Jobless Rate Drops To 6.7 Percent; Only 74,000 Jobs Added & Every Job In America, In 1 Graph & Where The Jobs Are (And Where They Aren't), In 1 Graph10&9JAN14&11JUL13

THIS pathetic jobs report shows we are still in recession. But the repiglicans and tea-baggers will continue their class warfare, blocking and voting against the renewal of emergency unemployment benefit extension and touring the country on a propaganda tour during the 50th anniversary of Pres Johnson's War On Poverty. They are trying to convince the nation they are concerned about American poverty too, while they slash funding for the social safety net, eliminate unemployment AND job training / stimulus programs while protecting the tax cuts and subsidies for the rich, for corporate America. WHEN will Americans wake up and see the greatest obstacles to economic recovery are the gop and tea-baggers in Congress? From NPR...

by

January 10, 2014 8:15 AM

We'll be constantly updating this post after its 8:30 a.m. ET release.

Sign of the times? A "help wanted" sign in the window of a Philadelphia business last year.

Matt Rourke/AP

There were only 74,000 jobs added to public and private payrolls in December, but the unemployment rate fell to a 5-year low 6.7 percent, . It was a report that included several surprises for economists and raised questions about just how strong — or not — the labor market was as 2013 came to a close. .
We'll have more on the news. Click your "refresh" button to be sure you're seeing our latest updates.
Update at 8:45 a.m. ET. If Job Growth Was So Slow, Why Did The Jobless Rate Go Down?
The 74,000-gain in payroll employment last month was far below the 195,000-or-so that economists expected. But the unemployment rate fell 0.3 percentage points, which also surprised the experts. They had thought the rate held steady at November's 7 percent.
Those figures often seem to contradict each other because they're based on different surveys. The job growth data come from surveys of businesses and government agencies. Those institutions are basically asked to report how many jobs they have on their payrolls. The unemployment figure, meanwhile, comes from a survey of households. People are basically asked if they were or were not working.
To understand what's going on, it's important to dig into the data behind the unemployment rate. According to BLS, there were 347,000 fewer people in the "civilian labor force" last month than there were in November. That group includes both those who have jobs and those who say they're looking for work.
Meanwhile, BLS says that 143,000 more people — a subset of the total labor force — reported they were working. When the total size of the labor force shrinks, but more people say they've got jobs, that brings the unemployment rate down.
A key issue: Why were there fewer people in the labor force? According to BLS, 917,000 individuals were classified as "discouraged workers" last month. That was up by 155,000 from November. Discouraged workers are those who would like to have jobs, but have given up looking for work because they don't think they can find any.
An increase in the number of discouraged workers is not a positive sign.
Our original post — Will Last Jobs Report For 2013 Offer Hopeful Signs For 2014? — previewed the news:
When the releases figures this morning about job growth and the unemployment rate in December, economists will sift through the data to see if the numbers add to the recent evidence of slow improvement in the labor market, NPR's Yuki Noguchi .
The BLS report is due at 8:30 a.m. ET. We'll be updating with highlights and reaction to the news. , economists expect to hear that 195,000 or so jobs were added to public and private payrolls last month. The unemployment rate, meanwhile, likely stayed around November's 7 percent.
There's a growing sense among economists, Yuki said, that something of a "warm front" is sweeping across the economy and that job growth in 2014 might be able to continue at a 200,000-or-so monthly rate. If that happens, she added, the jobless rate could be down around 6 percent by year's end.
One caveat: As the Federal Reserve it's been giving the economy, that could slow things down.
Our friends over at Planet Money, who track this sort of news all the time, offer this related post

Every Job In America, In 1 Graph

by Quoctrung Bui

January 09, 2014 4:13 PM

Whatever Friday's monthly jobs report says, it won't change the big picture. There are roughly 137 million jobs in this country. About two-thirds of those jobs are in private-sector services; the remaining third are split between goods-producing jobs (mainly manufacturing and construction) and government work (mostly at the state and local level).
Here's a closer look, drawn from the same data that the government collects for the monthly jobs report. (You can see this data, in glorious detail, .)

Notes

*The data come from the government's non-farm payroll report -- which, as the name suggests, does not include farm jobs.

Source: Bureau Of Labor Statistics
Credit: Quoctrung Bui/NPR

One thing this graph doesn't show is change over time. Over the past several years, the job market has (obviously) been pretty grim. The recession ended four and a half years ago, in June 2009. But there are still 1.3 million fewer U.S. jobs than there were in December 2007, when the recession began.
Still, when you look more closely, the picture is more nuanced. Since the recession started in December 2007:

• Health care has added 1.5 million jobs.
• Restaurants and bars have added roughly 700,000 jobs.
• The number of construction jobs has fallen by 1.6 million.
• The number of manufacturing jobs has fallen by 1.7 million.
• The number of government jobs has fallen by about 500,000.

For more on jobs lost and gained since the recession — and on average wages in different sectors — see our post .

Where The Jobs Are (And Where They Aren't), In 1 Graph

by Jacob Goldstein

July 11, 2013 3:47 PM

It's been five and a half years since the recession started, and four years since the recovery began. It's been a brutal time for the U.S. job market (obviously), and the picture is still pretty bleak.
But when you look at individual industries, you see a more nuanced picture. Many industries have lost jobs, but others are employing more people than ever.
To see how the jobs picture has changed since the start of the recession, we created the graph below. Here's how it works:

• The size of the circle represents the number of jobs in each industry today.
• The circle's position on the vertical axis shows the number of jobs lost or gained since the start of the recession.
• The circle's position on the horizontal axis shows average hourly earnings for workers as of this spring.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics
Credit: Matt Stiles and Alyson Hurt

A few notes on some key sectors from the graph:
Manufacturing lost 2 million jobs during the recession. The sector has actually added back about half a million jobs during the recovery, and average wages are over $24 an hour. But many of the jobs that disappeared during the recession are probably gone forever. Even before the recession, automation and global competition led U.S. manufacturers to cut jobs, even as they increased output. That trend is likely to continue.
Construction is the other big sector that really got wallopped. This isn't surprising, given that the recession followed a massive real estate bubble that triggered an unsustainable building boom. Still, it's worth noting that even now, with the housing sector coming back to life and adding jobs again, there are nearly a million fewer construction jobs than there were a decade ago.
Health care is the big bright spot in the jobs picture. The sector has added 1.5 million jobs since the start of the recession, and average earnings of over $26 an hour are solid.
Leisure and hospitality mostly means jobs at restaurants and bars. The sector has more jobs now than ever. But average earnings, at about $13 an hour, are low.
Mining and logging includes the oil and gas industries, which have been booming, and where average hourly earnings are nearly $30 an hour. But, as the graph shows, even after strong growth, the sector has fewer than 1 million jobs. It just isn't big enough to make much of dent in the national jobs picture.
Professional and technical services includes a big swath of the tech industry as well as architects and lawyers and other skilled professionals. Not surprisingly, average hourly earnings are high, at about $37 an hour.
For More: The data in this post come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which has tons of great jobs data. The are here; are here. One limitation: The BLS doesn't collect earnings data for government jobs. That's why government isn't listed on the graphic.

 http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/01/10/261361049/will-last-jobs-report-for-2013-offer-hopeful-signs-for-2014?utm_medium=Email&utm_source=BreakingNews&utm_campaign=

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/01/09/261053608/every-job-in-america-in-1-graph 

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/07/11/201075339/where-the-jobs-are-and-where-they-arent-in-1-graph 

Today's Job Numbers Show Why Job-Creation Must Take Precedence Over Deficit Reduction & Unemployment rate drops to 7.7% as economy shrugs off Sandy 7DEZ12

THE jobs report shows some improvement but Robert Reich is correct, the government must do more to stimulate the economy and put people and money back to work. Enough of the bullshit propaganda from the repiglicans and tea-baggers. We have to spend money to make money, failure to do so means a weak economy with an underemployed and underpaid workforce and too many resigned to never finding gainful employment. Our education ranking will continue to decline, our infrastructure will continue to crumble, the 98% of us that actually depend on income from working will continue to fall behind, income inequality will increase and the nation will stagnate, economically, spiritually, culturally, and we will become more divided politically. This can not be allowed to happen. Pres Obama, the Democratic Party and moderate republicans must join together to raise the debt ceiling, increase non defense domestic spending, cut the defense budget, get out troops out of Afghanistan before the end of 2014 and raise the taxes on the wealthy 2% and corporations while closing their tax loopholes and ending corporate welfare like the tax breaks and subsidies for big oil. See my earlier post Top Two Percent To GOP: Tax Us & Defense Execs Say Deeper DoD Budget Cuts, Higher Taxes OK 5&3DEZ12
From HuffPost and the Washington Post.....

Today's jobs report shows an economy that's still moving in the right direction but way too slowly, which is why Washington's continuing obsession with the federal budget deficit is insane. Jobs and growth must come first.
The cost of borrowing is so low -- the yield on the ten-year Treasury is near historic lows -- and the need for more jobs and better wages so high, and our infrastructure so neglected, that it's insanity not to borrow more to put more Americans to work rebuilding the nation.
Yes, unemployment is down slightly and 146,000 new jobs were created in November. That's some progress. But don't be blinded by the hype coming out of Wall Street and the White House, both of which want the public to believe everything is going wonderfully well.
The fact is some 350,000 more people stopped looking for jobs in November, and the percent of the working-age population in jobs continues to drop -- now at 63.6 percent, almost the lowest in 30 years. Meanwhile, the average workweek is stuck at 34.4 hours.
The slowness of this recovery isn't because of Hurricane Sandy, which it turns out had very little impact on these job numbers. And it's not because of any uncertainty over the looming "fiscal cliff." Most consumers in November were oblivious about any pending cliff.
The reason the economy is still under-performing is demand is inadequate. Businesses won't create more jobs without enough customers. But consumers can't and won't spend because they don't have the money. Unless or until the private sector -- businesses and consumers -- are able to boost the economy, government must be the spender of last resort.
But the nation has bought into the Republican frame of thinking that we have to "get our fiscal house in order" before the economy can get back on track. Even though Barack Obama was reelected and Democrats gained seats in the House and Senate, that frame is still dominating debate.
Even though we're near a fiscal cliff that illustrates how dangerous deficit reduction can be when so many people are still unemployed, the White House and the Democrats seem incapable of changing the frame of debate.
Jobs must come first. Job creation must be our first priority.
ROBERT B. REICH, Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley, was Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration. Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the last century. He has written thirteen books, including the best sellers "Aftershock" and "The Work of Nations." His latest is an e-book, "Beyond Outrage," now available in paperback. He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine and chairman of Common Cause.

Follow Robert Reich on Twitter: www.twitter.com/RBReich 
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/november-jobs-numbers_b_2257674.html?utm_source=Alert-blogger&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Email%2BNotifications 

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Unemployment rate drops to 7.7% as economy shrugs off Sandy

By Neil Irwin

The unemployment rate dipped and job creation remained steady in November, as the U.S. economy shrugged off any major impact from Hurricane Sandy and showed surprising resilience in the run-up to the “fiscal cliff.”
The November jobs report, released Friday morning, was a pleasant surprise to analysts who had braced for some ugly numbers for a period during which much of the Northeast was reeling from the superstorm. In fact, the national unemployment rate fell to 7.7 percent from 7.9 percent, and the nation added 146,000 jobs, not the mere 85,000 that forecasters had expected.
But the report contained some ominous elements as well. The jobless rate dropped in large part because the labor force fell by 350,000, suggesting that people gave up looking for work. The number of people saying they had a job actually fell by 122,000. And the Labor Department revised downward its estimates of job creation in September and October by a combined 49,000 jobs.
Add it all up, and the conclusion is this: The trend that we thought was underway, of a U.S. economy growing steadily but at an unspectacular pace, remains underway. It was not undone either by the hurricane or by anxiety over looming austerity — the tax hikes and spending cuts scheduled to take effect Jan. 1 if Congress and the White House can’t reach a deal.
Indeed, the job market has been remarkably consistent over the past year, adding an average of 157,000 jobs a month — well above the level needed to keep pace with a growing labor force, but slow enough that it would still take years to bring unemployment down to the 5 percent to 6 percent range. The new report shows no real shift in that trend, which in its way is still good news: It suggests that businesses did not bring their hiring to a halt in November out of fear that lawmakers will be unable to reach a deal and the nation will hit the fiscal cliff.
The report was “stronger than feared but does not materially change the outlook for the labor market,” economist Ryan Wang of HSBC said in a research note.
Markets were little changed Friday, with the Dow Jones average up 0.2 percent at 11:30 a.m. and the Standard & Poor’s index almost precisely flat.
The November report is the first snapshot of the job market released since President Obama was elected Nov. 6, and the first since negotiations over deficit reduction between the White House and House Republicans over the fiscal cliff have resumed and intensified.
Responding to the report Friday morning, House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) referred to those negotiations and focused on the people who are out of work rather than on the drop in the jobless rate.
“The Democrats’ slow-walk strategy is unfair to taxpayers, unfair to small businesses, and unfair to all those looking for work,” Boehner said in a statement. “If the president doesn’t like our plan, he has an obligation to send us one that can pass both houses of Congress as quickly as possible. We’re ready and eager to work with him on such a proposal.”
Alan Krueger, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said in a statement that “while more work remains to be done, today’s employment report provides further evidence that the U.S. economy is continuing to heal from the wounds inflicted by the worst downturn since the Great Depression.”
Forecasters had expected a significant impact from Sandy, which struck at the tail end of October and disrupted commerce in large parts of New Jersey, New York and surrounding states. The level of new claims for unemployment benefits spiked from about 370,000 before the storm to 451,000 in the first week of November.
But the Labor Department said that “survey response rates in the affected states were within normal ranges” and that “our analysis suggests that Hurricane Sandy did not substantively impact the national employment and unemployment estimates for November.” More detailed data will be available Dec. 21, when state jobs numbers will be released, allowing a closer look at any employment changes in the affected states.
The biggest category for job gains was the retail sector, which added 53,000 positions. But that growth could be due to Thanksgiving falling relatively early on the calendar this year, meaning retailers likely added temporary seasonal workers earlier than they normally would.
Other major sectors that saw job gains were professional and business services, which added 43,000 jobs, and leisure and hospitality, with 23,000.
The biggest category for job losses was construction, which shed 20,000 positions, though that may well be a Sandy effect, as construction sites temporarily shut down in the Northeast. If that’s the case, that sector will be expected to rebound in the months ahead, as those construction workers get back on the job and rebuilding efforts bring in more work.
Average hourly pay for private sector workers rose four cents to $23.63, a 0.3 percent increase in average weekly earnings.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/unemployment-rate-drops-as-economy-shrugs-off-sandy/2012/12/07/e7d2c482-4070-11e2-a2d9-822f58ac9fd5_print.html 

 

The Jobs Report and the Election &Just 96,000 Jobs Added To Payrolls; Unemployment Rate Dips To 8.1 Percent 7SEP12

THIS is insightful, but I do feel Pres Obama did address the differences in the gop / tea-bagger economic agenda and the the Democratic economic agenda, maybe not in specific terms, but by pointing out the differences concerning outsourcing, tax breaks, offshore tax shelters and job creation. From Robert Reich on HuffPost....
President Obama's speech to the Democratic National Convention was long on uplifting rhetoric but short on specifics for what he'll do if reelected to reignite the American economy.
Yet today's jobs report provides a troubling reminder that the economy is still in bad shape. Employers added only 96,000 nonfarm jobs in August. True, the unemployment rate fell to 8.1 percent from July's 8.3 percent, but the size of the workforce continued to drop, according to a Labor Department report Friday.
Unfortunately for the President -- and the rest of us -- jobs gains have averaged only 94,000 over the last three months. That's down from an average of 95,000 in the second quarter. And well below the average gain of 225,000 in the first quarter of the year. And compared to last year, the trend is still in the wrong direction: a monthly average gain of 139,000 this year compared to last year's average monthly gain of 153,000.
Look, I desperately want Obama to win. But the one thing his speech last night lacked was the one thing that was the most important for him to offer -- a plan for how to get the economy out of the doldrums.
Last week Mitt Romney offered only the standard Republican bromides: cut taxes on the rich, cut spending on programs everyone else depends on, and deregulate. They didn't work for George W. Bush and there's no reason to expect they'll work again.
But the president could have offered more than the rejoinder he did -- suggesting, even in broad strokes, what he'll do in his second term to get the economy moving again. At least he might have identified the scourge of inequality as a culprit, for example, pointing out, as he did last December, that the economy can't advance when so much income and wealth are concentrated at the top that the vast middle class doesn't have the purchasing power to get it back on track.
Undeniably, we have more jobs today than we did at the trough of the Great Recession in 2009. But the recovery has been anemic -- and it appears to be slowing. We're better off than we were then, but we're not as well off as we need to be by a long shot.
ROBERT B. REICH, Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley, was Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration. Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the last century. He has written thirteen books, including the best sellers "Aftershock" and "The Work of Nations." His latest is an e-book, "Beyond Outrage." He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine and chairman of Common Cause.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/the-jobs-report-and-the-e_b_1864732.html?utm_source=Alert-blogger&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Email%2BNotifications 

Just 96,000 Jobs Added To Payrolls; Unemployment Rate Dips To 8.1 Percent

by Mark Memmott

Enlarge Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images At a job fair in San Diego this week, Navy Sailor E-5 Cedric Washington spoke to Sim Garriotti from Lockheed Martin while interviewing for a potential position.

The number of jobs on private and public payrolls grew by just 96,000 in August from July, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said this morning.
Meanwhile, the nation's unemployment rate edged down to 8.1 percent from 8.3 percent the month before. Often, the jobless rate dips even when employment growth is weak because the size of the labor force shrank as many Americans gave up looking for work.
It's a report that will surely add to the presidential campaign rhetoric.
We'll have more from the report shortly, so hit your "refresh" button to see our latest updates.
Update at 9:50 a.m. ET. White House Says Report Is Evidence Of Recovery:
"While there is more work that remains to be done, today's employment report provides further evidence that the U.S. economy is continuing to recover from the worst downturn since the Great Depression," writes the president's top economic adviser, Alan Krueger, on the White House blog. He also focuses on the section of the BLS report that shows "private sector establishments added 103,000 jobs last month, and overall non-farm payroll employment rose by 96,000. The economy has now added private sector jobs for 30 straight months, for a total of 4.6 million jobs during that period."
Update at 9:35 a.m. ET. What Will Stocks Do?
There was a big rally Thursday on Wall Street, partly in anticipation of what some thought would be a good news on the jobs front. So will stocks tank today? USA Today's John Waggonner says maybe not, because "until the economy starts creating more jobs, the Fed is going to be fighting to keep interest rates low — and that's good for stocks." The Wall Street Journal also says today's report makes it more likely the Fed will try to give the economy a boost.
And at the start of trading, stocks appear to be holding steady.
So, in the sometimes bizarro world of Wall Street, bad news = good news.
Update at 9:10 a.m. ET. Big Decline In Labor Force:
There were 368,000 fewer people counted as being part of the labor force in August than in July, BLS says. That largely accounts for the drop in the official unemployment rate.
Among the reasons for that decline was an increase in those considered to be "marginally attached to the labor force." According to BLS, "these individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey."
Update at 9:06 a.m. ET. "We Aren't Better Off," Romney Says:
"If last night was the party, this morning is the hangover," Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney says in a statement just emailed to reporters by his campaign. He adds that:

"For every net new job created, nearly four Americans gave up looking for work entirely. This is more of the same for middle class families who are suffering through the worst economic recovery since the Great Depression. After 43 straight months of unemployment above 8 percent, it is clear that President Obama just hasn't lived up to his promises and his policies haven't worked. We aren't better off than they were four years ago. My plan for a stronger middle class will create 12 million new jobs by the end of my first term. America deserves new leadership that will get our economy moving again."

Update at 9:05 a.m. ET. Where The Jobs Were:

Food services and drinking places: Up by 28,000.
Professional and technical services: Up by 27,000.
Health care: Up by 17,000.
Computer systems design and related services: Up by 11,000.
Manufacturing: Down by 15,000.

Update at 9 a.m. ET. Average Monthly Gain Is Down:
"Since the beginning of this year," BLS says, "employment growth has averaged 139,000 per month, compared with an average monthly gain of 153,000 in 2011."
It adds that "in August, employment rose in food services and drinking places, in professional and technical services, and in health care."
Update at 8:55 a.m. ET. Could Overshadow Obama's Convention Speech:
The Associated Press calls the 96,000-gain in jobs "a weak figure that could slow any momentum President Barack Obama hoped to gain from his speech to the Democratic National Convention."
Update at 8:50 a.m. ET. Obama Deserves An "F," GOP Chairman Says:
"Time is up, Mr. President," tweets Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus. "More of the same is not good enough. This isn't an incomplete, it's an F."
Update at 8:45 a.m. ET. Stuck Above 8 Percent:
The nation's jobless rate has been above 8 percent since February 2009. Its recent peak was 10 percent, in October 2009, and it has now touched 8.1 percent twice (the other time, in April this year). Republicans and GOP nominee Mitt Romney will surely focus on how the rate has remained high through President Obama's first term. Democrats and the White House will say again that President Obama inherited an economic crisis and that more time is needed to fully recover.
Update at 8:40 a.m. ET. July Job Growth Revised Downward:
BLS now says that 141,000 jobs were added to payrolls in July. That's down from the agency's preliminary estimate of a 163,000-gain.
Our original post — "High Unemployment & Slow Job Growth: Likely News From Today's Report":
Expect to hear this morning that employers added 125,000 to 130,000 jobs to their payrolls in August and that the nation's unemployment rate stayed at 8.3 percent, economists tell Reuters and Bloomberg News.
The takeaway from such numbers would be that job growth remains sluggish and unemployment remains high. In other words, more of the same.
Yes, it's time again for the monthly numbers that hit home for most Americans when they think about how the economy is doing. They're also the numbers that get talked about most on the campaign trail and could have a big impact on who gets elected president in November.
Our colleagues over at Planet Money have posted a look at "Jobs In America, In 2 Graphs." As they write:

"Three years into the recovery, the U.S. jobs picture is still bleak. There are 4.8 million fewer jobs today than there were in January 2008, the month when employment peaked. But ... the story becomes more nuanced when you look across different sectors of the economy."

The BLS report is due at 8:30 a.m. ET. We'll update this post after the news is out and follow the analyses and reactions.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/09/07/160732356/high-unemployment-slow-job-growth-likely-news-from-todays-report?sc=nl&cc=brk-20120907-0838