posted on February 2, 2007 06:16:43 AM
Fewer Jobs Added; Jobless Rate Climbs
Updated 8:36 AM ET February 2, 2007
By JEANNINE AVERSA
WASHINGTON (AP) - The nation's unemployment rate climbed to a four-month high of 4.6 percent as somewhat cautious employers added fewer new jobs to their payrolls in January. Wage gains were even more modest.
The newest report on the economy, released Friday by the Labor Department, suggested that the jobs market got off to a slower start in 2007 yet still remains in decent shape. The more subdued job growth _ 110,000 positions _ is consistent with the expectation that growth in the economy as a whole will moderate this year.
The tally of new jobs added last month fell short of economists expectations for a gain of around 150,000 positions. Analysts also had said they anticipated that the overall unemployment rate would have held steady at 4.5 percent, the rate that was registered in December.
Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
posted on February 2, 2007 07:25:26 AM
From the Department of Labor website - TODAY
http://www.bls.gov/ces/ is embargoed until 8:30 A.M. (EST),
Media contact: 691-5902 Friday, February 2, 2007.
THE EMPLOYMENT SITUATION: JANUARY 2007
Nonfarm payroll employment rose by 111,000 in January, and the unemployment rate was essentially unchanged at 4.6 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today.
Job growth continued in sev- eral service-providing industries over the month, and construction employment also rose. The number of manufacturing jobs continued to decline.
Unemployment (Household Survey Data)
The number of unemployed persons (7.0 million) and the unemployment rate (4.6 percent) were about unchanged in January.
Over the month, the unemploy- ment rate for
Hispanics (5.7 percent) increased, while the rates for the other major worker groups--
adult men (4.1 percent),
adult women (4.0 percent),
teen- agers (15.0 percent),
whites (4.1 percent),
and blacks (8.0 percent)--were little changed.
The unemployment rate for Asians was 3.2 percent, not seasonally adjusted. (See tables A-1, A-2, and A-3.)
Total Employment and the Labor Force (Household Survey Data)
In January, both total employment (146.0 million) and the employment-popu- lation ratio (63.3 percent) were essentially unchanged. The civilian labor force (153.0 million) and the labor force participation rate (66.3 percent) were also about the same as in December.
The participation rate in January was 0.3 percentage point higher than a year earlier. (See table A-1.)
edited to add:
Hourly and Weekly Earnings (Establishment Survey Data)
Average hourly earnings of production and nonsupervisory workers on private nonfarm payrolls increased by 3 cents, or 0.2 percent, in January to $17.09.
This increase followed a gain of 7 cents in December.
Average weekly earnings fell by 0.1 percent in January to $577.64.
Over the year, both hourly earnings and weekly earnings rose by 4.0 percent. (See table B-3.)
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[ edited by Linda_K on Feb 2, 2007 07:35 AM ]
posted on February 2, 2007 07:38:08 AM
Job growth under Bush slower than under Clinton, Reagan
POSTED: 4:37 p.m. EST, January 8, 2007
Adjust font size:
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The economy has cranked out fewer jobs under President Bush -- by millions -- than it had by the same point in the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.
Democrats say it's evidence that Bush's economic policies aren't working.
Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez counters, in an interview, "It's just a matter of timing and when we started getting out of the recession that the president inherited."
Economists suggest something fundamentally different also may be going on in the economy: The labor force of available workers is growing more slowly as the baby boom generation ages.
Under Bush, the economy produced 3.7 million new jobs from January 2001 through December of last year based on nonfarm payroll figures collected by the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics.
That figure is likely to be higher -- perhaps by an additional 810,000 -- when the government releases annual revisions based on more complete information next month. However, that doesn't change the basic historical picture.
When Clinton was in the White House, the economy generated 17.6 million jobs during the corresponding period -- from January 1993 to December 1998. Under Reagan, 9.5 million jobs were created from January 1981 to December 1986.
Those are the two most-recent two-term presidents before Bush. Some 2.6 million jobs were created during the four-year term of Bush's father, who took office in January 1989.
Reagan had two recessions -- one of which began in July 1981 and ended in November 1982. It was the most severe recession since the Great Depression, pushing the monthly unemployment rate as high as 10.8 percent.
Terms marked by economic challenges
Bush, too, has had his economic challenges. He had the 2001 recession and that year's terror attack. And, Gutierrez noted, Bush faced lingering fallout from the bursting of the stock market bubble in 2000. He also was confronted with a wave of corporate accounting scandals that rocked Wall Street -- and with Iraq war beginning in 2003.
The economy lost jobs in 2001 and 2002. Since then jobs have been growing each year -- including 2006, when the economy was hit by the real-estate bust.
Those jolts did affect jobs on Bush's watch, economists say. Yet they see deeper reasons for slower job growth, too.
"The principal reason is that the labor force has grown much more slowly during the president's term than under the presidencies of Clinton and Reagan and that has nothing to do with anything but demographics," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com.
Baby boomers -- a huge block of workers -- poured into the work force in the 1980s and were rising through the ranks in the 1990s. That's not the case now as boomers face retirement, and there are fewer young people to take their places.
Women, meanwhile, who helped to bulk up the labor force over the past few decades, aren't streaming into jobs as they once did.
These changing demographic factors will shape the country's future.
"The impending retirement of the baby boomers and the fact that women are no longer increasing their participation in the labor force at the rate they were in the past will tend to restrain the future growth of the U.S. labor force," Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said in a major speech on the economy's outlook in late November.
Earlier in the decade, most economists estimated that monthly job growth of about 150,000 was consistent with the economy growing close to its potential. Now research suggests monthly increases of roughly 100,000 jobs, says Michael Moskow, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
Democrats, who took control of Congress last Thursday for the first time in a dozen years, say Bush's trade and other economic policies have contributed to the loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs and to the slower job creation.
They also argue that the poor haven't reaped benefits of the country's economic expansion.
"It has generally been an accepted fact that economic growth is a good thing and that the rising tide will lift all boats," said Rep. Barney Frank, D-Massachusetts. "The 'rising tide lifts all boats' has always been a problem. If you think about that analogy, the rising tide is a very good idea if you have a boat. But if you are too poor to afford a boat and you are standing tiptoe in water, the rising tide goes up your nose. And so that's a mistake," he said.
posted on February 2, 2007 08:37:06 AM
If you think it's funny what the Democrats say then you'll be in stitches for a long time to come...they are saying more and more and more and more REPUBLICANS are agreeing with them....more and more Americans are VOTING FOR THEM!
posted on February 2, 2007 12:44:36 PM
Friday's employment report - showing weaker-than-expected job growth in January - threw a bit of cold water on an otherwise upbeat week of economic data. The latest figures showed that just 111,000 new jobs were added for the month - a decent showing but a sign that the economy may be slowing. The unemployment rate edged up a notch - to 4.6 percent. Wage gains were meager.
But a week of otherwise upbeat economic numbers has the White House busy reminding the nation, despite the bad news coming out of Iraq, that life is good for most Americans on the home front. Despite some signs of a slowdown, the the economy is humming along at a healthy clip. Low inflation and a strong job market have left most households in relatively good financial shape.
Still, the positive impact of that economic growth — and the resulting prosperity it has brought to many — is not being shared by all Americans, especially among middle-income workers. President Bush acknowledged as much this week, as the new Democratic Congress has seized on this economic insecurity as a key issue in its agenda. Though the latest data on the overall economy is upbeat, many Americans say they care more about jobs lost to overseas outsourcing and a slide in the standard of living of middle-income workers. According to one recent poll, only 38 percent believed that their income will rise enough over the next 10 years to improve their standard of living.
Most of the recent data show U.S. economy has been positive, despite worries that a steep housing slump could drag the overall economy with it. Though the hangover from a post-Millennial housing boom continues, U.S. Gross Domestic Product rose by a stronger-than-expected 3.5 percent in the last quarter of 2006. Despite that growth, inflation remains tame enough that the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee said Wednesday it would hold interest rates steady. While still worried about inflation, the Fed pointed to "some tentative signs of stabilization ... in the housing market." All of which helped calm concerns about a weakening economy and helped push stock prices to record highs.
Bush, in a speech Wednesday just steps away from the New York Stock Exchange, where he was later greeted like a rock star on the exchange floor, used the stock market’s endorsement of his economic policies to remind Americans of the prosperity the White House maintains its policies have brought.
But the president tempered his upbeat outlook, acknowledging that the market’s bullish mood is not shared by all.
“By and large, our dynamic and innovative economy has helped Americans live better and more comfortable lives,” he said. “Yet the same dynamism that is driving economic growth is also — can be unsettling for people. For many Americans, change means having to find a new job, or to deal with a new boss after a merger, or to go back to school to learn new skills for a new career.”
Much of the concern of those displaced workers centers on the loss of jobs to overseas markets, especially in manufacturing. Bush has said that stemming that job outflow with trade barriers would only hurt the nation’s overall prosperity.
The White House also argues that the growth of U.S. service jobs is a sign of strength, not weakness, in the manufacturing sector. As of 1950, some 14 million manufacturing workers produced about $250 billion worth of goods each year; today, about the same number of workers produces five times that amount, according to Edward Lazear, the White House’s chief economist.
“That happened because productivity growth in manufacturing was so pronounced,” he told CNBC Thursday. “That allowed workers to move into these high-demand service sectors like education, like health, like financial services — all which are high-paid sectors. It was actually the strength of manufacturing that allowed that to happen.”
But millions of blue-collar workers have been unable to make that transition to a higher-paying job. Part of the reason maybe that federal spending on training and other job programs has fallen from $63 per worker in 1986 to only $35 per worker in 2006, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Whatever the cause, the result is a widening gap between the richest American and the average worker, even with a strong job market.
“The top 20 percent is doing fairly well, and the bottom 20 percent is doing better,” said David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor's in New York. “If there's a hole, it's in the middle, which frankly are those old blue-collar jobs that the Democrats say are leaving the country. And they're right."
Some help is on the way. A push by Democrats to raise the minimum wage, coupled with a tax break for small businesses to satisfy Republican opponents, appears to have a good chance of becoming law.
Still, while the overall U.S. economy is growing, large sections of it continue to undergo wrenching change. Even as new companies, technologies and industries create new jobs, widespread layoffs are hitting older, long-standing employers like auto makers and their parts suppliers. Though the pace of layoffs in January was lower than a year before, it’s “too early to tell if these trends will continue as the year proceeds," said outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas said in a recent report.
"Additionally, many experts feel that the housing market has not hit bottom, so manufacturers of home-building materials, and the real estate and construction sectors could see more job cutting this year," the report added.
Despite the recent upbeat data, some economists suggest there is a risk that the much hoped for “soft landing” — a slowing economy that avoids recession — could stray off course. Part of the GDP's strength, the fourth quarter, for example, came from a one-time boost from warmer-than-usual weather and a big drop in energy prices, according to Richard Iley, a senior economist with BNP Paribas.
“You take those two factors out, underlying the fundamentals, the economy is pretty poor,” he said. “The housing correction has a long way to run and there will be increasing spillovers.”
Absolute faith has been shown, consistently, to breed intolerance. And intolerance, history teaches us, again and again, begets violence.
---------------------------------- The duty of a patriot in this time and place is to ask questions, to demand answers, to understand where our nation is headed and why. If the answers you get do not suit you, or if they frighten you, or if they anger you, it is your duty as a patriot to dissent. Freedom does not begin with blind acceptance and with a flag. Freedom begins when you say 'No.'
Are YOU a Bunghole?