Employment surprise . . . an early Christmas gift to President Obama!
Posted on 05. Dec, 2009 by scott in economic daydreaming
Friday was an early Christmas for the President. He must have thought it was his ATM going crazy! I’ll bet he was beginning to think just about everything would go wrong if it could. It has been that kind of Presidency for the first 11 months.
But then the labor department comes to the rescue.
About time . . . and only hours following the President’s highly anticipated conference on employment. Good timing huh?
Frankly the numbers blew me away. After I heard them I thought markets would be up 3oo points . . . they were that good and that surprising . . . but markets took the news in stride and closed up marginally. Go figure.
Take this republicans: the unemployment rate fell from 10.2% to a near single digit 10.0%, this coupled with a job loss of only 11,000 for the month of November. This was great news and was followed by further smaller positives such as an increase in average work week (33.0 hours in October to 33.2 in November) and average weekly earnings up $4.08 to $622.17 (to put that in perspective it is less than 1/5th of what an average Congressperson or Senator makes — uh huh!).
I would like to take this all in stride and accept the news as all good but then I would have to ignore the fact (listening Democrats?) that the average length of unemployment is now more than 28 weeks (the longest since 1948) and the fact that we have lost jobs in America for a horrendous 23 months in a row.
I hope this is a beginning for further good news. But, I an holding my breath as the mixed news on Christmas shopping keeps hitting the wires. I have done my part, bought a golf cart cover to go with my golf cart heater . . . made it possible for me to get 7 pars on the front nine yesterday in 25 degree weather! I had a hard time convincing my wife that I did it for the sake of America . . . but then I paid for it before I told her so her impressions were offered too late.
If you all will help by spending wisely maybe American businesses will start hiring again. If not we always have President Obama and the Democrats burgeoning plans to stimulate hiring (the good news had better now slow down that process???).
thanks to flickr’s cjc4454 for the photo
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