{"id":467,"date":"2010-08-06T10:05:00","date_gmt":"2010-08-06T14:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.intuitiveinvestor.com\/web\/?p=467"},"modified":"2018-08-17T15:48:21","modified_gmt":"2018-08-17T19:48:21","slug":"unemployment-numbers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/2010\/08\/06\/unemployment-numbers\/","title":{"rendered":"Unemployment numbers"},"content":{"rendered":"

This morning the U.S. Labor Department announced the unemployment figures for the month of July.\u00a0 In short, they don’t look good…initially.\u00a0 Technically the U.S. economy lost 131,000 jobs last month.\u00a0 Of those losses 143,000 were U.S. Census jobs.\u00a0 However, the private sector did<\/span> add 71,000 jobs in July.<\/span><\/p>\n

More concerning to me is the trend as June’s unemployment figures were revised tremendously.\u00a0 The initial report was 125,000 jobs lost.\u00a0 Yet that figure was revised\u00a0downward to a new figure of\u00a0221,000 jobs lost!\u00a0 Clearly that is a gigantic revision; most of which came from a massively revised down private sector jobs add of only 31,000.<\/span><\/p>\n

Analysis:<\/strong> These are not the numbers that anybody in the economy wants to see – except employers, who clearly are not hiring.\u00a0 My preference is for the “game of chicken” that I have been describing to end.\u00a0 However, barring outside influence and assistance in the form of government subsidies of the economy, it is tough to see how there is an unexpectedly positive shift out of the economic doldrums.\u00a0 In short, the economic recovery is going very sloooooowly.\u00a0 That said, there\u00a0are several mitigating\u00a0details I have to highlight.<\/span><\/p>\n

First, the loss of the Census Bureau jobs has been expected, even by the Census workers themselves.\u00a0 What that means is that many of them are probably actively looking for work.\u00a0 So it is not as if these are long-term unemployed who have just given up.\u00a0 These are folks who are recently employed, likely more confident than other unemployed folks,\u00a0and likely actively looking.\u00a0 This confidence makes a big difference in the potency of the job hunt.<\/span><\/p>\n

Second, the revised private sector job add for June was only 31,000 jobs added by the private sector.\u00a0 However, July’s initial figure shows a job add by private employers of 71,000.\u00a0 Assuming that figure is not revised downward by 96,000 jobs as June’s figure were, then that means that private sector employment growth is actually occurring.\u00a0 My hunch is that 71,000 jobs added figure will be revised downward next month.\u00a0 But I think it will still be in positive territory.\u00a0 So the economy is slowly adding jobs.<\/span><\/p>\n

Third, the U.S. government is mulling creating more job stimulus packages.\u00a0 If done, the Feds can take massive pressure off of the unemployment situation because it can hire in whole huge swaths of people.\u00a0 Because it is an election year, you should expect to see some movement here.<\/span><\/p>\n

Importance grade:<\/strong> 10; the unemployment rate is the lynch pin of the economic recovery.\u00a0 If these figures don’t start improving there is a real risk that the U.S. economy drops into recession again.\u00a0 The danger is that giddy rhetoric on the part of politicians, and sunny-sounding legislation won’t cut it the second time around.\u00a0 No, to shift the mood of the average U.S. citizen will take serious, long-term, potentially painful, but eventually worthwhile CHANGE.\u00a0 That is, no more doing business as usual.\u00a0 FYI: I am considering revising my “buy” recommendation for U.S. equities, but not quite, yet.\u00a0 I will be paying close attention to the data that comes out over the next several weeks.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jason<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This morning the U.S. Labor Department announced the unemployment figures for the month of July.\u00a0 In short, they don’t look good…initially.\u00a0 Technically the U.S. economy lost 131,000 jobs last month.\u00a0 Of those losses 143,000 were U.S. Census jobs.\u00a0 However, the private sector did add 71,000 jobs in July. More concerning to me is the trend […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}