The January 2009 Employment Situation Report (020609): Continuing to Track What the POR Economy Hath Wrought
Run-up:
- ADP’s National Employment Report on the nonfarm private sector came in Wednesday at 522,000 seasonally adjusted jobs lost.
- CNBC says that “On average, economists expect that more than 500,000 jobs were lost in January, which would bring the total drop in payrolls to more than 1 million in the last two months,” and that the unemployment rate will jump to 7.5%.
- Mean Jeannine Aversa of the Associated Press reports that “the unemployment rate is expected to jump to 7.5 percent in January from 7.2 percent in December, according to economists’ forecasts,” and that ” after suffering heavy job losses last year, the country probably lost another 524,000 jobs month, getting the new year off to a rotten start. Some think the number of jobs reductions in January will be higher – 600,000 or 700,000.” For the record, the “heavy job losses” didn’t start occurring until the POR Economy of Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, and Harry Reid, which began sometime in June of last year, had been in place for a while:
You’ll note that the underperformance in 2008 compared to 2007 has accelerated since the election of The One who is playing the No-Confidence Game.
There may be a surprise in today’s numbers, but I ran out of time to explain it ahead of the report. (Update, 10:30 p.m.: The surprise has a twist, so the presentation will have to wait either until Monday here or later in the week at Pajamas Media.)
The report:
It will be here at 8:30 a.m.
Nonfarm payroll employment fell sharply in January (-598,000) and the unemployment rate rose from 7.2 to 7.6 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. Payroll employment has declined by 3.6 million since the start of the recession in December 2007; about one-half of this decline occurred in the past 3 months. In January, job losses were large and widespread across nearly all major industry sectors.
Barack Obama should be happy. It’s worse than expected.
I’ll have more later this morning.
We are well on our way to 10% unemployment by July when all those 4 million or so high school and college students graduate. February will be the telling month of the economy, if there is no increase in February’s employment #s then we are really in for deep *$#$%!.
Obama needs to immediately tell the nation’s small business community that he is relenting on any tax increase as he campaigned upon. He needs to put his rhetorical skills to use and convince people he realizes without small business hiring people and investing that there can be no recovery no matter how much the government spends on pork. Failing this confidence building exercise there is no reason why anyone should be hiring or investing where they believe money is going to be taken from them eliminating any hope of profit. Investing is a risky business, having the government confiscate your margin of profit is a no win proposition so why do it?
Comment by dscott — February 6, 2009 @ 10:55 am
One of the highlights of my travels around the internet is stopping by Bizzyblog when a crappy economic datapoint, usually the result of one or more of Bush’s failed policies, is released. On those days, ugly though they are, I always muster a smile as I watch you twist yourself into a pretzel trying to blame it all on Democrats.
Comment by Invictus — February 6, 2009 @ 9:00 pm
#2, no twisting here. Just factualizing. Eat your heart out.
And if you don’t have anything substantive to say, don’t blithely assume that your comments will be posted. Clearly, this one is an exception.
Comment by TBlumer — February 6, 2009 @ 10:33 pm
Excellent article on Hot Air: http://hotair.com/archives/2009/02/08/the-real-problem-in-the-unemployment-figures/ It indirectly supports my position that unemployment is heading toward 10% due to demographics and employers not hiring.
The proper salve for a lack of job creation would be an infusion of capital into the markets. The failure of businesses normally creates openings for small start-ups to take their place, or for innovators to find new solutions to new problems and bring them to market. The Obama administration should encourage capital to come to market by lowering the risk cost through cuts in the capital-gains tax rates, or eliminating them entirely, for the next four years.
That will create jobs and expand opportunity, and would balance the layoffs of firms that had shaky business models even before the latest financial crisis. In fact, that’s why the 2000-1 recession managed to absorb the dot-com bubble collapse as well as the 9/11 attack collapse so well. The Bush administration lowered taxes and kept capital working to create jobs. Instead, the Obama administration wants to re-create the WPA, digging ditches just to refill them later, and paying for it by eventually seizing the capital that could have created real, long-term employment.
Obama could learn something from George Bush. I doubt he’ll stop screeching hysterically long enough to figure it out.
Comment by dscott — February 9, 2009 @ 9:58 am