Disappointing job numbers

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Corporations have enjoyed record earnings and are sitting on more than $2 trillion in profits. The stock market closed above 12,000 this week. Corporations have used the money to pay record bonuses rather than to expand business and to create new jobs in America. Job growth is slower than in any post-war recovery as a result of this new corporate business model, and the depth of the Bush Great Recession (h/t Calculated Risk).

Steve Benen at The Washington Monthly reports on January's job numbers:

Expectations for a stronger 2011 are fairly common, which makes it all the more discouraging that January's job numbers were so underwhelming, getting the year off to a weak start.

The unemployment rate dropped sharply last month to 9 percent, the lowest level in nearly two years. But the economy generated only 36,000 net new jobs, the fewest in four months.

The January report illustrates how job growth remains the economy's weakest spot, even as other economic indicators point to a recovery that is strengthening.

Friday's report offered a conflicting picture on hiring. Unemployment fell because the Labor Department's household survey determined that more than a half-million people without jobs found work. The department conducts a separate survey of businesses, which showed tepid job creation. 

Many of the early reports suggest harsh winter storms throughout much of the country in January disrupted businesses and industries, reducing job totals.

On a slightly more encouraging note, the totals from November and December were both revised upwards, with November's totals revised to 93,000, up from 71,000, and December's totals revised to 121,000 from 103,000.

In case it's not obvious, the decline in the unemployment rate is nice, but the increase of only 36,000 jobs isn't nearly good enough. The number is far short of expectations, and a small fraction of what's needed to get us back to where we need to be. [It would take 200,000 new jobs a month until January 2014 just to get us back to the pre-recession level of unemployment, which itself was an under-performing employment number for the past decade.]

Note: the new report published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics includes recalculated data for every month in calendar year 2010. This chart reflects the revised data.

Steve Benen continues at The Washington Monthly:

[I]n keeping with tradition, here's a slightly different chart — one showing just the private sector job market.

For much of 2010, this was important because of the sharp differences we've seen between the private and public sectors. Most notably, the rise and fall of Census Bureau jobs can offer a skewed picture — some months, such as May 2010, look better than they should, because the monthly total is exaggerated by hundreds of thousands of Census jobs. Other months, such as June 2010, are distorted in the other direction, looking worse than they should.

But that period is finished. In January, while the public sector lost 14,000 jobs, the private sector added 50,000 jobs. Given revised data for 2010, this is the 11th consecutive month of private-sector growth.

And while that's nice, it's not as nice as more robust job creation — and this isn't it. The totals for both November and December, however, were revised upwards and appeared at least slightly more encouraging.

All told, the economy added roughly 1.3 million private-sector jobs in 2010. For comparison purposes, note that the economy lost nearly 4.7 million private-sector jobs in 2009, and lost 3.8 million in 2008.

With that in mind, here is a different homemade chart, showing monthly job losses/gains in the private sector since the start of the Great Recession.