The much awaited January unemployment report is released and from the headlines, one would think this is great. It's not.
The reason is the U.S. lost another 20,000 jobs. The employment-population ratio rose from 58.2 to 58.4 percent. This means while the ratio of the employed to unemployed improved, it is in part because there are more people added to the general population who are not being counted in the potential workforce or inversely, a decrease in the overall civilian workforce, which causes the ratio to increase.
Below are the total non-farm payrolls. The first is the raw numbers and the second is in percent change from the previous months report. In nonfarm payrolls one can see the real job losses that are still occurring this recession.
From The Financial Times (of London) - Moody’s Investors Service fired off a warning on Wednesday that the triple A sovereign credit rating of the US would come under pressure unless economic growth was more robust than expected or tougher actions were taken to tackle the country’s budget deficit.
The terminology is beginning to change in Europe. The fact that Spain's finance minister felt it necessary to say this speaks volumes about how the markets view Europe.
“Spain’s situation is not like that of Greece, not in terms of public debt nor in terms of economic strength,” Ms. Salgado said in an interview with La Cope radio.
Yields on Spanish bonds jumped today as the market demanded higher returns on the debt risk. Why did that happen?
Oh woe to the U.S. worker. Labor Productivity soared 6.2% in Q4 2009. We have a 7.2% increase in output and a measly 1.0% increase in hours worked. Hourly compensation increased 1.5%.
For the year labor productivity increased 5.1% and only compares to the great job exodus of 2001/2002.
The administration has told Chinese officials that currency policy will be high on its agenda this year for economic talks with China, a senior official said on Wednesday. The White House is also weighing whether to designate China as a country that manipulates its currency, when the Treasury Department issues its semiannual report on foreign currencies in April.
President Obama signaled the tougher line on Wednesday, telling Democratic senators that the United States needed “to make sure our goods are not artificially inflated in price and their goods are not artificially deflated in price; that puts us at a huge competitive disadvantage.”
I know we all believe the housing bubble has already popped and all things real estate are over. One might think this post should be from 2006 from the title. But it's not, this post is from 2010 and below are the reasons for the question.
The Non-manufacturing ISM index was released today. We have:
NMI is at 50.5%
Business Activity Index at 52.2%
New Orders Index at 54.7%
Employment Index at 44.6%
The NMI (Non-Manufacturing Index) registered 50.5 percent in January, 0.7 percentage point higher than the seasonally adjusted 49.8 percent registered in December, indicating growth in the non-manufacturing sector. The Non-Manufacturing Business Activity Index decreased 1 percentage point to 52.2 percent, reflecting growth for the second consecutive month. The New Orders Index increased 2.7 percentage points to 54.7 percent, and the Employment Index increased 1 percentage point to 44.6 percent. The Prices Index increased 1.6 percentage points to 61.2 percent in January, indicating an increase in prices paid from December.
Yet another employment report and yet more job losses. The ADP report shows a loss of 22,000 jobs but the bad news is more the loss of 25,000 jobs in manufacturing alone. Construction, no surprise there, lost 37,000 jobs.
Jobs in the service sector increased by 38,000, while goods-producing industries cut 60,000, including 25,000 in manufacturing
Planned layoff announcements at major U.S. corporations increased 59% in January, reaching 71,482 from a nine-year low of 45,094 seen in December, according to the latest job-cut tally by Challenger Gray & Christmas.
This is 70% lower than last year but when it seems everyone has been fired already and the country desperately needs to add jobs, this isn't a good sign.
Realize Challenger Gray layoff tallies are always significantly lower than the actual. Many companies hide planned layoffs, or one cannot find any official announcement.
9.1% of FHA loans missed 3 mortgage payments by December 2009.
Seems the problem is loans made in 2007, 2008. But by this time, the U.S. was well into a housing collapse, so the subprime lending was curtailed...but guess what, we have another sucker, the FHA.
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