Jobs

The Federal Reserve Board issued the following statement in conjunction with the FOMC's decision to begin an aggressive round of quantitative easing. Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in August suggests that…

By Sober Look Continuing with the recent theme of the US labor markets, consider the chart below. It's the total US employees on nonfarm payrolls going back to the mid 60s. We've heard numerous discussions about how the current payrolls…

No huge commentary today. But what struck me about the links in today's edition was how many were related to the loss of jobs and income both in the US and Europe. Rick Bookstaber's post about the Great Labor Reset has me thinking about how…

By Rick Bookstaber In a  recent post I discussed the potential for long-term, structural unemployment, the possibility that some of what we are seeing in the unemployment picture will not be resolved by an economic upturn. The focus of the…

By Sober Look Friday's employment figures were terrible across the board, although some have naively interpreted the decline in the headline unemployment rate (from 8.3% to 8.1%) as positive news. Unfortunately there is nothing positive…

By Marc Chandler The US employment data is an important disappointment, especially coming on the heels of yesterday's ADP and service ISM reports that had lifted expectations. The private sector created a net 103k jobs, well below the 143k…

I want to highlight the end of Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's speech at Jackson Hole yesterday because he reiterated something he has been saying for a while now - that the Fed will do more but it won't be able to save the day by itself. I…

By Rick Bookstaber There is a recent story in the New York Times on the growing use of labor-saving robots to increase production efficiency and, by replacing low-cost overseas labor, to return production to our shores. But the operative…

By Marc Chandler In recent weeks, the market had appeared to be scaling back expectations of another round of asset purchases by the Federal Reserve.   US 10-year Treasury yields rose nearly 40 bp since the August 1.  The reconsideration…

Simply cutting the deficit back and cleaning up bank balance sheets won’t get the economy back to growth. Indeed this habit of continually getting behind the curve, and trying vainly now that the economy is spiralling almost out of control…