Newsmax - A deceptively dismal jobs report, combined with Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s acknowledgement that it might be another five years before hiring fully recovers, put the final nail in the coffin Friday on the Obama administration’s claim that nearly $1 trillion in stimulus spending has rescued the economy. Although the headline number is impressive, with unemployment falling from 9.8 percent to 9.4 percent, the number of new jobs created was a big disappointment and far lower than private forecasters had predicted only days ago. The Labor Department reported just 103,000 new jobs in December, about half the level projected in private consensus forecasts.
An earlier report from private payroll company ADP had suggested that hiring might approach the 300,000 mark. “We’re just not getting the jobs yet. I was really disappointed with these numbers. I was expecting a pretty big number in terms of job creation,” Wall Street Journal editorial board member and senior economics writer Stephen Moore told MSNBC. “We need to be creating about two to three times more jobs than we are right now to start making real progress in putting Americans back to work,” Moore said. The total unemployment figure, on which most people focus, fell in large part because nearly a quarter million people simply gave up their job hunts and dropped out of the workforce altogether, according to Bureau of Labor statistics. There were 1.3 million so-called “discouraged workers” in December, an increase of 389,000 from December 2009, the government reported. Markets sold off on the jobs report following a bullish year-end push higher that seemed to price in a roaring recovery. Read full story here:
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