About that february jobs report

[Hannah Bell]

The report showed an overall increase in US payrolls for the month of 192,000, somewhat below economists’ expectations of a 200,000-plus gain. The official unemployment rate dipped to 8.9 percent from January’s 9.0 percent.

Private-sector payrolls rose by 222,000, but public sector jobs fell by a net 30,000, resulting from a loss of 12,000 state jobs and 18,000 local positions. Federal payrolls remained unchanged.

Much of the reported increase in February private-sector payrolls was the result of an artificially depressed number in the Labor Department’s January employment report, the result of unusually severe weather that month. In any event, the economy needs to generate between 125,000 and 160,000 new jobs every month just to keep pace with the normal growth in the labor force.

In February, there were 7.5 million fewer jobs on non-farm payrolls that in December 2007, and 7.3 million fewer jobs on private-sector payrolls. According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a liberal Washington think tank, at February’s growth rate it would take until 2019 to return to the pre-recession unemployment rate.

There are 4.8 unemployed workers for every available job.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/mar2011/econ-m05.shtml


Remarkably, despite payroll job growth over the last year, the labor force is now smaller than it was a year ago (by 312,000 workers), despite the fact that the working-age population grew by 1.9 million. Consequently, the proportion of the population in the labor force—i.e., people who are working or unemployed—dropped by 0.6 percentage points over the same period. This is comparable to the drop in unemployment. If the labor force participation rate had held steady over the last year, there would be roughly 1.5 million more workers in the labor force right now... If these workers were unemployed but still in the labor force (i.e., looking for work), the unemployment rate would be 9.8% right now instead of 8.9%.

In other words, the improvement in the unemployment rate over the last year (from 9.7% to 8.9%) is largely due to would-be workers deciding to sit out due to weakness in the labor market. The employment-to-population ratio, a broader measure of the share of the working-age population that has a job, actually declined slightly over the last year, from 58.5% to 58.4%. Improvements in the unemployment rate are only good news if a larger share of the potential workforce actually finds work, which is not happening.

Since their employment peak in August 2008, state and local governments have shed 450,000 jobs (82,000 state jobs, 368,000 local).

The private sector added 222,000 jobs. Of these gains, 152,000 jobs were in private service-providing industries. and 70,000 were in goods-producing industries. Manufacturing gained 33,000 jobs, another month of positive news but not as strong as the 53,000 added in January...To achieve the pre-recession unemployment rate in five years, the labor market would have to add around 285,000 jobs every month for that entire period.

http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/6847/

[xchrom]

1. recommend

[TBF]

2. The ruling class plan appears to be:

1 - let the baby boomers die off without health care
2 - put everyone else in the military until that happens
3 - outsource anything that can be cheaper to another country
4 - enjoy profits