Today's job report in pictures

[웃 910]

Today’s jobs report shows a labor market that continues to limp along rather than provide the healthy job growth needed to put people back to work. This situation screams out for extending the federal emergency unemployment insurance (UI) programs scheduled to expire at the end of this year, and for lawmakers and the Federal Reserve to consider further measures to boost the flagging economic recovery.

Below are some charts to show how the new figures look in historical context. Here is our statement with further analysis.

See our chart book for more charts.

[dalegg 143]

This recession is worser.

[scandal 951]

You know what's interesting to me about that chart is I remember the 1991 recession (the green one above, which ended GHWB presidency) as the first one in which they termed it a "jobless recovery", with lots of moping about how employment growth was lagging the business turnaround. Back then, much of the blame was put on outsourcing: American companies were supposedly aggressively shedding workers even as they were growing by outsourcing jobs to Asia. Of course all that "jobless recovery" talk ended pretty quickly after things really got moving again in 1993 and on, just when Clinton took office.

There is a clear trend through the recessions shown above for the hiring to kick in more and more delayed in each successive business cycle after the technical end of the recession.2001 was worse than 1991 which was worse than 1982. The trouble with our current economy is that the trigger wasn't just a normal business cycle boom/bust, but rather the debt-driven liquidity monster spawned by the subprime housing crash and related OTC derivatives. We are still way overlevered, so is Europe, and it's going to take eons till it all gets unwound. Jobs aren't going to come back quickly, and it frankly doesn't matter who is in the White House or which party controls Congress, or even who the Fed chairman is. Those things can have an effect on the margins as government policy does matter. But basically things aren't going to get much better until we as a society adjust to a substantially lower standard of living. Fewer services, leaner retirement benefits, capitated healthcare, etc.

[Bad_Daddy 2,209]

You know what's interesting to me about that chart is I remember the 1991 recession (the green one above, which ended GHWB presidency) as the first one in which they termed it a "jobless recovery", with lots of moping about how employment growth was lagging the business turnaround. Back then, much of the blame was put on outsourcing: American companies were supposedly aggressively shedding workers even as they were growing by outsourcing jobs to Asia. Of course all that "jobless recovery" talk ended pretty quickly after things really got moving again in 1993 and on, just when Clinton took office.

There is a clear trend through the recessions shown above for the hiring to kick in more and more delayed in each successive business cycle after the technical end of the recession.2001 was worse than 1991 which was worse than 1982. The trouble with our current economy is that the trigger wasn't just a normal business cycle boom/bust, but rather the debt-driven liquidity monster spawned by the subprime housing crash and related OTC derivatives. We are still way overlevered, so is Europe, and it's going to take eons till it all gets unwound. Jobs aren't going to come back quickly, and it frankly doesn't matter who is in the White House or which party controls Congress, or even who the Fed chairman is. Those things can have an effect on the margins as government policy does matter. But basically things aren't going to get much better until we as a society adjust to a substantially lower standard of living. Fewer services, leaner retirement benefits, capitated healthcare, etc.

Agreed with that, but I would also like to add that I think this should be a wake up call on wasteful spending and politicians that sold this country out to lobbyist. Voting day this next time around should be interesting if anything.

[Obama 2012 1,714]

The Dems and GOP don't give a damn about what it takes to create jobs, and that's a Fact minus a select few individuals who seem to have no voice.