Jobless Rate Falls
May 2nd, 2008 at 12:59pm Matt Margolis
Employers cut far fewer jobs in April than in recent months and the unemployment rate dropped to 5 percent, a better-than-expected showing that nonetheless reveals strains in the nation’s labor market.
For the fourth month in a row, the economy lost jobs, the Labor Department reported Friday. But in April the losses totaled 20,000, an improvement from the 81,000 reductions in payrolls logged in March. Job losses for both February and March turned out to be a bit deeper than previously reported.
The latest snapshot of the nationwide employment conditions — while clearly still weak — was better than many economists were anticipating. They were bracing for job cuts of 75,000 and for the unemployment rate to climb to 5.2 percent.
Now, I’m sure someone on the left will rebut about the faults in how unemployment is calculated, and while it is a fair point of debate, if they’re going to dismiss the way unemployment is calculated today, then they have to dismiss the jobless rate in the late 1990’s under Clinton as well — when it is certainly a valid point that the dotcom boom skewed the numbers drastically — and ultimately didn’t sustain itself very long as the economy went into a recession during the Clinton’s final fiscal year.
Entry Filed under: Economy
11 Comments
1. OhioOrrin | May 2nd, 2008 at 1:41 pm
sorry - but those $10/hr no benies, NAFTA warehouse jobs don’t count.
oh yeaaa - we’re all ‘possed to be brain surgeons, rocket scientists, and software engineers.
that’s the NEEW economy - u know, the economy where steel, cars, and durable goods are no longer made nor purchased. Guess I’m lucky to even have a durable toilet in the neeew economy.
gosh - what a leap backward into the future!?
2. neocon | May 2nd, 2008 at 1:48 pm
Ohio,
Congrats. You just complained more in one post than my 8 year old has all year.
Ya gotta love liberals. Find problems and complain. Tell me again why we need them?
Will someone find Ohio a better job. He obviously is a dependent, needy person.
3. SEW | May 2nd, 2008 at 2:32 pm
Can’t compare to the Clinton economy when PEs were 200 or more! Global crossing, Lucent, JDS Uniphase, Covad, ……where are thou now? Oh for the bubble days of Slick Willy. When Y2K was worse than Global Warming [less the next 8years of anomolous cooling].
Barry the savior is coming!
4. fartotheright | May 2nd, 2008 at 2:36 pm
Ohio, where on earth did you pull this “$10/hr” from? I don’t read that here. Your such a whinner! Wow, do you have any freinds? Or are your freinds a bunch of whinners like you, so it’s the norm in your croud? I’d hate to be a part of that gagle, I’d shoot myself or go on a shooting spree.
5. Bill Eischeidt | May 2nd, 2008 at 2:48 pm
“The sport of blaming presidents for downturns in capitalist economic cycles is high comedy.” That my friends is a quote from carlton pryor a man far better suited to talk about moolah than I am. Here’s another:
“The Clinton recession was a failure of venture capitalists this current Bush recession is the failing of hedge fund managers to reign in the financial houses borrowing against questionable collateralized debt meaning sub prime and Alt-A mortgages. Things will go pear shaped again in 2015 when the venture capitlaists strike again and take the liquidity out of greentech.”
Cycles folks not politics– cycles. Boom and bust that’s how capitalism works in the big picture I’m told.
Soemthing else I heard, “The GOP would rather take their chances defending the war in Iraq and all that it has cost in blood and treasure as a success than try to explain to American families that a sputtering economy rife with inflation is actually a good one and that they should ’stay the course.’”
6. SEW | May 2nd, 2008 at 2:58 pm
Bill, you have it correct. Did you remove the tinfoil? The same thing with the weather.
7. Matt Margolis | May 2nd, 2008 at 5:59 pm
Amazing… Liberals have desperately been talking down the economy for 6 years, that they keep repeating the same old falsehoods about what types of jobs have been created. Job statistics have repeatedly shown that the jobs that were created following the Bush tax cuts were high paying jobs. If you asked a liberal, you’d think that it was 8+million jobs created were all McDonalds jobs.
liberals are so desperate to believe the worst about America they’ll swallow any lie they have to
8. Title534 | May 2nd, 2008 at 7:32 pm
An economy losing less jobs than expected is a nice surprise for the conservatives, but in a new WSJ poll 81% of Americans believe the economy is in recession. I would say those who support more of the Bush/McCain borrow and spend economic plan are pretty much irrelevant.
9. LNC | May 2nd, 2008 at 8:30 pm
Um… I believe OhioOrrin was being sarcastic.
The way I read it, his first line was imitating the left, the next paragraph wasa huge exageration, and the third was making fun of what would be the result in the world he described in the second paragraph.
10. OperationChaos | May 3rd, 2008 at 6:36 am
liberals are so desperate to believe the worst about America they’ll swallow any lie they have to.
Matt, this is old hat–they’ve been doing this as long as I can remember, since the 1960’s. Libs are mired in negativity and misery, and they have to bend the truth, i.e., lie, to keep it going.
Remember now, with the left, results mean nothing. Intention is what matters to these kooks. It shows that they “care…”
11. ViralNexus | May 3rd, 2008 at 11:26 am
In all his crassness and sarcasm Ohio does have a valid point. With the loss of a substantial portion of our manufacturing and industrial base our new jobs increasingly require high skilled and educated workers. With the baby boomers being at the brink of mass retirement we lack the employment pool to fill these jobs. While many companies have increased their pay for unskilled workers as high as $10 or $11 this is not nearly enough to support a family on in this economy. We need those mid level jobs that have been raped and stolen from this country. As utopian as it may seem not everyone can obtain a bachelors degree- the statistic for American workers holding undergrad degrees has held steady at 24% and doesn’t look like it will be increasing any time soon. I don’t really think unemployment is our biggest concern but we should be worried about our inability to fill high skilled jobs.