{"id":191928,"date":"2009-06-05T17:44:00","date_gmt":"2009-06-05T22:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/06\/05\/economics-update-205\/"},"modified":"2009-06-05T17:44:00","modified_gmt":"2009-06-05T22:44:00","slug":"economics-update-205","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/06\/05\/economics-update-205\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"

Unemployment Rates, Actuals vs. Geithner’s “Stress Tests”, courtesy Calculated Risk<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n

Today, we get the unemployment rate (U3). It rose from 8.9% to 9.4%<\/a>, a \u00bd% rise.<\/p>\n

Ouch.<\/p>\n

By way of context, you can look at the BLS alternate measures table<\/a>, and U6, which is probably closest to the figures used during the depression, though it still under counts relative to the older metric, rose from 15.8% to 16.4%.<\/p>\n

Ugly number.<\/p>\n

Of course, the press is reporting that the decrease in non-farm payrolls was less than expected<\/a>, -345,000 as opposed to their projection of something in the -500K range.<\/p>\n

Additionally, part of the increase in unemployment is workers becoming undiscouraged and actively looking for work<\/a>, though the U6 number indicates that there was still an upward revision despite that.<\/p>\n

Still, it appears that bondholders are betting on a recovery, they are bidding up the rates on treasuries<\/a>, which is also driving up mortgage rates<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There is an argument between economists as to whether this is inflation concerns, or whether people have simply stopped fleeing headlong to the safety of US Government securities.<\/p>\n

I’m with the latter school, but you can decide for yourselves.<\/p>\n

As to where the economy is headed, I’d bet with the insiders and banks and such, and
insider sales as reported to the SEC are going up<\/a>, implying that they are expecting worse for their firms.<\/p>\n

Still, the jobs report drove both the dollar<\/a> and oil<\/a> up today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Unemployment Rates, Actuals vs. Geithner’s “Stress Tests”, courtesy Calculated Risk Today, we get the unemployment rate (U3). It rose from 8.9% to 9.4%, a \u00bd% rise. Ouch. By way of context, you can look at the BLS alternate measures table, and U6, which is probably closest to the figures used during the depression, though it …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1080,973,975,1135,1004,1088,1089],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-191928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-currency","category-economy","category-employment","category-energy","category-finance","category-real-estate","category-recession"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191928"}],"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=191928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191928\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}