Unemployment Rate Drops to Lowest Level in Three Years on December Hiring
Employers 200,000 jobs in December, pushing the unemployment rate down to about 8.5%, its lowest level in nearly 3 years.
The overall unemployment rate for the U.S. has dropped to 8.5%, at least when calculated by the federal government. The December Jobs report revealed that employers added over 200,000 jobs and there were additional indications that hiring was continuing to gain momentum. Average hourly pay rose along with the average length of the work week for most employees. Of course, November and December are traditionally strong hiring months because of the holiday shopping season.
And while all the recent improvements in the employment numbers are a welcome change from years of Great Recession Pessimism, everything must be looked at within the larger context of a broken macro economic model. The U.S. debt load is continuing to skyrocket, as Europe sits on the precipice of outright failure of the Euro Zone. Unsustainable sovereign debt is a global epidemic that is continuing to play out.
The improvement in hiring over the last few months also must be considered within the context of an overall Labor Participation Rate that is the lowest at any time since 1984, when the population of the country was much smaller than it is today.
It's also important to note that there were 42,000 new jobs added in December of 2010 and 2009 that were related directly to retail sales and shipping services like UPS, FedEx, etc. If you take that number into account, then it drops the overall number of new jobs created in December 2011 to 158,000, which is very close to the projected total for the month.
But back to the bright side, auto sales experienced their highest levels of performance of 2011 in November and December. So, there is some reason to believe that things can get better in the short term.
And while all the recent improvements in the employment numbers are a welcome change from years of Great Recession Pessimism, everything must be looked at within the larger context of a broken macro economic model. The U.S. debt load is continuing to skyrocket, as Europe sits on the precipice of outright failure of the Euro Zone. Unsustainable sovereign debt is a global epidemic that is continuing to play out.
The improvement in hiring over the last few months also must be considered within the context of an overall Labor Participation Rate that is the lowest at any time since 1984, when the population of the country was much smaller than it is today.
It's also important to note that there were 42,000 new jobs added in December of 2010 and 2009 that were related directly to retail sales and shipping services like UPS, FedEx, etc. If you take that number into account, then it drops the overall number of new jobs created in December 2011 to 158,000, which is very close to the projected total for the month.
But back to the bright side, auto sales experienced their highest levels of performance of 2011 in November and December. So, there is some reason to believe that things can get better in the short term.
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