Unemployment hit 9.9% in April 2010!
This is the 4th highest month on record since the early 80s
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

Quote :

"Household Survey Data In April, the number of unemployed persons was 15.3 million, and the unem- ployment rate edged up to 9.9 percent. The rate had been 9.7 percent for the first 3 months of this year. (See table A-1.) "

http://www.miseryindex.us/urbymonth.asp?StartYear=1980-03&EndYear=2010-03&submit1=Create+Report

5/7/2010 2:41:24 PM

Maybe Galactus should hire more than one herald at a time.

5/7/2010 2:43:58 PM

http://money.cnn.com/2010/05/07/news/economy/jobs_april/index.htm?cnn=yes&hpt=T3

Quote :

"The rise in the unemployment rate is actually a sign of improving perception of labor market conditions. The increase was due to an uptick in job seekers who had previously been discouraged and dropped out of the job market. There was a jump of 805,000 workers returning to the labor force in April alone. "When you think about the force it takes to get 800,000 beaten-down people off the couch and back on the street looking for work, that's pretty significant," said Lakshman Achuthan, managing director of Economic Cycle Research Institute."

Also "Unemployment Spike in April! Highest in 27 years! is wrong, it was higher last year so the title should read "Unemployment Spike in April! Highest in 1 years!"

5/7/2010 2:50:39 PM

"BECOME THE SENTINAL OF THE SPACEWAYS WITH....GALACTUS"

[Edited on May 7, 2010 at 3:36 PM. Reason : ``]

5/7/2010 3:33:10 PM

All in all, it is great news. Several consecutive months of job creation.

5/7/2010 4:13:10 PM

krugman has the 411 on why these numbers are good:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/07/jobs-jobs-jobs/

5/7/2010 4:32:43 PM

LMAO - this is how you are qualifing the increase in unemployment?

Quote :

""The rise in the unemployment rate is actually a sign of improving perception of labor market conditions. The increase was due to an uptick in job seekers who had previously been discouraged and dropped out of the job market. There was a jump of 805,000 workers returning to the labor force in April alone. "When you think about the force it takes to get 800,000 beaten-down people off the couch and back on the street looking for work, that's pretty significant," said Lakshman Achuthan, managing director of Economic Cycle Research Institute.""

improving preception of labor
previously been discouraged and dropped out of the market
force it takes to get 800,000 people off the couch
***this is very sad commentary***

you can't skew the numbers to begin with and not count these people as unemployeed and then try to present it as a positive when they start looking for work again
i'm willing to admit that jobs may be on the rise, but lets not cook the books and call it something it's not.

how much of this would you say is attributed to those people who are running out of unemployment money and are now willing to take that lower paying job that they would not 6 months - a year ago? and if we are accepting lower paying jobs then will this really have a positive impact on cash flow and consumer spending?

5/7/2010 4:33:36 PM

you realize that there are multiple measures from bls for unemployment, yes? that some include "discouraged" workers and some do not?

It isn't a ploy or a trick, its a question of figuring out whats going on in the economy and most people do that using multiple pieces of information.

[Edited on May 7, 2010 at 5:15 PM. Reason : ``]

5/7/2010 5:02:56 PM

No, past administrations have intentionally sought to skew the "primary" unemployment numbers for political reasons. Just as the inflation numbers you hear about now don't include food and energy prices. It's very convenient, because we all know that food and energy are going up in price.

Krugman et al can continue to make bad news seem like good news, but the gig will be up soon. Things can only get worse. What we see in Greece is a preview of things to come, but no one is willing to accept that. Greece overextended itself on lavish social programs and pensions. The difference between us and them is that we can print money, and they can't. So, Greece is actually having to do what we need to do - raise taxes and cut spending. People are rioting in the street because they aren't going to be able to depend on the government anymore. What do you think will happen here?

5/7/2010 6:04:04 PM

Quote :

"its a question of figuring out whats going on in the economy and most people do that using multiple pieces of information. are obfuscating the facts to support their own personal world view"

5/7/2010 7:13:01 PM

how many so called new jobs are temporary census jobs or government jobs. if the private sector is not hiring or expanding then the economy aint going no where any time fast

5/7/2010 9:23:54 PM

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/how_nation_true_jobless_rate_is_N4E6MjtfhnMcCi537pucaJ

Quote :

" Fact 1: The next employment report will be worse. When the Labor Department puts out the January employment figures on Feb. 4, they will include an assumption that a lot of companies went out of business. This is something called the birth/death model that is used by the department. Last year it caused 356,000 jobs to be subtracted from the January job count. So, the next employment figure should be shockingly bad. Fact 2: The birth/death model will then turn optimistic in the spring, causing jobs that really don't exist to be added to the Labor Department's count. It won't make the people who are unemployed feel any better. But it could give Wall Street another excuse to rally and, really, isn't that what it is all about? Fact 3: Nobody in the media will pick up on this, but the Labor De partment will also do something called a benchmark revision on Feb. 4 that will subtract around 840,000 jobs that the government thought existed, but really don't. This will mostly make up for the mistakes created by the birth/death model. Fact 4: That 840,000 job adjustment will only correct errors up to March 2009. Mistakes for the April 2009 to March 2110 period will be corrected next year. Fact 5: You keep reading that the unemployment rate stayed at 10 percent. But the press has been playing up the 17.3 percent rate that includes those "underemployed," meaning they can't find a full-time job but want one. I've been mentioning that under-employed figure -- called U-6 by the Labor Department -- for years and I'm glad everyone else has finally caught up. But that larger figure doesn't include a huge number of unemployed folks who have given up looking for work because they feel the search is hopeless. Last Friday's report said 661,000 such people left the labor force in December. If you count these hopelessly unemployed, the real jobless rate is probably close to 22 percent. If these all weren't such important issues, this would all be a big joke. Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/how_nation_true_jobless_rate_is_N4E6MjtfhnMcCi537pucaJ#ixzz0nInhAhCY"

5/7/2010 10:45:42 PM

^^231,000 of the jobs for last month were private number jobs.

Norrin Radd's response thread to mine thread means we're posting the same the same questions and answers in 2 places over and over.

5/7/2010 11:19:25 PM

I mean, I can see his problem. It's kind of lame that unemployment numbers can go up or down, and either way it means the President is doing a bang-up job and everything's improving.

5/8/2010 1:39:30 AM