Employment Still Lagging

The latest employment numbers are out and it doesn’t look good (emphasis mine). US employers added 430,000 jobs to nonfarm payrolls in May, but 411,000 of those were temporary census workers. That number was also well short of the more than 500,000 economists had expected. The unemployment rate, however, fell to 9.7 percent from 9.9 percent in April. I still don’t expect to see significant hiring gains until Q4 of this year at the earliest.  My highly non-scientific polling (talking to customers) shows that most are still in a tentative mode.  Perhaps some more enlightened analysis will surface later today.

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Hiring Stats Should Be Localized

You ever notice what a mixed bag of economic news we receive these days?  Here is one that caught my eye from CNNMoney.com (my editing): The private sector gained 9,000 jobs in July, primarily among small businesses and the service sector, according to a report payroll manager ADP released Wednesday. A consensus of economists surveyed by Briefing.com had expected a loss of 60,000 non-farm jobs. Can you imagine if the “consensus of economists” bet on football games?  They would be making their predictions from the poor house. Nonetheless, I heard a very interesting talk from John Sumser last week in which he discussed that national employment statistics are grossly overrated… Read More

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