A chart on Clusterstock (great name) by Kamelia Angelova (another great
name) shows what I've suspected for a while: all the jobs created in
the USA, during the Bush II years, were unsustainable. All have
been lost. Meanwhile, the population has increased by about 23
million.
People can argue about what the latest job numbers mean.
href="http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2009/07/weekly-unemployment-claims-decline.html">Some
see signs of recovery;
href="http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/">others do
not. I say the data are too noisy, but my take on it is that it
is more bad than good. Some say that employment tends to be
alagging indicator, but that is onlypart of the story.
The most comprehsensive look at the employment numbers that I've so so
far, is here:
href="http://www.businessinsider.com/henry-blodget-employment-is-not-a-lagging-indicator-2009-7">Employment
Is NOT A Lagging Indicator. It's good for people who like
graphs. There is a slideshow that slices and dices the employment
data 14 ways. It indicates that the only employment number that
is truly a laging indicator is the BLS civilian unemployment
rate. But there are many numbers pertaining to employment.
Most tell a different story.
The number of initial claims tends to be a leading indicator.
That has fallen lately. But the author says this could be
misleading: In prior recessions, the number peaked quickly, then
dropped quickly. This time, the peak was slow to develop, and it
is not dropping very much, or very quickly. Because the behavior
of this metric is so different than it has been, historically, it would
be hazardous to think it means the same thing at this point in time.