“The voters have spoken – the bastards” — usually attributed to Morris K. Udall. Dick Tuck actually said it first, in 1966 upon losing a California legislative race (though his exact words were “The people have spoken – the bastards”).
I’m sure a number of Democrats recalled this quote today with the release of yet another excellent jobs report for October. Steve Benen writes, Job totals steady in October, unemployment drops once again:
It wasn’t that long ago when we desperately hoped the economy would be strong enough to create 200,000 jobs a month. Now, for the first time in 14 years, it’s happened nine months in a row.
The new report from Bureau of Labor Statistics shows the U.S. economy added 214,000 jobs in October. The overall unemployment rate also dropped a little more to 5.8% — the lowest since July 2008, which was over six years ago.
Once again, public-sector layoffs did not drag down the overall employment figures. Though jobs reports over the last few years have shown monthly government job losses, in October, the private sector added 209,000 while the public sector added 5,000. The latter may not sound like much, but after several years in which that total was negative, it’s at least somewhat heartening.
As for the revisions, all of the news was positive: August’s totals were revised up from 180,000 to 203,000, while September’s figures were revised up, from 248,000 to 256,000. Combined, that’s an additional 31,000 jobs.
For the right, which is still under the illusion delusion that President Obama’s tax breaks and health care law are destroying the economy, this is yet another jobs report that will be very difficult to explain.
All told, over the last 12 months, the U.S. economy has added over 2.64 million jobs overall and 2.58 million in the private sector. What’s more, October was the 56th consecutive month in which we’ve seen private-sector job growth – the longest on record.
At this point, with the calendar year nearly over, 2014 is still very much on track to be the best year for U.S. job creation since 1999.
Here’s another chart, this one showing monthly job losses/gains in just the private sector since the start of the Great Recession.
What kind of jobs are they? I don’t know, so that is an honest inquiry.
Every time my company posts a job opening, my HR Manager tells me we receive hundreds of applications and resumes. He says the primary reason is that we pay well and comensurate with education and experience. He also says we constantly have headhunters knocking at our door at the mere hint a position may be opening up. Apparently, I could pay less and still hire these people because there just isn’t any wage or salary competition out there. So my experience is that people are hungry for decent jobs despite jobs being created at such a satisfying rate.
That’s why I ask what kind of jobs they are. It appears there are plenty of low wage and low salary jobs around, but for some reason there is no impetus to pay more than minimums. Is it a meaningless “recovery”?
Don’t worry. The all-Republican Congress can fix this.