Today our statistic is from Mitt Romney. Team Romney claims women have lost 92.3% of the jobs since Obama took office. U.S. Treasury Secretary Geithner, acting as political pundit, calls Romney's new favorite statistic ridiculous.
First off Romney is right. Since Obama took office in January 2009, the below graph shows the total job losses by women as a percentage of the total job losses. As of March 2012, it is 92.3%.
The March Consumer Price Index, which measures inflation, increased 0.3%. Inflation was across the board and for the year has increased 2.7%. Below is the graph for CPI's monthly percentage change.
While the Wall Street Journal tries to claim software engineer is the best job, whistle blower Jay Palmer is blowing the lid off the dire straights most American technical workers are facing today. We have brazen labor arbitrage through abuse of the United States foreign guest worker system. American workers with college degrees, high skills and years of experience, are either fired or not hired. Systemically U.S. STEM labor is displaced and replaced by cheap foreign guest workers, some on immigration visas which are not even legal.
The U.S. February 2012 trade deficitshrank $6.5 billion to $46 billion in a month. This is a 12.37% monthly decrease in the trade deficit. January's trade deficit was revised slightly down to $52.5 billion.
JOLTS stands for Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey. The February 2012 statistics show there were 3.66 official unemployed people hunting for a job to every position available*. There were 3,498,000 job openings for February 2012, an increase of 0.6%, from the previous month of 3,477,000. This is no change from January 2012 in actual job openings. Job openings have increased 60% from their July 2009 trough. Yet opportunities are still way below the 1.8 persons per job opening at the start of the recession, December 2007. Below is the graph of February official unemployed, 12.806 million, per job opening.
The BLS establishment survey doesn't get much press love or headline buzz when it comes to the monthly employment statistics, despite the survey's better accuracy than the population survey. For the past year, 1.899 million payroll jobs have been added and payrolls now stand at 132,821,000. From a year ago this is a 1.5% increase. The below pie chart breaks down March 2012 payrolls by major industry's percentage of total employment.
There is much talk, much too late of course, about the JOBS act. We warned about this inappropriately titled bill earlier, but as usual, when corporate lobbyists want, corporate lobbyists will get in Congress, no problem. The bill passed and was signed into law, despite having almost nothing to do with real jobs. Dealbook overviews what Wall Street is discovering after the Jumpstart Our Business Startups bill was passed, oops.
Provisions tucked into the so-called JOBS Act, or the Jumpstart Our Business Startups, will roll back some major securities regulations and parts of a landmark legal settlement struck almost a decade ago. That 2003 settlement built a Chinese wall between Wall Street research analysts and investment bankers, an effort to prevent analysts from improperly promoting stocks to help their firms drum up business from corporate clients.
Now many are pouring over the nitty gritty to see what this bill really does. It ain't lookin' too pretty. While being billed as something to give start up companies more sources of funding and flexibility, instead the bill appears to be a re-awakening of the great Dot Con IPO ripoff circle jerk that was going on from 1994-2001.
The press and pundits shout the unemployment rate dropped to 8.2%, the lowest since January 2009, over three years ago. Yet March only added 120,000 jobs and those reported as employed dropped by -31,000. So, how could the official unemployment rate drop when the jobs added barely keeps up with population growth and the increase in those employed actually dropped?
The March 2012 monthly unemployment figures show the official unemployment rate dropped a 10th of a percentage point to 8.2%, and the total nonfarm payroll jobs gained was 120,000. These statistics are not the blow out most were hoping for. Total private jobs came in at 121,000. Government jobs dropped, -1,000. While manufacturing gained 37,000 jobs, retail trade, a category that includes retail sales clerks, dropped -33,800 jobs.
The BLS reports on individual occupations and wages. This is a separate survey from the employment report and unfortunately there is significant lag in the breakdown of 800 different specific job categories from the current overall employment statistics. While waiting for the March unemployment report to be dissected and digested, it might be of interest to look at the most recent occupational survey statistics from the BLS. For May 2011, 10 months ago, we have some seriously crappy jobs dominating the labor market.
There is much talk, much too late of course, about the JOBS act. We warned about this 
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