Comments on: Unmitigated good news on jobs

By: mfw13

mfw13 — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 01:17:21 +0000

Would be much more interested in comparing December 2011 to past Decembers….there is always a lot of temporary hiring around the holidays.

By: jack512

jack512 — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 22:32:19 +0000

It’s worth noting that the additional jobs were not enough to budge the employment-population ratio, which remained constant at 58.5%.

By: jollypessimist

jollypessimist — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 20:47:34 +0000

Good news, yes, or good enough, but hoping unemployment rate drops will feed back into a virtuous cycle of economic growth this time. These rates tend to be lagging indicators, right? Here’s hoping the good vibes carry the day, because all I hear is business execs moaning plaintively about gov’t regulation and “uncertainty,” as if either one was new. Jamie Dimon and friends would have complained about regulation during the Gilded Age…

By: Nullcorp

Nullcorp — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 18:34:20 +0000

I blame Obama!

By: EcoNYC

EcoNYC — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 16:33:19 +0000

There’s been a strange seasonal quirk every Dec & Jan for the last 3 years now. Of the +212K private jobs, 42K were in the “courier & messengers” sub-category. In other words, a large fraction is due to holiday delivery people that aren’t being picked up by the seasonal adjustment algorithm. (Maybe an artifact of a transition to more itnernet shopping?) In 2009 & 2010, this was undone in January. So it’s more like a +170K jobs report.

By: FifthDecade

FifthDecade — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 15:16:06 +0000

It is indeed good news, but I wonder how long it will take for the Republican lobby to start dissing it? BlackRock’s Bob Doll was even before this report came out referring to the US economy as no more than “muddling along” so I expect other bankers and financiers, spin Doctors and Tea Party activists to contribute negatively to this discussion soon.

The sad thing is how much better the US economy would now be if not for the partisanship of the right. If the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats can work in government together in the UK, why so bitchy in the US?