waiting for new coal mining jobs?
Is this real numbers? Can these numbers be trusted? Is the administration inflating the numbers? Ask your self this before sharing. last month they where weaker lots of data pointing to even weaker numbers ahead. Now suddenly its great numbers?
No (see "Statistics" 101), No, and Yes. This is not something new or unique either. The Obama, Bush, Clinton, Bush, etc.. numbers were all bullshit too. The only difference is in how much bullshit goes into the published statistics, and of course who's party holds power when the numbers get published.
One thing for sure though, is that there is more market optimism today than we have seen since the Reagan era. Optimism does not always translate to mass scale positive results, but my stocks sure are doing great.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
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.
U3 numbers are complete bullshit. Everybody who is paying even the slightest attention knows they are complete bullshit. They are so full of bullshit that they're not even useful for comparative / trending purposes. They have literally only two forms of utility: political propaganda, and targets of mockery. It doesn't matter if it's a Democratic administration or a Republican administration. Even U6 is extremely sketchy: surveys multiplied by guesswork.
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So happy to see these numbers. President Trump is a truly worthy successor to Lincoln and Reagan. Keep up the good work, sir!
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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.
is Obama got the blame for post-Bush recession (which to be fair was caused by deregulation started by Clinton) and now Trump gets the credit for Obama's work fixing things.
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U-6 is not "the true unemployment"; it's a measure including people who are underemployed, who are unable to get jobs because of their economic situation (e.g. single mothers who couldn't take a job if you begged them, because they can't afford daycare and you're not willing to pay enough), and so forth.
Each unemployment measure has its uses. We're used to U-3 largely because it tells us how much competition is out there for a job of any sort; U-4 tells you how many people are out there actually unemployed, though. Underemployment (included in U-6) is another important statistic nobody looks at. The U-5 addition (people who can't take a job even if offered one, but wish they could) is fairly-unimportant in terms of unemployment measures.
U-6 still doesn't tell you about a few interesting things, like how much employment is actually available versus your participating labor force. Unemployment includes the people in U-5 because those people are interested in working, thus are part of the participating labor force. Because of that, U-6 plus employed persons equates to all participating labor force. Thing is, U-6 includes underemployment; that doesn't tell you about whole jobs.
If you have three underemployed working 20, 15, and 23 hours per week, you have 58 hours or 1.45 whole jobs between three people. A measure of whole jobs is useful; also useful is a measure of whole jobs counting part-time employment of people who want to be part-time employed as "whole jobs" (that is: if a working spouse has a 12-hour weekend job, that's a whole job because said person neither needs nor desires 40 hours of employment).
So that gives you three whole-employment indicators we don't track: WE-1 (number of whole jobs, including all full-time workers plus the fraction of full-time hours worked by hourly-paid part-time workers); WE-2 (WE-1, plus part-time workers not seeking full-time jobs are counted as whole jobs instead of partial jobs); and WE-3 (WE-2, plus full-time workers and workers with multiple jobs exceeding full-time hours have their total hours counted and fractioned, such that a person working 60 hours per week counts as 1.5 whole jobs).
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For a while the official unemployment rate didn't budge at all. If you read the monthly reports carefully, more and more people got hired each month. That should have driven down the unemployment rate further. It didn't. Looks like the slack of unemployed people got absorbed into the economy last year. Now that "full employment" is a talking point, expect inflation to become a hot topic as employers struggle to find workers.
Is this real numbers? Can these numbers be trusted?
Is the administration inflating the numbers?
You mean like every administration ever? The unemployment rate is meaningless, the number that matter is The labor force participation rate.
Unemployment rate is just how many people the Government has to pay unemployment benefits to, labor force participation rate is how many people are working. Some would argue that GDP PCap, Gross Domestic Product Per Capita, is important ($56,115.70 in the US).
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U-4 is published. Even U-6 is only 8.6%, and it counts people who stopped looking.
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I didn't realize cloning has become so effective....
Now the only question is can we make enough black turtlenecks to keep up with demand?
But remember, if this was Obama, the answer would be exactly the opposite ... yes, yes and no.
You see, Obama would NEVER do such a thing ... ever.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
'As new discouraged workers move regularly from U.3 into U.6 unemployment accounting, those who have been “discouraged” for one year also are dropped from the U.6 measure'.
http://www.shadowstats.com/art...
So there are many people out there who are not counted, even in U.6.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Odd that this comment, and my reply to it, have been moderated "Flamebait" and "Troll" respectively.
Apparently anyone who questions the official number can expect to be ruled out of order. And this isn't even Congress or the White House - it's Slashdot, where I thought people were capable of independent thought and (where warranted) scepticism.
Maybe the US government is scrupulously truthful, after all. Who knew?
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
So, discouraged workers count mothers who quit their jobs and then become stay-at-home mothers because their husband raises enough money, even though these people are no longer interested in work; but stops counting them after one year, and appropriately tallies them as not in the labor force?
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Creating 200k jobs is easy. Destroy 100k jobs that can actually sustain a family and create two separate jobs that can't. Presto job creation. Now pit the people who need those pittance jobs to make ends meet against each other and watch the race to the bottom unfold.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
From what I know about the unemployment number's survey process and recent trends in employment, I wonder how relevant it actually is. The government only surveys 6,000 people out of 300+ million, and defines employment as any job.
These days, there are a lot of underemployed people, people stringing together gig economy jobs, etc. Also, in the past it was pretty much assumed that unemployment was a temporary thing -- the factory laid people off during slow times and hired them back, or there were a ton of places to jump to. Now, it seems like full time work is getting harder to find and keep.
Obviously, improvement is good. You personally only need one full time job, and the closer we get to full employment, the further the pendulum swings back over into the worker side of the spectrum. But certainly, there are a lot of people that the official employment statistics don't capture.
Unfortunately, predicting that people will forget is pretty much an accurate prediction, unless it's about sex.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
By lowering the corporate tax rate the US becomes a tax haven where companies will put their global corporate offices, employ locals, and ultimately pay their corporate taxes.
This is the theory. It remains to be seen what actually will happen.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
I'm not saying the enemies of Trump rely entirely on name calling ... but they kind of argue like they are.
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."
In light of the fact that employees at the BLS are overwhelmingly Democrats, that makes total sense.
Those numbers means nothing without knowing how many displaced were able to re-enter versus how many went to new entrants.
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I know a lot of people getting laid off from my previous employers too. Some of us are still unemployed. I am almost on my fifth month. It's difficult/hard to find local and remote jobs with my disabilities and experiences. :(
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Problem is, you can't tell the difference between a woman who has no interest in being employed because she wants to be a stay-at-home mother and a woman who can't get a decent job and so is a stay-at-home mother. Someone who can't get a good job might go to some sort of school instead, and hope to be better prepared when the economy picks up. If I were to lose my job today, I'd just call myself retired, although I currently intend to keep working for a while.
If we had a count of people who'd be working if they could find a decent job (and we'd have to define "decent job" here), we could get a more accurate unemployment rate.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Right. No Democrat straw man would say anything bad about Obama. Protoplasmic Democrats are a bit more varied.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
You do realize that some people retire early, go to school, or become stay-at-home parents because they can't find a job, right?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
and everyone will rally behind him like they did Bush. The press has been touching on the subject (somewhat fearfully) that he's basically a sucker for praise and adoration and the only time he's gotten that so far is when he bombed the shit out of Syria & Afghanistan. Right now I'm guessing he's choosing between North Korea & Syria. NK is easier but Syria has oil so it's a tough call.
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