Discussion: Economy Adds 38,000 Jobs In May, Unemployment Drops To 4.7 Percent

See, always a mistake to elect a Democrat if you want a job.

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If you want to live like a Republican, vote Democrat.

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And all of this economic recovery despite the GOP’s often promised but never delivered Jobs Bill!

Am I the only one who remembers their battle cry JOBS! JOBS! JOBS! ?

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I blame Obama.

Oh, wait…

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In the new GOP they would say, “We never said that. That was someone impersonating our voice.”

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38000? That is horrible! That can’t be the right number.

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This is all Obama’s and Democrats’ doing. The Republicans in Congress had absolutely NOTHING to do with this…just so we all know, and remember this November.

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It’s possible that the May number gets revised upwards as happens sometimes. But you’re right; that number is dreadful.

I’m confused as to why the number of jobs added is so low however the UE percentage rate has fallen. Is that tying in the falling labor participation rate? I dunno.

Weird. On on hand, +38K is dismal, but on the other hand, 4.7% is ordinarily considered “labor shortage” and you could postulate that the low job growth is due to lack of anyone to hire. But we know that’s not true.

If these numbers coincide with underemployed people getting more hours, it’s good. If the “discouraged worker” rate has gone up, it’s really, really bad.

But there’s nothing in this jobs number to support that burning itch the Fed appears to have to raise interest rates just because its been a long time.

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A quick read of the May jobs report seems to indicate that many people who are working part-time but who would have preferred full-time increased by nearly half a million.

Can’t have people getting full-time benefits when you can scrimp and make them part-timers.

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Oh and Mittens would have brought it ‘down’ to 6%. If you need to get something DONE, vote DEMOCRAT!!!

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Blame the corporations…

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Oh I do! And Walmart is the most egregious of these corps - they actually an entire department devoted to helping their workforce apply for government benefits and showing these employees how it is in their best interest to work part-time so that they can qualify for SNAP, childcare and housing subsidies.

Sadly, many more corps have adopted the “Walmart model”.

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Absolutely true. It appears that companies are either not hiring and getting whatever employees they have to do multiple jobs within the company or they’re hiring with no benefits and letting the government take care of them as best they can.

And now that hourly wage earners are demanding something close to a livable hourly wage, some companies will continue to cut back their hours citing that there’s not enough money for the company.

EDIT TO ADD: Don’t believe the BS some right wing asshats parrot out about not having enough skilled labor. There ARE skilled unemployed people out there, the companies just don’t want to pay for them.

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38,000 people found jobs, that is good for them. No one really knows how many didn’t, that really were looking.
The trend is the promising indicator. We aren’t losing any, especially hundreds of thousands a month like in the Bush years and unemployment is at an expected level and stabilized.
Summer hiring is just starting. Soon, every business will be scrambling to find help. In the construction industry, we are always like that.

Maybe the silver linning is that interest rates may not go up as planned,low job rate equals no money.

38K jobs is, in fact, net job loss. We have to create something like 125K a month just due to the natural increase in the workforce.

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So if in any other month there were far more than the median necessary, doesn’t that offset the slow months?

To me, Obama on average has done very well, but it would be easy to focus on the bad months as the right does to make a case.
The long range trend is excellent in my opinion.

Could it better, of course, but if we were back in Obama’s first months and seeing what was really transpiring after the Bush years, would we be happy to be here. I say, without a doubt.
The odd slow month will happen but we have had many way beyond that number that you cited. To me, there is credit due.