November job growth unexpectedly soft (112,000 vs 180,000 expected)

[NickB79]

"A surprisingly soft 112,000 jobs were created in November, the Labor Department said Friday, casting a shadow across an already downbeat holiday sales season.

The November figure, weakest since July, came in well below economists' forecasts for 180,000 new jobs, though the unemployment rate eased to 5.4% from 5.5% in October as more people looking for work found jobs."

In addition, Labor lowered its estimates for job growth in both September and October. October's gain was marked down to 303,000 from the 337,000 originally reported. The department cut September's total to 119,000 from 139,000."

What's amazing is that this article admits that you need to add 200,000 new jobs per month to keep pace with population growth, yet says the unemployment rate dropped 0.1% even though we were almost 100,000 jobs short of breaking even. The only way this makes any sense is if you realize that the unemployment rate is dropping not because more people found jobs, but because more people have exhausted their unemployment benefits because they've been out of work so long.

Secondly, as usual, the Sept. and Oct. estimates were lowered significantly. Knock me over with a feather.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/employment/2004-12-03-nov-unemployment_x.htm?csp=24&RM_Exclude=Juno

[ohioliberal]

1. And guess what

it's just going to get worse as long as * is in office.:mad:

[Moderator]

2. Duplicate

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=1041667