Consumer spending, jobs data point to lukewarm growth

Perfect time for the Fed to taper as soon as possible. Fed knows that the QE can’t go forever, it has to be rewind at some point. Now its the time. Wallstreet banks want cheap money supply, but Fed has already flooded the markets with cheap money. What more they want? Look at the asset prices, inflation they are going up. Savers and fixed income holders are being knackered. Its time the Fed listens to main street.

Folks,
“Jobless claims fall to 346,000 in latest week”
Obviously not true.
The headline makes it sound like there are only 346 thousand of us claiming to be ‘jobless’ in order to collect public benefits.
As the body of the article points out, we ADDED another 346 thousand net people to the rolls of folks who just lost their jobs and employer-related benefits, which gives us the total number of people / families without jobs or benefits, the number of which is not reported.
Every week, all those without employment and benefits count.
Thanks.

I get a chuckle out of the BLS. The four week moving average fell by 2,750 people. This works out to 55 individuals per state on average. The 9,000 person drop (seasonally adjusted) works out to a whopping 180 person drop per state. With millions in the labor force these numbers aren’t even large enough to be called statistical noise. Oh, let’s wait now for the revision…..

itizens are even called consumers in nearly all media reporting… and thus we are further brainwashed to believe that our main purpose of existence on this earth is to consume. As a result, we’ve stimulated the American economy to the tune of:
-          $850.9 billion in credit card debt or $6,920 per household (January 2013)
-          A record $2.795 trillion in consumer debt (including school loans but excluding mortgages) or $22,720 per household (January 2013)
-          $14,517 average credit card debt per indebted household (in March 2012). We can try to mask this by saying that the average dropped about $20,000 since March 2010, but this only happened because in 2010, credit card companies wrote off 10.7% of debt – up 300% from 2006.
-          $16.7 trillion in US national debt and growing (March 2013)
Sources: Forbes and Federal Reserve)

Georgia is at a whopping 11.5 unemployment rate and has been for the last 8 months. Funny the news always says its dropping but we here in Ga haven’t seen it drop in over a year and a half. Our keeps getting high and high not lower. I fell someone is propagating propaganda.

joebon: We did not add 346,000 net people – this number is gross. 346,000 people filed for claims – we don’t know how many people acquired jobs but it’s certainly going to be something around that number.

Missing: Why do you get a chuckle out of the BLS from them reporting numbers as they have every week for decades?

Citizens are even called consumers in nearly all media reporting… and thus we are further brainwashed to believe that our main purpose of existence on this earth is to consume. As a result, we’ve stimulated the American economy to the tune of:
-          $850.9 billion in credit card debt or $6,920 per household (January 2013)
-          A record $2.795 trillion in consumer debt (including school loans but excluding mortgages) or $22,720 per household (January 2013)
-          $14,517 average credit card debt per indebted household (in March 2012). We can try to mask this by saying that the average dropped about $20,000 since March 2010, but this only happened because in 2010, credit card companies wrote off 10.7% of debt – up 300% from 2006.
-          $16.7 trillion in US national debt and growing (March 2013)
Sources: Forbes and Federal Reserve)

The reason I chuckle is that the BLS number (such as it is) gives false legitimacy to a headline that reads in part “jobless claims fall”. I’d argue that the numbers provided are so small as to be insignificant. Sadly many people never go past the headlines.

percy1
“346,000 people filed for claims – we don’t know how many people acquired jobs but it’s certainly going to be something around that number.”

Are you saying that around 346,000 will have found jobs in June 2013? I have not seen that number of jobs acquired in a week let alone a month very often. See below. Buy you lunch if the number of jobs added in June is 346,000 or more.

http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0000000001?output_view=net_1mth

1-Month Net Change Series Id: CES0000000001
Seasonally Adjusted
Super Sector: Total nonfarm
Industry: Total nonfarm
NAICS Code: -
Data Type: ALL EMPLOYEES, THOUSANDS

2003
89 -158 -215 -51 -10 -3 20 -44 105 197 13 119

2004
159 43 333 247 306 78 37 125 155 343 65 128

2005
130 240 135 362 168 246 372 192 65 81 335 158

2006
274 316 280 181 21 80 210 179 159 -3 205 169

2007
234 90 186 76 141 80 -35 -24 77 86 111 93

2008
14 -85 -79 -215 -186 -169 -216 -270 -459 -472 -775 -705

2009
-794 -695 -830 -704 -352 -472 -351 -210 -233 -170 -21 -220

2010
-13 -40 154 229 521 -130 -86 -37 -43 228 144 95

2011
69 196 205 304 115 209 78 132 225 166 174 230

2012
311 271 205 112 125 87 153 165 138 160 247 219

2013
148 332 142 149(P) 175(P)

P : preliminary

@crash, to quote you ‘I have not seen that number of jobs acquired in a week let alone a month very often. See below. Buy you lunch if the number of jobs added in June is 346,000 or more.’ And then you go on to post #’s for NET job created, in other words jobs created-jobs lost.

So for a simple example(I am rounding numbers here for simplicity sake)….

May ~175,000 NET jobs gained
Assuming 4 weeks in May of 350,000 NEW jobless claims=1,400,000 jobs lost.
That means 1,575,000 people got jobs in May.

SO that leads me to 2 possible conlcusions…
1. You are just plain ignorant as to what the different numbers/reports mean.
2. You are being willfully ignorant.

Which is it? I am open to different possibilities, but none comes to mind.

USAPragmatist
Really…Will the Net change be +346? I think not.

People, these are 1st time weekly jobless claims, nothing more. This means almost 350,000 filed for unemployment for the 1st time this week. A healthy economy would be 300,000 or less. We are certainly not there yet.