Here's my reaction to the employment report (let me add what is implicit below, my disappointment with policymakers at the Fed and in Congress -- it doesn't have to be like this. So I hope I've erred in my assessment that the Fed will remain in wait and see mode until the next report.):

Employment Report Shows Little Change from Last Month: (MoneyWatch) The employment report released earlier today was not as strong as many analysts had predicted. Nonfarm payroll employment increased by 80,000, just under what is needed to keep up with population growth, and the unemployment rate was unchanged from the previous month at 8.2 percent.

The report highlights the fact that the economy is treading water rather than making progress on the unemployment problem. The number of long-term unemployed, which accounts for 41.9 percent of the unemployed, was essentially unchanged as was the civilian labor force participation

I wrote this the other day and then forgot to post it at CBS and/or here:

Information in the minutes from the April 24-25 meeting of the Federal Reserve's policymaking committee released last week led many observers to conclude that monetary easing was more likely than we thought. The confirmation of Jeremy Stein and Jerome Powell as Federal Reserve governors on Thursday did little to alter that view since most believed these appointments would do little to change the balance of power in monetary policy meetings. However, the real news from these two events isn't about potential changes in the policy outlook, it's that current policy is now even more entrenched than before.

The key reason that many analysts changed their policy outlook was language in the minutes from the last meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, in particular this phrase: "Several members indicated that additional monetary policy accommodation

I just got out of a press conference with Dennis Lockhart (Atlanta Fed president) and Charles Evans (Chicago Fed president). I can't say there was any real news, but I did manage to ask a question. After forgetting to introduce myself, and the organization I write for like everyone else did, I asked whether the 2% inflation target was truly symmetric. I noted that the projections from members of the FOMC looked more like a ceiling than a central point, and that the comments made by Dennis Lockhart in the previous session made me wonder if, in fact, he thought there were asymmetric costs to over and under-shooting. I also asked Lockhart in particular what he is so afraid of if the inflation rate goes up temporarily.

Both insisted that the target is symmetric. However, Lockhart said that we know much more about the effects of inflation than deflation, and

The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta's Survey of Business Inflation Expectations released yesterday showed a continuation of rather modest expectations for unit cost pressures over the coming 12 months. In February, our panel of firms reported a 1.9 percent average expected rise in unit costs over the coming year, still within the very narrow 1.8 percent to 2 percent range the group has been reporting over the past five months.

That's the good news. Now for some (potentially) bad news. In a special question this month, we asked the panel to weigh in on their expectations for annual unit cost increases over the longer term—specifically, the next 5 to 10 years. The group's expectation was a percentage point higher, at 2.9 percent.

The reason for the higher expectation for unit costs over the longer term can be seen in the following chart, which compares how the group assigns probabilities to

...but can't help worrying that this will happen.

Things do look better, but assuming recent trends don't end up like the skier in the link the question is how strong growth will be. Will it be just enough to absorb population growth, but no more? Or will there be an acceleration of growth that allows us to provide jobs for new entrants to the labor force and also begin to reemploy the millions of people who lost jobs during the recession and have had no luck finding new ones?

I wish I was confident that will happen, and happen fairly soon. In the past, such bursts of activity during the recovery phase were normal and expected. But as I noted recently, it's hard to see where the needed jump in demand will come from:

...no matter which sector you point to, government, business, households, or foreigners, there is little reason

With today's decent number for unemployment claims -- claims fell to 366,000 and are finally below the breakeven point for job creation -- it's worth thinking about how long it might take for employment to recover. Calculated Risk calculates how long it will take to reach 8% by November 2012 under various scenarios:

I think the participation rate will be in the 64.0% to 64.5% range next November. That would mean the economy would need to add somewhere between 167,000 and 260,000 jobs per month. The bottom end of that range seems possible with sluggish growth, but the top end is less likely.

This is very sensitive to the participation rate. If the economy adds 167,000 jobs per month next year, and the

We need to create 100,000 to 125,000 jobs per month just to keep up with the growth in population. In order to reabsorb the millions of workers who have lost jobs during the recession back into the labor force, we need to create several hundred thousand jobs per month, and even at that rate it would take years for employment to fully recover.

Unfortunately, according to the latest employment report from the BLS, the economy only created 80,000 jobs in October:

Nonfarm payroll employment continued to trend up in October (+80,000), and the unemployment rate was little changed at 9.0%... Employment in the private sector rose, with modest job growth continuing in professional and businesses services, leisure and hospitality, health care, and mining. Government employment continued to trend down.

The average over the last three months was 114,000. That's enough to keep up with population growth, but no more. Unemployment

I wish I could find a way to adequately express the frustration I feel over the way Congress has all but turned its back on the unemployed. Even now, the only reason we're hearing anything from Democrats about job creation is because there's an election ahead. The legislation is timed for the politicians -- it needs to maximize reelection chances -- minimizing the struggles of the unemployed is a secondary consideration (if that).

If the election were further away it's unlikely we'd be hearing about this much at all. And Republicans are worse, they have no plans at all except to use unemployment as an excuse to further ideological goals (balanced

Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia President Charles Plosser voted against Operation Twist -- the recent attempt for the Fed to help the economy -- because:

“The actions taken in August and September tend to undermine the Fed’s credibility by giving the impression that we think such policies can have a major impact on the speed of the recovery. It is my assessment that they will not,” ... “We should not take certain actions simply because we can.”

“If we act as if the Fed has the ability to solve all our economic problems, the credibility of the institution is undermined,” Plosser said. “The loss of that credibility and confidence could be costly to the economy because it will make it much harder for the Fed to implement effective monetary policy in the future,” he said.

He certainly isn't acting like "the Fed has the ability to solve all our economic

Here's the FOMC statement. The big news is the attempt to lower long-term interest rates by shifting $400 billion of the Fed's portfolio from short-term to long-term assets (i.e. what has been described as a "twist"):

Press Release, Release Date: September 21, 2011: Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in August indicates that economic growth remains slow. Recent indicators point to continuing weakness in overall labor market conditions, and the unemployment rate remains elevated. Household spending has been increasing at only a modest pace in recent months despite some recovery in sales of motor vehicles as supply-chain disruptions eased. Investment in nonresidential structures is still weak, and the housing sector remains depressed. However, business investment in equipment and software continues to expand. Inflation appears to have moderated since earlier in the year as prices of energy and some commodities have declined from their peaks. Longer-term inflation expectations

There is a lot of discussion on how the Fed will react to the jobs report in its meeting this month, including here and here. My view is that if the Fed is moved to action by the report -- and it is not at all certain that it will be -- the Fed will do the least the Fed possibly can while still looking like the Fed is doing something about the problem.

What is the least the Fed can do while still satisfying the demand for action? One option is to change the average duration of the assets the Fed holds on the balance sheet by trading short-term for long-term assets (i.e. lengthen the average duration of the portfolio). This could bring down the long end of the yield curve a bit -- not much as there isn't all that much room for long-term rates to fall --

There is news from the Fed. First, from Narayana Kocherlakota of the Minneapolis Fed:

Fed’s Kocherlakota Suggests Dissent Won’t Be Repeated, by Michael S. Derby, WSJ: One member of the troika who opposed the Federal Reserve‘s recent decision to keep rates at rock bottom levels for two years suggested he won’t be repeating his disagreement at coming central bank gatherings.

In a speech, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis President Narayana Kocherlakota said Tuesday “I see no reason to revisit the decisions” made last month, and added “I plan to abide by the August 2011 commitment in thinking about my own future decision.”

The reason? With the Fed having made its pledge, “I believe that undoing this commitment in the near term would undercut the ability of the Committee to offer similar conditional commitments in the future.” ...

That said, the official spent a considerable amount of his speech — his

The estimate of GDP growth for the second quarter of the year was revised downward today:

Real gross domestic product -- the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States -- increased at an annual rate of 1.0 percent in the second quarter of 2011, (that is, from the first quarter to the second quarter), according to the "second" estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the first quarter, real GDP increased 0.4 percent.

The GDP estimates released today are based on more complete source data than were available for the "advance" estimate issued last month. In the advance estimate, the increase in real GDP was 1.3 percent (see "Revisions" on page 3).

Thus, once again the situation is worse than we initially thought. However, Justin Wolfers finds reason to upgrade his forecast:

There's more news in the first GDI estimates

Narayana Kocherlakota makes it clear that the rate at which the recovery is proceeding is just fine with him. No more accommodation from the Fed is necessary given that "Since November, inflation has risen and unemployment has fallen."

But he doesn't acknowledge that the November date is cherry-picked to some extent. Since January -- just two months from when he starts his measurement -- unemployment has actually risen. He's happy with that? As for inflation -- the worry that is stopping him from endorsing a more aggressive policy -- using his preferred time period from last November until now, core PCE has risen from 1.0% to 1.3%. And it didn't move at all between May and June, it was 1.3% in both months. Uh oh, hyperinflation! Assuming a target of 2.0%, at this rate the Fed will reach it's inflation target in about a year and a half. Sounds kind

If Consumer Reports came out with a widely discussed report telling us they are lowering their rating on a particular type of car, what would you expect to happen to the price of that car? And, if you believe that markets are smarter than people, if the price goes up instead of down, what would the reaction say about the market's confidence in firm issuing the ratings?

The price of bonds went up today, not down:

Aaauuuggghhh! Market Commentary Edition, by Paul Krugman: Carnage in stock markets as I write — and all of the headlines I see attribute it to S&P’s downgrade.

They really are trying to make my head explode, aren’t they?

Once again: S&P declared that US debt is no longer a safe investment; yet investors are piling into US debt, not out of it, driving the 10-year interest rate below 2.4%. This amounts to a massive

I don't think the idea that the unemployment problem is mostly structural stands up to the evidence (see here for example), but for the sake of argument, suppose it is. How should we respond? There are several choices:

1. Do nothing to help. Even though the problems facing the unemployed were created by events out of their control -- they did nothing to deserve unemployment and the struggles that come with it -- and even though those who did cause the problem have received lots of help from bailouts, unemployed workers should not get anything from the government. They're on their own.
2. Provide government help in the form of transfer payments (i.e. cash or the equivalent, e.g. food stamps, from the government), but don't expect anything useful in return