Friday, April 01, 2011
Double good news on the employment front
The morning's employment report, just across, includes some double good news (unless, I suppose, you are an unreconstructed partisan):
The Labor Department says the economy added 216,000 new jobs last month, offsetting layoffs a local governments. Factories, retailers, education, health care and an array of professional and financial services expanded payrolls.
Private employers, the backbone of the economy, drove nearly all of the gains. They added 230,000 jobs last month, on top of 240,000 in February. It was the first time private hiring topped 200,000 in back-to-back months since 2006 — more than a year before the recession started.
More private jobs (ahead of the "Street" consensus forecast of 206,000), fewer state and local government jobs (BLS press release here). Manufacturing jobs were up 17,000. What could be better? Fewer federal employees, but you cannot have everything.
7 Comments:
By 
, at
Fri Apr 01, 09:36:00 AM:
It is good news, especially for the young people just entering the labor market who bear no responsibility for the current economic chaos.
But there is no doubt that economic misery is one reason BHO's popularity is in the pits and that if the economy is in a sustained expansion in 2012, he will be very hard to unhorse.
Thus the news is a mixed blessing at best. Continued control in Washington by the progressives cannot be good for the economy in the long run.
By , at
Fri Apr 01, 10:10:00 AM:
It would be good if the "fewer federal employees" were the highly paid mandarins, but I fear they are more likely to be the low-paid ones who actually do useful work.
DC
By 
Georg Felis, at
Fri Apr 01, 10:52:00 AM:
I don't believe the report actually says "fewer federal employees", it refers to layoffs in state and local government. True, the Feds are presently on a hiring freeze for most agencies, but they have not yet begun to cut, and when they do, it is most probably not the high-paid SES feds that were freshly hired by Obama who will go first.
By D.E. Cloutier, at
Fri Apr 01, 11:16:00 AM:
From Stephen Moore, Wall Street Journal: "More Americans work for the government than work in construction, farming, fishing, forestry, manufacturing, mining and utilities combined."
Link:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704050204576219073867182108.html
By , at
Fri Apr 01, 11:40:00 AM:
I don't know what to make of the report. A CNBC talking head this morning pointed out that virtually all the private job creation in the new jobs report came from part time work and that the labor participation rate is still abnormally low for this point in a post recessionary cycle.
What I like about this report is that it could potentially give the Fed some cover for not renewing QE2 or even ending it early. It may also give Congressional Democrats some political cover for restructuring entitlements. More jobs, regardless of type, means more wages. That could lead to a firming up of real estate markets, and eventually to a recovery in consumer sentiment. But all of this good stuff is still in the future.
By , at
Fri Apr 01, 02:26:00 PM:
yeah, great news indeed - if it weren't for the fact that it's all a lie. they overweight birth & death stats; they overstate seasonal impact - wasn't it last month they blamed high numbers on "snow", because it *never* snows in february - they refuse to count the folks who've gotten so discouraged they've given up even trying to find work; and the U-6 stat - the one they used back in the '30's, the one that would indicate actual unemployment of 18% or so - is no longer published. too much hassle, or national security. something like that.
i think it was clinton and co. who figured it out: while it's a *felony* for the proles to lie to THEM, the government lying to the proles is the perfect crime. polispeak 2011: bad numbers are good, ponzi schemes can go on forever, we can print money out of thin air with no harm to the currency, better to ship a trillion bucks a year to OPEC than drill our own oil, why would we need an audit of ft. knox gold since we just did one only 50 years ago or so, war is peace.
if you think i'm wrong, cruise along a few strip malls someday and count the number of suddenly-closed businesses and restaurants, along with the ones that never even opened. that look like recovery to you?
By , at
Sat Apr 02, 06:36:00 PM:
Glad to learn of the new jobs, but I echo the last two anons. The unemployment rate is down not so much because (A) the numerator -- jobs -- went up a bit, as because (B) the denominator -- labor force participation -- went down more. The latter figure is very "fudgeable." Officially, 2.33 million Americans left the work force in the last year.
Clever, that. And who said Obama was inummerate? Oh yeah, me.
But you can't keep this game going and going without MSM playing along. I've got two years of comments here on unemployment, but won't repeat them. And I thought the Democrats cared about the downtrodden. Blow me.
It ties to a broader point: everything is A-OK as long as the Fed buys 70% of new Treasuries.
