{"id":187781,"date":"2011-03-06T21:31:00","date_gmt":"2011-03-07T02:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2011\/03\/06\/economics-update-for-the-week\/"},"modified":"2011-03-06T21:31:00","modified_gmt":"2011-03-07T02:31:00","slug":"economics-update-for-the-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2011\/03\/06\/economics-update-for-the-week\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update for the Week"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The news has been good this week.<\/p>\n<p>First, the jobless rate rate fell to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessweek.com\/news\/2011-03-04\/u-s-economy-unemployment-rate-unexpectedly-declines.html\">below 9% for the first time in about 2 years<\/a>, and initial unemployment claims <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/2011-03-03\/u-s-initial-jobless-claims-fall-to-368-000-lowest-since-2008.html\">fell to a roughly two year low as well<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Note that while the improvement in the labor force was good, 193,000 that rate means that something like <b>7 more years<\/b> would be required to reach something approaching a normal employment picture.<\/p>\n<p>Additionally, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/2011-03-03\/u-s-productivity-rises-2-6-in-fourth-quarter-costs-fall-1-.html\">productivity rose strongly in the 4<sup>th<\/sup> quarter<\/a>, while the Institute for Supply Management&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/news\/nationworld\/nation\/wire\/sns-bc-us--economy-manufacturing-summarybox,0,1015427.story\">Manufacturing<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chicagotribune.com\/business\/yourmoney\/sns-rt-business-us-usa-econtre72243n-20110303,0,6887963.story\">Non-Manufacturing<\/a> indices both rose strongly.<\/p>\n<p>The only real question is whether the pain caucus calling for government austerity will screw this all up by cutting government spending, and possibly tightening monetary policy, too soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The news has been good this week. First, the jobless rate rate fell to below 9% for the first time in about 2 years, and initial unemployment claims fell to a roughly two year low as well. Note that while the improvement in the labor force was good, 193,000 that rate means that something like &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[973,975,1089],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-187781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-employment","category-recession"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187781"}],"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=187781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187781\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}