Bending the Third Rail
Because We Should, We Can, We Do
Friday, September 01, 2006
Wowzers
The jobs report came out today.

The economy reported a growth in jobs of 128K workers, above the Wall Street forecast. Well, you'd think that we were in the 90's the way the stock market rallied.

For the moment, let's set aside (h/t Barry Ritholtz):
- The mix of job growth remains skewed toward low-paying industries;

- Weakness is most evident in the retail component -- which has stopped growing;

- Almost one-half of the rise occurred in the health and social assistance category -- generally low-paying jobs;

- Other sectors have not picked up the slack
(Joshua Shapiro, MFR);

- The pace of job creation has slowed dramatically.

2004: 175,000/mo
2005: 165,000/mo
2006: 140,000/mo
Past five months: 119,000/mo
(Steven A. Wood, Insight Economics)

- Manufacturing has lost more than three million jobs since 2000; Conditions remain poor;

- Prior recoveries at this point had created two million manufacturing jobs;

- Unemployment fell to 4.7 from 4.8% due to a large number of adults leaving the labor force (NiLF);

- The two-tiered labor market continues: The top quartile has it good; but for everyone else, the future is worrisome;

- For many workers, real incomes lag inflation;
These are all "minor" details, right?

The fact remains that in a country of nearly 300 million folks, it takes many more new jobs than this to just stay even with population growth. The bottom line remains that this "recovery" (and I'm being generous) is a jobless recovery. I sense the market is having it's last party .... a winter party before returning to it's bear ways in early 2007.
Written at 11:05 AM by Greyhair.
1 comments
1 Comments:
Blogger Lynne said...
A more accurate reflection of the state of the nation can be seen in the dramatic increase in people showing up at soup kitchens.
3:45 PM  
Post a Comment
<< Home