Today’s unemployment report shows America still has a weak economy as it moves towards growth killing austerity cuts by Congress. In January the private sector expanded by 166,000 jobs with government shedding 9,000 jobs for a net gain of 157,000. The official unemployment rate rose to 7.9 percent. Factoring in the loss of middle class [...]

The good news is that the Federal Reserve vowed to keep interest rates low until unemployment fell below 6.5%. The bad news is that they implied it would take until 2015 to get there. And it will take that long, if we continue to pull back on fiscal policy in the middle of a lukewarm [...]

The Federal Reserve adopted an innovative tactic in its latest Federal Open Market Committee report. Instead of merely identifying a target federal funds rate, or giving guidance that rates will remain low for a certain period of time, the Fed now specifically targeted both an unemployment rate and an inflation rate, and said that their [...]

As we gaze at today’s payroll report, it’s worth pointing out how government policies have improved the numbers in relative terms. Not by putting more people back to work, but by putting more people into the uncounted shadows: During a press conference demanding unemployment insurance be part of a fiscal cliff deal, Chuck Schumer noted [...]

The US economy proved surprisingly resilient in preliminary November job numbers, despite the effects of Hurricane Sandy, posting a gain of 146,000 jobs, and a drop in the topline unemployment rate to 7.7%. However, because of Sandy we should expect substantial revision to the numbers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics claims that their survey response [...]

Joblessness in the Eurozone reached new highs in October, with 11.7% of the population in the member states out of work. This compares to a 10.4% unemployment rate just a year ago. And inflation has slowed, suggesting that consumer spending activity has weakened even further. 23.9% of young people under 25 are unemployed. There’s considerable [...]

The Commerce Department revised its estimate of GDP in the third quarter up to 2.7%, a substantial gain from the initial estimate and an indication that the economy grew at a solid clip in the months leading up to the Presidential election, putting wind at the back of President Obama. This represents the fastest economic [...]

Not to harp on Raul Grijalva, but his media critique in this op-ed is spot-on, even if you strip away the partisan lens through which he frames this. The real story is that we have a jobs shortage crisis in this country, and Republicans haven’t lifted a finger to help. Democrats have put up the [...]

The New York Fed released their household credit and debt report yesterday, and they show increases in student loan debt relative to other forms (mortgage, credit card, auto loan and others). To keep this in perspective, mortgage debt represents 71% of all debt, and student debt represents about 8-9%. So there’s still a wide gulf [...]

Ben Bernanke’s speech on the economy today offered no new information. It was more of an overview on the state of the economy, and it hit on many very familiar themes which Bernanke has expressed for a long time now, including the need to loosen lending standards in a type of reinflation of the housing [...]

First-time jobless claims spiked to 439,000 after nearly a year under 400,000. The reason for this sudden weakness in the US economy? Suprestorm Sandy. This sharp increase is due to Hurricane Sandy as claims increased significantly in the impacted areas. Note the spike in 2005 related to hurricane Katrina – we are seeing a similar [...]