Economy added 67,000 private sector jobs in August
The unemployment rate ticked up to 9.6 percent. Good news, bad news. Staying on the up-side, the overall dip in jobs for the month was much lower than expected (analysts were predicting a loss of around 100,000 jobs.) From CNBC:
Nonfarm payrolls fell 54,000, the Labor Department said on Friday as temporary jobs to conduct the decennial dropped by 114,000.
Private employment, considered a better gauge of labor market health, increased 67,000 after a revised 107,000 gain in July. In addition, the government revised payrolls for June and July to show 123,000 fewer jobs lost than previously reported.
The decline in payrolls was about half as large as expected. Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast overall employment falling 100,000 and private-sector hiring increasing 41,000.
The unemployment rate edged up to 9.6 percent last month, in line with market expectations. The rise in the jobless rate reflected an increase in the labor force as some discouraged workers resumed the hunt for jobs.
“We really need private businesses to step up and begin to hire more aggressively for this recovery to really gain momentum,” said Ryan Sweet, a senior economist at Moody’s Economy.com in West Chester, _a.
The smaller-than-expected job losses last month could assuage fears the economy is sliding back into recession and ease pressure on the Fed—the U.S. central bank—to launch a fresh round of bond buying to keep borrowing costs low.
The real dirty little secret of the American economy is that business is doing quite well (a point made on the segment before mine on CNBC last night.) Companies — especially big companies — are sitting on lots of cash, and so are banks. Companies are simply not hiring because they can milk worker angst for more productivity, and banks, flush with our tax money, don’t feel the need to lend, including to small businesses. So what we’re seeing is a recovery for corporations and Wall Street, but a terrible economy for workers, who can’t find jobs and even if they have them, are seeing their incomes stall or decline.
Watch Kudlow ask: “will business bail out the economy”
It’s a rich man’s recovery, folks. That’s the problem.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration is huddling to figure out new fixes for the economy, including potential new infrastructure spending.
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