Posted on 06/04/2016 5:23:25 PM PDT by Lorianne
It would have been nice if wed been correct to the minute, but we were two months early, and therefore wrong, when we wrote on March 30, If This Plays Out, Friday Will Get Ugly.
But it did play out today.
At the time, we suspected that the March jobs report, released in early April, would be a debacle. We based this on an analysis of the divergence over time between the reports issued by payroll processing company ADP and the jobs reports issued by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That divergence had been going on for months. Eventually it reverts to the mean. We postulated that March would be that month.
Instead, it happened two months behind schedule, so to speak, as todays jobs report was precisely that sort of debacle.
This is what was expected:
The Labor Department was expected to report, according to Wall Street economists, a moderate gain of 158,000 jobs in May, moderate given that the Verizon strike kept 35,000 workers off their jobs. The whisper number was around 200,000 jobs.
And this is what we got:
The BLS reported that the economy had added 38,000 jobs, the lowest since September 2010. Furthermore, the April job gains of 160,000 were chopped down by 37,000 and the March job gains of 208,000 were chopped down by 22,000. Hence, with 59,000 jobs revised away, and with only 38,000 jobs created in May, the net total in todays report was a net loss of 21,000 jobs. We havent seen that since the Financial Crisis.
Shockingly weak, and In one word, Ouch' is how MarketWatch put it so elegantly.
It was ugly all around. A number of sectors, including manufacturing, shed jobs, and the labor participation rate dropped for the second month in a row, to 62.6%. Just about the only good number was the magic headline unemployment rate, which fell sharply, from 5% in April to 4.7%, the lowest since the Great Recession began, leaving some folks scratching their heads and searching for answers.
snip
I heard Trump recently talking about this exact thing. He stated they are lying about unemployment numbers and are NOT counting all of the unemployed. This crap will come to an end under Trump. For one thing, the media will all of a sudden become "investigative journalists" and dig up any and all dirt on the Trump admin. so he'd never get away with it like Obama has anyway.
I'll be the contrarian to other posters, and say: if you can afford it, then do so. 4-8 years from now, you won't wish you had worked longer, and you'll have had more years to enjoy retirement while you are healthier.
But, you have to be sure you can afford to do so:
Do you like your job or would you rather be doing something else? Your time is more important than the money. If retiring means just sitting around, don’t do it. If there is something else you would like to try, go for it!
I’m wondering - when the 35,000 Verizon workers went on strike - did they get unemployment?
but I'm a worrier...lol
The fact is the day after Trump’s oath of office the leftist news media will begin relentlessly bombarding us with every negative figure left over from the Democrat Obama regime. Trump will have to do daily updates addressing the negative assaults.
It will be ugly. Very ugly. Trump will be walking into a chaotic mess with every leftist entity in the World going after him even worse than we see today on the campaign trail.
I turn 66 at the end of this year. I'm 75% sure I will start my Social Security on time.
I have zero desire to retire for at least 4 more years. It may go much longer unless feebleness sets in.
Last weekend I attended an event with a number of peers. Several of them have retired, literally. Every one of them was still making mortgage payments. One was quite concerned about that.
All of them said their kids already had their inheritance in the form og weddings and college tuition.
Ah! My mother was a worrier. That is what she did.
I don't worry...I trust in our good Lord to take care of things.
“this is why at age 62 I have second thoughts about retiring..I’m at the top of the heap in wages and seniority....I’ll never get hired back....what if something really devastating happens to our family, our home, etc....
what if...what if...what if....”
I’m in much the same boat. I’m OK...for now (now being 1-2 years out). Beyond that...
Wasn’t your thinking 35 years ago that you would have no worries in this era of your life? Stupidly, that was my thinking...realistically, things have been going to hell since the late 80’s.
“He cant take on an unemployment rate of 4.7 and drive it down...”
The good news is, that not a single person working or desiring to work to the right of Bernie Sanders believes that number, and a good number of them to his left don’t believe it either.
You’re right. I was laid off at 60 and so far I have had no responses to my applications, except to exhort me to apply for the same position later, after someone younger has pole vaulted from it. Same story next time, no response. I can likely get a job at a parts store, where I’d make $8.00 a hour 29.0 hrs a week.No hope of corporate insurance, only health marketplace.So I work odd jobs sell stuff on ebay,, work n cars a little. But Lockheed, Rolls Royce aviation and L3 ain’t having none of me. And those guys are pulling $40 a hour now(no pensions in this area.)
I’ve owned an oilfield related business here in Texas since 1979 and have weathered out the great oil depressions of 1982 and 1986, but this monster I see today is far above anything ever seen in the past. Worse yet, it’s not just in Texas, for it’s nationwide. However, it’s not worldwide.
Why? I think everyone knows the answer to that and it can be cured with this upcoming national election if people wake up and vote for a certain individual (T) who CAN MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
Through the years we have gone from the strongest and most secure nation in the world’s history to the wimp we are today. No thanks to those who rate sensitivity, racial harmony, gay rights, the persecution of maleness, the outright hate of our country and its history and heritage.
The BOY president, his minions and his blind and ignorant follwers/worshipers have in 8 years, destroyed over 200 years of proud American heritage and we now stand to become a third-world country along with the rest of communist and socialists countries.
The coal industry suffered the first “cannon blast” of liberalism and attacks by those who would “save the earth” and we did not learn from that. Now the “earth savers” AND the worlds elite financial players have teamed up and attacked the oil industry to enslave it for their own purposes.
If Trump is not elected we are totally doomed as the country founded upon on freedom and liberty. We all know what the result of that will be for we are getting a preview of that now.
My wife retired at 62 and I did same a little while after.
We had some IRAs (which we moved into a fund that has a guaranteed interest with potential of increasing if stock market goes up and which will not lose money even if the Market crashes) and between them, Social Security, and retirements, things are fine. If you don't have any big debts and don't need to take out loans for "stuff", then I highly recommend it before you become too old to be able to enjoy it. Every day is Saturday unless you have an appointment and it's hard to believe we actually had time to go to work.
Good luck.
PS - do the math - I made a spreadsheet that showed our current income and how it would change with our retirements.
I also showed all the current expenses (broken down by month to make some views easier to compute), including what we generally spent on leisure/dining out, etc.
I had the income (calibrated for post-taxes) shown as monthly and annual and did same with expenses. Made formulas to subtract expenses fro income and have it shown both monthly and annual. We left more in regular checking and savings than what is recommended as "emergency" funds and "padded" everything slightly against us so we see a low-end estimate instead of the rosiest (about $2000/year less than what normal would yield) picture.
I agonized over things for a while and decided we had no business working until we were in the grave and it would take something cataclysmic to leave us in trouble since we can "tighten our belts" if need be as we don't have any reason to be really "scrimpy".
If Obama were to walk to the microphone after a round of golf or a choom session and tell them that he signed an ExOrder outlawing unemployment, they would cheer him for eliminating unemployment.
Trump has already promised that he will reveal the real unemployment rate. I have no doubt it’s much higher than 4.7%.
... Add into the mix that a lot of soon-to-be-grads are out there looking for the first “real job”. And the cupboard is bare. This is why our politics has gotten so radicalized... This is by design. Thanks Obama.
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