Today unemployment data came up at 5% lowest since 9/11 2001. New employment rate was also 25% lower than what was expected that contradict each other. In the last 3 months, we were just hearing more layoff, like GM, Ford, IBM,..... I don't know any tech company or any other company who is hiring except army!!. Bottom of the line, I don't believe that unemployment rate is down. I think many unemployed people just gave up. Any idea? what is your take on this?
They don't take into account those who quit looking for jobs because they are tired of looking for jobs. Guess I am off the official "Unemployed" list.
housing is accounting for a huge number of jobs. 30-40% of new jobs are "housing" related. a house of cards, if you ask me.
Yeah, 90% of those new jobs are held by mostly illegal aliens. Thus, we should really need to think about if the employment rate grew for Mexico or the U.S.
Labor force participation today - 66% Labor force participation in January 2001 - 67.2% That's about 2 million people who left the workforce for whatever reasons in the last 4.5 years. That's not a sign of healthy economy.
The consensus yesterday from a few sources that I watch was that the new jobs number would be 200k to 250k. When I heard the new jobs number was only 146k I thought the market was going to sell off. Could this be a case where the spin machine kicked in and pushed the market up? Maybe the market would have gone up if there were only 75K new jobs? 50k new jobs? Took me a while this morning to understand the market was going to discount or ignore the 'real' number.... Good luck
The unemployment rate is much higher than the numbers the govt. puts out. Many individual unemployment benefits ran out, and the rate of lay-offs has decreased this year because most companies have no more workers to cut. Once you stop getting payments, you stop being counted. The way these figures are calculated is spurious. Another suprious number put out is the CPI. Bill Gross of pimco funds explains it well http://www.pimco.com/LeftNav/Late+Breaking+Commentary/IO/2004/IO_Oct_2004.htm
None of the economic numbers are legit. PPI, CPI, Employment, etc, etc. I just figured we all accepted this as reality at this point.
bad news is good news. soft job creation is good for the market because it takes the pressure off the fed to raise rates.