US Economy Could Recover Much Sooner Than Expected pt 3

[OilFinder2]

So anyway we've got Ford hiring 7,000 in the US, google hiring at least 2,000 just in the Bay Area, wonder what other goodies we can come up with? Hmmmm . . .

Let's see, we've got Boeing ended 2010 with hiring spree - in the Seattle area, of course.

Boeing Commercial Airplanes is so hungry for workers to raise production levels that it kept hiring right up to the company’s weeklong holiday break, despite the fact that this meant paying new workers for doing no work ... The last orientation brought Boeing’s new regional union hires for October, November and December up to a hefty 1,417 new workers, Kelliher said.

And according to the union website there have been another 406 hires and re-hires in January.

Of course the Boeing-related aerospace biz in the US isn't just located in Seattle, so we also get Spirit plans to hire hundreds in Wichita:

Spirit AeroSystems plans to hire hundreds of workers in Wichita this year as production on new and existing programs ramps up.

Spirit also will hire workers for its Tulsa and Kinston, N.C., sites this year.

In the near-term, Spirit plans to hire about 200 workers for Wichita and Tulsa, spokesman Ken Evans said Friday.

The job openings, which are to be filled in the first quarter, are primarily factory positions, he said.

So we've got the automobiles and the planes, now we just need the trains. Alas . . .

Kansas City Southern, railroads are full steam ahead on hiring

A combination of the recovering economy and an older work force is expected to send U.S. railroad operators on a hiring spree.

The Association of American Railroads said this week that an estimated 67,000 rail workers — 30 percent of the industry’s labor force — will be eligible for retirement during the next five years. The railroads also are hiring more employees to handle the growing amount of freight being transported by rail as the economy rebounds and shippers look to save money by using trains instead of long-haul trucking.

Planes, trains and automobiles!

[Armageddon]

Lowe's to Cut 1,700 Management Jobs, Hire More Weekend Staff

Lowe’s Cos., the second-biggest U.S. home-improvement retailer, plans to eliminate 1,700 middle- management jobs in stores as profit growth trails that of larger Home Depot Inc.

Brent Kirby, Lowe’s senior vice president of store operations for the North Central division, declined to say how much the moves will save the company. Lowe’s also plans to add 8,000 to 10,000 weekend sales positions to improve staffing at the chain’s busiest time of the week, he said in an interview. The change takes effect Jan. 29.



Oily would say this is good news.

[Armageddon]

Real National Debt - 202 trillion
Real Unemployment % - 22%
Only 47% Of Working Age Americans Have Full Time Jobs
43 Million on foodstamps


http://dailybail.com/home/chart-shock-t ... llion.html


The economy is booming, The only thing booming is debt and the printing presses.

[OilFinder2]

Some more info on the railroads hiring. Thousands and thousands of jobs. Thousands. And thousands.

Railroads Post Big Profit Increases, Resume Hiring

Both CSX and Union Pacific said they intend to boost hiring this year, with CSX pegging the figure at about 2,900 new workers and Union Pacific announcing plans for 4,000, in addition to some furloughed employees it intends to recall.

[OilFinder2]

Lowe's to Cut 1,700 Management Jobs, Hire More Weekend Staff

Lowe’s Cos., the second-biggest U.S. home-improvement retailer, plans to eliminate 1,700 middle- management jobs in stores as profit growth trails that of larger Home Depot Inc.

Brent Kirby, Lowe’s senior vice president of store operations for the North Central division, declined to say how much the moves will save the company. Lowe’s also plans to add 8,000 to 10,000 weekend sales positions to improve staffing at the chain’s busiest time of the week, he said in an interview. The change takes effect Jan. 29.



Oily would say this is good news.

On balance, it is good news. See bolded text. Thousands and thousands more new jobs!

[joewp]

Oh crap, OF2. Those are weekend jobs, in other words, part-time.

You really think firing 1700 full-time employees and hiring 10,000 part timers is good news?

Last year Home Depot cut over 10,000 jobs. What you're seeing is just Lowe's out competing HD for customers, so it needs more part-timers on the weekends.

Man, you're like the guys falling 500 feet of a cliff saying "What a great view!".

[OilFinder2]

Oh crap, OF2. Those are weekend jobs, in other words, part-time.

You really think firing 1700 full-time employees and hiring 10,000 part timers is good news?

I figured someone would say this.

Since the layoffs are in middle management, and the hires are customer service jobs, the answer is an unabashed "YES!" From a macroeconomic standpoint, the total wages of each of the two groups are probably about the same, but from the p.o.v. of the customer - which, after all, is why the chain exists in the first place - the move is definitely a good one. Customer service is always more important than middle management. End of story.

[Armageddon]

Oily, that's an odd way to look at it. I see decent paying jobs with benefits being replaced by low paying jobs with no benefits.

[Armageddon]

Report: Disney Interactive Lays Off Nearly Half Its Employees

9:40 PM 1/24/2011 by Annie Yuan

14Disney Interactive Studios, the gaming branch of Walt Disney, let go of a significant portion of its department on Monday.

Although the company has not yet announced the mass layoff or how many were affected by it, sources close to the situation told CNBC that the nearly half of the studio’s 700 employees were cut.

Since dropping $763 million to purchase online game company Playdom in July 2010, Disney’s interactive media division, which publishes and distributes video games, mobile content and websites, has undergone several major changes to account for financial losses.

Several Disney Interactive executives have exited in the past few months, including president Steve Wadsworth and GM Graham Hopper, who spent eight years building Disney’s presence in the gaming industry.

Earlier this month, Disney shut down its Vancouver production unit, Propaganda Games. The closure affected at least 70 jobs and resulted in the cancellation of “Pirates of the Caribbean: Armada of the Damned,” a million-dollar project that had been near completion.

[OilFinder2]

^
I'll take those 350 IT jobs, and double 'em.

LINK

VA IT Hiring Spree
BY BOB BREWIN 01/05/11 01:16 pm ET

Buff up those resumes. The Veterans Affairs Department's Office of Information & Technology plans to hire 705 IT professionals between now and April 22, according to an internal Dec. 22, 2010 memo that popped up in my inbox.

This hiring sprint -- which the IT shop has dubbed Race to 705 -- focuses on high priority, but undefined positions in just three unspecified locations. VA says it seeks out the "best and the brightest" and plans to hire them through a two-week streamlined procedure.

[...]

[eXpat]

U.S. Home Prices Slump Again, Hitting New Lows

A new slide in housing prices has begun in earnest, with averages in major cities across the country falling to their lowest point in many years.
Prices in 20 major metropolitan areas slid 1 percent in November from October, according to the Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller Home Price Index released Tuesday. The index has fallen 1.6 percent from a year ago.

Nine of the 20 cities in the index sank in November to new lows for this economic cycle: Chicago; Las Vegas; Detroit; Atlanta; Seattle; Charlotte, N.C.; Miami; Tampa; Fla.; and Portland, Ore. Only a handful of places — essentially, California and the District of Columbia — went counter to the trend and had rising prices over the last year.

Whether the long-predicted double dip is looming or has already arrived is a quibble of semantics.

David M. Blitzer, chairman of S.& P.’s Index Committee, does not count a downturn as a double dip until it exceeds the previous low. The index is still 3.3 percent above the low it reached in April 2009. Mr. Blitzer thinks a double dip could be confirmed before spring.

“We shouldn’t kid ourselves,” he said. “The last few months have been weak.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/26/business/economy/26econ.html?src=me&ref=business

[vision-master]

Some more info on the railroads hiring. Thousands and thousands of jobs. Thousands. And thousands.

Railroads Post Big Profit Increases, Resume Hiring

Both CSX and Union Pacific said they intend to boost hiring this year, with CSX pegging the figure at about 2,900 new workers and Union Pacific announcing plans for 4,000, in addition to some furloughed employees it intends to recall.

All the boomers are retiring, just replacing existing work force.

[MichaelWallace]

This is silly. Even in the Great Depression there were mass hirings and even in the boom years of the 90s there were mass layoffs. What do the nationwide statistics say and do we trust them?

[OilFinder2]

Like the increase on existing home sales reported last week, today we've got a similar jump in new home sales. There's no first-time home buyer incentives or anything like that, and mortgage rates have been coming up from recent lows, so this is definitely something to keep an eye on to see if it's the start of a new trend or not.

LINK

New U.S. home sales soared in December
Monthly gain raising cautious optimism for housing market recovery

WASHINGTON — New U.S. single-family home sales soared in December, rising faster than expected to their highest level in eight months.

Early Wednesday, the Commerce Department said sales jumped 17.5 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted 329,000 unit annual rate after a downwardly revised 280,000-unit pace in November. Prices in December were the highest since April 2008, raising cautious optimism for a housing market recovery.

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast new home sales rising to a 300,000-unit pace in December from a previously reported 290,000 unit rate.

[...]

[OilFinder2]

All the boomers are retiring, just replacing existing work force.

Not all of them:
LINK

[...] In addition, the industry has increased its hiring activity in response to improving traffic levels, according to the Association of American Railroads (AAR).

Monthly data submitted by the railroads to the Surface Transportation Board, the federal agency overseeing the industry, showed that overall rail employment rose in December by 5.2 percent over the year-earlier period. [...]

[eXpat]

CBO projects record-high $1.5 trillion budget deficit this year

The Congressional Budget Office is estimating that the federal budget deficit will hit $1.5 trillion this year, another new record.

The non-partisan budget agency is also predicting that next year's budget deficit will drop to $1.1 trillion.

The new report comes a day after President Obama pledged to work with congressional Republicans to reduce budget deficits and accumulated federal debt.

It also comes as Congress soon decides on raising the federal government's $14.3 trillion debt ceiling, a move some Republicans are resisting unless it is accompanied by major spending cuts from the administration.

The Associated Press notes that the higher deficit estimate reflects "bipartisan legislation passed in December that extended Bush-era tax cuts, unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless and provided a 2 per cent payroll tax cut this year. That measure added almost $400 billion to this year's deficit, the CBO says."

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2011/01/cbo-projects-15-trillion-budget-deficit-this-year/1

It is a record deficit in dollar terms, and almost equals the 10% of GDP overspend recorded by Washington in 2009 at the depth of the recession.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) revised up an earlier deficit estimate of $1.07tn after President Obama agreed a new stimulus package with Congress.

That package extended Bush-era tax cuts and prolonged unemployment benefits.

"The United States faces daunting economic and budgetary challenges," said the CBO in the introduction to its latest budget outlook report.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12291143

[eXpat]

Only 47% Of Working Age Americans Have Full Time Jobs

VK, roving reporter for The Automatic Earth, has been playing with the numbers from the January 7 employment report issued by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. It seems valuable to look at unemployment from this, a different, angle. Some of it may even surprise you.

The total non institutional civilian labor force (Americans 16 years and older who are not in a institution -criminal, mental, or other types of facilities- or an active military duty) is reported as 238.889 million. Of these, we see:

* Employed: 139.206 million people (58.3% of labor force)
* Unemployed: 14.485 million people (6.1% of labor force)

Obviously, that can't be the total picture, we're only at 64.4%. This is why:

* Part time employed for economic reasons: 8.931 million people. This concerns people who want a full-time job but can't get one.
* Part time employed for non-economic reasons: 18.184 million people. Non-economic reasons include school or training, retirement or Social Security limits on earnings, but also childcare problems and family or personal obligations.

But the by far largest category "missing" from both the Employed and Unemployed statistics is the "Not In Labor Force": 85.2 Million people.

The BLS definition states: "Not in the labor force (NILF). A person who did not work last week, was not temporarily absent from a job, did not actively look for work in the previous 4 weeks, or looked but was unavailable for work during the reference week; in other words, a person who was neither employed nor unemployed." (Clearly, this does include lot of unemployed people).

To summarize: 108.616 million people in America are either unemployed, underemployed or "Not in the labor force". This represents 45.5% of working age Americans.

If you count the "Part time employed for non-economic reasons", you get 126.8 million Americans who are unemployed, underemployed, working part time or "Not in the labor force". That represents 53% of working age Americans.

So only 47% of working age Americans have full time jobs. While the official unemployment rate is 9.4%. Something's missing somewhere.

http://www.businessinsider.com/real-employment-rate-47-percent-2011-1#ixzz1C2PNGfJ1

[eXpat]

A Frightening Satellite Tour Of America's Foreclosure Wastelands

RealtyTrac is out with the total foreclosure numbers for 2010. On the whole things are getting worse.

72 percent of major metro areas saw an increase in foreclosure volume. Although some of the worst hit areas in Nevada, California and Florida improved from 2009, the foreclosure rate in these areas remains shockingly high. If not for some foreclosure suspensions due to the robosigning scandal, these numbers would have been higher.

For a frightening way to visualize the foreclosure crisis, we're borrowing a Google maps technique described by Barry Ritholtz.

link to the article and the maps:
[url]http://www.businessinsider.com/satellite-tour-foreclosure-cities-2011-1?slop=1#slideshow-start#ixzz1CFjS7Vrt[/url]

[Daniel_Plainview]

There's such an overflowing plethora of negative economic news today -- from housing data to durable goods data -- that for now I'll just duplicate a post appearing in the "Sideways Unemployment" thread. I always feel bad for the cornies when their illusion of a "recovery" becomes shattered by the intervention of stark reality. I weep for the cornies ... and empathize with their plight ...

Aw Crap -- Jobless Claims Skyrocket by 51K as Phony Recovery Loses Steam

UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE WEEKLY CLAIMS REPORT

SEASONALLY ADJUSTED DATA

In the week ending Jan. 22, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 454,000, an increase of 51,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 403,000. The 4-week moving average was 428,750, an increase of 15,750 from the previous week's revised average of 413,000.

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 3.2 percent for the week ending Jan. 15, an increase of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week's unrevised rate of 3.1 percent.

The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending Jan. 15 was 3,991,000, an increase of 94,000 from the preceding week's revised level of 3,897,000. The 4-week moving average was 3,975,500, a decrease of 39,750 from the preceding week's revised average of 4,015,250.

UNADJUSTED DATA

The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 482,399 in the week ending Jan. 22, a decrease of 67,491 from the previous week. There were 502,710 initial claims in the comparable week in 2010.

The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 3.7 percent during the week ending Jan. 15, unchanged from the prior week. The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 4,593,535, a decrease of 58,900 from the preceding week. A year earlier, the rate was 4.3 percent and the volume was 5,602,357.

The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending Jan. 8 was 9,410,977.

linky winky

[Daniel_Plainview]

Nevertheless, hopefully the cornies will take refuge in the likelihood that the Fed will soon unleash QE3, and that the US Govt will soon undergo another round of stimulus spending. Happily, the federal deficit is under control such that massive amounts of Obamian pork-barrel spending won't worsen the fiscal dilemma. Oh, wait ... wait ... hold on ... as just announced within the past 24 hours, the Congressional Budget Office now projects that the 2011 federal budget will show a deficit of $1.5 trillion, or 9.8 percent of GDP. Oh drats. Damn! It looks like the US "recovery" has hit a brick wall. QE4 by the end of the year? How about QE5?