98,000 whopping jobs in March

[RunInRed 16,481]

Quote

The economy added 98,000 jobs in March, postponing fulfillment of President Donald Trump’s pledge to put Americans back to work.

Analysts surveyed by Bloomberg had predicted the creation of about 175,000 jobs and an unemployment rate of 4.7 percent. The payroll company ADP estimated Wednesday based on its own records that March job growth in the private sector was 263,000.

The jobs report is bad news for Trump as he struggles to recover from the defeat of Obamacare repeal, multiple brewing investigations into his presidential campaign’s contacts with Russia and reports of debilitating rivalries among White House staff and in the agencies. Trump’s approval rating stands at about 40 percent, according to a poll average calculated daily by FiveThirtyEight.com. That’s lower than for any other president at this stage, going back to President Harry Truman.

Labor force participation remained low at 63 percent, unchanged from February and close to its lowest level since the 1970’s.

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/04/economy-created-98-000-jobs-in-march-236992

 

[AU64 10,122]

And 4.5% unemployment.....does any of that make you wonder?   

Major transition taking place in retail business in the US.....lots of retail / mall jobs going away forever....kind of like the textile jobs in the industry where I spent 25 years in the last century.     In retail, Amazon and the on-line retailing busy taking over the market.  I was in a major name department store (Belks) last week about 7 PM on a week day.....and was the only customer in the men's department...me and one clerk who was business checking some inventory records....it was spooky.   Think I only saw 3 or 4 customers in a 50,000 store.    The times they are a changin'   Retail has become mostly a seasonal business....  

Meanwhile why do you appear gleeful about possible bad news that negatively affects the lives of your fellow Americans? 

[MDM4AU 336]

If you believe all the numbers out there, January added 227K v. 175K predicted. February added 235k v. 197K expected. With these numbers for March, the number of jobs added for Q1 2017 is 560K v. 552K expected. And unemployment is at 4.5% - the lowest since 2007.

This is not to defend Trump because i don't know how much of this is due to him but, I think this thread is disingenuous when you look at the whole picture.

[AUDub 11,181]

3 minutes ago, AU64 said:

And 4.5% unemployment.....does any of that make you wonder?   

Major transition taking place in retail business in the US.....lots of retail / mall jobs going away forever....kind of like the textile jobs in the industry where I spent 25 years in the last century.     In retail, Amazon and the on-line retailing busy taking over the market.  I was in a major name department store (Belks) last week about 7 PM on a week day.....and was the only customer in the men's department...me and one clerk who was business checking some inventory records....it was spooky.   Think I only saw 3 or 4 customers in a 50,000 store.    The times they are a changin'   Retail has become mostly a seasonal business....  

Meanwhile why do you appear gleeful about possible bad news that negatively affects the lives of your fellow Americans? 

Projection. 

[homersapien 11,431]

The economy in general and unemployment in particular are trailing indicators when it comes to evaluating a POTUS.

And I am guessing the trailing interval is at least 3 years, if not more.

[RunInRed 16,481]

2 hours ago, AU64 said:

Meanwhile why do you appear gleeful about possible bad news that negatively affects the lives of your fellow Americans? 

Gleeful? Hardly.  Although, it is a bit comical when job growth was 2-300K per month under Obama and was labeled by those now in power as "anemic" growth ... not good enough.  As well as an insistent focus on the labor participation rate.  Now that the GOP is in charge, you hardly hear any peeps (I can't find any one complaining about today's job report or the labor participation rate on the Right).

Of course, combined with Trump's particular platform focus on bringing back "JOBS JOB JOBS" ... even trumpeting job news before his inauguration ... today, has he said anything about the jobs report?

Anyways.

[homersapien 11,431]

24 minutes ago, RunInRed said:

Gleeful? Hardly.  Although, it is a bit comical when job growth was 2-300K per month under Obama and was labeled by those now in power as "anemic" growth ... not good enough.  As well as an insistent focus on the labor participation rate.  Now that the GOP is in charge, you hardly hear any peeps (I can't find any one complaining about today's job report or the labor participation rate on the Right).

Of course, combined with Trump's particular platform focus on bringing back "JOBS JOB JOBS" ... even trumpeting job news before his inauguration ... today, has he said anything about the jobs report?

Anyways.

Heck, they actually said the numbers were bogus:

During his presidential campaign, Trump attacked the Labor Department’s official estimates of the number of jobs added each month as “phony” and “total fiction.” He said that Americans were living in a “false economy,” and repeatedly said that he believed that the U.S. unemployment rate is as high as 35 percent. (It is currently 4.7 percent.) Even after Trump won the election, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, repeated this claim at his confirmation hearing in January, saying, “The unemployment rate is not real.”

But as many expected, Trump has been a bit more upbeat about America’s economy since taking office. On Friday, many eagerly waited to see how Trump would characterize February’s stellar jobs report. He retweeted the Drudge Report’s take, which characterized the latest jobs report as “GREAT AGAIN.”

The White House Press Secretary, Sean Spicer, didn’t mince words at a press conference Friday afternoon when Eamon Javers, a reporter for CNBC, brought up Trump’s previous doubts about the report’s veracity. “Does the president believe that this jobs report was an accurate and a fair way to measure the economy?” Javers asked. In response, Spicer said, “I talked to the president prior to this, and he said to quote him very clearly. They may have been phony in the past, but it’s very real now.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/03/trump-spicer-jobs-report/519273/

[RunInRed 16,481]

3 minutes ago, homersapien said:

“I talked to the president prior to this, and he said to quote him very clearly. They may have been phony in the past, but it’s very real now.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/03/trump-spicer-jobs-report/519273/

[icanthearyou 4,463]

The problem is not jobs.  The problem is wages.  

[icanthearyou 4,463]

17 minutes ago, AU64 said:

Both perhaps.....but wages go up and hours go down at many companies....especially if the minimum wage law is involved.

Overall, middle class folks have not seen much , maybe none, in the way of real income increases in a half dozen years...maybe longer.  That's a problem ...more people qualifying for food stamps or taking the "disabled" route to maintain a minimum living standard. 14 million people getting disability payments.

http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/    

Problem is according to a study I saw recently, is that once a person starts getting disability payments, they are unlikely to go back to work....have to give up too many benefits.

All these employment numbers are suspect in my view....plus a good percentage of the people doing manual labor around our area are paid in cash (mostly Latinos) and if my landscape guy is any example, he's making pretty good money for a mostly rural area....paid $20/hour including his tools and gets paid in Jacksons. The modern American economy.

I find most of your economic information anecdotal.  However, you brought up a good point.  I went to Andalusia this week to pick up some blueberry bushes from a farmer.  He began to tell me how lazy Americans are and, his Mexicans are hard workers.  I asked him if he was collecting payroll taxes on them.  He got very quiet.

[icanthearyou 4,463]

2 minutes ago, AU64 said:

Get enough anecdotal data and pretty soon you have a poll or a survey.      Don't know if you read the link I provided, but there is some pretty hard data mixed in there to support some of the concerns.  And a fair amount of sunshine being shined on the issue of our "labor participation rate". 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/04/08/how-americans-game-the-200-billion-a-year-disability-industrial-complex/#599b4aa04b6d   

And don't ask me if I hold out taxes from my guys either.   Hate to say it, but in our area there a handful of landscape type companies and there is not a white or black face among them. The guys are pretty professional, have the latest equipment, etc....and mostly work for cash. 

Sounds like a very hypocritical rationalization.  How do you think that affects the labor participation rate?

[icanthearyou 4,463]

3 minutes ago, AU64 said:

Not sure it affects it at all....probably the chicken or the egg situation as far as the US born work force is concerned.   My observation is that in many jobs, the immigrant workers don't displace US born workers, they fill vacuums.  Maybe your job puts you in a position to observe some of this...if not, you might want to spend some time on the subject.    Maybe it is rationalization but I think it is a lot more complicated than that.   I'm of the opinion that people drop out of the work force for a variety of reasons, but if you do a bit of research on the subject you will note that there is a relationship between how long a person is out of a job and the likelihood the person will ever go back to work.  http://www.dailynews.com/social-affairs/20140321/for-the-long-term-unemployed-going-back-to-work-isnt-likely

Wish it was not necessary but as the farmer in Andalusia noted, sometimes these guys are the only labor source available....certainly the case around here for us seniors who aren't able to do serious work now.   It's the world we live in ...     I was in Europe quite a bit related to my job (worked for a Swiss Company) and found that Germans, Swiss and many other Western Europeans don't do much menial work or even normal manufacturing work.  Much of  that German and Swiss precision is the result of East Europeans or Turks.   

So the more civilized a society, the lazier the population?  This "lack of labor" justifies tax evasion?

[icanthearyou 4,463]

26 minutes ago, AU64 said:

So the more civilized a society, the lazier the population?  This "lack of labor" justifies tax evasion?   Nope but it probably encourages it...

But I think that Henry George was correct on the issue. 

Did he say that you are a hypocrite and a thief?

[icanthearyou 4,463]

2 hours ago, AU64 said:

Meanwhile we were having a nice discussion and all of a sudden you respond like an A-H...is that your normal approach when you don't have a good answer or response? 

If you cheat the government, you cheat all of us.  I don't really care about your rationalizations.

Don't pay your taxes, don't collect employment taxes,,, criminal.

[icanthearyou 4,463]

32 minutes ago, AU64 said:

I don'' cheat the government and if you draw that conclusion from my comments above you are totally ignorant of tax laws.

First...I pay plenty of taxes.,,,whatever my CPA tells me to pay.    And as for the guys I mentioned above....I hire them for two or three days a year....so I have no obligation to collect anything from them or even send them a 1099...  So you are wasting your venom on me.  

Meanwhile....I'm curious how many hours you cheat your employer out of with the time you spend on the internet ?   Hoping you keep careful records of your time.

Then I would not go around insinuating you hire workers without collecting employment taxes.  

I work for myself.

[GiveEmElle 1,559]

On 4/7/2017 at 10:01 AM, AU64 said:

And 4.5% unemployment.....does any of that make you wonder?   

Major transition taking place in retail business in the US.....lots of retail / mall jobs going away forever....kind of like the textile jobs in the industry where I spent 25 years in the last century.     In retail, Amazon and the on-line retailing busy taking over the market.  I was in a major name department store (Belks) last week about 7 PM on a week day.....and was the only customer in the men's department...me and one clerk who was business checking some inventory records....it was spooky.   Think I only saw 3 or 4 customers in a 50,000 store.    The times they are a changin'   Retail has become mostly a seasonal business....  

Meanwhile why do you appear gleeful about possible bad news that negatively affects the lives of your fellow Americans? 

You are right about the transition taking place in retail and other job markets. Trump seemed to be unaware of those changes when he made outlandishes promises about returning jobs to America. He didn't put forth a plan that addressed the changing times that have phased out many job or even a plan to create new jobs in marketplace that has changed. Seems to me Red was merely pointing out that the facts support the belief that Trump's rhetoric was empty. 

[AU64 10,122]

On 4/8/2017 at 11:47 AM, GiveEmElle said:

You are right about the transition taking place in retail and other job markets. Trump seemed to be unaware of those changes when he made outlandishes promises about returning jobs to America. He didn't put forth a plan that addressed the changing times that have phased out many job or even a plan to create new jobs in marketplace that has changed. Seems to me Red was merely pointing out that the facts support the belief that Trump's rhetoric was empty. 

I was a student at Auburn when President Kennedy set the goal for the US to send a man to the moon and return him home safely in less than ten years.....and this was made at a time when the US did not even have a reliable first stage rocket nor had we even had a man orbit the earth.  If anything was outlandish, that was it.....but the speech was delivered to a nation that was not that far from winning WW II and people still thought the country was capable of doing great things. Kennedy knew that without great dreams and great goals, nothing great gets accomplished.   That's pretty well established whether talking about one's personal life or a country...and probably even a football team.  Kinda sad to live in a country where so many young people have lost the ability to dream big.

Contrary to your comment above however,  DJT did and does have a plan.  Now, you might not agree with his plans but they have been discussed for a year or more.....loosen regulations, cut corporate taxes and personal income taxes, replace Obamacare with something more affordable for everyone,  incentivize companies to bring foreign profits back to the US and undertake a major infrastructure program ....just to mention a couple items.  Like them or not, those are plans, with fairly broad support....though maybe you just never took the time to learn about them.  

Rhetoric empty? .....kinda early to make that pronouncement but again, I suspect you are not aware of the rollback of costly regulations and work under way to change the tax laws.   He's not emperor so is having allow the process to work with Congress.... but be patient...  Trump unaware of the US economic problems? ....more likely you are thinking of HC who, because her big Wall Street donors were doing well, was under the mistaken belief the the US economy was thriving.  She apparently still doesn't know why the historic Dem base of working class people abandoned her. 

[TexasTiger 13,005]

On 4/7/2017 at 11:46 AM, RunInRed said:

Gleeful? Hardly.  Although, it is a bit comical when job growth was 2-300K per month under Obama and was labeled by those now in power as "anemic" growth ... not good enough.  As well as an insistent focus on the labor participation rate.  Now that the GOP is in charge, you hardly hear any peeps (I can't find any one complaining about today's job report or the labor participation rate on the Right).

Of course, combined with Trump's particular platform focus on bringing back "JOBS JOB JOBS" ... even trumpeting job news before his inauguration ... today, has he said anything about the jobs report?

Anyways.

This is it. Any decent number for that last 8 years was dismissed and derided. The issue is complex and reflects a structural change in our economy that's not addressed by deregulation of coal and building pipelines.

[GiveEmElle 1,559]

Comparing Kennedy giving America hope through dreams of a successful space program to Donald Trump's rhetoric used solely to achieve adulation to feed his narcissism is laughable. Trump has installed the wealthiest cabinet to ever serve in a White House Administration. Do you really think their interests are to best serve the working class in America? And I am aware of the rollbacks that Trump and the GOP claim will create jobs. But that is just a guise for corporations to make more money at the expense of the taxpayers. Trump is a reality star show, not a man who cares about America. 

[homersapien 11,431]

1 hour ago, AU64 said:

Contrary to your comment above however,  DJT did and does have a plan.  Now, you might not agree with his plans but they have been discussed for a year or more.....

1. loosen regulations,
2. cut corporate taxes  
3. personal income taxes,
4. replace Obamacare with something more affordable for everyone, 
5. incentivize companies to bring foreign profits back to the US and
6. undertake a major infrastructure program 

1) What regulations?  Doing away with the financial regulations probably would result in another economic boon for institutions so big the government has to guarantee them.  Unfortunately, this will take us right back to 2008. (This is a good example of how true conservatism no longer exists.)

2) I agree that corporate taxes should be lower, but they shouldn't be reduced without raising personal income taxes on the wealthy to offset the lost revenue.

3) See #2.  I agree personal income taxes for middle class should be cut but taxes for the upper brackets should be increased.

4) Nothing will happen to Obamacare until Democrats regain the power to do it themselves.  The Republicans don't want universal coverage. As far as I can tell, they want to return to status quo ante Obamacare.

5) Presumably that would naturally occur with a big reduction in corporate income tax.

6) I'll believe it when I see it.

 

[homersapien 11,431]

59 minutes ago, TexasTiger said:

This is it. Any decent number for that last 8 years was dismissed and derided. The issue is complex and reflects a structural change in our economy that's not addressed by deregulation of coal and building pipelines.

Just wait until all those coal jobs return.

[AU64 10,122]

Homer...as I noted...you don't have to agree with them....and not surprised that you don't...but the argument that there were no plans was inaccurate.... Not going to debate your comments because you have your mind made up...and I do too.  

IMO, your comments are pretty simplistic rejections of the items you listed.  For example, most of the new financial regulations had nothing to do with 2008....and actually penalized middle and smaller sized financial institutions...and posed no real problems to the Dems big bank friends.   Anyway...as you note...time will tell.

https://www.democracynow.org/2017/3/6/headlines/nyt_trump_admin_has_rolled_back_90_regulations_over_last_6_weeks

[homersapien 11,431]

11 minutes ago, AU64 said:

Homer...as I noted...you don't have to agree with them....and not surprised that you don't...but the argument that there were no plans was inaccurate.... Not going to debate your comments because you have your mind made up...and I do too.  

IMO, your comments are pretty simplistic rejections of the items you listed.  For example, most of the new financial regulations had nothing to do with 2008....and actually penalized middle and smaller sized financial institutions...and posed no real problems to the Dems big bank friends.   Anyway...as you note...time will tell.

I do agree that small financial institutions got caught up in the regulatory fixes that were aimed more at the "too big to fail" players.  But that can be fixed - which has been proposed - without deregulating organizations too big to fail.

Yes, my comments are simplistic, just as are the supposed plans to reinstill growth I was responding to.

[AU64 10,122]

25 minutes ago, homersapien said:

I do agree that small financial institutions got caught up in the regulatory fixes that were aimed more at the "too big to fail" players.  But that can be fixed - which has been proposed - without deregulating organizations too big to fail.

Yes, my comments are simplistic, just as are the supposed plans to reinstill growth I was responding to.

JMO not simplistic exactly, but most of your objections were of a philosophical nature...not necessarily economic. 

[GiveEmElle 1,559]

"In many cases, the regulatory rollbacks have come after the direct requests of lobbyists or trade industry groups. Trump’s administration is expected to continue eliminating more regulations in the coming days and weeks, including rolling back rules that limit car pollution."

http://m.democracynow.org/headlines/2017/3/6/48146

That sounds like lobbyists with cash are making the decisions.