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Friday, May 6, 2011

Economy What's Up With the Employment Numbers?

Posted by Goldy on Fri, May 6, 2011 at 9:43 AM

It's been a bad week for Republicans, what with the dramatic assassination of Osama bin Laden followed by last night's pathetic kickoff to the 2012 presidential nomination. And GOP prospects only got worse this morning with the release of the third consecutive month of job growth in excess of 200,000.

The Labor Department said Friday that 244,000 jobs were added last month after a gain of a revised 221,000 in March. The unemployment rate rose to 9 percent in April from 8.8 percent in March. ... As has been the case for several months, all of the increase came from private employers, which added another 268,000 jobs last month, after a revised gain of 231,000 in March, the report said. Results of the previous two months were revised to show another 46,000 jobs were added.

That's the good news. The bad news is that the job gains may have partially resulted from one-time factors, and don't appear to be distributed evenly across the economy. Employment growth has been strongest for workers 55 and older, while actually falling in the 25-44 age group. And unemployment remains extremely high for African Americans, who as a group have seen few job gains during the recovery.

All in all, while today's job numbers are considerably stronger than economists had expected, nobody's predicting this trend to continue without interruption. Still, for a party that has pinned its political prospects on Obama failing, even this small tidbit of positive economic news must come as a blow to Republican hopefuls who just had foreign policy yanked out from under them as an effective campaign talking point in 2012.

Comments (12) RSS

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Krugman is scathing on the underlying apathy in Washington toward all this. You're right, today's news only looks bad to people paying attention, which is nobody much.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/06/opinio…

Posted by gloomy gus on May 6, 2011 at 9:53 AM

Job growth? What kind of jobs? Does America need another burger flipper?

Posted by Sargon Bighorn on May 6, 2011 at 10:05 AM

They'll ignore all actual facts and make claims of failure based on skewed or nonexistent facts anyway. And too many will take the bait.

Posted by S-Lo on May 6, 2011 at 10:06 AM

Hang on, weren't you all parroting Krugman and arguing that Obama's policies were too timid, too pro-Wall Street, that the economy wouldn't recover without a FDR-style splurge?

I guess us moderates were right after all.

Obama 2012: Because the Center Rules

Posted by The Centre Rules on May 6, 2011 at 10:06 AM

I'm missing something here. There was job growth, but unemployment went up? What's the deal?

Posted by Purocuyu

on May 6, 2011 at 10:22 AM

The Republicans are in the rather painful position of desperately wanting America to fail.

Posted by Fnarf

on May 6, 2011 at 10:27 AM

So says Goldilocks as commodity prices fall in expectation of yet another recession... And that will be just super for unemployment numbers.

No incumbent has ever been re-elected with unemployment above 7.2%, and we are projected to have unemployment numbers north of there long past the next election.

And really? Assassination???

Assassinate
1
: to injure or destroy unexpectedly and treacherously
2
: to murder (a usually prominent person) by sudden or secret attack often for political reasons

So Obama is now a treacherous, politically motivated, murderer.

And he’s your man in Washington...

Posted by You_Gotta_Be_Kidding_Me on May 6, 2011 at 11:01 AM

@5 - You have to count the jobs "saved" as growth... :-/

Posted by You_Gotta_Be_Kidding_Me on May 6, 2011 at 11:02 AM

No incumbent has ever been re-elected with unemployment above 7.2%

In 1932 unemployment was at 16.9%. FDR was handily reelected. You're an idiot, @7.

Posted by Indy on May 6, 2011 at 12:49 PM

rewind: 1936, not 1932

Posted by Indy on May 6, 2011 at 12:49 PM

Barack Obama doesn't care about black people.

Posted by OuterCow on May 6, 2011 at 1:11 PM

@9 & @10 - Yours is an estimated number... The unemployment rate was not tracked until 1948. What I meant is that:

Since we began tracking unemploymnet, no incumbent has ever been re-elected with unemployment above 7.2%, and we are projected to have unemployment numbers north of there long past the next election.

That said, your treacherous, politically motivated, murderer may buck the trend.

Posted by You_Gotta_Be_Kidding_Me on May 6, 2011 at 1:13 PM