As the exceptionally well-informed readers of this little blog know, the Fed has signaled that once the unemployment rate reaches 6.5% it will declare “Mission Accomplished” and begin to unwind it’s various monetary stimulus programs. As this little snippet from the WSJ blog points out, getting to that magic number doesn’t necessarily mean that everything […]
Posts Tagged ‘unemployment’
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Don’t Worry About Unemployment Anymore
Posted by Tom Lindmark on December 7th, 2012
Rest easy everyone, the noted economist Felix Salmon has pronounced the “employment emergency” over. This is the US unemployment rate, from Calculated Risk. Today’s jobs report was a very positive one: not only did job creation exceed all expectations, but unemployment fell too, to 7.7%. For the first time, the unemployment rate is lower than it was […]
Unemployment And Stimulus
Posted by Tom Lindmark on June 6th, 2011
Obviously, I’ve been away for awhile. Actually not physically, I just felt like a long overdue break fro blogging was warranted. I don’t know if it’s going to result in any better content quality but I sure enjoyed the chance to just sit back, read a bit and reflect. So, with that explanation, let me […]
Employment Slogs Ahead
Posted by Tom Lindmark on May 6th, 2011
After a week or so of pretty middling economic news – paltry GDP growth in the first quarter, continuing increases in applications for unemployment insurance and weakness in the ISM measurement of services sector strength – there was more than a bit of breath holding in advance of this mornings April employment report. The breeze […]
No Jobs In Sight For The Long-Term Unemployed
Posted by Tom Lindmark on April 28th, 2011
You have already seen the numbers, weekly uninsurance claims increased by 25,000 to 429,000 according to the DOL. Increasing claims over the past couple of weeks have pushed the 4-week moving average back over 400,000. The economy is doing a poor job of treading water. So, let’s take a look at what might well be […]
The New Natural Rate Of Unemployment
Posted by Tom Lindmark on February 14th, 2011
One of the ways that government tends to tackle difficult problems is to redefine parameters in a manner that minimizes the problem. Inflation is a good example. Over the years we have seen “refinements” in the metrics used to measure its severity as well as a definition which excludes the inflation rate of certain components […]
More Questions Than Answers On The Broken Jobs Machine
Posted by Tom Lindmark on January 21st, 2011
Jim Tankersley has an article in the NationalJournal which provides an interesting overview of the unemployment conundrum. He paints a picture of an employment market that has been deteriorating over time and not one which was dealt a devastating blow by the Great Recession from which it inexplicably can’t seem to recover. This isn’t an […]
