Category Archives: labor market & jobs

The Labor Market is Still Down — “Master Your Statistics, So They Don’t Master You”

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The quip “There are three kinds of lies:  lies, damn lies, and statistics” is variously attributed to Benjamin Disraeli or Mark Twain.   What should the public make of government statistics, such as the monthly employment report released today, Thursday, July 2, by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)?  

 

There is no lying in US government statistics.   But there are always commentators who will use the numbers to make whatever point they want.     One should learn enough to be able to interpret the numbers for oneself.     That is the only way to prevent being misled. read more

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The labor market has NOT yet signaled a turning point

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The rate of decline in employment moderated substantially in May, according to the BLS figures released June 5, to about half the monthly rate of job loss recorded over the preceding six months (345,000 vs. 642,000).    The news was received in a variety of ways. 

 

First, the cynics.  They tend to wax sarcastic at the idea of “things are not getting worse quite as fast as they were” as a good-news proposition.    But a wide variety of recent data indicate that the economy is no longer in the state of free-fall that it entered last September, and this is indeed good news.  To begin to level off is the first step toward the start of the recovery. read more

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Why Are Workers Unhappy, With Only 5.0% Unemployed? Almost 5 Million Have “Opted Out” of the Labor Force

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Payroll employment peaked in December, and according to numbers released today had declined by 260,000 jobs as of April. (Source: BLS.) Since we have not yet seen a single negative number on GDP growth, this job loss is easily the most tangible statistical evidence we have so far that the much-heralded recession indeed may have started in the first quarter of 2008.

It has been noted that the unemployment rate started out from a low level — averaging 4.6 % in 2007 — so that even after a period of gradual increase, it remains relatively low by historical standards: 5.0% in April. This is still inside the range that has usually been considered by politicians as too low to generate serious discontent (and by central bankers as too low to put downward pressure on wages and prices). But why, then, is there so much popular dissatisfaction with the economy? read more

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