Ward on Words

WSJ covers the emerging green shoots of the economy - the unemployment rate is dropping, as are the new claims for unemployment. Kinda looking like THIS drop in unemployment is for real, not just the "fuzzy math" that comes by not counting people who've given up all hope of ever getting a job. Can it be that years after Ben Bernanke so optimistically groomed us for "green shoots," they're finally popping up at last?! Well, according to the WSJ, the Fed's not doing a jig just yet: "The Federal Reserve, charged with maintaining stable prices and maximum employment, has remained cautious." Strange to see such caution from an organization that proclaimed the arrival of [the false] spring back in March 2009...

A recent Economix column has a chart comparing this recession against others we've experienced. And guess what? This one's pretty bad! Unemployment has risen to 9.1%, thanks to the tepid movement on new jobs in May. Under-employment remains high. And the numbers of those who've "dropped out of the employment market" is large as well. Here's what Economix has to say about it: "Since the downturn began in December 2007, the economy has shed, on net, about 5 percent of its nonfarm payroll jobs. And that does not even account for the fact that the working-age population has continued to grow, meaning that if the economy were healthy we should have more jobs today than we had before the recession..... There are now 13.9 million workers who are looking for work and cannot find it; the figure nearly doubles if you include workers who are part-time but want to be employed full-time, and workers who want to work but have stopped looking." If you add it up, ...

Schmuck! That's if you're like most Americans and have seen the value of your retirement fund dip alarmingly with the collapse of the economy. Shoulda been a "top executive!" According to the WSJ , their pensions have risen an average of 19 percent in 2009 - with more than 200 excecs seeing a 50 percent increase in their pension... Also news in the WSJ, the private sector shed more than 200,000 jobs in October and big bonuses are back for Wall Street bankers ... The yin and yang of life in America.

People appear giddy with joy that July saw the loss of only 250,000 jobs. Here's how the US News & World Report characterized the news : "Finally, some good news for the nation's long-suffering job seekers: Employers cut just 247,000 jobs last month, the smallest payroll slice since last August, the Labor Department reported today." (Not sure myself why finding out that nearly 250,000 people are also now looking for jobs would make the "long-suffering job seekers" so happy...) Econbrowser's take on the report is not quite as happy, pointing to a key issue with the loss of so many jobs: "But the problem is, if a traditional economic recovery had actually begun in June (8 weeks after the April peak in claims), the number of people with jobs should have increased in July rather than fallen by another quarter million." Yes. To Econbrowser, the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs is a concern, not a celebration. And here's more...

"It's surreal out here," said a soccer dad to my husband at our village fair this weekend. The soccer dad works in print advertising, so you can imagine the surreality of his existence. He had to lay off seven people last week - and is concerned about the longevity of his own position. One neighbor we know just laid off two people in his department. It sickened him to do so - he himself had been a victim of downsizing a few years ago and knows how it wreaks havoc on the soul, the psyche and the bankbook. A Cub Scout dad we know used Facebook to post his "success story" in temporarily keeping his job, which was to be terminated right around the end of the school year. His corporation, despite the leadership of a man now being paid more than $10 mil a year, is on very shaky ground and may not be around much longer. Downstate, things aren't much better. A neighbor of my in-laws, a developer, is in bankruptcy right now. Another person they know con...

Just the other day, the payroll firm ADP issued a report that said more than 500,000 people had lost their jobs in May. They also revised their April unemployment records upward - to 545,000 from the previous estimate of 491,000. Today, the Bureau of Labor Statistics issued their report with a much sunnier view of the labor landscape - "nonfarm payroll employment fell by 345,000 in May, about half the average monthly decline for the prior 6 months." Not sure how the two organizations came up with different numbers but both estimate unemployment to be at 9.4 percent (which, as some have noted , is a worse scenario than depicted in the Fed's stress tests, but we all know those were rigged, right?) As you can imagine, the numbers cited by the BLS are happily received by the MSM. Some links to stories about this topic follow.... Denver Business Journal story on the BLS report WSJ story on BLS report MarketWatch story on ADP report

Gas prices in my 'hood are now at $2.75 $2.89 a gallon, up nearly a dollar since a few weeks ago (and up 14 cents since yesterday morning.) The ADP National Employment Report provides no solace. More than 532,000 people lost their jobs in May - more than some analysts expected; less than what others had anticipated. Still, more than a half a million more people were shed from productive employment last month. Small businesses - the ones not big enough to qualify for a bailout - have been hit hard by the economic downturn, according to the ADP report: "Since reaching peak employment in January 2008, small-size businesses have shed 2,125,000 jobs." Unemployment is likely to rise to 9.2 percent for May. From this point in early June, summer looks to be long and hot, especially for those with no income coming in. Let's hope the stimulus kicks in with a breeze that cools down the unemployment figures. Here's the ADP summary of their report: "...

Last fall, the US Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson, came to Congress and said that if we did not lay out a massive "tarp" to catch the financial industry from its freefall, there would be no more US economy on Monday. Congress listened. The money was fed to the banks. Since October, they've received a very fluffy financial cushion from the feds, a cushion that seems backed by a "fluffy forever!" promise from the US government. In the Chicago Tribune today, we get a glimpse into what life is like when people who are not bankers find themselves in an financial freefall as a result of the terrible economy. Here's how the Trib's story begins: "This is how fast it can happen: One day Patrick Robbins was a sportswear buyer at Mark Shale earning $110,000 a year. The next day he was laid off, with no severance. Within a week, the family was on Medicaid and had applied for food stamps. Soon his mother-in-law was bringing over toilet paper and...

Workers continue to lose jobs! Unemployment rate in the U.S. has risen to 8.9 percent! That's the news out of the Bureau of Labor Statistics today. And yesterday, the Treasury Department rejoiced in their discovery that 19 of the biggest American banks could lose nearly $600 billion by the end of 2010, if the economy worsens! Other good news out of Treasury - ten of these 19 banks are now required to raise billions as a capital cushion! More than half of our biggest banks are teetering on the wire without an appropriate safety net! All this good news leaves me feeling like I'm inhabiting a Terry Gilliam movie. Why do I feel gloom instead of joy when reading these stories? What am I missing? According to the NY Times , the jobs report was "pretty encouraging." Because the loss of 539,000 jobs in April was not nearly as big a slide as we've seen in previous months (699,000 in March, 681,000 in February, 741,000 in January), the green shoot in th...