More Good Employment News

[Lord Jim]

December jobs report: Unemployment falls to 9.4%

By Annalyn Censky, staff reporterJanuary 7, 2011: 8:42 AM ET

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- The U.S. economy added 103,000 jobs in December, and the unemployment rate unexpectedly fell to 9.4% -- its lowest level since May 2009, the Labor Department reported Friday.

Businesses were hiring, adding 113,000 jobs to payrolls in the month. But the government continued to shed staff, cutting 10,000 workers from payrolls.


But the two previous months were better than originally thought. November was revised up to 71,000, while October was revised to 210,000, adding a combined 70,000 jobs to the 2010 total.

More:

http://money.cnn.com/2011/01/07/news/ec ... bs_report/

[Gob]

Now you are ignoring all the facts there Jim, and just looking at the positives. Truth is things are still much worse than ever. And who is profiting out of all these jobs, the MOTU!!

(I thought I'd best keep up tradition.)

[Gob]

You're in good company Jim!!

President Obama has cautiously hailed a "clear" trend of job growth, and called on businesses to boost investment.

His remarks at a window manufacturer came as the US unemployment rate dropped 0.4 points to 9.4% in December, the largest one-month drop since 1998.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12140721

[dales]

A little rain must fall.....

Payrolls confirm Fed's bleak view of job market
Bob Willis, Bloomberg News

Bloomberg January 7, 2011 04:00 AM Friday, January 7, 2011

Employers in the United States added fewer jobs than forecast in December, confirming Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's view that it will take years for the labor market to heal.

Payrolls increased 103,000, compared with the median forecast of 150,000 in a Bloomberg News survey, Labor Department figures showed Friday in Washington. Employment the previous two months rose more than initially estimated. The jobless rate fell to 9.4 percent, partly reflecting a shrinking workforce.

Faster job growth is needed to keep consumers spending and ensure a self-sustaining recovery in the world's largest economy. Bernanke, in Senate testimony an hour after the report, said it may take four or five years for the labor market to "normalize fully," indicating no change in the Fed's plans to pump $600 billion into the financial system.

"We're moving in the right direction, but we won't get out of the hole anytime soon," said Jay Feldman, an economist at Credit Suisse in New York. "For the Fed, it means steady as she goes."

Estimates for the change in payrolls among 78 economists surveyed by Bloomberg ranged from 98,000 to 240,000. The median climbed from 140,000 at the start of the week after projections from ADP Employer Services showed companies boosted employment by 297,000 workers last month.

The unemployment rate was forecast to fall to 9.7 percent from 9.8 percent, according to the median prediction of 73 economists. Estimates ranged from 9.5 percent to 9.9 percent.

"It's about what we expected," Bernanke said of Friday's Labor Department data in response to questions from the Senate Budget Committee. "If we continue at this pace, we're not going to see sustained declines in the unemployment rate."



Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... z1AQBJueNT

[rubato]

IIR it takes about 150,000 new jobs a month for employment to stay flat because people keep entering the workforce every month as they finish school.

The other reason that the unemployment number goes down is that people quit looking for work and are taken out of the statistical database.

You figure it out.

yrs,
rubato

[Gob]

This is interesting..

Deep inside the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the $600 billion man is fast at work.

In a spare, government-issue office in Lower Manhattan, behind a bank of cubicles and a scruffy copy machine, Josh Frost and a band of market specialists are making the Fed’s ultimate Wall Street trade. They are buying hundreds of billions of dollars of United States Treasury securities on the open market in a controversial attempt to keep interest rates low and, in the process, revive the economy.

To critics, it is a Hail Mary play — an admission that the economy’s persistent weakness has all but exhausted the central bank’s powers and tested the limits of its policy making. Around the world, some warn the unusual strategy will weaken the dollar and lead to crippling inflation.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/41019109

[rubato]

This is interesting..

Deep inside the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the $600 billion man is fast at work.

In a spare, government-issue office in Lower Manhattan, behind a bank of cubicles and a scruffy copy machine, Josh Frost and a band of market specialists are making the Fed’s ultimate Wall Street trade. They are buying hundreds of billions of dollars of United States Treasury securities on the open market in a controversial attempt to keep interest rates low and, in the process, revive the economy.

To critics, it is a Hail Mary play — an admission that the economy’s persistent weakness has all but exhausted the central bank’s powers and tested the limits of its policy making. Around the world, some warn the unusual strategy will weaken the dollar and lead to crippling inflation.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/41019109

And some have pointed out that even Milton Friedman endorsed quantitative easing in this situation (what they are doing).


http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2010/11/m ... on-qe.html


yrs,
rubato