As you've no doubt heard today, the jobs report for May was... disappointing. Many were expecting 200,000 or more jobs created in May, but instead there were only 54,000. In addition, the number of jobs created for April and March were revised downwards from 221k to 194k and from 244k to 232k, respectively.
The unemployment rate is 9.1%, and the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over) increased by 361,000 to 6.2 million. Additionally, the average length of unemployment rose again this month to 39.7 weeks.
If you'd like to read the jobs report yourself, you may do so here:
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm
This isn't good news, people... but if you ask me it's not that unexpected. Each spring, the BLS attempts to "normalize" the employment figures by estimating (read: guessing) how many jobs were created that they didn't count. That's what happened the past few months, and I believe the jobs numbers were rather heavily inflated. The facts bear me out... the previous two months were "adjusted" to show 20k fewer jobs than had beeen previously guessed... I mean, estimated.
No matter what rhetoric you hear spewing from the mouths of elected Democrats in Washington, our economy isn't flourishing, and we haven't turned any "corner" of economic growth.
Unfortunately.
Our economy is in trouble, and it will remain in trouble as long as businesses and individuals suffer the uncertainty of not knowing what things will be like tomorrow. The Democrats in charge are entirely too willing to change the rules under which we operate on a daily, even hourly basis. And since we don't know what the legal, regulatory, and even taxation world will look like in the near future, how can we justify taking any risky actions?
Until that changes, our economy will continue to suffer.
Come on, Democrats, isn't our country's well-being more important than your desire to force your political agenda down our throats? If not, isn't that just about the best reason in the world for the voters to fire you next year?
UPDATE: This is rich. The unemployment rate jumped and we created far fewer jobs than can remotely be considered healthy, but Obama is running a victory lap today.
http://blog.heritage.org/2011/06/03/morning-bell-unemployment-goes-up-obama-declares-victory/
Friday, June 3, 2011
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I've come to believe in the past week that a double-dip recession is about to occur. It may be a month away....maybe three months...but we are about to trip over ourselves again. Unemployment is still an issue...home sales....banks are still failing at about the same rate as they were in spring of 2010, and folks are still considering just dumping their house back to the bank to accept bankruptcy.
ReplyDeleteI'm moving my 401K money into bonds and selling my stock portfolio to just sit around the remainder of this year with money drawing a lousy 2.5 interest in a savings account. That's how sure I am of this coming 2nd recession.
The problem is dramatic though. We've already spends tons of money for the 2009 recession, and there isn't any magic pot left to save anyone else. The various debt problems of city, county, state and federal governments have me mostly amused.
I will predict a sour economy through most of 2011 and half of 2012. The election will come down hard on the President, his economic advisors, and the Senate (both Republicans and Democrats are going to get blamed in next year's election). Around the spring of 2013....things will clear up....likely new administration, and a number of new Senators in office. I realize this is a far distance off...but it's likely to be a pretty long hot summer this year and next. Put out a garden...learn to eat lean....and expect gas to run around $6 a gallon by the end of 2012. It'll eventually get better...
Ripley, I predicted a double-dip a LONG time ago... based primarily upon the flawed policies coming from this administration which have no hope of encouraging private-sector job growth.
ReplyDeleteI will predict bad economic times as long as our government is willing to raise taxes and levy massive new regulations on American businesses and citizens in order to fullfill the political agenda of the party in power.
The best thing our government can do for the economy is get out of the way and let the private sector do what it does best. As long as the government is not doing that, things will continue to be... less than stellar.