The October jobs report is out, and while unemployment went down a notch to 9.0 percent, the jobs market is still pretty damn weak.
The economy added just 80,000 jobs in October, continuing a pattern of weak job growth. Upward revisions to the growth numbers for the prior two months brought the average for the last three months to 114,000, slightly higher than the 90,000 needed to keep pace with the growth of the labor force. At this pace it would take more than 33 years to return to the pre-recession rates of unemployment.
At least, we think the economy added just 80,000 jobs in October. It seems that every month the previous couple months’ reports keep getting revised upwards, so perhaps jobs growth is a tad more robust than reported.
And of course, the October jobs report would look substantially stronger if not for the 22,000 jobs state and local governments shed last month, but of course, public employees don’t count as real Americans, so fuck ’em. Besides, Republicans are doing important things like enshrining “In God We Trust” as a national motto, so I’m sure everything will turn around shortly.
Don’t forget the National Baseball Hall of Fame Commemorative Coin Act. That’ll put some people to work.
I still don’t understand why more or less jobs is something to get excited about without knowing the quality of the jobs being created, especially vs. the quality of the jobs that are being lost. I guess that’s part of your point about 22,000 government workers being cut last month?
I thought the people who compile these jobs reports were all laid off a couple months ago.
Wait until all the local and state austerity measures really hit in the spring. It’s gonna get worse before it get’s better.
(Unless Europe can some how produce “good news” – maybe get the Chinese to bail out Italy and let Greece leave the EU gracefully.)
Plus. I had to lay off an employee this week.
Man. I have never felt this bleak. I guess we’ll have to hire “interns” like The Stranger.
and there is absolutely no one to vote for who will do anything different than what we are seeing now. that’s american democracy.
US small business created 225,000 before you add the cuts in manufacturing, govt, and Big Business layoffs and outsourcing.
Think about what that means …
I guess if the bicycle messenger business pick up #occupy* will pretty much decamp and head back to high hourly wages and lounging at Zeitgeist.
@6: “Again, from July, 1999, to the present time, there has been ZERO net new job creation.
In other words, the sum total of job losses is greater than any such jobs creation.”
Um, NO. If there has been zero net new job creation, the sum total of job losses would be EQUAL to the sum total of job creation. sgt_doom cannot into mathematics.
@6 What the liberal populace don’t seem to understand is that you don’t have a choice about free trade. No choice. When you run massive decifits, and have to engage overseas markets – you have to play by someone else’s rules. And they aren’t going to buy our debt unless we open our markets to compete. The only choice you have is to cut spending, to lessen debt-dependency.
The economy of today isn’t good or bad. It’s just a market. And forever will be a market, forcing us to compete. When you perpetuate a shitty public education system, you won’t be able to compete. There are literally hundreds of thousands of great jobs in America today, but nobody to fill them because they lack the education and skills required. Yet the Dems keep defending the anti-choice public school model that has evolved only slightly since our society was agrarian. We have a poverty of intelligence, which is leading to economic poverty – and no form of government can protect you from competitiveness, for long.
When you tax and regulate capital, it will go find other markets. And when all Obama can muster in 3 years of domestic policy is bunch of haphazard political programs, and not a coherent economic strategy, then why are you surprised that companies sit on their cash reserves and wait to see what happens?
Would the notion of the “Atlases” shrugging really surprise you? Do you think it isn’t happening? And do you think government could do anything to stop it, long-term?
If we just ended tax giveaways to Big Business today, and ended all deductiblility of all exec/CEO pay/bonus/options, the amount of outsourcing is estimated to shrink to less than 40 percent of what it is today.
Which would have meant 150,000 US jobs created in October, instead of 80,000 jobs.
Think about it.
Tax exemptions – or tax giveaways – promote job outsourcing and capital investment outsourcing. (not safety capital though, since that flees to US treasuries)
End those.
Fix the root problem.
Under what economic principle does disincentive (taxation) result in attraction (jobs), when the net benefit (infrastructure, educated workforce) isn’t accrued by the business?
@ 10,
you don’t have a choice about free trade…
Of course we do. Germany, for example, has the world’s highest wages for working people, a strong public safety net, and a robust export-driven industrial economy that’s the envy of the rest of the first world. Japan slaps massive tariffs on imported goods like cars in order to strengthen the wages and buying power of its domestic workers and economy.
It’s the good ole’ USA that’s turned globalization into a zero-sum game of middle-class implosion, since we’re in the asset-stripping phase of our imperial collapse.
@5: when they had the congress in 09-10, the democrats did something different than what we’re seeing now. weak and watered-down, but it wasn’t nothing. “they’re all the same” is how the GOP likes it.
Yes. And please note — unlike us — Germany has an astounding education system, with virtually no federal government involvement, and five separate, rigorous courses of study based on student assessment and localized school choice opportunities, that prepares students for higher-wage technical work.
Yet the Dems and the teachers unions fight every single notion of that model.
And so, in the study of science, math, computer science, and engineering, Germany also graduates nearly twice as many students compared to the US. (28.1% v 15%).
Conversely, our advanced studies include graphic design, fashion merchandizing, communications, film, sociology, political science and law. And it shows. In the market.
Then – Germany’s cume debt is scaled back to 71% of GDP and 1.5% excess of annual revenues. In the US over 110% of GDP – and $1,400,000,000,000 this year alone.
When you manage your budget, you get to call the shots about free trade or not.
Yes, Japan slaps massive tariffs on imports. And their economy has been virtually stagnant for nearly 20 years, virtually abandoning their youth. Or weren’t you aware of that? “Kakusa shakai” as they say.
The wonderful thing about the Left (and its inactivist agents in OS) is their fatalism about the alleged “Empire.” But it hasn’t quite occurred to them what the top 20% in education, income and social capital will do in response to their trashing of our system in the rule of law, civility, property rights, etc. They may very well be stuck with themselves: under-education, over-Twittered, self-aggrandizing and un-industrious whiners.
And then who’ll pay for your art supplies and espresso habit. German engineers?