Happy Friday
By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in Economy | Employment Figures — Comments (7) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Some good news to go into the weekend with:
Employers added a modest 94,000 jobs to their payrolls in November, the unemployment rate held steady at 4.7 percent and wages grew briskly, encouraging signs the nation's employment climate is holding up in the face of turbulence in the housing and credit markets.
The fresh snapshot of the labor market, released by the Labor Department on Friday, showed that hiring was brisk in education and health services, retail, professional services, the government and elsewhere. That helped to offset job losses in construction, manufacturing and financial services -- casualties of the housing slump and credit crunch.
The 94,000 new jobs in November came after a surprisingly strong payroll gain of 170,000 in October. The unemployment rate stayed at a relatively low 4.7 percent for the third straight month.
"This is reassuring. The pillar continuing to support the economy is job creation," said Carl Tannenbaum, chief economist at LaSalle Bank. "This should provide reassurance to those who worry that a recession is imminent," he said.
The performance was better than economists were expecting. They were forecasting that the unemployment rate would nudge up to 4.8 percent and they also said they thought employers would boost payrolls by around 70,000.
I am still waiting to see how we do in December and January before I can feel safe about pronouncing that recessionary pressures have substantially eased. But this is very good news and if we get similar news for December and January, we should consider ourselves very lucky and blessed indeed.
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n/t
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Two thirds of the world is covered by water,
the other third is covered by Champ Bailey.
On the front page of "Business Day" and above the fold is an article entitled "Slowing Growth in Jobs Seen as Ominous Sign for Economy." The perps ( or reporters, if you please) are Peter S. Goodman and Michael M. Grynbaum.
They mention a "modest" 94,000 jobs in November. Of course, they do not note that only 70,000 jobs had been forecast. The rest of the article is the usual "doom and gloom" but, at least, they left out "women and minorities hardest hit."
... but the economy has actually NOT LOST jobs since August of 2003. That's 51 months of consecutive job growth, the longest such streak in American History.
http://data.bls.gov/PDQ/servlet/SurveyOutputServlet
Hang all traitors and secessionists! Hang them high!
- Me
"...hiring was brisk in education and health services, retail, professional services, the government and elsewhere."
Good. Hiring was brisk in education (publicly funded?) and government. Good way to offset losses in the private sector.