{"id":183271,"date":"2015-01-10T20:50:00","date_gmt":"2015-01-11T01:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2015\/01\/10\/the-latest-unemployment-numbers-are-not-good\/"},"modified":"2015-01-10T20:50:00","modified_gmt":"2015-01-11T01:50:00","slug":"the-latest-unemployment-numbers-are-not-good","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2015\/01\/10\/the-latest-unemployment-numbers-are-not-good\/","title":{"rendered":"The Latest Unemployment Numbers are not Good"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>While most of the coverage has been about a fall in the unemployment rate, specifically a fall in the U-3 rate, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/01\/10\/business\/economy\/jobs-unemployment-figures-december.html\">from 5.8% to 5.6%<\/a>, but this misses a lot.<\/p>\n<p>Specifically, workforce participation fell again, so the number is primarily as a result of people giving up, &#8220;Long-term unemployment remains highly elevated, and the work force participation rate, already at historically low levels, slipped in December.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Additionally, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/01\/10\/upshot\/job-growth-looks-great-wage-growth-less-so.html\">wages fell in December<\/a>, indicating that the ordinary worker is still being screwed by the job market:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">The big disappointment was on wages. In the November numbers, one of the brightest signs was an 0.4 percent rise in average hourly earnings, which was a hint that maybe, just maybe, a tighter job market was leading employers to raise wages after years of resisting.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">It turned out to be a false signal. In Friday\u2019s revisions, November wages rose only 0.2 percent. And even worse, in December they fell 0.2 percent.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Over the last year, the average hourly wage in America has risen 40 cents, from $24.17 to $24.57 an hour. That is a mere 1.65 percent, in the same ballpark as many inflation readings and not a meaningful rise in real wages.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>We need to see an improvement in the takehome pay for the median worker before we see anything like a strong job market.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While most of the coverage has been about a fall in the unemployment rate, specifically a fall in the U-3 rate, from 5.8% to 5.6%, but this misses a lot. Specifically, workforce participation fell again, so the number is primarily as a result of people giving up, &#8220;Long-term unemployment remains highly elevated, and the work &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[975,1089,992],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-183271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-employment","category-recession","category-statistics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183271"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183271\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}