Posted on 05/03/2014 12:03:04 PM PDT by Kaslin
The economy created 288,000 jobs in April, up from 203,000 in March. That’s the second best showing of the Obama recovery but still less than what is needed each month to raise employment to prerecession levels.
Those results are consistent with an economy recovering from its winter slump but performing well below full potential—4 to 5 percent GDP growth and 400,000 to 500,000 jobs a month.
Construction, manufacturing, retail and wholesale trade, business and professional services, finance, health care, leisure and hospitality, and government employment were all up. Information technology registered a small loss.
Hourly earnings made no gain, indicating the economy is still creating too many low paying jobs.
Autos and broader retail sales have been improving; however, the housing sector is yet to take off. An odd combination of constrained demand, caused by higher mortgage interest rates and heavy college debt among young buyers, and short supplies of skilled trades, such as framers and carpenters, in some markets are dampening a much anticipated takeoff in residential construction.
The energy boom has absorbed a lot of the skilled construction labor, leaving residential builders, which traditionally pays less than commercial developers, scrambling in some markets.
Global growth is rebalancing from Asia to the Atlantic community, as Europe begins a slow recovery and growth slows a bit in China and Japan. Much of China’s miracle has been premised on financial gimmicks—an undervalued currency and overly generous credit. As Japan demonstrated in the 1980s, those tactics have limits.
Unfortunately, the effects of currency manipulation on the U.S. economy—along with self- imposed restraints on oil and gas development and the manifest inefficiencies imposed by dysfunctional management and profiteering in health care, higher education and finance—have lowered U.S. annual growth to 1.7 percent since the turn of the century from the 3.4 percent pace accomplished during the Reagan-Clinton era.
Consequently, jobs creation lags population growth. The unemployment rate, which fell to 6.3 percent in April from 6.7 percent the prior month, wholly masks the extent of the problem. The percentage of adults seeking employment dropped precipitously. One out of six men between the ages of 25 and 54 are without jobs, and many have given up looking for work and are not counted in the jobless rate.
Factoring in adults on the sidelines who say they would seek employment if conditions were better and part-timers desiring full-time work, the jobless rate becomes 12.3 percent.
Remedies to slow growth and unemployment challenge the hardened ideological position of both the Obama-Pelosi wing of the Democratic Party and the conservative wing of the GOP.
Neither President Obama nor Speaker Boehner accepts the urgency—or at least has the stomach—of addressing Chinese and Japanese currency manipulation and other protectionist practices.
Democrats act as if shutting down U.S. energy development would reduce environmental risks, when it merely exacerbates those by increasing dependency on production in developing economies where hazards are less well managed. Meanwhile, the GOP sees few risks from shale gas development, and would like to export the commodity to countries that refuse to develop their own resources and share in environmental risks.
Regulating banks has failed to the point that Attorney General Holder is shy about prosecuting Wall Street institutions that are now dubbed “too big to jail.” Meanwhile, Republicans won’t embrace structural remedies—in particular separating government insured deposit taking institutions from the casinos and breaking up the largest banks to encourage competition and increase small business lending.
Germany enjoys health care costs about one-third lower than the United States by running an all must play insurance system but with genuine price controls, recognizing the monopoly power near universal coverage affords drug companies and other providers. Still it’s tough to find a politician or policy analyst in Washington who wants an honest discussion about that.
So it goes. Ideology bordering on idolatry reigns in the nation’s capital, the economy grows too slowly, and Americans go jobless or suffer sinking wages.
Lies , lies , and MORE DAMDED LIES !!
Just ask the unemployed !
Now ,..ask the ones who can only work 30 hours !
Even though there are no benenefits from work other than income
Loose 25 % of your income due to working hours, increase healthcare by 30% on average,.. and call that job production.
I call that Bull SH*T !
The jobs numbers were bogus yesterday.
They were completely manufactured, by keeping the numerator the same, but knocking out 800,000 from the numerator of the percentage.
We are manufacturing the illusion of American jobs.
GOP stand up, and support American hiring.
We need to bring back jobs from China. China is now as developed as America is.
It is time to repatriate our manufacturing.
To America.
If the unemployment rate is plummeting - why is growth rate only .1%?????
“Unemployment Drops to 0% as Last Worker Leaves Labor Force”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3151710/posts
Sorry “knocking out 800,000 from the denominator”.
Excuse the correction.
Could you elaborate on the “800,000” comment?
http://www.foxbusiness.com/economy-policy/2014/05/02/big-downside-to-april-jobs-report/
Better yet, here’s a Fox News story on it.
Thanks
It is bovine excrement. I have seen my blue collar wage decline one third in actual dollars and have the same decrease in my wife’s part time wage. All cost of running a household are up twenty or more percent so the real sum is I make half of what I made one year ago. FUBO
You’re welcome.
That is a good article, and I suggest it to readers.
The jobs prospect did not improve. The jobs situation actually fell further behind.
The only thing which improved, was a percentage which have been unhitched from reality for a while, and going ever in the opposite direction.
American jobs are not improving.
Not at all.
I'm sure it runs as well as the VA, the IRS and the DMV. I can't wait to feel the government love.
Ok, so the 280,000 figure is what? Just want to be clear and accurate in my arguments/debates with the dreaded Liberals.
My understanding is the 280,000 is the “rise”.
The 806,000 is the “fall”.
So they counted the rise. But eliminated the fall. The fall was larger than the rise.
That is my point. I could be on the wrong page with this, but that is the way I understand this.
Both parties however are hostile to the American jobs market right now.
Understand that, before you start going mano-a-mano with the left about America jobs.
The GOP needs to be for American jobs.
I don’t see that at the moment.
From either party.
Everyone is currently hiring Chinese to build stuff.
We buy so much from China, that our trade deficit with them is currently massive.
That is in my opinion a very large, and growing problem for America.
America needs to make stuff.
Right here.
Why be concerned about any freshly-released government jobs report? I don’t remember when the feds or fed watchdogs haven’t subsequently updated a jobs report, the initial report typically being a little too optimistic.
I question how many of the 288K are actually permanent jobs.
Due to the bad weather between Jan-Mar, a developer near my neighborhood fell behind on his production schedule.
He hired 30 workers for April and caught up on his schedule. He then let them go last week.
So, how many of the 288K are REALLY temporary workers that will be let go in the near future ???
Panic ensues, as, it is realized that there is no one left to pay for everyone else. Who am I kidding, the 99% will never get this.
Beat me to the LIES, LIES, LIES I was going to post.
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