The unemployment rate unexpectedly fell to 9 percent in January, the lowest level in nearly two years, but the economy added just 36,000 new jobs last month.
The Labor Department reported Friday that more than 500,000 Americans reported finding jobs in January, improving the jobless rate from December’s 9.4 percent to 9 percent. The last time it was that low was in April 2009.
Experts had expected that the unemployment rate would rise to 9.5 percent for January. In all, 13.86 million people looking for jobs couldn’t find work in January.
“The overall trend of economic data in recent months has been encouraging, as initiatives put in place by this administration are taking hold, but there is still considerable work to do,” said Austan Goolsbee, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. While “the 0.8 percentage point decline in the unemployment rate over the past two months is a welcome development,” he said, it still “remains unacceptably high.”
Indeed, the news isn’t all good — even as the unemployment rate shrank, non-farm businesses reported the creation of 36,000 jobs, far fewer than the 136,000 new jobs that had been anticipated for January. Bad weather throughout much of the country is likely to blame, with snowstorms hurting the construction industry especially hard, marked by 32,000 jobs lost last month.
“Until we see a sustained period of stronger job creation, we cannot consider the recovery to be truly established,” Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke said Thursday.
16 comments:
though it is an improvement i agree with Goolsbee, the rate is still unacceptably high. But i will say that you have to improve in small incriments. it wont just happen over night so maybe this is a sign that it will continue to drop. we do need to increase the amount of jobs by more than thirty six thousand to keep this decline going. Without jobs to find the unemployed cant do anything. we need to create more jobs to supply them with that opportunity
...Ok so I seriously think the only reason i chose this to comment on is because the picture is funny...
Also to the people that think that Ohbama is doing nothing to help with unemployment and that the unemployment would rise...take that. Sure it's not a whole lot but Rome wasn't built in a day. It will take more time for unemployment to get down to a preferred level even if it never gets down to the natural unemployment rate. If we can keep this up I do believe that we can bring down the unemployment rate down quite a bit more.
This 9 percent unemployment rate was presented in Obama's speech in The State of the Union Address as a foot hold to begin our journey in Winning The Future. In this article the optimism of not only the Chairman of the Federal Reserve but the author who posted the cartoon, is severely lacking. I understand that there is little ice to stand on (if ice can be a metaphor for a growing economy, but then there's the question of why were standing on the economy..), but we have to be excited about as much progress that we can grasp! Then after our victory dance we can continue to work on the economy to a reasonably decent percentage where I wont have to work at McDonald's.
The unemployment lowering is definitely a nice thing to hear, considering everyone hurting due to recession. The part of the article that I could best relate to is the loss of work because of bad weather. My dad is a brick mason and if the weather gets bad, he doesn't work. He could only work one day this week. Luckily he has done some side jobs, so losing four days of work is fine. Weather really sucks when you primarily work outside.
The .4% drop in unemployment is a step in the right direction; however, it still has a long way to go to reach the natural rate of unemployment. If the job creation picks up to what is scheduled, instead of 100,000 jobs behind, then the unemployment rate will drop even more, and Americans will be in a much better position.
Well, this is good. Even though there's a considerable amount of work to be done, it's certainly a good start. Though we're going to need a lot more than 36,000 jobs. “Until we see a sustained period of stronger job creation, we cannot consider the recovery to be truly established," this is true, and hopefully the situation will improve with a little bit of time. I wish all those people job hunting good luck.
Sure bad weather could be the cause of unemployment but i find that to just be an excuse. "It's too cold to go out, i'm just gonna stay in and get fat."
I think with weather like that it opens up more jobs although they'd be temporary. Go out and offer to shovel someone's driveway and do chores for them outside that they might not want to do.
Become a bounty hunter like The Dog, you'd get your own show and theme song and make 10K for every druggie you bust.
I'm glad the unemployment rate has dropped and hope it continues to do so. At this rate, it looks good for me, seeing as I will have to find a job soon. I agree that the weather has affected jobs that are solely outside because with every thing covered in ice, it is difficult to do anything.
We learned in economics that any spike of improvement is soon followed by a downward slope. The media uses these slight increases to expand a "good feeling" for an economy "on the rise". While it's not a complete false hope and joy, its gonna take a fair bit more than a few hundred thousend jobs to pull us out of the hole we dug ourselves into...
We learned in economics that any spike of improvement is soon followed by a downward slope. The media uses these slight increases to expand a "good feeling" for an economy "on the rise". While it's not a complete false hope and joy, its gonna take a fair bit more than a few hundred thousend jobs to pull us out of the hole we dug ourselves into...
With Obama saying that we have had such a great recovery. Its no wonder, why so many people were so sceptical, about his response to the economy. Yes they have made X number of jobs, but the fact that they havent done enough is the problem. With Obama's sugar coated speach, its hard to not have a positive look on the economic climate.
I’m going to start off saying that I like the comic displayed for this article. It is very true about how difficult it is to get a good job without college degrees and how competitive it is to get a job. I’m surprised by the number of new jobs added in the previous month. It’s higher than I expected. I think it’s sad though that this is still not enough to cover the amount of unemployed people. “Indeed, the news isn’t all good — even as the unemployment rate shrank, non-farm businesses reported the creation of 36,000 jobs, far fewer than the 136,000 new jobs that had been anticipated for January.” This makes me wonder if there were 136,000 new jobs anticipated, how many people are unemployed and in need of a job. It is sad that 36,000 new jobs are considered bad news and is far fewer than the amount of jobs needed.
I don't really understand how such a small number of jobs would change the unemployment rate so much. I mean, you have to creat 150,000 jobs a month to keep it at the same level, so I'm confused at how about one fourth of 150,000 would change the unemployment rate almost half a point?
At least there was an improvement in the rate of unemployment even though it fell only just a little but 9 percent is fairly high. Everyone is being touched by this economy right now and unemployment is effecting many Americans. Like they said until more jobs are created for the jobless we won't expect to see any kind of improvement. This snowstorm problem isn't permanent it's just a temporary problem that's not going to last long. More jobs for us, less problems (hopefully) for the economy.
It will be interesting to see if the unemployment rate continues to fall. It's a little over double what it should be. This is a sign that whatever the FED and Obama administration are doing its working. The warmer weather will be better for jobs because people will go out and do stuff more than they would have on the 2nd, when it was well below zero.
Certainly unemployment needs to continue to drop over a longer period of time before we know for sure if there is a recovery. However, any drop in unemployment is good news. I wonder if those who still find these results anything but positive are the same people who do not want Obama's job initiatives to prove successful.
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