Of course, I am out of pocket when the 8:30 am data release hits. Use comments to report the data — I’ll update later
The most recent Employment Situation Summary gets updated at 8:30 precisely.
Please use the comments to demonstrate your own ignorance, unfamiliarity with empirical data, ability to repeat discredited memes, and lack of respect for scientific knowledge. Also, be sure to create straw men and argue against things I have neither said nor even implied. Any irrelevancies you can mention will also be appreciated. Lastly, kindly forgo all civility in your discourse . . . you are, after all, anonymous.
"Overall household indebtedness is up from $7 trillion to almost $10 trillion since 2000. On this sum, we estimate, the American consumer has an annual interest bill of more than $500 billion; a sum, by the way, that vastly exceeds his current income growth." —Kurt Richebacher
"The Greek offer is not sufficient and they have to go away to come up with a revised plan," said a spokesman for the German Finance Ministry. The Greeks must first have a plan that satisfies the Germans which this comment states they clearly don't yet and then the Greek Parliament will vote on it this weekend. This said, whatever package gets voted on in Greece is basically an up or down vote on euro membership so we are entering another uncertain weekend for global markets. A failed vote will likely lead to a hard default which may be what...
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February 5th, 2010 at 8:30 am
U.S. employers cut 20,000 jobs in January. The unemployment rate dropped to 9.7% from 10%. December payrolls were revised to a loss of 150,000 from 85,000. December’s jobless rate was unrevised.
February 5th, 2010 at 8:32 am
Payrolls -20K. Unemployment 9.7% for Jan.
We have US citizens falling off unemployment insurance at a record rate.
February 5th, 2010 at 8:38 am
The market is very confused trading all over the place. The big # is Dec was down pretty big (-150K). The big question is when does the market figure out the people leaving unemployment aren’t because of they found a job it’s because they ran out of benefits which means they have zero income now besides what they might find on foodstamps or welfare.
February 5th, 2010 at 8:39 am
1.4M unjobs…
The total nonfarm employment level for March 2009 was revised down-
ward by 902,000 (930,000 on a seasonally adjusted basis), or 0.7 percent. The
previously published level for December 2009 was revised downward 1,390,000
(1,363,000 on a seasonally adjusted basis).
February 5th, 2010 at 8:40 am
Better headline number 9.7% should generate an interesting response depending on how much people dig around for the reason.
Boy, was I wrong yesterday about the rally continuing! LOL :D
February 5th, 2010 at 8:45 am
Here is my comment. I smell BULLSHIT and it stinks to high heaven. I have never known so many people out of work as I do now. I live on Long Island, and I am not just talking about people that work on Wall Street. These are Main Street people, who no longer can make their mortgage payments. And guess what, most of them aren’t. They all know the game the banks are playing. No foreclosures….and a check of just $1,000 every threee months restarts the time again for the NOD letter.
This is BULLSHIT. Although it was quite obvious they were setting the market up for a surprise yesterday. I really didn’t think they had the balls to be so blatantly obvious about it.
February 5th, 2010 at 8:46 am
9.7?!
…. 5.7?!
These numbers are pot brownies, full of fudge, meant to alter reality and cause temporary euphoria.
Can they figure out a way to measure the crime rate of those who have given up/fallen off unemployment insurance? Time to be frank about the implications of this shift in our society.
February 5th, 2010 at 8:55 am
I know four people who got job offers, or half job offers, or made transitions this month. And I keep in touch with alot of people about job/career type stuff. From that standpoint, its the best I’ve seen in 18 months. Of course, it may be my industry… which seems to be on the rebound.
The numbers are odd (nothing new in that) but it does occur to me that the leading edge of the baby boomers were born in 1946… so they turn 64 this year. I like to watch demographics as they can lead to some investment theses. It makes some sense that this recession knocks alot of boomers into early retirement (which is fine, and doable as retirement homes in FLA are now 20-30 cents on the dollar).
So isnt workforce exit rate the highest ever right now?
It seems to mean +50-75bps on stock futures, so far. That’s just noise.
February 5th, 2010 at 9:05 am
Amazing to see the result of the Birth/Death Adjustment: ~600K more jobs lost last year than reported…
With regard to the drop in unemployment, I’m not getting to excited. November was our only positive month in more than a year; and at +64K jobs, it wouldn’t move the dial of percent unemployed. All we are seeing is people falling out of the system and no longer being counted.
February 5th, 2010 at 9:06 am
The United States of America
(A division of Enron)
February 5th, 2010 at 9:10 am
Two comments about forced early retirements.
I believe the Fed was manipulating market prices upwards this year to mitigate pension underfunding and to aid 401K balances.
These forced early retirements will drain the social security fund sooner than expected.
The decline in the unemployment rate is pure statistical BS. I’m sure Kudlow and Maria will be loading their Depends describing the falling unemployment rate but by now people have figured out that CNBC buzz is a real counter indicator
February 5th, 2010 at 9:10 am
U6 rose from 17.1 to 18.0 (non-seasonally adjusted). That is a very high print.
February 5th, 2010 at 9:26 am
Sorry, also meant to provide a link: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm keep in mind that the seasonal adjustment (due to retail) between dec and jan is large. Still, that’s 18% of the labor force that could be working, but isn’t. Most of the alternate measures of unemployment rose.
Also take a look at http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm the section that reads “Revisions to Establishment Survey Data”, this is the adjustment being discussed earlier in the week (birth-death model assumptions replaced by actual counts).
“The total nonfarm employment level for March 2009 was revised down-
ward by 902,000 (930,000 on a seasonally adjusted basis), or 0.7 percent. The
previously published level for December 2009 was revised downward 1,390,000
(1,363,000 on a seasonally adjusted basis).”
also further on in the same page:
“Effective with data for January 2010, updated population estimates have been
used in the household survey. ” ……
“In accordance with usual practice, BLS will not revise the official household
survey estimates for December 2009 or earlier months. To show the impact of
the population adjustment, however, differences in selected December 2009 labor
force series based on the old and new population estimates are shown in table B.
The adjustment decreased the estimated size of the civilian noninstitutional
population in December by 258,000, the civilian labor force by 249,000, and
employment by 243,000; the new population estimates had a negligible impact
on unemployment rates and other percentage estimates. ”
All these may not be big deals, and I don’t subscribe to conspiracy theories. But all this does tell me that the 10.0 –> 9.7 move has to be taken with a grain of salt since there are a number of adjustments being made to the model this month (more than usual).
February 5th, 2010 at 9:28 am
Remember that reality has a liberal bias.
February 5th, 2010 at 9:46 am
Thing about saying… “but +65k in Nov is a blip”.
Is that 1-yr ago the monthly numbers were -600k, -700k, -800k. And so now they are +50k, -150k, -25k.
The trend, for the past year, is pretty firm — and its way, way better.
The question is… will that continue? Will we see solid positive #s in the +200-500k range in 6 months?
February 5th, 2010 at 9:46 am
You guys are not gonna be happy with my next post . . .
February 5th, 2010 at 9:58 am
The absolute best possible interpretation about jobs is: Neutral.
The absolute best interpretation of the European and Chinese situations is: Bad.
February 5th, 2010 at 10:01 am
“Still, that’s 18% of the labor force that could be working, but isn’t.”
Subir, that’s a good way to state it… just like ‘capacity utilization’ for manufacturing.
February 5th, 2010 at 10:07 am
You guys are not gonna be happy with my next post . . .
Let me guess: you think we’re in recovery but with a 50-50 chance of double-dip.
Sell-off resuming?
February 5th, 2010 at 10:15 am
@cognos
Agreed. It is getting better, and I know of 2 undergrads who graduated last quarter and have already found jobs. Not fantastic jobs, but enough to pay the rent.
There are some jobs that flat out aren’t coming back anytime soon–home building and mortgage processing come to mind. We’ll see what happens with these folks. I think they ought to be put to work fixing our broken infrastructure. Why is it that some say that if the government pays people to stay home and watch TV on unemployment, that’s capitalism. But if the government pays people to do work, that’s socialism?
@johnborchers
How do you know they’re American citizens falling out of the workforce? If you go to the BLS website, you’ll see that the survey does not separate workers out by immigration status. It includes everyone–legal and illegal.