Let the good times roll again?

[OzzyKP]

Originally posted by DanS
Michigan is 2nd worst in unemployment at 6.6%. The worst is Mississippi at 6.7%.

Weird. I hear New Orleans just can't find enough people to do all the work that needs done.

[Dinner]

What the labor participation rate? Has the tighter labor market convinced more people to go out and get jobs?

[MRT144]

Originally posted by DanS
Michigan is 2nd worst in unemployment at 6.6%. The worst is Mississippi at 6.7%.

thats not actually that bad.

[Vanguard]

NM

[trev]

Not bad, you unemployment rate about the same as Australia, so your keeping up with us there, just start running a budget surplus like ours and you will be as good overall for the long term.

[Frozzy]

Meh, NZ has a 3.7% unemployment rate and a $8.5bn surplus.

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by Frozzy
Meh, NZ has a 3.7% unemployment rate and a $8.5bn surplus.

And remember, U.S. unemployment numbers do not include those who are incarcerated -- which is the highest per capita in the world.

[DRoseDARs]

http://www.economicpolicymonitor.com/

About Those Poof, Pow, Bam Employment Numbers

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released data today that showed job creation exceeded forecasts and the unemployment rate unexpectedly declined in March. The number of people on payrolls grew by 180,000, the most in three months, and the February increase was revised higher to 113,000. The jobless rate fell to 4.4 percent, matching the lowest since May 2001. The total employment was reported at 146.3 million. But don't throw a party just yet.

There are several problems with this data. The first being the data shows that construction employment increased by 56,000 in March. Given the collapse of the housing market, this is unlikely. Some of it may have to do with February numbers being too negative, where adverse weather contributed to a more than normal decline that month--and thus the bounce up this month versus February. In reality, the construction industry has shown no net growth since employment peaked in September 2006. Over this span, job gains in the nonresidential components of construction have been more than offset by losses in the residential components.

Second, manufacturing employment continued to trend down over the month (-16,000), with declines in furniture and related products (-4,000), computer and electronic products (-4,000), textile mills (-2,000), and paper and paper products (-2,000). Not good.

Finally, the BLS in March added a magical 128,000 to the number employed with what they call their Birth/Death Model --it's not real counted new employment. It's some kind of estimate of an estimate, i.e., they guess how many new businesses are formed, how many die. They mix this all together with no hard data--and viola--new employment!

Breaking down the numbers and taking out the magical 128,000 and the construction gain of 56,000 and poof, pow,bam--the 180,000 increase becomes a decrease in employment of 4,000.

posted by Raymond Weber @ 12:03 PM

[Barnabas]

USA has very low unemployment, how do they do it?

[snoopy369]

So this is a good time for me to look for a new job, right?

DRose, although I'm as skeptical about numbers as anyone who doesn't have direct access, a lot of people like your site there can criticize the stats largely out of a lack of understanding of what the stats are. If 56,000 construction jobs were a result of the downturn in Feb, don't the jobs from Feb come from somewhere? And it's simple to criticize the birth/death model by simply saying "it's a predictive model and not real stats" but do you know how accurate it is? Perhaps it's highly accurate... and perhaps it tends towards underestimating. They're certainly not getting the number out of "no hard data", there's always data coming from somewhere, even if the end result isn't a straight number... but at some point the BLS's numbers all have to be models rather than hard data. They can't exactly call every employer in the nation and ask them how many people they hired this month

[DaShi]

DanS makes a good point. With all this 'good' news, you'd think things would be better in this country. Seriously. How many times has this economy recovered over the last few years?

[Drake Tungsten]

How many times has this economy recovered over the last few years?

Your economy has been consistently good over the last few years...

[DaShi]

Really? Where?

[Drake Tungsten]

You Americans are such whiners. You know how many countries would kill to have a 4.4% unemployment rate? That's great. We're at 8.4% and that's the lowest it's been in a couple decades...

[Addled Platypus]

yeah...more fast food jobs, WalMarts still growing cheap jobs, bookstores and check cashing stores....OH MY

so stay home with mom and dad forever, inherrit their house

Haliburton moves out of USA, 401Ks get raided

life is beautiful