Free fries for lunch? Employee discount at the dollar store? (Just kidding.) I cannot disagree with you there. One of my closest friends presently works two jobs and is making less than he did in his single job about 5 or so years ago. He is not alone. While we would be remiss to overlook the quantity of work that is available, let us not dismiss the fact that we are probably no longer comparing apples with apples. I am not drawing any conclusions. Rather, I am just making an observation.
All im trying to say by posting this is that the whole week all the talking heads were saying they were looking fwd to the numbers coming out later in the week, ism and of course employment, piss poor number was expected to be 300K added, it wasnt 300K, so thats why we always see the gross rate ticking down to counter it, its weird actually. i think that number is masking a lot of underlying weakness in the economy.
You just made 2 assumptions, whereas I tried not to make any. You see, I'm not a very good guesser. For example, if I had to guess, I would say that, judging by your posts, you are probably fairly young and not yet out of your 20s. See how wrong I can be?
I was disappointed by the job report this morning because I developed an indicator that is similar to the Monster Employment Index (similar methodology and similar results) that pointed to much higher employment. But the overall picture is still very good if you look at what I consider to be the absolute best economic indicators: The U.S. Department of Labor's Alternative Measures of Labor Underutilization http://stats.bls.gov/webapps/legacy/cpsatab12.htm
In contrast to the employment numbers coming from the Payroll Survey, the Household Survey indicates continuous strength with +373,000 employed.