Unemployment fell to 9%, in part because more people have given up on the job market.

[brentspeak]

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-jobs-report-20110205,0,2873149.story

Unemployment falls to 9% but job growth remains sluggish

Only 36,000 jobs were added to the U.S. economy in January, the federal unemployment report says, apparently reflecting a reluctance to hire. Unemployment fell to 9%, in part because more people have given up on the job market.

Reporting from Washington —
The U.S. economy added a paltry 36,000 jobs in January, the government said Friday. Bad weather likely contributed to the weaker-than-expected hiring, but the report also suggests that many employers remain reluctant to hire despite a strengthening economic recovery. Even so, the nation's unemployment rate fell dramatically for the second month in a row. It dropped to 9% in January, from 9.4% in December and 9.8% in November.

But as in December, the official unemployment rate dropped in part because many more workers left the labor market -- an indication that many people aren't finding opportunities or don't believe there's a job for them in the current economy.

"A chilling start to 2011," declared the Conference Board's chief economist, Bart van Ark. "The U.S. labor market remains unable to catch the recovery momentum of the broader economy."

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/us-unemployment-falls-jobs-lag/story?id=12834761

U.S. Unemployment Falls, But New Jobs Lag

Economists had expected at least 146,000 new jobs last month, so the numbers reported Friday by the U.S. Department of Labor painted a mixed picture of the economy, which has struggled for more than two years. Snow and ice storms in many parts of the country likely cut employment in construction and other industries, the labor department said. The Labor Department's household survey determined that more than a half-million people without jobs found work. But there are still 13.9 million people who are unemployed.

snip

Friday's jobs numbers were a contrast to Wednesday, when private payroll firm Automatic Data Processing reported an increase of 187,000 jobs in January.

In recent months, ADP has shown job market acceleration that outpaces the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The 297,000 jobs the company predicted the job market would gain in December did not match the Department of Labor's subsequent 103,000 figure.

The December number was well below the 150,000 payroll additions economists were predicting based upon other economic signals. But, it was an improvement after a disappointing November when payrolls added 71,000 jobs and the unemployment rate skated up to 9.8 percent.

[Phoonzang]

1. What do they mean by "left the labor market"?

Even if you stopped looking for a job, wouldn't you still be listed among the unemployed?

[xchrom]

2. they have to count you -- not all measures that keep track will necessarily

keep track of everyone.

and then of course we all become familiar with the revised additions of these reports -- because god knows these guys can't get it right the first time.

[elocs]

5. Unless you retire, how does one leave the labor market?

Marry someone with money to take care of you? Win the lottery? Or simply become a homeless wanderer?

How do you take care of even the bare necessities of life if you leave the job market?

[dmallind]

7. The first is the largest category.

How many stay at home parents do you know or have heard of? Not in the labor force. the military is not in the labor force. Prisoners are not. The indepedently wealthy. Quite a lot of people really.

[elocs]

12. All of these indicate that someone else is helping or aiding in being able to live.

Yes, even prisoners are cared for.

So as a single adult male who is approaching 60 how do I choose to simply leave the labor force unless I have some other means of caring for my basic need? I really have no viable option of simply choosing to leave the labor force.

[dmallind]

14. Well it;'s not about you personally but the simple answer is you would not, barring a lottery win

you would I assume keep looking for work and be counted in U3 regardless of benefit status

[Autumn]

8. You can't find a job so you quit looking, I

fell into that category, Thank God my Husband is retired and we have an income. Its only about a fourth of what we were making three years ago but better than nothing.:shrug:

[elocs]

11. Ahh, the key word here is "husband". So what does a single person do?

Particularly a single male of 58 years. My gigalo years are well past me, not that I ever had any to begin with. So how do I just leave the job market when I've become so attached to things like eating and staying dry and warm?

To be honest, I have reached the point now where I only work to make enough money to pay my bills since I can live on an incredibly small amount of money. I have been out of work since the end of October and really have not looked yet, but I think I will go back to work next week. I had a stash to live on for awhile, but I also had to provide some shepherding care and guidance for my 19 year old goddaughter who moved first in with me and then near me who is struggling with mental illness.

[golfguru]

40. Unemployment expired is one category

who are not counted as unemployed unless they register with state employment
office and actively seek employment.

[dmallind]

6. No - because that would count many peope it should not.

Stay at home parents, the idle rich, disabled, etc. There are many people of working age who have no intention or no need of seeking work.

If you are not looking and have not looked even once in a YEAR ou are not in the labor force. You don't have to have applied, you don't have to have intervied, but if you haven't even scanned Monster or the local help wanted ads for twelve months why SHOULD you be counted as looking for work? Even the U-3 rate only requires t=you to have looked once in a month - the rates that include discouraged workers - starting with 4 - just need once in the year. I don't care how "discouraged" you are. If you can't be arsed looking once in a year - anywhere, anyhow, for any job at all, then you are not unemployed, you are simoply not interested in being employed.

[zalinda]

16. How can anyone tell if someone is looking for a job?

REALLY? This is a load of garbage. Unless you can actively watch what a person does every day, these stats and the explanations are ridiculous. It's like saying that the housing market has so many houses available because people left willingly, they just didn't want to live in their own home any more.

The only stat that they can use is the unemployment figures that they get from those actively getting unemployment checks. Any random sampling by survey doesn't show the true picture.

Has any one looked at the help wanted ads? They have gotten absolutely ridiculous in what they require to get the job. I recently read an ad that said you had to have a BA in computer science, an A+ certificate plus 3 years customer service, to answer phones for an alarm company. How many people do you think applied for that job?

Where are all the computer jobs that were supposed to be here, for those who took computer courses, after their manufacturing job went overseas. Oh, yeah, it's being outsourced to India now.

My little 100,000 population city used to have a whole section of job want ads in the Sunday paper, now there is 2 pages, if we are lucky. Those 2 pages haven't increased in 4 years. It's funny though, the amount of ads for housing has increased two fold.

zalinda

[boppers]

25. The computer jobs are still here for small-midsize companies.

The big techs can outsource, but the 25-200 person companies don't have the resources to do it... look for startups.

As far as looking at newspaper "help wanted" ads, uhm, if you're in the computer field, we all pretty much stopped using dead trees a while ago.

Look here (I got the city from your profile)
http://syracuse.craigslist.org/

[zalinda]

39. Did you actually look to see how many jobs were available?

My son has been on line for a year and a half trying to find something. He gets an interview and it goes well, and then he gets a call saying they are going to go with someone who has more experience.

The problem is that those who were working at large companies are now getting the jobs at small companies. My son has to go head to head with people who have had 10 years of experience or more and who can drive. He can't drive, his vision won't allow it.

Everything looks great until you confront the facts of the situation. And as far as 'dead trees' are concerned, I've been working with computers since 1985 and have been on the Internet since 1997 and on BBS's before that. Don't condescend to me.

zalinda

[boppers]

41. I glanced through, looks like an opening every few days.

I had to go head to head with some of the best and brightest for my current gig, but we also hire a mix of Jedi and Padewan, because hiring only Jedi gets really expensive. What's his field of expertise? Has he considered a headhunter? Can he do tele-work?

I've been working on computers since '81, so chances are we're of similar ages... don't take the 'dead trees' thing personally, I'm also old enough to remember life before the 'tubes.

[txlibdem]

44. Reagan changed the way unemployment was calculated - to hide his poor performance

See the following DU discussion:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=5196075&mesg_id=5196145
...and

"What are the basic concepts of employment and unemployment?

The basic concepts involved in identifying the employed and unemployed are quite simple:

* People with jobs are employed.
* People who are jobless, looking for jobs, and available for work are unemployed.
* People who are neither employed nor unemployed are not in the labor force."

http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm#where

... that's what the government says unemployment is. For an independent count of the unemployment rate:
"Have you ever wondered why the CPI, GDP and employment numbers run counter to your personal and business experiences? The problem lies in biased and often-manipulated government reporting."

http://www.shadowstats.com/

[karynnj]

45. There are some who retire

I have not seen any studies on the number of people who retire by choice. That actually DOES happen, though many "retirements" are not really voluntary. Given my age, I have friends who are carefully trying to decide when to retire and if they have enough money to do so.

The rising stock market has mostly made anyone who did not pull their money out at the bottom whole. That may have led some to feel comfortable about retiring.

[JoePhilly]

3. If only the unemployment rate had gone up!!!

That would be great news.

Ahh ... for the good old days when it was at 10.2%

:sarcasm:

[BklnDem75]

4. Got any stats to back your claim?

In January, 2.8 million persons were marginally attached to the labor
force, up from 2.5 million a year earlier. (These data are not
seasonally adjusted.) These individuals were not in the labor force,
wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime
in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because
they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey.
(See table A-16.)

Among the marginally attached, there were 1.0 million discouraged
workers in January, about the same as a year earlier. (These data are
not seasonally adjusted.) Discouraged workers are persons not
currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available
for them. The remaining 1.8 million persons marginally attached to the
labor force had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the
survey for reasons such as school attendance or family
responsibilities. (See table A-16.)


http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

[dmallind]

13. important qualifier

Your first paragraph unless I am much mistaken refers to U3. Discouraged workers who have looked in last year but not month are counted in 4-6

[BklnDem75]

18. You mean U-6?

U-6 isn't really reliable because it adds all people marginally attached into the labor force plus part time workers. That's why they never use that specific number when mentioning the unemployment rate.

[dmallind]

19. U4 and 5 also

U4 adds discouraged. U5 adds marginally attached. U6 adds part time who prefer FT. All need a search in last 12 months only - however desultory.

http://www.bls.gov/opub/ils/pdf/opbils67.pdf

[ProSense]

9. It's part of the reason, but the

participation rate doesn't explain the steep drop.

[phleshdef]

10. Wrong.

A much better explanation lies here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=439&topic_id=347139&mesg_id=347212

[Beacool]

15. I was listening to 2 financial analysts on the radio this morning.

They both couldn't figure why the unemployment rate was being lowered to 9% when only 36,000 new jobs were created in January. They said that there were two different reports released and that the figures didn't jibe. I'm no economist, but the labor market is still depressed. I mean, only 36,000 new jobs in a country of this size???

:-(

[dionysus]

20. on the bright side... the banky factory is running a brisk business...

:hi:

[Beacool]

22. Yippeee!!!

Let's have a gigantic banky factory. Plenty of jobs and bankies for all!!!

:woohoo:

[treestar]

17. This has always been said

But one who gives up is no longer in the job market.

One should not give up.

[Cali_Democrat]

21. The Fed's attempt to get the economy going by re-inflating the housing/equities bubbles....

...has been a complete failure.

Food prices are spiking thanks to the Fed's QE2 asset purchasing program (money printing scheme). This has been the main factor in the social unrest we are seeing in the Middle East.

We need a full restructuring of our economy in the 21st century and we have completely failed. They people in power are doing the American people a tremendous disservice.

[ProSense]

23. QE 2 is working

Its purpose is to maintain the recovery, not job creation (though there will be some residual).

This jobs report is not evidence of the effectiveness of the Fed program.

Besides, the jobs report was somewhat impacted by bad weather.

[Cali_Democrat]

24. Maintain the recovery? What exactly is your definition of recovery?

We have paltry job growth and stagnant wages. Exactly who is recovering? To me recovery has to do with the American worker and not corporate profits.

The GDP figures are simply the result of squeezing productivity from current workers, corporate profits and equities gains for the wealthy.

What is your definition of recovery...and please stop giving me links....I want YOUR definition of recovery.

[boppers]

26. "We have ... job growth and ... wages"

That's what counts as recovery, compared to job losses and no wages.

[Cali_Democrat]

28. As one poster noted in another thread...

We need a over 125,000k jobs per month just to keep up with population growth. Also, consider the millions of jobs we lost since the Great Recession in 2008 and we're in very bad shape when it comes to the job market.

The good news is that we aren't experiencing massive job losses like before, but we have very paltry job gains.

That's not recovery, that's stagnation.

[boppers]

32. How would you quantify recovery? Or being "recovered", for that matter?

It seems that you would set the bar at having better numbers than during the last bubble, correct?

[Cali_Democrat]

34. Full employment

nt

[boppers]

35. So, something the US has never had? 0% unemployment?

How are you defining "Full employment"?

[Cali_Democrat]

37. Actually an unemployment rate around 4% can be considered full employment.

There will always be a certain amount of people unemployed, especially in an economy as large as hours. 0% is not possible.

[ProSense]

27. It's really telling

We have paltry job growth and stagnant wages. Exactly who is recovering? To me recovery has to do with the American worker and not corporate profits.

The GDP figures are simply the result of squeezing productivity from current workers, corporate profits and equities gains for the wealthy.

What is your definition of recovery...and please stop giving me links....I want YOUR definition of recovery.

...when "links" become a part of one's argument.

The economy is recovering.

Recovery: job growth, regardless of being "paltry," is the opposite of job loss, especially coming of a period of losses in the range of 850,000 per month.

[Cali_Democrat]

30. I simply asked you for your opinion which required no links...what is your definition of recovery?

You say job growth? Well considering we added only 36,000 jobs, I would consider this paltry. We lost millions of jobs since 2008 and we're nowhere near getting those back and even if we do get those back, we still have to account for the increase in the population. A tall order to say the least.

Also, don't forget about the millions of people who have given up looking for work and aren't counted.

These are paltry job gains at best and you know it. Stop trying to polish the turd. What we have now is stagnation, not recovery.

[ProSense]

31. So you're

simply going to ignore my response?

[Cali_Democrat]

33. I did not ignore your response...you answered my question

You said recovery is job growth and I gave you my opinion on our current job growth situation :hi:

[ProSense]

36. Well

"We lost millions of jobs since 2008 and we're nowhere near getting those back and even if we do get those back, we still have to account for the increase in the population."

...the recovery isn't defined by getting back to normal. It's defined by a starting point on the path to recovery. When it returns to normal, the recovery is completed.

The economy needs 125,000 jobs to keep pace with population growth. In 2009, monthly job losses went from 850,000 in January to about 70,000 in December.

In 2010, the economy gained about 1.1 million jobs or about 90,000 jobs per month.

That's 400,000 less than needed to keep pace with population growth, but it is still positive job creation compared to no job creation or job losses, as in 2009. It's a recovery, not a return to normal.

The recovery has to start somewhere.

[Cali_Democrat]

38. I don't necessarily disagree with that. n/t

[AdHocSolver]

43. The U.S. economy will not recover until a majority of goods purchased are made in the U.S....

...rather than imported. In other words, economic recovery will NOT occur until we reverse the trade deficit.

Playing statistical games with the employment figures does not indicate anything about the real economy.

[cottonseed]

29. It's been great for the Art Market though!

Christie’s will announce record global sales of £3.2 billion ($5 billion) for 2010 next month. The figure includes both auction sales and private sales, and just nudges ahead of the company’s previous high of £3.1 billion in 2007. Sotheby’s will announce its figures in dollars, and its website indicates that its global auction sales have almost doubled last years, reaching $4.3 billion, not including private sales.

Sotheby’s shares opened at $47.25 in New York yesterday, more than double the $21.76 low earlier in the year.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/artsales/8215179/Art-market-news-a-record-year-for-Christies.html

[jeanpalmer]

42. Spot on

All they're doing is putting us deeper into debt and revving up asset prices, including food. With little to show for the effort. It's a failed strategy. And just like it blew up in 2007-08, it's going to blow up again.