America’s job market has been down so long, today’s mediocre report looked like up.
The headline figures — payrolls up 117,000, unemployment rate down a tic to 9.1% — were better than most forecasters anticipated. That’s a relief.
And many details moved in the right direction as well. Revisions to May and June added another 56,000 jobs, the U-6 measure of underemployment ticked down to 16.1%, and hourly earnings were up 0.4%.
But we still need much stronger job growth if we are ever going to get America back to work. Both unemployment and underemployment remain stubbornly high:
(The U-6 measures includes the officially unemployed, marginally attached workers, and those who are working part-time but want full-time work.)
What would the unemployment rate look like if we included those who have given up completely of ever being hired/re-hired?
Until we renegotiate our trade “deals” with China, you can pretty much bet the employment reports will look like this at best.
Free trade ain’t free. One of the most expensive mistakes we ever made was removing tariffs from Chinese goods, the other was exporting entire factories and sectors of industry to China.
Tariffs are sometimes a very good thing, will our corporate government figure it out before the country goes belly up?
Today’s news that new applications for U.S. unemployment rose 5,000 to 417,000 isn’t overly encouraging to say the least.
The US economy is vital the strength of the global markets and I agree, we need to start seeing increases in job growth.
Nice post.