January 09, 2004
The 'jobless recovery' gets even more jobless.
New statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the US economy created 1000 jobs during December. No, that's not a typo. There were only 1000 jobs created in the entire country.
Despite this, the 'seasonal adjustments' that the BLS makes to the jobless figures resulted in a drop in the unemployment rate, to 5.7 percent. The reason for this drop is disturbing:
The 0.2 percentage point drop in the jobless rate occurred because fewer people were looking for work, the Labor Department said. More than 300,000 people gave up their search for jobs and dropped out of the pool of available workers.
"The (unemployment) rate is going down, but it is going down for the wrong reasons," said Bill Cheney, chief economist at John Hancock Financial Services "That doesn't make you feel really good about the state of the jobs market."
Of course, the prez took a different view of the new figures:
"Unemployment dropped today to 5.7 percent. That's not good enough. We want more people still working," the president said. "But nevertheless, it is a positive sign that the economy is getting better."
We have to wonder what planet Dubya lives on.
Via CBS News.
Posted by Magpie at January 9, 2004 03:43 PM | TrackBackThe 0.2 percentage point drop in the jobless rate occurred because fewer people were looking for work, the Labor Department said. More than 300,000 people gave up their search for jobs and dropped out of the pool of available workers.
What that really means, in large part, is that Congress failed to extend unemployment benefits before they adjourned in December. If you aren't receiving benefits, you aren't unemployed.
Posted by: N in Seattle on January 9, 2004 04:04 PMRe: "No, that's not a typo. There were only 1000 jobs created in the entire country."
After 6 months of unemployment, I began work at a new job in December. Which means that I constitute 1/10 of 1% of the 1000 jobs created! Wow!
Congratulations, Wayne!
Perhaps the nation's largest single contributor to the December job creation statistics was the Dean campaign. According to a comment I saw on their blog, DFA added about 100 paid staffers last month.
Posted by: N in Seattle on January 10, 2004 01:30 AM