Job-less re-cov-er-y

By Barbara Kiviat | June 4, 2010 | +

The U.S. gained 431,000 jobs in May, according to this morning’s release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). That sounds great—until you take into account that 411,000 of those positions were for temporary Census workers. The private sector added only 41,000 jobs, which is a drop in the bucket.

The employment rate edged down to 9.7%, but we’ve still got some 15 million people out of work. And we’re still facing a horrible long-term unemployment problem. In May, 6.8 million people without jobs—or 46% of all those unemployed—had been jobless for 27 weeks or more. (Sara Murray at the WSJ had a great piece the other day about who, exactly, makes up the long-term unemployed.)

There was a glimmer of good news in the latest BLS report. The number of people working part-time even though they’d like to be working full-time declined by 343,000, to 8.8 million.

Still, overall we continue to have a big, sideways moving labor market on our hands.

Related Topics: Bureau of Labor Statistics, unemployment, Economy & Policy

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http://stephenpoo.wordpress.com stephenpoo

There is another class of unemployed who probably never get counted. In the years leading up to the recession many people in fields like construction and other areas were “sub contractors”.
Employers found it convient to have the job done by independent contractors. And all they had to do was issue a paper at the years end saying how much they paid to you. And if you were a corporation they didn’t even have to do that.There was no unemployement to pay or social security to contribute to or collect any payroll tax. And no workers comp to pay for.
Where are they counted I wonder?
http://stephenpoo.wordpress.com stephenpoo

And when the Census workers are finished are they in mass going to hit the unemployed list? That will be a bad week.
tanboontee

That seems a reasonably fine analysis.

Yet Obama has just argued, “We’ve now added jobs in six out of the last seven months. The question now is, how do we keep this momentum going?”

Was he right in saying that? Has he been given a superficial input wrapped in cosmetics and sweet coatings by his advisors?