Arkady
President
I was reading the CNN/Money website's story on the monthly jobs figures. You'd think it would be extremely positive. After all, there was a four-tenths of a point drop in the unemployment rate, in a single month, which is almost unheard of. We had a similar big drop one month in 2010, but that was from a much higher rate (from 9.8), so that was proportionally much smaller than this drop (from 6.7). The last time we had such a proportionally large improvement in a single month was back in the Clinton years!
And this wasn't just a matter of retirees exiting the labor force. The economy added 288,000 new jobs in a single month, which is quite good, blowing away what labor market watchers had expected. That was the best job creation since the start of 2012, and far above average. And that's despite the fact the federal government continues to slash government jobs, putting an increased burden on the private sector.
So, what was the "liberal media's" spin? The headline reads "unemployment rate falls, but for the wrong reasons." This is apparently a reference to the fact that a lot of this was pent-up demand from winter, when bad weather suppressed hiring. Meanwhile, they point out that the economy has a long way to go to get back to where it was before the recession, in the 4% to 5% range. In reality, the unemployment rate hasn't been down to 4% since the end of 2000, which was two recessions ago. We don't need to be back to 4% for the economy to be "fully recovered" to where it was before the recession. According to the NBER, the recession started in December 2007, when the unemployment rate was 5%. We have another 1.3 points to go, to get there, versus the 3.7 points we've fallen so far from the worst of the recession.
I don't mean to downplay the size of the struggle ahead of us. That last bit of improvement is going to be damnably hard to get in the face of government austerity. But the month's data was a really bright spot, and pretending it wasn't is dishonest and counter-productive.
And this wasn't just a matter of retirees exiting the labor force. The economy added 288,000 new jobs in a single month, which is quite good, blowing away what labor market watchers had expected. That was the best job creation since the start of 2012, and far above average. And that's despite the fact the federal government continues to slash government jobs, putting an increased burden on the private sector.
So, what was the "liberal media's" spin? The headline reads "unemployment rate falls, but for the wrong reasons." This is apparently a reference to the fact that a lot of this was pent-up demand from winter, when bad weather suppressed hiring. Meanwhile, they point out that the economy has a long way to go to get back to where it was before the recession, in the 4% to 5% range. In reality, the unemployment rate hasn't been down to 4% since the end of 2000, which was two recessions ago. We don't need to be back to 4% for the economy to be "fully recovered" to where it was before the recession. According to the NBER, the recession started in December 2007, when the unemployment rate was 5%. We have another 1.3 points to go, to get there, versus the 3.7 points we've fallen so far from the worst of the recession.
I don't mean to downplay the size of the struggle ahead of us. That last bit of improvement is going to be damnably hard to get in the face of government austerity. But the month's data was a really bright spot, and pretending it wasn't is dishonest and counter-productive.
