Unemployment Rises, but Economy Isn't Falling

(CBS)  As weak as the job numbers were, they were better than Wall Street expected - and seemed to give investors confidence the economy can avoid a double dip recession.

With American businesses creating 67,000 jobs in August, the private sector has now added jobs for eight consecutive months, reports CBS Evening News senior business correspondent Anthony Mason.

These numbers are telling us the economy is not falling off a cliff," chief economist of MKM Partners, Michael Darda. "It's not booming either, which is the bad news."

But the median length of unemployment fell below 29 weeks in Aug. It had been 22.2 weeks in July.

An additional 19,000 construction jobs were added last month, and 17,000 temporary jobs. Nearly 400,000 temporary jobs have been added over the past year as employers have remained cautious.

"There is great uncertainty in the economy right now," said Daniel Herrick, CFO of Pilla Performance Eyewear in Conn.

A year ago, his company had five employees. Today it has 18.

"Almost all our expansion over the past year has been with temporary employees," said Herrick.

But that still means work for Luisa Olah.

"And I'm still pinching myself," said Olah.

After two years of looking, she finally landed a temporary job as a bookkeeper.

"For the first time in two years I didn't have to call unemployment," said Olah. "I didn't have to get online at 5 in the morning with unemployment. It was wonderful."

But it could be a while before others share that feeling, said Darda.

"We're gonna need 200 to 250,000 jobs on a monthly basis for a sustained period of time to get back to anything that looks like full employment. And that is years away."

Meanwhile, the so-called "underemployment" rate, which includes those who've been forced to take part-time work and those who have given up looking - rose again in Aug. to 16.7 percent.

[Elbonian]

CBS, like most media outlets, only reports the institutional job numbers and ignores the household job survey numbers which come out at the same time in the same report. Those numbers show that almost every month for the past year the total number of employed people has gone down. Meanwhile, the economy adds about 200,000 working age people each month. Thus, the competition for jobs gets fiercer each month. And yet, the economy continues to grow. How? By offshoring jobs! If you send a computer or engineering job to India, the company gets a lower cost of employment and still gets the economic benefit of the employee, which adds to the profitability of the company and helps increase the overall Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the US while not adding any new employee inside the borders of the US. Since productivity is simply GDP divided by the number of employed people, productivity rises because there is greater economic activity and fewer workers (or rather, fewer US workers).

We are actually in the middle of the jobless recovery to end all jobless recoveries as we will most likely continue to lose more jobs to other countries than we create here inside the USA, all the while growing the size of the economy at the expense of printed stimulus money (watch for another stimulus, but only AFTER the upcoming election; the Republicans will not allow any more stimulus until AFTER the elections). What Obama should be working on is ending the export of good-paying US jobs to India, China, Romania, and other low wage nations. But again, the Republicans will not allow that to happen because it will hurt the big businesses that run the Republican Party.

[larryp0304]

They have been printing the same stories for almost 2 years now. "Things are getting better" or "Well they are not getting any worse". Also, we all know that 16.7% is a lie cause they admitted it was closer to 20% a few weeks ago.

I guess it's all in an individual's opinion. If ya got a job, things are better and if not, than they are worse.......

[ev1963thomp]

PLEASE GIVE US THE COURTESY AND VIEW THE NEWS CLIP THAT OUR LOCAL NEWS CHANNEL KESQ TV ON THE DISTRESSED CONTRACTOR. I HAVE ATTACHED A COUPLE OF PICTURES OF THE KIND OF WORK WE DO. ALSO BELOW THE LINK YOU WILL FIND HIGHLIGHTED -- WE ARE IN CONTRACTUAL WORKS WITH THE BERGMAN COMPANY ON A PROJECT , BUT IT HAS BEEN PUT ON HOLD FOR THE MOMENT.

http://www.kesq.com/news/24346935/detail.html?taf=palm


Everett,

Thank you. A formal subcontract will be forthcoming. We have a start date of 8/16/2010

Brian Brown
Director of Construction

D / 909.923.6434 F / 909.923.6929 C / 909.208.0825
Corporate Office: T / 909.627.3651 - 4300 Edison Avenue, Chino, California 91710
[e-mail]
assistant: Monique Mendez Martinez email: [e-mail]
www.thebergman.com



CAN YOU PLEASE HELP US GET OUT WORD OUT TO ALL AMERICA THAT WE ARE OPEN TO ANY AND ALL TEMPORARY FINANCIAL HELP OR DONATIONS WHICH WILL HELP EMPLOYEE OTHERS AND HELP BRING DOWN THE UNEMPLOYED RATE. WE NEED MORE SMALL BUSINESSES TO STAY IN BUSINESS.

WE ARE CURRENTLY WORKING WITH GEORGE HANIBLE COMMUNITY PROGRAMS MANAGER WITH SKANSKA. SKANSKA IS ALSO REACHING OUR TO HELP MY COMPANY GET CERTIFIED FOR THE DBE PROGRAM WHICH WILL ALLOW EVERETT C. THOMPSON CONSTRUCTION TO BID ON STATE AND FEDERAL JOBS , IN WHICH WITHOUT WE WOULD NOT BE ELIGIBLE TO BID.

George C. Hanible

Community Programs Manager



Skanska USA Civil West CA

Human Resources

www.skanska.com

444 South Flower St. Suite 2200

Los Angeles, California 90071, United States

Phone: [phone]

Mobile: + 1 951 202 3128

Fax: + 1 213 362-9481




SINCERELY,
EVERETT THOMPSON

Everett C.Thompson Construction
43580 Roebelenii Way
Indio, Ca. 92201
Office: 760-342-8708
Fax: [phone]
Cell: 760-391-7619
E-Mail: [e-mail]

[kluzer12]

What a left wing cover up story. I can only image if Bush were still President and passed a 1 trillion dollar stimulus that did noting to help create jobs. Can you imagine the headlines, "Unemployment goes to 9.6% after Bush stimulus fails." Oh, if the left wing media could have the good old days back again.