Category: Employment
The analysis published under this category are as follows.Saturday, June 07, 2014
U.S. Civilian Labor Force, Unemployment Claims and Recession Risk / Economics / Employment
Courtesy of Doug Short: Every week I post an update on new unemployment claims shortly after the BLS report is made available. My focus is the four-week moving average of this rather volatile indicator. The financial press generally takes a fairly simplistic view of the latest number, and the market often reacts, for a few minutes or a few hours, to the initial estimate, which is always revised the following week.
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Friday, May 30, 2014
The U.S. Jobs Market is Gaining Traction / Economics / Employment
Claims Data
The Jobless claims data came out on Thursday and the trend is still in place and bodes well for the May Employment Report coming out next Friday as jobless claims fell sharply in the May 24 week, down 27,000 to 300,000. The 4-week average is down a significant 11,250 to a new recovery low of 311,500. Continuing claims are also down, falling 17,000 in data for the May 17 week to a new recovery low of 2.631 million. The 4-week average is down 33,000 to 2.655 million, also a recovery low. The unemployment rate for insured workers, also at a recovery low, came in at 2.0 percent. Notice a pattern here, new recovery low, new recovery low, and new recovery low.
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Monday, May 12, 2014
U.S. Employment - The Bed-Pan Economy / Economics / Employment
Data portrayed in the "Employment in Total Non-Farm" payroll (NFP) chart is used by central bankers and Wall Street strategists to assert economic strength. They either think the trend demonstrates morning in America, or, they know otherwise, but cannot fashion anything better.
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Sunday, May 04, 2014
Inside the Latest U.S. Jobs Report - Nonfarm Payrolls +288,000, Unemployment Rate Drops to 6.3%... / Economics / Employment
Initial Reaction
This month sported another amazing difference between the household survey and the payroll survey. The difference is so vast that looking at the numbers in isolation, one might think the results were from two different countries.
The headline number from the payroll survey beat expectations by a mile with 288,000 jobs, but beneath the surface, the household survey shows employment declined by 73,000.
Friday, May 02, 2014
Non-Farm Friday – U.S. Economy Is Not Working / Economics / Employment
When is a job not a job?
When the job sucks! We've all had crappy jobs in our lives – something we stay in to pay the bills but has no chance of being a career. As you can see from the chart on the right, a lot of career Government jobs have disappeared over the past 4 years – the kind of jobs that held advancement and retirement and health benefits.
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Wednesday, April 30, 2014
Technology and the Future of Jobs / Politics / Employment
Quite a stir occurred with the academic presentation, How Technology Is Destroying Jobs, by Brynjolfsson, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and his collaborator and coauthor Andrew McAfee. Both "have been arguing for the last year and a half that impressive advances in computer technology—from improved industrial robotics to automated translation services—are largely behind the sluggish employment growth of the last 10 to 15 years. Even more ominous for workers, the MIT academics foresee dismal prospects for many types of jobs as these powerful new technologies are increasingly adopted not only in manufacturing, clerical, and retail work but in professions such as law, financial services, education, and medicine."
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Friday, April 11, 2014
Limits to Employment Participation, and Societal Change / Politics / Employment
Raymond Matison writes: Ever since the calamitous financial meltdown in 2008, economists, market analysts, and media pundits persistently have envisioned an economic recovery, with an attendant increase in employment. However, critics maintain that such a recovery has never really occurred – prompting the pundit response that ours is a jobless recovery. Recently, President Obama promoted raising the minimum wage, and increasing payment for overtime work, as a means to help provide a higher wage for workers. This effort is good politics, but is not really a sound bureaucratic practice. The direction and future of unemployment is easy to see, as is the future employment participation rate, and the resulting direction of national income. Globally embedded, strategic economic trends are more powerful than presidential edict and the Federal Reserve Bank, and so economics will trump central planning. This article discusses a possible outcome of these trends.
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Saturday, February 08, 2014
Ominous Looking Picture in U.S. Healthcare and Education Jobs / Economics / Employment
Month in, month out, recession or not, there has been a strong uptick in the number of healthcare and education jobs. Until now. A few charts will show what I mean.
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Saturday, February 08, 2014
Chronic U.S. Employment Data Conflict: Establishment versus Household Surveys / Economics / Employment
Courtesy of Doug Short: Yesterday’s employment report again highlights an ongoing conflict between the jobs number in the Establishment Survey versus the roughly comparable data in the Household Survey. The Nonfarm Payrolls of the former came it at a disappointing 113K new jobs — well off the consensus forecasts for 185K or more. In contrast, the Household Survey reported a 638K increase in civilian employment age 16 and over, a number that gets trimmed to 616K after the BLS applies its “annual adjustment to the population controls.” Business Insider, not surprisingly, picked up on this oddity with the headline “By One Measure, This Was A Stupendous Jobs Report“.
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Friday, February 07, 2014
Non-Farm Friday – Is America Working? / Politics / Employment
I F'ing give up!!!
I try my best to make people aware of the ridiculous BS that goes on behind the scenes in the halls of power. I try to help people understand the way Big Business manipulates our Government, the same way the Banksters and Billionaires manipulate the markets. In short – we explore the dark side of Capitalism as having a realistic outlook helps us make better trading decisions.
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Sunday, February 02, 2014
Kill the Minimum Wage and Give Teens a Future / Politics / Employment
G. Joseph McLiney writes: Business owners know when a product is not selling, regardless of whether it’s apples or automobiles, they must lower the price.
Sometimes they’re forced to cut it severely and take a loss. Most reasonable people would contend that it’s a right of the owner to sell his product at whatever level the owner determines is in his best interest.
Friday, January 31, 2014
For Europe’s Youth, Minimum Wages Means Minimal Employment / Economics / Employment
Yesterday, in the wake of Tuesday’s State of the Union address, I poured cold water on President Obama’s claim that a hike in the minimum wage for federal contract workers would benefit the United States’ economy, pointing specifically to unemployment rates in the European Union. The data never lie: EU countries with minimum wage laws suffer higher rates of unemployment than those that do not mandate minimum wages. This point is even more pronounced when we look at rates of unemployment among the EU’s youth – defined as those younger than 25 years of age.
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Tuesday, January 14, 2014
Job Exclusion in America: What Caused Crash In the Labor Participation Rate? / Economics / Employment
Workers May Simply Be Giving Up
Zero Hedge notes that the number of Americans in the labor force has dropped to 1978 levels:
Read full article... Read full article...The civilian labor force … dropped from 155.3 million to 154.9 million, which means the labor participation rate just dropped to a fresh 35 year low, hitting levels not seen since 1978, at 62.8% down from 63.0%.
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
U.S. Nonfarm Payroll: A 50-Year Perspective / Economics / Employment
Courtesy of Doug Short: Friday’s employment report generated a surge of economic commentaries focused on the unexpectedly low 74K increase in Nonfarm Employment. Forecasters were looking a number closer to 200K. The blogosphere exploded with a range of opinions, the more dramatic of which spoke of the “huge miss” in new jobs.
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Sunday, January 12, 2014
Alleged U.S. Economic Recovery: No Jobs For Americans / Politics / Employment
The alleged recovery took a direct hit from Friday’s payroll jobs report. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the economy created 74,000 net new jobs in December.
Wholesale and retail trade accounted for 70,700 of these jobs or 95.5%. It is likely that the December wholesale and retail hires were temporary for the Christmas shopping season, which doesn’t seem to have been very exuberant, especially in light of Macy’s decision to close five stores and lay off 2,500 employees. It is a good bet that these December hires have already been laid off.
Sunday, January 12, 2014
Worst US Jobs Report in Three Years shatters Claims of Economic Recovery / Economics / Employment
Andre Damon writes: The US employment report for December, released Friday by the Labor Department, is a shattering exposure of the Obama administration’s claims that the US economy is in the midst of a recovery.
Just one day before, in announcing his “economic promise zones,” Obama had touted the so-called recovery, insisting, in the face of widespread disbelief among working people, that it was “real.” (See “Obama’s phony campaign against inequality”).
Saturday, January 11, 2014
U.S. Jobs Report Rained On New Fed Chair Yellen’s Honeymoon Period / Stock-Markets / Employment
Once again, the Labor Department’s monthly employment report lived up to its reputation of providing a surprise in one direction or the other.
The economy created only 74,000 new jobs in December compared to the consensus forecast for 200,000.
No one saw that coming, and the bull/bear debates over what it means have begun.
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Friday, January 10, 2014
Puzzling and Worrisome U.S. Jobs Data Says El-Erian / Politics / Employment
PIMCO CEO and co-CIO Mohamed El-Erian and Jason Furman, Chairman of the U.S. Council of Economic Advisors, appeared on Bloomberg Television today to discuss the jobs report. El-Erian told Betty Liu that today's jobs report is "somewhere between puzzling and worrisome."
Furman said, "This is a recovery that is continuing, there's going to be volatility from month to month, but you're seeing an economy that overall continues to strengthen."
Friday, January 10, 2014
U.S. Jobs Report – To Work or Not to Work, That is the Economic Question / Economics / Employment
We're waiting on the Jobs Report.
I don't think it's going to matter, whether or not we employed more or less than the expected 200,000 new people in December doesn't matter as much as what we had to pay them. Hourly earnings are, so far, up 0.2% for the year and the average work-week for "employed" people is 34.5 hours and that's GOOD news for Corporation, who are spending 15% less per worker than they did in 2005.
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Tuesday, December 10, 2013
Why Last Month’s Employment Numbers Should Worry Investors / Economics / Employment
Michael Lombardi writes:
Finally some good news in the U.S. jobs market?
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported Friday that, in November, 203,000 jobs were added to the U.S. jobs market. As a result, the unemployment rate went down to 7.0% from 7.3% in October. In addition to this, the BLS also revised the job numbers from October and September, saying 20,000 more jobs were created than previously reported. (Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, December 6, 2013.)