Tag Archives: joblessness

business news, national news

Big jobs numbers, but still no GOP applause

Critics of President Obama have been beating the drum for years about the economic recovery.

Yeah, nice jobs numbers, but those wages just aren’t increasing, they say, while lampooning the economic recovery as a sort of mirage.

Today’s news brought some serious good cheer to some of us, but not all.

The economy added 321,000 jobs in November. Wages increased 0.4 percent as well. The bottom line? The economy is finally beginning to be felt in people’s homes.

Will there be cheering among congressional critics of the president? Don’t hold your breath.

My hunch is that they’ll find a way to spread the joy among themselves without giving credit to a federal economic policy that’s been working for, oh, about the past five-plus years.

The stock market is heading into record territory — again. The trade deficit is down. The budget deficit is down. The national debt is slowing. Unemployment remains less than 6 percent. Investments are up. Spending is up. Real estate prices are up. Auto sales are up. Domestic energy production is up. Gasoline prices are plummeting.

Holy cow! I can’t stand all this good news!

I’ll just have to proclaim it from this forum yet again.

 

business news, national news, political news

Silence on job growth is quite telling

That silence you hear from the Republican side of the political divide is quite instructive as the nation digests the latest job-growth numbers.

The Labor Department today reported that 248,000 jobs were added in September and that the jobless rate fell to less than 6 percent for the first time since 2008.

No cheers. No backslapping. No “congrats, you guys” are coming from the GOP gang.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/10/september-2014-unemployment-numbers-111583.html?hp=l1

Indeed, this morning — just before the jobs figures came out — Ari Fleischer, who served as press secretary during the George W. Bush administration, disputed President Obama’s claim the other day that we’re better off now than when he took office in January 2009. Fleischer told Joe Scarborough on “Morning Joe” that Obama inherited a “100-foot hole” but still has a “95-foot hole” from which the country must emerge.

What utter bunk!

The economy is growing. Every independent analyst I’ve read suggests the nation has turned the corner from where we were six years ago.

Of course, the task now is to keep marching forward and to keep the momentum going.

Today’s job numbers suggest we’re continuing to make progress.

I get that politics requires muzzles when the “other side” has good news to report. That’s the way the game is played. Democrats do it, too, when the news involved a Republican administration.

Rest assured that if the next job report isn’t as glowing as this one, the loyal opposition will awaken quickly from its silent slumber.

Uncategorized

Time for economic shouting match

The economic naysayers keep winning the shouting match over the state of the economy.

I choose to listen a bit more intently to the other side, the folks who proclaim the nation’s economy is doing better than what many Americans think.

http://money.msn.com/business-news/article.aspx?feed=OBR&date=20140606&id=17680783

The latest job numbers provide reason for the positive thinkers to begin outshouting the other side.

The U.S. Labor Department announced Friday the economy added 217,000 jobs in May. Unemployment held steady at 6.3 percent; there used to be a time when that would be seen as “bad news,” but in this era it’s seen as an indication that more people are re-entering the job-search market, that hope is returning.

The May jobs boost comes after an April jobs increase that was even greater.

Why, then, do the goofballs who want the current administration’s economic policies to fail keep winning the argument?

My own guess is that they’re better at shouting over the opposition than, well, their opposition. Just maybe it’s time for those of us who do not share the Gloomy Gus outlook to begin shouting with a bit more fervor about the accomplishments that have occurred during the past six years.

I’ve tried to make the point on occasion from my own platform. It’s not getting much run out there. Surely there are others like myself who believe in a bit more optimistic future than the other side.

So, to whatever extent I can motivate the masses who share that view, I’m going to shout it out once more from this perch.

The U.S. economy is in recovery mode! We’ve gained back all the jobs we lost during the Great Recession of 2008-09! It ain’t perfect, but then again, when is it ever perfect?

Uncategorized

Economy gives GOP reason to cheer Obama policies

I can sense it, sort of.

The Labor Department said today the economy created 203,000 jobs in October. The jobless rate fell to 7 percent, the lowest level in five years. The jobs report provided the first “clean” look at the state of the economy, according to Politico.com, meaning a report that wasn’t shaded by the government shutdown and other external political factors.

And … the Federal Reserve Board just might start dialing back its stimulus efforts with the realization that the economy is finally — finally! — gaining some actual strength.

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/12/november-2013-unemployment-numbers-100780.html

What am I sensing? The Republican leadership in Congress might be willing to give President Obama a little bit of credit for what appears to be a full-blown economic recovery.

I say “might be willing.” Whether it happens is anyone’s guess.

Perhaps the most encouraging element of this report, if you’re a Republican, is that the Fed might start drawing back on the bond-buying program it had instituted to help jump-start the economy. This government “intrusion” is anathema to congressional Republicans. It well might be that the Fed has seen enough improvement in the economy — which includes significant strength in the private sector — that it no longer has to pump billions of dollars to keep the economic engines running.

The stock market gets jittery at that kind of news. Still, the market took off like a rocket today when the jobs figures came out. It helped yours truly’s retirement account immensely, for which I am grateful.

The president cannot get a break these days, what with the Affordable Care Act rollout being the disaster it has become. That problem appears fixed, too.

Remember when the economy was Issue No. 1 in the GOP’s plan to defeat President Obama’s attempt at re-election? It didn’t work. Voter returned him to office for another four years.

Today’s jobs report seems to suggest that’s why virtually no one is talking smack about the economy these days.

Uncategorized

Jobs numbers ‘bad’? Not really

I was preparing myself this morning for a terrible jobs report from the U.S. Department of Labor.

It didn’t arrive. What we got instead was a tally of 148,000 jobs created in September, with unemployment falling to 7.2 percent, the lowest it’s been since November 2008.

http://money.cnn.com/2013/10/22/news/economy/september-jobs-report/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

Are those figures great? No. Are they dismal? No.

I don’t quite know how to describe them. The political hounds on either side will spin it in their direction. Democrats will say the fight over whether to shut down the government hampered hiring. Republicans will say the shutdown didn’t have that much of an effect. Democrats will say 148,000 jobs added means more Americans are working than the previous month. Republicans will say the economy is still too sluggish to be described as being in “recovery” mode.

Hanging over all this is that 16-day shutdown, which delayed the release of the government figures. Maybe we need to wait for the October jobs report to determine what impact the shutdown had, if any.

I’m getting the sense that the mood in Washington is casting a pall over everything these days. Americans are angry at Congress and the White House. Although polling — the scientific kind, not those instant media polls that tell us nothing — tells us Republicans are taking the major body blows as a result of the shutdown and the debt ceiling “crisis.”

That’s the bad news. You want worse news?

The 2014 midterm elections are just around the corner. Get ready for even more politicization.