The NFP report is out this morning, and is: Nonfarm payroll employment rose by 227,000 in February, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 8.3 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment rose in professional and businesses services, health care and social assistance, leisure and hospitality, manufacturing, and mining.The Bureau of Lies and Scams claims that private employment rose by 233,000, with government decrementing the number by 6,000. The also claim that all of the employment gain in manufacturing came from durables, while the durable goods report was extremely negative last month. Hmmm… Let’s look at the household data, which is (at least allgedly) actual counts. That looks pretty good, especially the red line. Hmmmm….. where did it come from? Oh there it is! Not-in-labor-force dropped like a stone, and that accounts for the move. It is also why the unemployment rate didn’t move. Now the question is, did we get material improvement in the labor participation rate? Meh. 57.8 to 58.0, not even back to where it was in December (58.5). In fact, it’s pretty much following the pattern of last year; March of 2011 was 58.1%, last February 57.8%. This chart, the change in employment ex change in population, more than anything else, illuminates the evisceration of the American workforce, and nothing — absolutely nothing — indicates that we’ve done anything to change that over the last decade. We have not added a single job, adjusted for population, since 2006 — and even then going all the way back to 2000 the “gains” were tiny and fleeting. Until and unless we stop sending jobs overseas there will be no durable economic improvement. Discussion (registration required to post)  |
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