The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves Paul Krugman argues In today’s (July 5) New York Times that the case for extending the duration of unemployment benefits is stronger when the unemployment rate is higher. Even if empirical studies show that extending benefits reduces slightly the incentive to seek employment, that argument is weaker (and [...]
Warning: In terms of the title, I’m about to bury my lead. Either be patient, or jump ahead. Yesterday my dentist asked me if there was a short and sweet book I could recommend to him that would help him establish a framework for his thinking on matters economic. He thought he had good instincts [...]
Nonfarm payroll employment declined by another 263,000 jobs in September. According the the Labor Department release, over the recent period . . . “From May through September, job losses averaged 307,000 per month, compared with losses averaging 645,000 per month from November 2008 to April. Since the start of the recession in December 2007, payroll [...]
(The Glass is Half Full; not Half Empty) The good news that employment declined less in August than in previous months is more important than the bad news of the rise in the unemployment rate. As I've noted here previously, the unemployment rate (from the household survey) had not kept up with employment losses [...]
(I'm Hopeful, but not Convinced) A Technical Answer The Business Cycle Dating Committee (BCDC) of the National Bureau of Economic Analysis determined that the current recession began when payroll employment started declining in January 2008. I doubt that they well declare the recession over while payrolls continue to decline, even if we get positive [...]
A Mixed Blessing Productivity surged in the second quarter–up 6.3 percent in the business sector and 6.4 percent in the nonfarm business sector. These were the largest increases since the third quarter of 2003. Rising productivity is a blessing. It's a mixed blessing during periods of high unemployment, however, since the alternative is higher [...]
The decline in payroll jobs of 247, 000 was a pleasant surprise to most observers, including me. It continues the "less bad is the new good" paradigm, but I'll take it. The negative must get smaller before it becomes positive. More surprising to me was the decline in the unemployment rate from 9.5 percent to [...]
My local newspaper this morning showed a picture of a guy standing in a line of job seekers at a Career Expo. He had his cap on backwards. If, in the unlikely event, he were contacted for the household survey of employment, they would ask him if he had a job. He would say no. [...]
The stimulus plan was designed to fail- not deliberately, probably, but in effect. It reflected priorities other than job creation or preservation, as had been advertized. It was not timely- we're still waiting for most of it to be implemented- and it was not focused. It was scattershot. At the time I likened it to [...]
The collapse of confidence resulting from last Friday's bad employment report was overdone, not because the news wasn't that bad, but because expectations had gotten way too rosy. The search for green shoots with green-colored glasses had led to false hopes and denial– a false dawn if you will. The employment report reminded us that [...]