Redstate

Posted at 12:01am on Feb. 3, 2008 Alack

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

It is bad enough that the employment situation has become sour. It is even worse that employment problems may help lend even more momentum to the god-awful stimulus package currently under consideration in the Senate. Nothing like bad news today to cause us to make decisions that will bring about bad news tomorrow.

The story does note that a 17,000 job loss in the context of an economy of over 130 million jobs is strikingly small and could just be a statistical hiccup. Let us hope so. But even if it is, enough people are panicking that there will be a short term stimulus package that does not solve--and perhaps makes worse--our longer term problems.

Posted in Economy | Employment Figures — Comments (10)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 4:38pm on Dec. 7, 2007 Happy Friday

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

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.

Posted in Economy | Employment Figures — Comments (7)/ Email this page » / Read More »