Unemployment

The US employment data was disappointing.  The key measure of private sector job creation was only 41k compared with expectations for 180k and a 3 month moving average of 155.6k.  The fact that the unemployment rate ticked down is…

Highlights The US dollar trading higher just as the North American session is about to start.  However, position squaring in Asia and Europe had pushed short-term technical indicators into an over-extended condition and near-midday in…

By Comstock Partners In our comment of April 22nd we said that the impression that the economy was undergoing a normal economic recovery was highly misleading, and outlined a number of key economic series that supported our case that the…

Let me wade back in to the jobs data this week. First, this morning we saw that ADP reported non-farm private employment had increased a seasonally-adjusted 55,000 in May. This comes after the upwardly revised 65,000 increase in April and…

The number of unemployed in Spain dropped in May by 76,223, the second consecutive monthly drop. While this is a positive data point, the drop is largely due to seasonal actors and more than 4 million people remain unemployed.  Yet, to…

Marshall Auerback presents us with a perspective on how deficit hawks want to cut social programs but leave defense spending untouched while completely overlooking the fiscal cost of bailouts (originally published at New Deal 2.0). Harold…

Meredith Whitney sounds off in today's Wall Street Journal about small businesses. She is worried about the lack of credit they are getting and its effect on the tenuous economic recovery in keeping the unemployment rate high. She writes:…

Greece fiddled its books and ran a deficit in good times and bad.  But, it is rubbish to paint all of the debtor nations in Euroland now in crisis with the same brush. There are huge differences I would like to point out. And I will…

The Employment Situation Survey was very bullish. We saw non-farm payrolls up 290,000 and a net upward revision of prior month of 121,000.  Moreover, there was an over 230K improvement in both private sector jobs and job gains ex.…

Well, according to a popular urban legend, Spain’s unemployment rate - which is the second highest in the EU after Latvia - is currently running at something just a touch over 20%. Or is it? The unemployment problem I wish to address here…