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Nov. Nonfarm Payrolls: +120K vs. consensus of +125K, +100K (revised) prior. Unemployment 8.6% vs...
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Friday, December 2, 2011, 8:31 AM ETNov. Nonfarm Payrolls: +120K vs. consensus of +125K, +100K (revised) prior. Unemployment 8.6% vs 9% expected. Avg. hourly earnings -0.1%. to $23.18. Workweek unchanged at 34.3 hours.
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This news story has 48 comments:
http://bit.ly/uhgEhJ
Also...average duration of unemployment measured in weeks is at an all time high of more than 40 weeks.
If the republican's had not forced the loss of over 20K Government Jobs in November and over 600K in the past 2 years the unemployment would be 7.5% today. If they had passed the Obama Job's Bill that would create nearly 2 million jobs, the unemployment would be 6.8% and declining.
The unemployment rate went down due to the denominator shrinking (size of workforce). This isn't anything new, and can be clearly seen via the Labor force participation rate (employed vs work age population):
http://bit.ly/pSpjQo
Back the data up to 1999 and one can see the peak and then long decline trend.
Population growth has slowed and aged in the last decade, but instead of the participation rate increasing due to a larger work age population it has been decreasing since May of 2000. It amazes me that no one really discusses this rather glaring issue.
A +10 yrs decline crosses both party boundaries of congressional and WH control. Thus BOTH parties get the chump award…to say any different is to be a blind party follower. The question that needs to be asked is, "What thing(s) changed over a decade ago to start and continue this degradation?"
The fact that neither party wishes to address this shows a rather dishonest face to those in power (regardless of party). I think Tack made a rather perfect list of some of the underlying issues that have us in our present predicament….Neither party is doing squat to address them other than words and window dressing.
Levels are now at 1983 labor levels.
He could win the lottery and spin it into bad.
A market rallying massively on rumors (Europe) and ignoring a rather poor showing on the home front (ex. Q3 Debt grew by $447 Billion while Q3 GDP grew by $167 Billion or a stagnant employment situation mired in 1983-84 levels) seems more like desperation to get in the last hurrah. Most people are not day traders nor watch their investments daily. This means most people's investments are stagnating at best (down 1.74% over last 5 yrs) coupled with inflation, stagnating wages, declining home values and interest rates near zero…the average person is loosing money/wealth at an alarming rate.
http://bit.ly/ryM9q8
Despite being used, abused, and lied to by Dear Leader (War Monger in Chief), she still stands by her man.
120,000 is mediocre - not horrible but not great.
the number to watch is not any of these it is the Thursday morning number
payroll matters later in the cycle
E
http://bit.ly/pSpjQo
bbro will tell the the internal numbers were bad news.
Every Thursday we have +300,000 NEW unemployment filings.
How do you categorize people that are not employed and want to work but have given up?
Seriously where do they go?
They are neither employed nor unemployed according to the government so how do they survive?
Is it Soylent Green?
Another consideration I don't see anyone mention is Boomer retirements - they should be coming fast and furious right now. Any Boomer thrown out of work has Social Security as an option when they can't find a job. How many retire each month?
How can the addition of 120,000 jobs lower the rate by .5%? This would imply the nations' workforce is about 24 million people.
for perspective, there are 35 million Americans receiving welfare (social assistance) as of November 2011.
Everyone knows that the U-6 rate, (or independent research) measures real unemployment in the mid teens.
Eventually, the official number is going to cross a psychological barrier, say under 7% for 2 consecutive months in about a year. Then we'll see a huge rally develop as consumers stop deleveraging, and companies deploy the retained earnings they've been hoarding.
For the time being though, nothing much to see here. We're just a bit closer to that day.
Next thing we'll hear is there isn't actually a crime problem because most of the murder victims are either: a) non U.S citizens, b)have been incarcerated and hence not able to vote, or lastly, c) were not counted in the census, nor filed a tax return, so in "theory" they don't even exist.
Can you see how ridiculous this is?
My point was that the official rate can't improve without plowing through the unknown number of people who have currently giving up looking for work. Would you rather the official rate be 12%, with millions uncounted, or 8.6%?
However, if a neutral comment helps gives you confidence in your short positions, then more power to you. You should do OK once this rally fizzles out in a few more trading days.