Tag: job growth

Need to Know 8/3/18

Job growth disappointed in July….Ok, not really.  That’s just the headline.  Actually, the news is pretty much all good in the jobs department.  The economy added 157,000 jobs in July and the unemployment rate dropped back below 4%.  We continue to be at full employment.  The underemployment rate also dropped from 7.8% to 7.5% which is the lowest it’s been since before the 2008 financial crisis.  So what’s the bad news?  Economists were expecting 193,000 jobs, so that’s a 41,000 miss.  Keep reading.

June’s jobs report was revised upward from the 213,000 originally reported to 248,000.  That’s a 35,000 increase over what was originally reported.  May was also revised up to 268,000.  Originally they had reported 244,000 jobs in May.  That’s another 24,000.  So we missed July by 41,000, but revised May and June up 59,000.  I’m feelin’ alright.

“US Economy added fewer jobs than expected in July” but more than previously thought in May and June

Speaking of unemployment, the unemployment rate for adult women is at 3.7%, for blacks 6.6% and for Hispanics a record low 4.5%.  The black unemployment rate had been at 7.9% at the beginning of the Trump economy and as high as 16.3% during the Obama administration.  And yet Democrats want to go back to the way it was before Trump.  They want to raise taxes back to where they were and bring back all the regulation that hurt the economy.  I think black Democrat voters need to ask themselves if they want to go back.

Unemployment for minorities drops again

“…relics from the past, frumpy and outdated”.  This was the description of the terms “feminism” and “empowerment” by none other than young Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.  You may not know this, but Ocasio-Cortez used to be an anti-tax capitalist and economics student.  This was of course before her publishing company went under in 2016, she tried to vote for the first time and found out she had been purged from the voter rolls for inactivity, she went full blown socialist, and joined up with Bernie Sanders.  Turns out in 2009 she had a right leaning blog too and described herself as an Adam Smith capitalist.  She also had the harsh words for feminism back then.  I’m sure she’d hate if anyone brought that up today, as she runs as the icon of the Democratic Socialist movement.

In 2009, Ocasio-Cortez trashed feminism, supported capitalism, and cooled on the fight for equality

What Makes Up 4.6% Unemployment

The last time the unemployment rate was 4.6% was August, 2007.    Bush was President and Democrats had been in control of Congress for only 8 months.  By October, 2009 unemployment had hit 10%.

However, that number has been steadily dropping since then, falling below 5% for the first time of Obama’s Presidency in January, 2016.  Today, after adding only 178,000 jobs, the rate fell to 4.6% again.  In fact, monthly job growth has been anemic for 8 years while the unemployment rate has steadily fallen.

The reason economists have been cautious is that the drop in the unemployment rate has less to do with job growth and more to do with how many have given up looking for a job. The U-6 unemployment rate is only a measure of the percentage of workers in the market who are employed.  It doesn’t count anyone who is not working and not actively seeking work.

Since January, 2009 the number of employed workers in the United States has increased 11 million.  That is an increase of 8% over 8 years.  On the other hand, about 15 million have dropped out of the workforce since January, 2009.  That’s nearly a 19% increase in the permanently unemployed over 8 years.  4 million more have dropped out of the workforce over the last 8 years than have been hired.

But we are still growing, so that’s good, right?  New hires rose 178,000 in November. On average, they’ve grown about 135,000 a month under Obama. The economy needs a minimum of 145,000 new jobs a month just to keep up with population growth. On the other hand, an average of about 155,000 have dropped out of the labor force each month. No credible economist is cheering 4.6% unemployment this time because it only represents long term economic failure.