Friday, June 04, 2010
A short note on the jobs report
Stock futures turned down a few minutes ago after the Department of Labor reported disappointing employment growth, virtually all of it attributable to Census Workers made necessary because so many Americans do not open their freaking mail:
US employers added 431,000 jobs to nonfarm payrolls in May, but 411,000 of those were temporary census workers. The private sector added just 41,000 jobs: Manufacturing, temporary help and mining added jobs, while construction declined. That number was also well short of the more than 500,000 economists had expected.
The chatter on CNBC this morning noted that the "headline" average expectation was for 500,000 new jobs (as the pulled quotation reports), but that there was a wide disparity among the polled economists, ranging from around 100,000 (which would have implied a big reduction in private sector employment) to 750,000. It is obviously very hard to get a good short-term reading on an economy this large, but I would have expected very low private sector growth. My company is adding jobs with great reluctance -- we are still growing, but (thanks to the Obama administration's various initiatives) are staring at a much less certain future than a few years ago -- but we are definitely attracting stronger candidates than in times past. Some of that may be because we are a bigger and more secure employer, but it is also obvious that a lot of good people are out of work. Often for a long time.
4 Comments:
By 
, at
Fri Jun 04, 09:59:00 AM:
Joe Biden stated that the Obama/Biden stimulus plan would produce 500,000 jobs every month going forward!! Thanks Joe. Hope, transparency, change!! Obama/Biden 08
By , at
Fri Jun 04, 10:19:00 AM:
Many if not most of the new census employee are former ACORNer who will be employed, in future, by Obamacare as members of the death panels, responsible for rationing health care and shifting resources from evil white seniors to blessed new arrivals.
By 
MTF, at
Fri Jun 04, 01:28:00 PM:
By , at
Fri Jun 04, 03:36:00 PM:
We are noticing the same thing, on a smaller scale. It has always been hard to get really talented people to move to Podunk. We have had to make a few key hires in high skill business development areas and the reluctance to relocate to the greater Podunk metropolitan area no longer seems to be a factor.
