Going into this morning, expectations were that that the new report from Bureau of Labor Statistics would show the economy added about 160,000 jobs in December. As it turns out, in the preliminary report, the expectations were quite close.
The BLS reported this morning that the overall economy added 155,000 jobs last month, while the revised unemployment rate was unchanged at 7.8%. As is often the case, austerity measures undermined the employment landscape -- while America's private sector added 168,000 jobs in December, the public sector lost 13,000 jobs, including over 11,000 teachers. (President Obama's American Jobs Act was intended to prevent this, but congressional Republicans refused to vote on his proposal.)
In terms of revisions, October's numbers were slightly worse than previously reported, while November's totals were revised up by 15,000.
For the 2012 calendar year, the nation added over 1.83 million jobs, which is down slightly from 2011, but is the second best annual total since 2005. The private sector, meanwhile, added over 1.9 million jobs last year.
Politically, I suspect most will find this report underwhelming -- because it is -- but this should, in theory, only serve to remind policymakers and the rest of the political world that the economic recovery is not yet robust, and focusing on deficit reduction and austerity instead of economic growth and job creation is misguided and counterproductive.
Above you'll find the chart I run on the first Friday of every month, showing monthly job losses since the start of the Great Recession. The image makes a distinction -- red columns point to monthly job totals under the Bush administration, while blue columns point to job totals under the Obama administration.
Update: Here's another chart, this one showing monthly job losses/gains in just the private sector since the start of the Great Recession.
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CNBC whining about the debt, but there is something strange with all that. For one President Obama does want to take care of the debt. And the other thing the same people at CNBC wanted Romney to win the election. Now something is not quite clicking here, because Romney was the biggest thief around when it came to running up companies debt just to make huge profits at the very cost of the company and workers. Something definitely is not right here and those people at CNBC are a load of crap and drastically lying about something or they are really dumb. So what is it CNBC, are you finally going to start telling the truth about things or keep playing the rich bastard games.
Yes Deb CNBC is an extension of the Fux News business channel. All you see on that channel are rich CEO'S whining about entitlements and in the next breath whine about their taxes being too high and how President Obama is anti business. People like Jack Welch who have more money than they will ever need and will never have to depend on SS or medicare. Kernen and Santelli have that I've got my place in the life boat and if you and your family try to get in we'll hit you over the head with these oars attitude. In fact we can contribute much of the trouble we have today in this country to CNBC'S Rick the Pric* Santelli and his tea party rant. That whole bunch should be fired with the exeption of Becky Quick.
Interestingly enough I have a niece who works at DCOTA( Design center of the Americas) http://www.dcota.com/
This is a high end design furnishing and fabric showroom that caters to the very very wealthy . She has been hearing the same thing from the clients ...Oh woe is me my taxes are going up while they pick out $200 a square yard fabric.
Let them eat cake redux
But I am sure the rich bastards would be more than happy to crush us majority people down by removing our life support of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicare just cause they don't need any of it. Our problem is we have these bought off politicians by these rich bastards too much and company monopolies way out of control. Of course though, the rich bastards will handle our Social Security for us, you know you cannot let that 2 trillion dollars go to waste by the middle class and poor. The rich bastards I am sure will use that money to refurbish their fabrics a few more times a year than just once a year.
They scream that the government can't create jobs, but what are those lost teacher jobs? And why is it so horrible that the military-industrial complex might not grow at a pace far above inflation?
It must be so nice to be a Republican -- to be so indifferent to facts, to have your "beliefs" so non-falsifiable.
The number of jobs is pretty irrelevant as the problem in America is a lack of income for the American People in the lower and middle classes(even those w/ incomes of $450,000- I'll ignore the disparity in living in high cost areas NYC & LA vs KC). If you go back to the income levels of 2007 or even earlier it is down. This lack of income is why most domestic business are not expanding production or hiring in the US because they do not see the demand.
So feel free to jump up and down about job numbers but until we reduce the amount of debt held by the average American and increase their income the sluggishness in the economy will continue.
Repubs WANT worker incomes to stay low, because that means that businesses, (i.e. owners and management), can keep more money for themselves. Of course, logically that means that those workers will be able to buy less, which is bad for business, and that is what we are seeing, but they really don't care, as long as they keep pulling in their inflated salaries. As usual in this country, long-term thinking is defined as stretching no further into the future than the end of the next fiscal quarter. This country is Short Attention Span Theater; if that is not the case, then we would have been replacing our crumbling, economy-stifling infrastructure.
Krugman has been constantly hammering on this, that we need more stimulus, and that austerity is a threat short and long term. My question is, why isn't Obama arguing this, making the public case for it, with charts? This is a failure of leadership. http://therepublicon.blogspot.com/2012/11/president-obama-invest-in-america-and.html
Why isn't Obama arguing this with charts? Because facts are something that repubs hate, and simply don't believe. There is a ton of historical evidence, from this country and others around the world, from the Great Depression to Europe today, that shows austerity not only doesn't work, but creates the kind of damage that it is supposedly there to prevent. Interestingly enough, repubs only believe in austerity in regards to social programs. Note that during the fiscal cliff debacle, repubs were repeatedly talking about how catastrophic the sequester would be for the Pentagon, but absolutely nothing was said about how bad it would be for social programs. In fact, in previous months, repubs suggested eliminating the entire sequester for the Pentagon, and making it up with additional cuts to social programs. If they truly want to see Depression-level unemployment in this country, go right ahead and make massive austerity the rule of the land. I kind of think that the 25% of the country that ends up unemployed will not give a hoot about the deficit being reduced if they are out of work, have no unemployment funds, no food stamps, and are homeless. They are playing an exceedingly dangerous game, risking the total meltdown of our society just to keep their rich corporate masters happy.
The reason Obama isn't crowing about these numbers is because they SUCK!!! He's driven down real wages 20% since he's taken office. Your taxes are going up not down, yes even for the middle and lower class. Obama and the democrats have historically been out to destroy the middle and lower classes. Government jobs do not create wealth even valuable jobs like, teachers, firemen, and police officers. Anyone who gets money from the government had it taken from someone else. That's a fact get over it. Those of you who will say I want to fire all teachers, police and firemen can just shut up because that's not what I'm saying. I'm simply saying that for the government to spend money it must take money from someone else. The government needs to live within it's means just like you and I do. Here's an example in terms we all can understand. The govenment takes in $2.2B each year in taxes they spent $3.8B and have debt of $16B. Let's view it as a US family making $22,000 a year spending $38,000 per year with credit card bills of $160,000. How long can that last? This family is also adding $16,000 of new credit card debt each year. Is that something you would do?
I just received my tax return for 2011 back from the IRS. It puzzles me!!!
They are questioning how many dependents I claimed.
I guess it was because of my response to the question: "List all dependents?"
I replied: 12 million illegal immigrants; 3 million crack heads; 42 million unemployed people on food stamps; 2 million people in over 243 prisons; Half of Mexico; 535 pompass @!$%#s in the U.S. House and Senate and 1 useless President.
Evidently, this was NOT an acceptable answer.
I KEEP ASKING MYSELF, WHO DID I MISS?