5.4% unemployment lowest in 7 yrs. 223K job gains last month. BIN LADEN dead.

[UTUSN]

Wonder what we'd be hearing if these and other things had happened on Shrub's "watch".

*********QUOTE********

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/08/us-usa-economy-jobs-idUSKBN0NS1DT20150508

[font size=5]Job growth rebounds, keeps 2015 Fed rate hike in play[/font]

U.S. job growth rebounded last month and the unemployment rate dropped to a near seven-year low of 5.4 percent, signs of a pick-up in economic momentum that could keep the Federal Reserve on track to hike interest rates this year.

Nonfarm payrolls increased 223,000 as gains in services sector and construction jobs offset weakness in mining, the Labor Department said on Friday. The one-tenth of a percentage point decline in the unemployment rate to its lowest level since May 2008 came even as more people piled into the labor market. ....

*************UNQUOTE*************

[Dem2]

1. Terrible news.

Didn't you hear about the U6? Labor participation rate? QE2?

/s

[JaneyVee]

8. How many of those are retired boomers, seniors, disabled?

There's no way of knowing because there is no economic metric that measures it.

[former9thward]

33. It can be measured.

They break it down by age. The labor participation rate is dropping in the 20-54 group. Its not "retired boomers".

[DCBob]

34. college students.. stay at home moms.. young rich retired.

Lots of logical explanations. It makes no sense why a young healthy person would simply give up looking for work.

[former9thward]

35. It makes perfect sense.

Haven't there always been college students, stay at home moms, young rich retired? The participation rate is a moving downward trend. You can whistle past the graveyard all you want but jobs are not out there for many. They stay at home or move back. This means housing is not being sold and the furnishing for the housing is not sold. Student loan debt means new cars are not sold and people do not go out. It is the reason we only had 0.2% growth in the economy last quarter. Terrible number. They blamed it on the winter as if we have never had winters before....

[DCBob]

36. Yes of course but..

I suspect there are alot more now for whatever reason. Maybe many decided to go back to school or stay at home with children because it was harder to find a job. That seems more likely than just saying people have given up looking for work entirely and doing nothing.

[uponit7771]

49. Yes, in light of Obama care we know why U6 goes up but REPUBLICANs usually don't mention Obama

... care as cause... like you've done

[Thinkingabout]

2. It must be Obama's fault, huh.

[Fred Sanders]

5. Terrible news, now Obama has brought the unemployment rate to near historical lows!

Terrible, terrible, terrible.... where is my daily dose of bad news? Please only post negative comments, no one wants to hear this stuff.

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

54. ikr!

[sufrommich]

3. Unemployment rates:

Bush takes office: 4.2%
Bush leaves office: 7.8%

Obama takes office: 7.8%
Today: 5.4%

Questions?

[Fred Sanders]

6. Truly an amazing statistic today, but little news. The anti-TPP folks should set up Camp Strawman elsewhere

[steve2470]

7. +1 nt

[tridim]

11. Why do you hate 'Merika?

Facts are dangerous things, to Republicans.

[sufrommich]

12. Democrats should be shouting these numbers

from the rooftops.

[Mojorabbit]

22. In another thread the same report shows a huge loss in full time jobs. nt

[sufrommich]

26. By all means let's not,as democrats, take any credit for

improving the economy,let's put on our sad sack faces and our "we suck" t shirts. If history has taught us anything,it's that voters love that shit.

[Fred Sanders]

4. But American military bases went to Level Brown Pants, or something, no time to celebrate and to not be afraid!

[treestar]

9. Thanks Obama

[econoclast]

10. Actually LOST 252K Full-time jobs

Thats right. The Household Survey - the same data set used to calculate the Unemployment Rate also reports on the number of Full Time jobs.

The data series is Employed -Usually Work Full Time.

The number of Full Time jobs declined from a level of 121,024,000 in March to 120,772,000 in April. A LOSS of 252,000 Full Time jobs.

In fact, the number of full time jobs peaked in Nov 2007 at 121,875,000. Thats right. We have yet to regain the number of full time jobs we had over seven years ago! We are over 1.1 MILLION jobs short of where we were in 2007. And there are 17 million more people now than there were then.

Don't believe me? You can look it up. I'd recommend the St Louis Fed's FRED data library website. Look for data series - LNS12500000

[tridim]

13. And the trend since the end of the great Bush recession is nothing but upward.

Just a small point that must have slipped your mind?

https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/LNS12500000

[econoclast]

17. Nope

But before we get all back slapping self-congratulatory, realize that full time job creation STINKS!!!!

[bluesbassman]

18. Hey, just think of all those happy part-time barristas and cashiers!

The economy IS booming!

Too bad for the ever shrinking middle class the boom is creating profits for the financial sector and corporations, but real wealth for the average American is slipping away daily.

[tridim]

20. Did you even bother to look at the graph on the link I provided?

DERP

[stevenleser]

24. No, and they won't. They don't want to believe the truth. They have an agenda and no facts will

distract them from it.

[econoclast]

29. I've been looking at it

Every month for years!!!!!

Where have you been. Head in the sand?

[econoclast]

25. I look at it EVERY MONTH

Yes its going up. But for Pete's Sake its going uo too slowly. Over six years and we still haven't reached the pre recession peak. That's terrible!

[840high]

56. Yes it does.

[whatthehey]

16. And the U6 measures PT workers who would prefer FT

Not only is U6 down more than 10% from a year ago but the difference between U3 and U6, which isolates discouraged and unwilling PT workers, is also down. Which means, as befits a rapidly aging workforce, more people are looking for PT rather than FT work

[stevenleser]

23. Unfortunately, that person isn't interested in the truth. They comb the stats for the one stat that

out of context seems to indicate what they desperately want to believe.

[econoclast]

28. Steve ... I've been banging the drum

On this for six years!!!!!

In many cases it is THE important stat. Why is median household income flat? Look here. Income inequality? Look here? New household formation in the tank. Look here.

The important question is why haven't you noticed in six years?

[tridim]

31. You don't even know how to read a simple graph.

Why would anyone listen to you and your six years of looking at data you don't understand?

Upward trends are displayed as an upward sloping graph, left to right.

Downward trends are displayed as a downward sloping graph, left to right.

[econoclast]

32. Ever heard of second derivatives?

Not just the change but the rate of change?It is going up but too damn slowly! We are still over 1 million full time jobs below the pre recession peak


Go to the chart you assert I din't understand. Change the graph date range to ten years and from LEVEL to CHANGE. You wull see that from the recession lows to about April 2010 things were going pretty well. Then things slowed to a crawl and we have been stuck there since.

[Marr]

47. They won't look it like that. Pretty much the definition of myopic. /nt

[LeftOfWest]

62. Nailed it.

And them. Thanks.

Stuck. Enough of that.

[progree]

64. Yes. So what? Here are those graphs you want us to look at...

Go to the chart you assert I din't understand. Change the graph date range to ten years and from LEVEL to CHANGE. You wull see that from the recession lows to about April 2010 things were going pretty well. Then things slowed to a crawl and we have been stuck there since.

http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS12500000
(click on "More Formatting Options" on the upper right and check the following 4 boxes: "Original Data Value", "1-Month Net Change," "3-month Net Change", and "12-Month Net Change". In the "Output Type" section, under "Graphs" check "include graphs". Then click "Retrieve Data"

I did. I looked at 1-month change, 3-month change, and 12-month change. They all present the same picture but the 3-month presents less zip-zagginess than than 1-month change, and the 12-month change is less zig-zaggy. In other words, with the month-to-month volatility somewhat smoothed out so its easier to see the general trend.

Below is the 1-month change:



Below is the 3-month change:



Below is the 12-month change:



So what's your point again? Is the rate of job change supposed to keep going up? Why? (Actually there is a little bit of acceleration evident in the 12-month change graph).

As for it being still below the high-fever sick bubble of 2007, see #61.

[progree]

60. Full-time workers up 1,265,000 over last 5 months (253,000/month average)

Did you make a big HOO-HAH when fulltime workers went up by 552,000 in September, 427,000 in December, and 777,000 in January, for example?

Monthly changes in full-time workers (in thousands): http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS12500000
` ` `` Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun July Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
2014) 410 209 203 396 332 -538 196 310 552 371 -174 427
2015) 777 123 190 -252



Note this is a highly volatile data series, as are most of the Household Survey numbers (in other words, most of the month to month changes is statistical noise)

I talk about this on my EF-0 page under the topic "Highlighting the adverse one-month or other short-term changes in some highly volatile component, and making it seem like it's the story of the whole Obama administration's job record. Also known as cherry-picking the bad statistic of the month

Should we perhaps look over the past 12 months:

-880,000 Part-Time Workers who want Full-Time Jobs (Table A-8's Part-Time For Economic Reasons)
+487,000 Part-Time Workers (Table A-9)
+2,314,000 Full-Time Workers (Table A-9)

Or since the jobs recovery began in March 2010?
-2,356,000 Part-Time Workers who want Full-Time Jobs (Table A-8's Part-Time For Economic Reasons)
+111,000 Part-Time Workers (Table A-9)
+9,994,000 Full-Time Workers (Table A-9)
(so much for the meme that all the new jobs are part-time)

[progree]

61. If we want to get back to Nov 2007, maybe we should elect Jeb Bush. Or Scott Walker?

and get back to the good ol' rah rah boom boom days when we had a white man in the White House? [font color = "gray", size = 1]{sarcasm thingy just to be sure}[/font]

We lost 252,000 full-time jobs in April
In fact, the number of full time jobs peaked in Nov 2007 at 121,875,000. Thats right. We have yet to regain the number of full time jobs we had over seven years ago! We are over 1.1 MILLION jobs short of where we were in 2007. And there are 17 million more people now than there were then.
BLS full-time worker data series: http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS12500000
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026642259

Yes, most of the economic statistics suck when compared to the peak in 2007. This is one of the classical polemicist tricks (from my EF-0 page at my sigline)

(5). Comparing the current statistics to 2007's statistics, as if 2007 was a normal economy we should get back to - I see this all the time. Yes, today's economic statistics just about across the board suck compared to 2007's. But keep in mind that 2007 was not a normal economy. It was a very sick bubble economy with a very high fever -- people using their houses as ATMs to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars a year. Anybody could get a mortgage, virtually no questions asked. The belief that housing prices never go down, at least not on a national average scale (thus the theory that a geographically diversified bundle of mortgages was always a safe bet).

The same for comparisons to 2000 -- that too was a very sick economy -- astronomical price/earnings ratios in the stock market, day trading and momentum investing. The belief that Alan Greenspan had mastered the "Goldilocks" economy (not too cool, not too warm) and that, now that we understood how to use the Fed's powers to control the economy, we will never have a recession again. That tech companies with huge negative earnings and no business plan were great investments. That we were all going to the moon, and we were all going to the stars (speaking of the economy and the stock market).

Well, I'm extremely very sorry. But we don't want to get back to the very sick high-fever bubble economies of 2000 or 2007.

[Martin Eden]

14. BIN LADEN is STILL DEAD???

He and Generalissimo Francisco Franco have a lot in common.

[Puzzledtraveller]

15. Bin laden dead

Terrorism, or w/e you want to call it, thriving, for better or worse, and for whomever's fault(bushco) in my book. Having Bin Laden hunted and killed was never something I wanted or cared about and the job numbers, BS. I'm one of those that stopped looking. I did go back to school, 100% grant covered Booya!!!

[Hekate]

19. KnR

[True Blue Door]

21. Be fun to compare this performance with things Hillary Clinton said about Obama.

Even things she keeps saying about him, trying to distance herself from one of America's best ever Presidents.

[UTUSN]

27. I'll see the thousand words and raise them one pic:

[CountAllVotes]

30. Good on the rate hike

This zero% B.S. has taken a huge toll on my household as we don't "invest" in the Wall Street casino. Nope.

Raise the rate Fed. Do something positive for those that don't play the shell game.

[OilemFirchen]

37. Absolutely.

But then some of our resident economic "experts" will begin grousing about inflation. Others, of course, will append the move to their litany of a Wall Street / Fed / CFR / Bilderberg / Illuminati death-machine parts inventory.

[KamaAina]

38. BENGHAZI!! BENGHAZI!!! BENGHAZI!!!!

[BKH70041]

39. They should be embarrassed to tout those numbers.

It's not a true reflection of just how lousy the economy really is.

There's 93,000,000 (93 million) Americans not in the labor force who want to have work, 56,000,000 (56 million) of them women. Not good at all.

This 5.4% crap may play to some citizens, and Wall Street liked the numbers for the moment, but this spells bad things on the horizon. And the excuses are wearing thin, especially the one where they blame the Republicans for everything. Time for the Democratic leaders to buck up, shoulder the responsibility and say "as a party our ideas didn't work and we f%*d up," and take your lumps now before 2016 rolls around.

[DCBob]

40. You should be embarrased using RW talking points.

[Romulox]

42. *Reality*, DCBob. It's a factor. nt

[DCBob]

44. Reality is the labor participation rate was abnormally boosted by bubbles.

The current rate is more normal.

[Romulox]

45. No, that's an *interpretation*. You were complaining about bringing up the raw facts of the matter.

[DCBob]

48. No. I have no problem with the facts. Its your interpretation I have a problem with.

[uponit7771]

51. Yeap, one of the reasons right here on DU Clinton doesn't get any credit for economy or improving

... middle class...

[BKH70041]

55. That tactic is used here all the time.

"You're using RW talking points" is one of the many ways members here try to intimidate other members to shut up when they're saying something uncomfortable. Meh. May work with some at this site who value their membership. In normal, everyday public life, it's a joke, which is how I'll always treat it.

[99Forever]

41. Shit jobs, paying shit wages are not enough.

We DEMAND living wage jobs.

[Marr]

50. This is just a sales pitch for the TPP.

They need to convince as many rubes as possible that the government is trying to make the economy work for all of us, rather than just a few families.

[Dem2]

59. This suggests that the numbers are deliberately manipulated

when compared to some other standard in the past. I know we have shifting labor demographics that might explain why some may view this data poorly, but calling it a "sales pitch" implies some nefarious manipulation of the data. I'm interested in the source and supporting data for this theory. Would you provide supporting information from reputable sources?

[uponit7771]

52. More RW wing meme pushing, knowing without stimulus we'd not have shit jobs.. we'd

... have just shit

[99Forever]

57. Hey, if you've have no actual response...

... just go with "you're RW" personal attack, eh?

And everybody KNOWS that the only people who want ALL of us to make a decent living are Republicans, eh smartguy?

Here's your sign:

FAIL

[Bobbie Jo]

58. What?

Hey, if you've have no actual response...

... just go with "you're RW" personal attack, eh?

Press 1 for English...

1



Talk about FAIL .

[Romulox]

43. But labor participation rate continues to plummet. Oops! nt

[Liberal_in_LA]

46. yay

[CentralMass]

53. yet, life sucks more then I can remember.

[Jamaal510]

63. It's been over a week,

and a good news thread like this only has 20-something recs on a supposed Dem site. I'm almost speechless at how odd that is.