WSJ: Jobs Report is All Positive
Tristan Abbey ·
Feb 3 at 10:48am
The Wall Street Journal's panel of economists is universally cheering today's jobs report. A few samplings:
- "Our quick read through of today’s report shows that this is unquestionably a positive report in nearly every way...."
- "This is a game-changer. Right on cue..."
- "It’s hard to find much not to like in today’s jobs report. Strength is everywhere..."
- "The January employment report is a blow-out number. It is strong in virtually every way that it could be...."
Some right-wing skeptics -- Human Events, Washington Times -- are pointing to the drop in the labor participation rate, but another story from the WSJ suggests that this is due to retiring baby boomers.
What is the conservative response? That things would simply be even better under Republican rule?
- Comment (67)
- · Quote
- · UnfollowFollow (3)
Comments :
Jul '10
Re: WSJ: Jobs Report is All Positive
BTW, it's good to see you posting here again, Tristan.
Jan '11
Re: WSJ: Jobs Report is All Positive
Glad to be back! ;-)
Apr '11
Re: WSJ: Jobs Report is All Positive
ZeroHedge says
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/implied-unemployment-rate-rises-115-spread-propaganda-number-surges-30-year-high
Dec '11
Re: WSJ: Jobs Report is All Positive
Thanks, Tristan Abbey for spelling it out for me.
Dec '11
Re: WSJ: Jobs Report is All Positive
Before we get too happy, or depressed, about the employment numbers, consider this. The US economy is still down 5.6 million jobs from the December 2007 peak. At January's 243,000-job increase, it will still take 27 months to get employment back to the pre-recession level.
One thing that I've not seen commented on is the demographic intersection of boomers and extended unemployment benefits. It seems possible that some of the seemingly odd drops in the unemployment rate due to drops in the worker participation rate, might be due to boomers who stayed in the workforce an extra year or two to collect extended unemployment. I have no idea how prevalent this is, but it is possible to receive both social security and extended unemployment. Now that the extensions have been running out, those affected boomers are leaving the workforce, and reducing the participation rate.
Dec '11
Re: WSJ: Jobs Report is All Positive
So, Tristan Abbey, the other part of of my question was about the "real unadjusted, unmassaged, unmanipulated numbers." This link asserts they were down but does not supply the source.
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/deconstructing-massive-beat-employment-data
Quote from above link:
"I like to look behind the headlines at the real unadjusted, unmassaged, unmanipulated numbers to get some idea of what's really going on. Here's where things get strange. Total reported employment and full time employment plunged in January, as is normal for that month."
Aug '10
Re: WSJ: Jobs Report is All Positive
Source: Explaining Obama's Fake Job Numbers