Take a look…

I’m sorry, but I literally can not understand the thought process here. They talk about deficit spending until they’re blue in the face, but they favor massive, unpaid tax cuts for the super rich, while wanting to deny unemployment benefits for the people who need it most. Baffling.

Well, okay, not baffling. What I’m guessing is that many in that 62% hear “unemployment” and think people are just lazy. However, in order to get unemployment benefits you have to prove you’re seeking work. Meanwhile, they have no problem with corporations making record profits but not hiring anybody.

Oh, and they’re also forcing people to work longer hours for no more pay…

Nonfarm business sector labor productivity increased at a 2.3 percent annual rate during the third quarter of 2010, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Labor productivity is calculated by dividing an index of real output by an index of the combined hours worked of all persons, including employees, proprietors, and unpaid family workers. Output increased 3.7 percent and hours worked increased 1.4 percent in the third quarter. (All quarterly percent changes in this release are seasonally adjusted annual rates.) Nonfarm business productivity increased 2.5 percent from the third quarter of 2009 to the third quarter of 2010, as output increased 4.3 percent and hours worked rose 1.7 percent.

Good times.

Nobody’s signing “Happy Days Are Here Again,” but any significant downward movement in the unemployment rate is reason for some early holiday cheer. And there’s more good news beyond this. I’ll share a chart that shows this after the numbers.

From WSJ:

U.S. job losses in November posted the smallest drop since the start of the recession and the unemployment rate unexpectedly declined, a sign the labor market is finally healing as the economy recovers.

Nonfarm payrolls fell by just 11,000 last month, slowing down from a downwardly revised 111,000 drop seen in October, as the recovery encouraged some companies to retain workers, the Labor Department said Friday.

Okay, now here’s a graph (with some notations from me) to illustrate how significant this is and how it’s even more evidence that we’re pulling out of this mess…

More from WSJ about how some sectors are recovering…

Employment in the service sector — the main source of U.S. jobs — rose by 58,000 in November. But that was more than offset by manufacturing companies shedding 41,000 jobs and construction companies cutting 27,000.

Health-care employment continued to rise in November, by 21,000. The industry has added 613,000 jobs since the recession began at the end of 2007.

And one last bright spot…

Friday’s report showed that average hourly earnings rose by 0.1%, or $0.01, to $18.74.

More people are employed and we’re making more money.

Win, win.

PS – BTW, if you’re going to talk to me about U6 or the underemployment rate, you better also explain why it was ignored for 8 years under Bush as it skyrocketed past 15% in 2008. In short, don’t get U6 religion now just because a Dem is in office.

We’ve crossed the psychological barrier and this spells bad news for Dems unless they can turn it around in the next couple months. Because this is the highest rate since 1983 and you’ll be hearing that time and time again in the next month.

Here’s more about those numbers:

Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men (10.7 percent) and whites (9.5 percent) rose in October. The jobless rates for adult women (8.1 percent), teenagers (27.6 percent), blacks (15.7 percent), and Hispanics (13.1 percent) were little changed over the month. The unemployment rate for Asians was 7.5 percent, not seasonally adjusted.

The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over) was little changed over the month at 5.6 million. In October, 35.6 percent of unemployed persons were jobless for 27 weeks or more.

The civilian labor force participation rate was little changed over the month at 65.1 percent. The employment-population ratio continued to decline in October, falling to 58.5 percent.

Thankfully, only 190,000 non-farm jobs were lost last month. That’s lower than September’s 216,000 so the trend is in the right direction.

Also, some good news for those without work…jobless benefits are being extended:

After weeks of partisan debate, the Senate voted on Wednesday to lengthen unemployment benefits by up to 20 weeks and to extend the $8,000 homebuyer tax credit.

The closely watched legislation would extend jobless benefits in all states by 14 weeks. Those that live in states with unemployment greater than 8.5% would receive an additional six weeks. The proposal would be funded by extending a longstanding federal unemployment tax on employers through June 30, 2011.

The measure would apply to those whose benefits will run out by Dec. 31, which is nearly two million people, according to Senate estimates. Those whose checks have already stopped would be able to reapply for another round.

The vote was 98 to 0.

How’s that for bipartisan?

More as it develops…

Numbers just came out today and in July the number was 247,000. This is obviously disappointing because the numbers had been consistently dropping since the beginning of the year and this uptick was not expected.

More from Reuters:

Analysts polled by Reuters had expected non-farm payrolls to drop 180,000 in September and the unemployment rate to rise to 9.8 percent from 9.7 percent the prior month. The poll was conducted before reports, including regional manufacturing surveys, showed some deterioration in employment measures.

The government revised job losses for July and August to show 13,000 more jobs lost than previously reported. Preliminary annual benchmark revisions, released together with September’s employment report showed that total non-farm payroll employment for March would have to be revised down about 824,000. [...]

Since the start of the recession in December 2007, the number of unemployed people has risen by 7.6 million to 15.1 million, the department said. While the decline in payrolls has moderated from early this year, companies are still not hiring on a wide scale, likely waiting for a signal that the economic recovery is sustainable.

This can kind of be a chicken and an egg problem. Companies won’t start hiring until they see signs of recovery, but recovery won’t happen until companies start hiring. Yikes!

That’s where the solvency of the banking industry comes into play, and while we have seen some of the TARP money paid back, money is still hard to come by. My continued belief is employment is always a lagging indicator of economic recovery and that we’ll start to see job growth by Q1 2010.

Tick tock…

And the unemployment rate dropped to 9.4%.

This is pretty significant for a few reasons.

First, there’s just the psychological effect of 10% unemployment. The media had been positioning that as the dreaded magic number and now it appears that we’ll never reach it.

Second, economists projected 325,000 job losses for July, so coming in 80,000 below is incredibly encouraging.

Third, we lost 545,000 jobs in April, 532,000 in May, 443,000 in June, and now 247,000 in July. Obviously we’re headed in the right direction.

Still, as the NY Times points out, people are hurting…

Karen Triplett, 61, of Atlanta, lost her job in advertising sales in February and said she has been hitting wall after wall as she looks for work. The only job offer she received, she said, turned out to be a scam.

“It’s dismal to say the least,” she said. “I went from making $60,000 a year to $1,100 a month unemployment. I’ve got two friends who have already lost their houses. I’m struggling just to make sure my house note is met.”

Ms. Triplett said she worked nearly full-time since she was a teenager — as a secretary at a bank, a tobacco company and a television station, as a flight attendant, and selling advertising. She raised two children, bought a house, paid her bills on time and had a credit score of 878. Now, she is trying to stretch her unemployment checks far enough to cover her costs and struggling to pay her credit-card bills.

“I’m beyond down to basics,” Ms. Triplett said. “My daughter’s tried to help me. My son has given me money. But what I can’t do, I can’t do.”

So while we’re not adding jobs yet, I can’t help but think we’re only a few months away from that.

Fingers crossed.

I’ve been talking about this for a while now, and it’s encouraging to see some dead trees taking up the story.

Basically, the unemployment figures that get reported are known as U3, which are simply the number of people who are applying for unemployment insurance. And that’s not a good gauge because a lot of people’s benefits are running out and/or they simply stop looking for work because they’re discouraged.

More at True/Slant.

Some sobering stats when thinking about the fallout from last year. Now entire families, like the one pictured above, are living out of a single hotel. And those are the lucky ones.

From Wash Post:

Although the number of homeless individuals remained relatively stable between 2007 and 2008, the number of homeless families rose 9 percent, and in rural and suburban areas the number jumped by 56 percent, according to a report released last week by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

In real terms, homelessness is still concentrated in urban areas and among adult males; 20 percent of homeless people live in Los Angeles, New York and Detroit. About 1.6 million people used an emergency shelter between Oct. 1, 2007, and Sept. 30, 2008, including 516,700 people in families. [...]

“The typical homeless person has changed to become less focused on the chronically homeless or single-individual homeless to somebody who is part of a family, whether it be a mother or a father or a child in a homeless family,” HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan said. “I think what that tells us is that the economic crisis is forcing more families who had previously been well-housed into homelessness.”

That 56% jump is pretty insane and speaks to how much people need the basics right now. Especially children. Because free access to good health care becomes that much more important when kids don’t have a home. And not just for physical illnesses. The homeless are much more prone to mental illnesses due to poor diet, feelings of hopelessness, easier access to narcotics, higher incidences of sexual abuse and many other factors.

This is one of the reasons why the administration insisted that health care and unemployment benefits make up a large majority of the stimulus funding. Because it doesn’t do us any good to have these folks out on the street since it’ll cost more in the long run to treat them when they get sick/injured or if they turn to a life of crime to make ends meet. That may sound like nanny state stuff for some who read this blog, but I’d rather deal with these problems now and pay a few thousand dollars to keep folks like these in their homes instead of pay tens of thousands to jail them, treat their mental illnesses, etc.