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Employment Report: IT SUCKS

Unread postPosted: Fri 04 Feb 2011, 10:41:30
by Daniel_Plainview
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Employment Report: IT SUCKS

Wow.... if you remember on the ADP and Claims numbers, I said I was expecting +100k.

That was way off - we really got +36k.

The unemployment rate fell by 0.4 percentage point to 9.0 percent in January, while nonfarm payroll employment changed little (+36,000), the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment rose in manufacturing and in retail trade but was down in construction and in transportation and warehousing. Employment in most other major industries changed little over the month.


Youch.

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There's no love in here. Worse, the benchmark revisions are out, and they show about 300,000 supposedly-reported jobs that didn't really happen. No, really? How come that number seems to always be in this direction? That is, why is it that the BLS always seems to over-report reality in the establishment survey?

That inconvenient truth, incidentally, is why I always use the household numbers. They're at least a real survey without BS "adjustments" applied and while they're subject to sampling error at least they're not intentionally distorted.

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This officially sucks.

On a month-by-month basis the number of actual employed people dropped by more than 1.5 million! That's a huge decrease and what's worse, the trend is awful, being unbroken now since the first of last year.

Remember, we need about +150,000 in actual employment just to keep up with new entrants into the workforce. We instead lost ten times that number of actual employed.

The monthly numbers are noisy in this regard, but there's simply no way to argue "strength" in these numbers, irrespective of how much cheerleading you'd like to do.

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Not-in-labor force numbers are still rising, but the annualized change is now negative. That's a positive. Mildly. Unfortunately it's not turning into actual jobs, it's turning into people looking for work and not finding it.

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The employment rate posted a new low for the recessionary period - 57.6%, falling below the 57.8% registered in January of 2010.

There has been no improvement - at all - in the employment picture, and in fact the employed rate, as a percentage of the non-institutionalized population, is now the worst it has been since the economic downturn began.


Recovery my ass.


Karl Denninger -- MarketTicker

Re: Employment Report: IT SUCKS

Unread postPosted: Fri 04 Feb 2011, 10:51:07
by Daniel_Plainview
Persons Not In Labor Force Who Want Job Now Jumps To All Time Record; Real Unemployment Rate At 12.8%

02/04/2011 09:35 -0500

Probably the last chart to bury any doubt about just how truly horrible today's employment data was, comes from a little observed data metric: that showing the number of people who are not in the labor force, but who want a job now. The number just hit 6,643K, a jump of 431K from December, and the highest number in history. These are people that would send the unemployment rate to about 12.8% if they were in the labor force (and, as indicated, looking for a job). Nothing else needs to be said.

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ZH

Re: Employment Report: IT SUCKS

Unread postPosted: Fri 04 Feb 2011, 10:57:23
by Daniel_Plainview
Let's not forget this lovely chart:

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Re: Employment Report: IT SUCKS

Unread postPosted: Fri 04 Feb 2011, 11:48:54
by Roy
Nice work Daniel_Plainview. Let me throw another log on this fire, from the St Louis Fed.

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Img from another site, but here is the actual source page: [url=http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?s[1][id]=EMRATIO]graph[/url]

There's your recovery s*** sandwich. Now you'll take a bite, and you'll like it. :)

(to access the link, just copy/paste the entire line.. don't know why it won't work as expected).

Re: Employment Report: IT SUCKS

Unread postPosted: Fri 04 Feb 2011, 11:53:01
by eXpat
There MUST be a mistake somewhere! i though economic recovery is complete. and expansion has begun! :lol: :P :twisted:

Re: Employment Report: IT SUCKS

Unread postPosted: Fri 04 Feb 2011, 12:09:14
by Daniel_Plainview
Roy wrote:Nice work Daniel_Plainview. Let me throw another log on this fire, from the St Louis Fed.

Image

Img from another site, but here is the actual source page: [url=http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?s[1][id]=EMRATIO]graph[/url]
There's your recovery s*** sandwich. Now you'll take a bite, and you'll like it. :)
(to access the link, just copy/paste the entire line.. don't know why it won't work as expected).

Yep, the labor force participation rate has plunged to 64.2% (viz the total civilian non-institutional population) which is the lowest in 26 years (hasn't been this low since March 1984); this explains why the unemployment rate dropped to 9%. IOW, the STRUCTURAL unemployment problem is truly dire.

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ZeroHedge: Those not in the Labor Force has increased from 83.9 million to 86.2 million, or 2.2 million in one year! As for the numerator in the fraction, the number of unemployed, it has plunged from 15 million to 13.9 million in two months! The only reason for this is due to the increasing disenchantment of those who completely fall off the BLS rolls and no longer even try to look for a job. Lastly, we won't even show what the labor force is as a percentage of total population. It is a vertical plunge.


eXpat wrote:There MUST be a mistake somewhere! i though economic recovery is complete. and expansion has begun! :lol: :P :twisted:


Ah yes, the "expansion": the only thing "expanding" is the govt's capacity for deception.

Re: Employment Report: IT SUCKS

Unread postPosted: Fri 04 Feb 2011, 12:18:09
by mos6507
"Ah yes, the "expansion": the only thing "expanding" is the govt's capacity for deception."

Whatever the numbers may be, what exactly should the govt be doing to bring those jobs back? The general public seems to think our reaction should be to deregulate and unfetter business. How well do you think that plan is gonna work out?

Re: Employment Report: IT SUCKS

Unread postPosted: Fri 04 Feb 2011, 12:30:29
by Lore
Jobs are not coming back, at least those in the traditional unskilled areas. Last year 900,000 new jobs were created by the private business sector, as well as nearly 2,000,000 jobs by them being created overseas. Big business is already, it seems, unfettered and unfazed. Of course business, in a so called free market, does not exist to create jobs, but to make money for its shareholders.

Re: Employment Report: IT SUCKS

Unread postPosted: Fri 04 Feb 2011, 12:36:37
by mos6507
Lore wrote:Jobs are not coming back

So why are we wasting time arguing over the statistics? What's the point?

Re: Employment Report: IT SUCKS

Unread postPosted: Fri 04 Feb 2011, 13:03:22
by Lore
mos6507 wrote:So why are we wasting time arguing over the statistics? What's the point?

My point, exactly!

Re: Employment Report: IT SUCKS

Unread postPosted: Fri 04 Feb 2011, 16:50:47
by americandream
Lore wrote:Jobs are not coming back, at least those in the traditional unskilled areas. Last year 900,000 new jobs were created by the private business sector, as well as nearly 2,000,000 jobs by them being created overseas. Big business is already, it seems, unfettered and unfazed. Of course business, in a so called free market, does not exist to create jobs, but to make money for its shareholders.


Playing devil's advocate here, why would big business exist for any other reason. Philanthrophy, where it does exist, invariably reports to the bottom line and where charity no longer serves any value, is subsumed by the true ethos of any enterprise based on personal gain. So we should hardly be surprised when big business blithely outsources and otherwise acts to serve narrow financial interests.

Employment security is a fading hope, even for the Chindians who will in due course be abandoned for that next source of cheap labour, wherever it might be.

Re: Employment Report: IT SUCKS

Unread postPosted: Fri 04 Feb 2011, 17:33:06
by Fishman
Lets step back from any politics. Isn't this what we should expect from post peak oil? Oil prices up, government throwing paper at the problem. No solutions? Got preps?

Soil, many times its been said here, from Heiniken to Pops to others. Get your garden set up. it looks like a long slog.

Re: Employment Report: IT SUCKS

Unread postPosted: Fri 04 Feb 2011, 18:17:14
by Daniel_Plainview
US Needs To Generate 246,600 Jobs A Month To Get To Pre-Depression Employment By End Of Obama Second Term new

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02/04/2011 13:15 -0500

Every time we revise the attached chart, its looks worse and worse. The first time we did an analysis of how many jobs per month the US has to generate each month to get back to the same payroll number as of November 2007, right before the start of the Greater Depression, and when accounting for the 90K/month natural growth to the labor force, something the administration continues to blissfully ignore (with the labor participation rate plunging to a 26 year low) it was in the mid 220s. As of today, the number is almost quarter of a million, or 246,600. That is how many jobs the US has to generate every single month until November 2016, or the end of Obama's improbable second turn, for the unemployment rate to get back to where it was when accounting for population growth. And while this is obviously impossible, one other thing that is concerning is that post the revised NFP numbers, not only do we now get a lower cumulative low of all jobs lost, at just over 8.6 million attained in February 2010, but as the highlighted area demonstrates, the recent trend in jobs is one of accelerating deterioration. If in the offchance it were to, gasp, snow in February, March will likely have the first negative NFP print since September. Oh yes, post today's revisions, we now learn that the months June through September actually lost jobs (granted, inclusive of census adjustments). One thing is certain: 5% unemployment will not be back for the next 5 years. 100% guaranteed.


ZH

Re: Employment Report: IT SUCKS

Unread postPosted: Fri 04 Feb 2011, 19:24:02
by Plantagenet
Daniel_Plainview wrote:US Needs To Generate 246,600 Jobs A Month To Get To Pre-Depression Employment By End Of Obama Second Term new


How about if the Obama administration just keeps reclassifying 500,000 unemployed each month as "discouraged" and no longer counts them in the unemployment statistics as it did in December and January.

Then we don't have to create any jobs and the unemployment rate will still go down. :roll:

Re: Employment Report: IT SUCKS

Unread postPosted: Fri 04 Feb 2011, 19:49:24
by Armageddon
Plantagenet wrote:How about if the Obama administration just keeps reclassifying 500,000 unemployed each month as "discouraged" and no longer counts them in the unemployment statistics as it did in December and January.
Then we don't have to create any jobs and the unemployment rate will still go down. :roll:

Pretty much what is happening.

Re: Employment Report: IT SUCKS

Unread postPosted: Fri 04 Feb 2011, 20:12:44
by Daniel_Plainview
Plantagenet wrote:
Daniel_Plainview wrote:US Needs To Generate 246,600 Jobs A Month To Get To Pre-Depression Employment By End Of Obama Second Term new


How about if the Obama administration just keeps reclassifying 500,000 unemployed each month as "discouraged" and no longer counts them in the unemployment statistics as it did in December and January.


And for those unemployed Americans that it doesn't reclassify as discouraged, the govt can tweak the seasonal adjustments and the birth-death models until it finds a number it can live with ... :razz: :razz:

Re: Employment Report: IT SUCKS

Unread postPosted: Fri 04 Feb 2011, 20:51:06
by Xenophobe
Fishman wrote:Lets step back from any politics. Isn't this what we should expect from post peak oil? Oil prices up, government throwing paper at the problem. No solutions? Got preps?


Peak oil was supposed to start with shortages. Rationing. Obviously, when demand runs into no supply, bad things are supposed to happen, and it all was going to start with the fuel.

The heavy duty relationship to all things financial is primarily a revisionist game by those disappointed with how peak oil in 2005 actually went.

Re: Employment Report: IT SUCKS

Unread postPosted: Fri 04 Feb 2011, 21:00:47
by Daniel_Plainview
Xenophobe wrote:
Fishman wrote:Lets step back from any politics. Isn't this what we should expect from post peak oil? Oil prices up, government throwing paper at the problem. No solutions? Got preps?


Peak oil was supposed to start with shortages. Rationing. Obviously, when demand runs into no supply, bad things are supposed to happen, and it all was going to start with the fuel.

The heavy duty relationship to all things financial is primarily a revisionist game by those disappointed with how peak oil in 2005 actually went.


There never has been a uniform theory as to precisely how peak oil's consequences will play out. The most widely held view is that PO will lead to successive ratchetings of a "severe recession" followed by a "weak recovery" followed by a "severe recession" followed by a "weak recovery." This has been playing out to a tee since 2008. Where have you been? Did you miss the collapse of 2008 and the extremely weak "recovery" of 2009-2011?

Re: Employment Report: IT SUCKS

Unread postPosted: Fri 04 Feb 2011, 21:15:00
by Daniel_Plainview
pstarr wrote:
Daniel_Plainview wrote:
Xenophobe wrote:
Fishman wrote:Lets step back from any politics. Isn't this what we should expect from post peak oil? Oil prices up, government throwing paper at the problem. No solutions? Got preps?


Peak oil was supposed to start with shortages. Rationing. Obviously, when demand runs into no supply, bad things are supposed to happen, and it all was going to start with the fuel.

The heavy duty relationship to all things financial is primarily a revisionist game by those disappointed with how peak oil in 2005 actually went.


There never has been a uniform theory as to precisely how peak oil's consequences will play out. The most widely held view is that PO will lead to successive ratchetings of a "severe recession" followed by a "weak recovery" followed by a "severe recession" followed by a "weak recovery." This has been playing out to a tee since 2008. Where have you been? Did you miss the collapse of 2008 and the extremely weak "recovery" of 2009-2011?
That is one theory---Greer's "catabolic collapse." I no longer subscribe to it, as I consider the alternative--systemic failures in a tightly coupled tightly wound entropic infrastructure to be more likely. The obvious vulnerability of the Suez Canal/Homuz Straits has reminded me of that fact.

Yo Xeno. Go pleasure yerself. :twisted:


So are you arguing that PO hasn't happened yet, but when it does, it will lead to systemic collapse; or are you arguing that PO has already happened, and we're now in the midst of a systemic collapse?