Payrolls Down 63000 in February

Link: Rex Nutting: Job growth has slowed to a crawl, economists say - MarketWatch .

There is a natural human tendency to overreact to what is, after all, only a marginal data point, and panic.

Even so, it is now time for words like "alrm" and phrases like "grave concern."

Comments

[save_the_rustbelt]

The economic version of hari-kari....

State's plant auctions booming
Louis Aguilar / The Detroit News

KENTWOOD -- The state's manufacturing base may be rapidly vanishing but the business of selling Michigan factories is a thriving scene.

Beyond the industrial auction houses that have seen steady growth in recent years, there are a wide range of players who show up at events like Wednesday's industrial auction of Synergis Technologies Group, once one of the largest tool-and-die makers in the Grand Rapids area.

There's middle-age men in work boots and blue jeans who show up during the beginning of the auctions and bid on small items like tool cabinets and small machinery.

They tend to be former tool-and-die workers like Jim Gabrielson, who owned a shop in Detroit that closed three years ago. "I just want to buy something so I can make something again," Gabrielson said.

As the bigger machinery -- like a 30-ton hydraulic press -- begins to be auctioned later in the day, scrap dealers like Mike Becker, owner of PMS Excavating in Olivet, start bidding. "We go to as many of these things as we can," said Becker, who's already been to 10 this year.

By midday, when the truly heavy machinery comes up for bid, the crowd begins to change to men in loafers and expensive-looking sweaters wielding Blackberries. The Webcast bidders, mostly representing out-of-state and foreign bidders, become much more active.

[jerry]

save_the_rust belt, you are just not seeing the creative destruction as the old tired and busted manufacturing industry is overcome by the new high value service jobs. Jobs like: hedgefund manager, security guard, wal*mart greeter, security guard, telephone sanitizer, YouTube Channel producers, security guard, real-estate agent, call center administrator, security guard, recycled waste separator, diversity trainer, lawyer, and of course, security guard.

Any resemblance to those new high value service jobs, and the jobs that originally came to us through our creation legend of the landing of the B Ark on our planet by the Golgafrinchans are purely coincidental.

[pgl]

Check out the White House "fact sheet" on the BLS news. They are actually touting the drop in the unemployment rate as goods news even though the employment to population ratio fell from 67.9% to 67.7%!

[me]

str you just think all those mfg jobs are disappearing. The low dollar has exports just booming to save the economy. Don't worry, be happy and export something.

[Neal]

Total NFP -63K

Goods producing sector -89K
Construction -39K
Manufacturing -52K
Service providing +26K
Retail -31K
Finance -12K
Temporary Help -28K
Education/Health +30K
Leisure/Hospitality +21K
Government +38K

From these numbers it is clear where the future of the US economy will be:

A giangantic governmental/insurance funded teaching hospital with bars and restaurants in a food court.

[save_the_rustbelt]

Neal:

How true.

My main area is health care, and we keep hearing:

1) we cannot afford the current healthcare system

2) former manufcturing workers should go to work in healthcare

Duh

[Neal]

Health care as the future reminds me of a snake eating its tail.

[Kaleberg]

Hey, you're an economist. Maybe you can answer this. How low can the percentage of employed to population go without changing the unemployment rate? If we decreased the percentage employed along some optimal path, could we maintain a 5% unemployment all the way down to 0%?

This strikes me as a fruitful path for future research, especially if we get another Republican president this November.

[Dave L]

Indeed, words like "alrm".

Although if matters deteriorate badly we may yet be forced to retrench even further, doing without vowels altogether.

[piotr]

Brad rarely answers questions here, although he does, sometimes.

I think that unemployed are defined as people who (a) have no jobs -- a relatively clear criterion, and (b) actively look for work.

(b) is much more open to interpretation. There was a time when you looked for work tramping around the town asking for job openings, or filing applications etc. Now people can make much fewer futile attempts because so much information is available on internet. So my theory is that the definition of looking for work does not capture the way most people do it these days -- or at least many.

First, there is some "methodological" justification to keep old counting methods so the time series are comparable. Second, political pressure would definitely be against updating the methodology to reveal higher unemployment.

[Jonathan King]

Dave L wrote:
> Indeed, words like "alrm".
>
> Although if matters deteriorate badly we may yet be forced to retrench even further, doing
> without vowels altogether.

Snark while you can, monkey boy! I am guessing that you have not seen the true power of iPhone Blogging (tm). You will be pwn3d.