Good day all. No, not Steve Jobs. He is still dead. The good news is that the jobs report was a lot better then anyone expected. It was expected to be not very good at all, and yesterday the Stock Market dropped significantly.
Instead, the report came out and a lot more jobs were created then people thought. Here are some of the details from CNBC:
The U.S. job market roared back to life in June, with a better-than-expected 222,000 new positions created in June while the unemployment rate held at 4.4 percent, according to a government report Friday.
On a personal note, I lost my job a couple of weeks ago. That and the fact that more people are coming back into the workforce is why the unemployment rate held steady. There is also the issue of the actual measuring they use. I’ve gone over before how they play games with the U2 and U6 numbers. Still, adding 222K jobs bodes well for me.
Economists surveyed by Reuters had been expecting nonfarm payrolls growth of 179,000 and the unemployment rate to be 4.3 percent.
And due to that expectation, the market dropped something like 150 points yesterday. It’s come back some today, but the investors haven’t fully removed their heads from their posteriors yet.
The report “is another illustration that the real economy is in good health,” said Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist at Capital Economics. “The only disappointment is that wage growth still shows few signs of accelerating.”
Wage growth is disappointing. At my most recent job, I took almost a 50% pay cut from my last job. I was just above living paycheck to paycheck. Still, it was a lot better than nothing.
The jump in payrolls came following a disappointing May that saw an increase of just 152,000. However, even that number was revised up from an initially reported 138,000, and April was revised upward as well, from 174,000 to 207,000.
I may have a faulty memory, but I seem to recall that the opposite thing happened during the Obama regime. Jobs reports were either flat or they had to lower the number they originally reported.
“The strong job growth in June and the upward revisions for May and April suggest that the concerns about a major slowdown in job growth were premature,” said Gad Levanon, chief economist, North America, for The Conference Board.
Which is making the Progressive Democrats very unhappy. The GOP(e) isn’t all that thrilled either. It means they actually have to get to work and produce things to build on all this good news. It hasn’t really been congress that’s driven this, it’s President Trump and his administration going after all the Obama regulations and rolling them back. Another issue has been inflation. There hasn’t been much for the last 15-20 years.
That lack of inflation has vexed policymakers at the Federal Reserve, which is expected to raise its benchmark interest rate once more this year. Indications from central bank officials are that they believe the low inflation pressures to be temporary, though a continued lack of wage growth could change that perspective.
One of the problems with the Federal Reserve, actually the biggest problem, is they are morons. They think they can run the economy, but as the last century has shown, all they can do is really screw things up. Hopefully, I will find something soon. I can’t deal with another 18 months out of work.
Thatisall
~The Angry Webmaster~
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