Total employment in the U.S. has recovered to about the halfway point of its previous high. Looked at this way, the Less Bad Recovery is chugging along, but at a very slow rate. Total employment, at 143.28 million, sits roughly in the same place as it did in 2005.
However, a recent chart from Jacob Goldstein at the NPR blog is useful, as it shows how singular and unusual the Great Recession has been during the “recovery” phase compared to other post-war recessions.
Goldstein writes:
How much worse is it this time? Here’s the answer: In previous postwar recoveries, the number of jobs was about 7 percent above its previous peak by this point, on average. In other words, if this had been a typical recession and recovery, the U.S. economy would now have roughly 10 million more jobs than it did at the previous peak. In fact, there are now three million fewer jobs.
Another ‘who woulda thunk it’ moment: The U.S. economy posted a stunning drop of 0.1 percent in the fourth quarter, defying expectations for slow growth and possibly providing incentive for more Federal Reserve stimulus. The economy shrank from October through …
And here the Republicans wanted to avoid the blame, by being nice.
Get outta here! You mean with businesses fretting over the unknown cost of ObamaCare, with taxes being raised for almost every American, and government spending continuing to spiral out of control that our economy is contracting?
In Spain, the seasonally adjusted numbers show industrial production falling by 2.3% mom in November and 7.2% yoy. While the consensus expected a rebound after the sharp drop recorded in September (-2.8% mom) and flat activity in October, this is another sign that the three point VAT increase in September as well as the ongoing budget tightening continue to weigh on domestic demand. The fall takes the level of production back to level not seen since 1993, wiping out the best part of two decades gains in production. On the details, all industrial sectors reported a fall in output. The main sector particularly hit was capital goods (-4.1% on a 3m/3m basis, -12.8% yoy) while consumer goods and intermediate goods output fell by 2.3% on 3m/3m basis.
Assuming an unchanged reading in December from November, industrial output would drop by 2.6% qoq. Although this negative contribution on GDP growth will be partially offset by a positive contribution from net trade, the Spanish economy is set to post a weak GDP print in Q4. Our Q4 GDP forecast remains at -0.5% qoq but risks are clearly tilted to the downside. In a nutshell, the recession remains severe in Spain and unemployment rate is set to carry on rising from already depressed level (26.2% in October).
Tax increase leading to widespread economic contraction and demand collapse? Someone should tell US economists all about this curious phenomenon.
The global economy is likely to be stuck in the “twilight zone” of sluggish growth in 2013, Morgan Stanley has warned, but if policymakers fail to act, it could get a lot worse.
The bank’s economics team forecasts a full-blown recession next year, under a pessimistic scenario, with global gross domestic product (GDP) likely to plunge 2 percent.
“More than ever, the economic outlook hinges upon the actions taken or not taken by governments and central banks,” Morgan Stanley said in a report.
Under the bank’s more gloomy scenario, the U.S. would go over the “fiscal cliff” leading to a contraction in U.S. GDP for the first three quarters of 2013. In Europe, the bank’s pessimistic scenario assumes a failure of the European Central Bank (ECB) in cutting rates and a delay of its bond-buying program.
Unemployment in Greece hit a record high of 25.1 percent in July as the country’s financial crisis continues to exact its heavy toll, official figures showed Thursday.
All indications are that unemployment in Greece will continue to rise. The economy has shrunk by around a fifth since the recession started in 2008 and youth unemployment has pushed way above 50 percent. The economy is expected to enter a sixth year of recession next year.
“This is a very dramatic result of the recession,” said Angelos Tsakanikas, head of research at Greece’s IOBE economic research foundation.
The Dow was down for the week, as QE3 has not had the desired effect
Rick Santelli on CNBC says that the economic indicacators that came out this morning are “Depressingly Weak” (September 27, 2012).
Stocks ended lower Friday, the last trading day of the week, and the month and the third quarter. Investors were grappling with the same things they have for most of the past quarter: mixed news on the economy and the European debt crisis.
According to the Obama administration, the unemployment rate in the United States has been slowly coming down over the past couple of years. But is that actually true? When you take a closer look at the data you quickly realize that the real unemployment numbers are much worse than we are being told.
For example, if the labor force participation rate was the same today as it was back when Barack Obama first took office, the unemployment rate in the United States would be a whopping 11.2 percent. But every month the Obama administration has been able to show “progress” because of the fiction that hundreds of thousands of Americans are “disappearing” from the labor force each month.
Frankly, the way that they come up with these numbers is an insult to our intelligence.
Personally, I much prefer the employment-population ratio. It is a measure of the percentage of working age Americans that actually have jobs. So what happened to the “employment rate” in August? It fell slightly to 58.3 percent. It is lower than it was when the last recession supposedly ended, and it is almost as low as it has been at any point since the very beginning of this crisis. A few times during this economic downturn it has actually hit 58.2 percent.
Needless to say, things are not getting any better.
So why aren’t the American people being told the truth?
Hey why you say. That’s a joke line for Leno, right…
As if you didn’t know, you are probably worse off than you were four years ago. When you consider the average American family has lost 40% of their net wealth, I doubt anyone will find this as news.,
So why would you vote for this out of ideas, except those he gets from a ghost, you want more?
As the economy sputters along, consumers are feeling the squeeze in their annual paychecks.
That’s according to Sentier Research, whose latest report found household incomes have been declining ever since the recovery began in June 2009.
The numbers are striking: Yearly household income dwindled by 4.8 percent between June 2009 and 2012 from $53,508 to $50,964, although several types of households fared much worse than that.
“Based on our data, almost every group is worse off now than it was three years ago, with the exception of households with householders 65-years-old and over,” said researcher Gordon Green.
Maybe you can’t get enough of Rev wright sermons as Obama …
It’s a double dipper. Wait, don’t you have to actually come out before you can double dip?
When did we come out?
The odds the United States will slip back into recession next year have risen, ratings agency Standard & Poor’s said, citing risks from the European debt crisis and budget tightening at year-end.
The US ratings firm raised the chance of the US falling into recession to 25 percent, up from a 20 percent chance estimated in February, as the world’s largest economy struggles to recover from a severe 2008-2009 slump.
All moeny belongs to government if you ask any government beuracrat and the totally useless Obama.
How does government spending prevent recession/depressions? Maybe we should concentrate on getting the private economy moving not just parroting Obama’s tax the rich crap. That would probably help a lot. Ya think???
If you were hoping for a recession in 2012, then you are going to be very happy with the numbers you are about to see. The U.S. economy is heading downhill just in time for the 2012 election.
Retail sales have fallen for three months in a row for the first time since 2008, manufacturing activity is dropping like a rock, sales of new homes are declining again, consumer confidence has moved significantly lower and a depressingly small percentage of businesses anticipate hiring more workers in the coming months.
Even though the Federal Reserve has been wildly pumping money into the financial system and even though the federal government has been injecting gigantic piles of borrowed cash into the economy, we still haven’t seen an economic recovery. In fact, we appear to be on the verge of yet another major downturn.
In California the other night, Barack Obama told supporters that “we tried our plan — and it worked“, but only those that are still drinking the Obama kool-aid would believe something so preposterous. The truth is that the U.S. economy has been steadily declining for many years under Obama, and now we have reached another very painful recession.
The dreaded double hump.
And don’t let the second quarter GDP number on Friday fool you. Analysts are expecting to see GDP growth of about 1.4 percent for the second quarter, but the only reason for our very small amount of “economic growth” is because the economy has been flooded with new dollars.
But they said it was 1.5% GDP, which likely makes everyone go huh?
Posted by tarpon 
