Today's Employment Situation Report from Uncle Sam (link will be updated for May results at 8:30 a.m.) will almost certainly report hundreds of thousands of seasonally adjusted jobs lost.
According to this AFP report, "Most analysts expect employers to have cut 520,000 jobs, down from 539,000 in April. But the unemployment rate is still expected to have jumped to 9.2 percent, its highest since 1983." (UPDATE: 345,000 seasonally adjusted jobs were lost in May, but the unemployment rate rose sharply to 9.4%.)
"Down from April"? Given the vagaries in the governmnent's estimates, and that the figure will be revised in the following two months, how about "virtually the same as April"?
At least AFP gave us two numbers to compare. An e-mail I received on Wednesday morning from CNNMoney.com about ADP's monthly National Employment Report didn't even do that:
A casual recipient looking no further would have thought that the country's steep employment declines might be getting less steep.
That's not the case in any meaningful way. As the actual ADP Report told us on Wednesday:
Nonfarm private employment decreased 532,000 from April to May 2009 on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to the ADP National Employment Report®. The estimated change of employment from March to April was revised by 54,000, from a decline of 491,000 to a decline of 545,000.
Wow, May's -532,000 was a whole 13,000 "better" than April's revised -545,000.
At this rate of “better,” the economy, if it loses 13,000 fewer monthly jobs continually, will will finally start adding seasonally adjusted jobs towards the end of 2012 -- 41 months from now. In the interim, the country will have lost over 10.5 million more jobs.
Plus, as seen in the downward revision to April's original number, the "better" May number could easily be adjusted in June to a number that's worse, perhaps even by tens of thousands of jobs.
Better, schmetter.
A related entry is here at BizzyBlog.com.
—Tom Blumer is president of a training and development company in Mason, Ohio, and is a contributing editor to NewsBusters
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Yesterday I heard that the
June 5, 2009 - 07:21 ET by motherbeltYesterday I heard that the number of new "jobless" claims was down, but that the unemployment rate was up.
How does that work?
If you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bull$h!t.
I didn't think it was physically possible, but this both sucks and blows. -Bart Simpson
Yup...
June 5, 2009 - 07:37 ET by TASS719.4%...thanks for making history Leftards...
However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results. - Sir Winston Churchill
9.4%??
June 5, 2009 - 08:15 ET by jdripperWe are at the largest population in the history of this nation. We have more unemployed people on the rolls now then at anytime since the great depression. Placing the actual numbers into historical context; not just the percentages gives a whole new reality.
Jack
"If at age 20 you are a conservative then you have no heart. If at age 30 you are a liberal then you have no brains." Sir Winston Churchill
Totally predictable... I
June 5, 2009 - 08:43 ET by dscottTotally predictable... I told you so.
Even if the job losses stopped today, unemployment will still rise due to demographics. 4 million high school and college students graduating in May and June. Minus the statistical average of 208,333 people who die every month (2.5 million a year in the US). May's numbers reflect the college students graduating (approx. 1 million), the big pulse is yet to come in June and July with the high schoolers coming into the job market (approx 3 million).
The demographic reality is the economy must create 1.5 million new jobs a year for unemployment to remain stable. The reason is clear, the Democrats broke their 2006 campaign pledge of lowering the price of gas and if you check the stats, January 2007 (when they took control of Congress) unemployment began it's steady rise due to the drilling ban choking energy supplies thus pushing up the price of gas still further to $4/gallon killing the required economic expansion that occurred in Sept 08 not Dec 07 as falsely propagandized by liberals who hijacked NBER.
Bottom line, you ain't seen nothing yet, come August when they report the July stats, unemployment will be around 11%. That percentage will be supported by the cycling of newly entering people into the labor market getting jobs displacing older workers going onto unemployment. Watch for the Not in Laborforce numbers to drop as this happens. The high schoolers and college students are mostly in that Not in Laborforce category since teen unemployment (16 to 19) is in the 20% range indicating a lot more people want a job but can't get one because they either dropped off of unemployment or never held a job long enough to get unemployment or never got a job in the first place.
Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, starving the poor one gallon of ethanol at a time. Fill your tank with E85 and cull a village.
Anybody ever heard the term
June 5, 2009 - 08:50 ET by BKeyserAnybody ever heard the term "skeleton crew"?
Of course jobless claims are going to decrease eventually, until business' completely shut their doors, they'll continue to shed all but the absolutely critical assets- the number of expendables, however, is finite.
The dealer closings haven't hit yet either....
Neither has the commercial construction market- and things will get really ugly when that crashes (later this year or the first of next) since that employee base is largely union...(Compare that to the residential construction market which lost a lot of jobs that likely went un-reported- though my guess is the number of illegals has dropped a bit...)
Why don't they just say
June 6, 2009 - 00:49 ET by RR GOPWhy don't they just say that employment was up by +532,000?
Hell, even + 1,000,000
The average American would be none the wiser.
One of the 34% who thinks George W. Bush was a great President. One of the 61% who wants to bring back the stock and pillory (yep...approval for Congress now at 39%...do you believe that!?).