Updates
July 8, 2012: Timing is everything; this is quite incredible. Earlier, "anonymous" sent me a note telling me that the unemployment numbers were better under those politicians than any politician I had voted for (I don't know how "Connie" knows who I vote for, but I digress.) I don't post Connie's comments due to spelling, punctuation, grammar, and language. I wish I had posted that comment. It is now being reported that unemployment dropped in every state that elected a Republican governor in 2010. Just saying. This won't be reported in the mainstream media.
July 8, 2012: Forget the blame game. I don't care who is responsible or what your myth is -- the point is this: this is a jobless recovery and the trend seems to suggest things have gotten worse, and the mainstream media continues to try to spin it. A reader sent me this: The new job increase in Jan, Feb and March averaged 225,000 PER month. April, May, and June was 217,000 TOTAL ... for all three months. Spin it any way you want. Those are the facts. Blame anyone you want. But we will see.
July 8, 2012: Forget the blame game, but with regard to jobs, this is the worst recovery in modern era following the end of the recession. There are multiple reasons, but it was predicted a while back it would be a jobless recovery. We all have our myths on why the recovery is "dead last" in modern history.
July 7, 2012: This subject just won't go away. Now we learn that the president has used the same line regarding the "jobs number" for 30 months.
Later, 10: 30: I have to laugh. Someone said my blog should be re-titled to "reflect reality." Shortly after receiving this comment, this story appeared in the LA Times: "Obama: The jobs number is a step in the right direction." If his goal is a government-centric, welfare state, ala Europe in the 1930's, he is correct. I have been reading the Stephen Spender autobiography which reminded me of that.
Later, 9:45 a.m.: I am going to try doing a better job and make sure that each and every post has something to do with the Bakken. Apparently a couple of readers did not like this post because a) it had nothing to do with the Bakken; and, b) it "did not reflect reality." (I cannot make these things up.) Anyway, to tie this post in with the Bakken, from PennEnergy comes this story: US offshore oil and gas potential limited only by regulators. It should be noted that the comment period for regulating fracking in the Bakken has been extended until September 10, 2012 (earlier story). Sometime after the end of the comment period, Federal fracking regulations will redun-date the state regulations. At that time we will have a controlled experiment: we can watch the oil activity in the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation vs the oil activity in the Dickinson, North Dakota, area.
Later, 9:00 a.m.: By this afternoon, the Drudge Report front page will have changed, but right now, the Drudge Report is full of "cup-half-empty" stories. It is quite incredible how bad this story -- the jobs story -- really is. No matter how you paint it, it's bad, bad, bad.
Original Post
Holy jobs market, Batman!
Remember: the magic number is 200,000.
I have not read the story. I read the headline. I skimmed a few paragraphs. Unemployment still at 8.2 percent. Only 80,000 jobs created. The magic number is the mainstream media's agreed-upon number for number of new jobs needed each month to result in full economic recovery by .... drum roll ... 12 years. So, if we give the Obama team three terms, ...
For the first six months of the year, U.S. employers added an average of 150,000 jobs a month. That's fewer than the 161,000 a month for the first half of 2011. And it shows that the job market is weakening.But based on a comment from Curt yesterday, he's happy with how things are going. His cup is half-full.
"It's a disappointing report," said George Mokrzan, director of economics at Huntington National Bank in Columbus, Ohio. He said the job gains are consistent with sluggish economic growth.
The "market" must be a "cup half empty" also -- the market fell upon the news.
I'm an eternal optimist. With regard to the jobs report, yes, my cup is half-empty. And dropping. But on most things, my cups are half-full.
[Update: this came in as a new comment for Curt. I would not have had time to look for it, but thanks to another reader: "Fox business news came out with 2 different statistics today.. Jobs created in April 2012, 66,000; May, 70,000; June, 80,000."
So, with that, let's go back to some folks with a half-full cup. We will go back to March, 2012: this Washington Post story was just one of many reporting how good things were getting. And this from the New York Times, May 31, 2012.
200,000 jobs/month is the "magic number." April + May + June = 216,000.
Yup, my cup is half empty when it comes to jobs under this administration. The recession officially
ended in 2009.]
