National Unemployment Now At 10%

The Department of Labor released jobs data for November and it turns out the country "only" lost 11,000 jobs last month, bringing unemployment to 10%, after being at 10.2% for October. Now the Dow has jumped over 100 points on the news.

The NY Times reports, "Though the pace of job loss has been declining since a peak in January, the November number was surprising. Economists had been expecting a turning point to come in the late spring or summer, with employers finally adding workers as a recovery takes hold. The last time the number was so bright was in December 2007, when the economy added 120,000 jobs." One economist said, "It is clearly a much better picture, and appears to be mostly genuine," but another told the paper, "It is like a patient after having collapsed with a heart attack sitting up and taking a breath—nothing more than that. Things are getting better, but a one-month respite, frankly, means nothing in the context of the worst labor market ever seen since the 1930s."

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis says, "I am encouraged by the pattern of moderated job loss; however, I will not be satisfied until there are robust job gains. This administration is focused on jobs and job creation every day. We are working hard to sustain economic growth and spur renewed hiring for the millions of Americans who need and want work but cannot find it. Over the past 10 months, the Obama Administration has taken bold steps to break the back of this recession. While there has been a lot of rhetoric about the Recovery Act, when you look at today's report and other recent favorable economic trends, it is hard to argue that the Recovery Act is not working."

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By Jen Chung in News on December 4, 2009 10:40 AM

Comments [rss]

ides_of_march

I'm so glad Obama flushed all those trillions of dollars down the toilet to "stimulate" the economy. If only his stupidity only affected the dopes who voted for this fraud, it wouldn't be so bad.

Guest

Do you come up with all of this Obama hate, or is it spoon fed to you by Mommy Hannity and Daddy Beck?

NannyState

Great Britain's stimulus was 1/2 of its GDP; China's was 1/4 of its GDP; "Obama's" was 1/6 of our GDP. Do you ever know what the fuck you're talking about?

FranklinBluth

Are you sure?

According to http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/2009/01/05/a-look-at-the-worlds-largest-stimulus-plans-outside-the-united-states.html

GB's stimulus was 1.1% of its GDP; China's is 18%; and the US's is 7%

Bernie Madoff-Goetz

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ulu3SCAmeBA

Shinobi Shaw

Good Vid!

Bernie Madoff-Goetz

This is just the 10% who have made themselves known. I know at least five people who do not qualify for unemployment due to having taken time off for school or other reasons and are simply out there applying for jobs with everyone else. I won't bait the stat nazis but I do believe the REAL number is much higher than 10%.

NannyState

The real number is always higher than the reported figure so that becomes a statistical wash. The reality is that jobs are not being created in many familiar industries and sectors so it's natural to assume that nothing is happening out there. The Fed has a weak dollar strategy to tamp down on consumption and rev up the export economy. They want to model the US after Germany which has nasty unions, high taxes, and costs of doing business yet its exports are over 30% of their economy while it's less than 10% of ours. That's where a lot of the action is. Think high tech, healthcare technologies, and energy infrastructure technologies.

wingedearth

The best solution would be to put the unemployment office on a ship in the water at the South Street Seaport, and to tell all the unemployed people that they have to pick up their government checks in person. Once the ship fills up with people standing in line to get their checks, we can sink it and watch the unemployment rate go down with the ship. That will fix the unemployment numbers for sure. The unemployed people deserve it anyway, for making Obama look bad.

longacre

Unemployment numbers are subject to massive fraud and should not be held in such high regard. It's easy to track the number of jobs lost since most of those people file for unemployment, but does the Dept of Labor have any way of knowing how many jobs were created? Not really. They can basically make up any number they want.

jlocke

Absolutely right. Thank god we don't have to report our employers and wages to the government on standardized forms that everyone has to fill out before they get paid!

longacre

That paperwork is not processed in real time.

Rami Fawaz

We will not come out of this recession over night, but this is a step in the right direction.

ed_Extinct

10% is the number of people claiming unemployment. I think that number is more realistically around 15-17%.

jlocke

You used 'think' and 'realistically' in the same sentence. Come back when you have some actual statistics.

Brian Denton

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Situation Summary for Friday, December 4, 2009, significant job losses in construction, manufacturing and information industries were offset by job gains in stimulus-assisted industries like temporary help services and health care. So long as the stimulus funds are being spent, resources will be misallocated, capital will flow from productive sources to unproductive politically-approved sources and the labor market will continue to be distorted, creating misleading headlines about economic recovery. Further, stimulus money is being used to expand unemployment programs across the country and when you subsidize something you get more of it.

Lucky for us, President Obama held a jobs summit yesterday wherein he asked for "big ideas" in combating the nation's awful unemployment picture.

Perhaps the best big idea is to stop having them.

FranklinBluth

This is positive news, but it's interesting that the media, at least so far, hasn't qualified the report with numbers on underemployed people. It feels like last month underemployment was the big spectre on the jobs report.