US Jobs Dropped By 33,000 In September, Likely Due To Storms (npr.org) 128
An anonymous reader shares an NPR report: The U.S. economy shed 33,000 jobs in September, according to the latest report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, while unemployment fell to 4.2 percent. The September payrolls drop broke a nearly 7-year streak of continuous job gains. But economists caution that the drop is likely representing the short-term consequences of bad weather, not a long-term shift in the job market. Before this report, the economy had added an average of about 175,000 jobs per month; the unemployment rate has been at 4.3 or 4.4 percent since April. Job growth in September was expected to be lower than usual because of the effects of several devastating hurricanes. Economists did not generally predict an actual decline, but a not-so-stellar report was widely anticipated.
The Hillary Recession is coming! (Score:1, Funny)
Thunderstorm (Score:2)
>> US Jobs Dropped By 33,000 In September, Likely Due To Storms
It's likely to be caused by this storm : http://droit-public.ulb.ac.be/... [ulb.ac.be]
Does this storm have a name already ?
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The Gulf cost is a major area for US Oil Refineries. Being hit by a Hurricane is not good for them.
Also there isn't any noticeable trending decline in the US Oil and Gas industry. It may not be a big boom like it was a few years ago, but the US is a major Oil producer (and consumer)
...and in a month or two... (Score:5, Insightful)
Given that the hurricane-stricken areas are in semi-tropical places where construction can (and probably does) happen year-round, I'm betting that there will be a massive boom in construction jobs coming in the next month or two, and lasting maybe 6 months or more. Someone's gotta rebuild all that stuff, after all...
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Also see opportunity cost [investopedia.com]. Like most people, you are incorrectly calculating opportunity cost by comparing to a vacuum (construction repair
Re:...and in a month or two... (Score:4, Informative)
fallacy fallacy fallacy.
Fatcats don't hoard money - they invest it, creating further economic activity. The money doesn't leave the economy unless somebody sinks it into gold, art, or real estate.
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Reading fallacy. This entire chain is pointless, because Solandri started it all by not reading. OP didn't say there was going to be a big economic boom because of this. He said there was going to be "a massive boom in construction jobs". He labelled a specific area that was going to have a boom.
Solandri's post was the equivalent of saying it's a fallacy that there was a dotcom boom or a housing boom or any other boom, because if those hadn't happened the money would have just been used somewhere else.
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Re:...and in a month or two... (Score:4, Insightful)
Money spent on gold, art, and real estate stays in the economy. The guy you paid for the gold, art, or real estate now has a bunch of money he can spend on things.
What matters is the overall productivity gain from what the money was spent on. That's why Enron's scam of selling the same equipment back and forth multiple times between two of its divisions didn't actually generate money. It inflated the accounting books, but because there was no productivity gain per transaction, it did nothing to help the company. For an economic transaction to be beneficial to the individual/company and the overall economy, it has to have a net productivity gain. The store which sells a hammer has to sell it for more than they paid for it (and to stock it). The carpenter who buys the hammer has to be able to use it to increase his carpentry business sales by more than he paid for the hammer.
Gold is pretty bad in that respect because it doesn't do anything (unless you're using it to plate electronics for corrosion resistance). And in fact buying it for decoration can be a net negative on the economy since it drives up the price for gold used for productive purposes (like anti-corrosion plating). Art can be good if exhibiting it generates additional economic activity (people wanting to make/buy more art, people traveling to view it). Real estate can be good if you build something on it that generates more economic activity, or preserve it to allow something to continue to exist which generates or protects economic activity (e.g. land for anti-flood dikes).
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Investments are done with the sole goal of earning the investor a profit. Economic activity is not a requirement for investing. This is why fatcats have like no other time in history been fueling one speculative bubble after another. Here's a quick recap of the past 20 years: the Dotcom bubble, oil bubble (remember when gas was almost 4 bucks a gallon), the housing bubble, the gold bubble. We are in a stock market bubble right now.
I thought we were in a student load bubble...
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bullshit.
spending is spending whether its invested or spent on consumer goods.
the richer people are, the the smaller a % of their income or wealth they spend.
poor people spend 100% (or greater, thanks to credit) of their funds, ie, every dollar.
the top 1% spends on average only 32 cents of every dollar.
in total, the majority of funds in teh economy, driving demand and driving job creation, come from the bottom 90% of americans.
not the rich. and hte rich DO hoard their money. their spending is not the engine
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Economically there is no advantage to randomly destroying infrastructure and an apparent "construction boom" resulting from a storm
That's true, but the point was that the jobs "shed" in September will be replaced quickly. The economy is still growing very nicely.
Re:...and in a month or two... (Score:5, Informative)
I never stated that hurricanes were good for the economy, nor did I recommend destruction in order to stimulate said economy. I merely stated that a frigton of temporary jobs would come of it, and why.
QED: I posted no fallacy here.
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Construction is economically bad. That is less money that could be spent on other things. For a middle income family a $25,000 repair bill means no new cars, toys, investments, etc for 2 years.
Construction jobs pay shit and the money goes to Mexico mostly anyway. I am not racist but live in Texas. Construction is no longer a middle class job here.
FYI these replaced workers are the ones who voted for Trump for obvious reasons
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Depends on their deductible, really. Typical is something like $2.5-$5k or so.
A $25k deductible tells me this is either one very stupid (or rather, a stupidly skinflint) homeowner, or some massively shit insurance. Bumping to a $5k or $10 deductible and banking that cash in savings I can understand, but $25k? damn...
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I still maintain contacts with some folks I know in Texas who are involved in light (domestic) construction. No one's getting filthy rich, but they've put kids through college and no one's going hungry. I'll grant that day-laborers are a different story, but qualified and competent skilled workers (electricians, concrete men, c
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Duh, it's October now. These are historical figures for September. What's happening today means jack shit for what happened last month.
Storms? (Score:1, Insightful)
Aren't we pretty sure it's Trump's fault?
Or the Russians?
Or Global Warming. Ah...that works "storms" = global warming. NOW I can fit this news into my preconceived worldview.
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The Unemployment Rate [bls.gov] this year since January has been 4.8%, 4.7%, 4.5%, 4.4%, 4.3%, 4.4%, 4.3%, 4.4%, 4.2%. Jobs dropped by 33,000 but unemployment went down...? FAKE NEWS!!!
Seriously though, what? Labor force participation rate went up from 62.9% in August to 63.1% in September. Labor force went from 160,571,000 to 161,146,000. Number of employed went from 153,439,000 to 154,345,000. Where do you see 33,000 jobs reduced?
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I'm guessing from this:
"People who have jobs but weren't paid during the survey period don't count as "employed" in the BLS statistics. That would include, for instance, a restaurant worker who is paid hourly and could not work for an extended period because of a storm."
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Yes but the BLS statistics show an increase in jobs and an increase in labor participation rate.
Re:Storms? (Score:5, Funny)
"Aren't we pretty sure it's Trump's fault?"
That's just Twitter storms.
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Ah, if you have no legitimate argument...resort to name calling.
1) The link between AGW and tropical storm intensity is in no way certain.
https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes/
"It is premature to conclude that human activities–and particularly greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming–have already had a detectable impact on Atlantic hurricane or global tropical cyclone activity."
2) If anyone in power had found even a shred of evidence of any collusion between Trump a
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The people who are saying it was caused by global warming are the people who are paid to raise the fear level about global warming.
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el nino = pacific ocean.
hurricanes = atlantic ocean.
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You better check that again. Wrong ocean.
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I Blame (Score:3, Insightful)
Plug in your political affiliation and start pointing fingers now...
Democrat
Trump
Climate Change
Misogyny
Russia
Republican
Obama/Clinton
Abortion
Snowflakes
BLM
Or maybe, instead of picking sides, and listening to the talking heads, we could just for a moment stop and realize that "the other side" isn't all evil/crazy, and that they just see things through a different lens that we should try to understand instead of listening to our individual echo chambers.
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Republican
Obama/Clinton
Funny. The Wall Street Journal had a recent article that Obama is/was "too conservative" [wsj.com] for the Democrats. I've always thought Obama and Clinton were moderate conservatives.
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I've always thought Obama and Clinton were moderate conservatives.
You only think that because they are moderate conservatives.
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No, the other side isn't evil or crazy, but that doesn't mean that climate change isn't real, that Donald Trump isn't a sexist asshole who literally bragged about sexually assaulting women, and that he very likely collaborated with Russia in if not illegal, certainly questionable ways. And of course, there are Republicans out there who are willing to stand up to him, but that doesn't make Trump less bad.
Every Presidential election since I was old enough to care except this one, I've sent time arguing wi
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The entire reason we developed representative government with elected officials is so we would only need to take a few days out of our lives every couple years to worry about politics. Instead of having to learn the minutiae of every political issue every day so we can m
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>The entire reason we developed representative government with elected officials is so we would
>only need to take a few days out of our lives every couple years to worry about politics.
No, that just isn't correct.
Britain developed it much by accident.
Coming out of the feudal period, the king couldn't simply impose taxes; Parliaments were about getting the consent he needed for those/
Over time, Parliament came up with a "grievances before revenues" policy in which they wouldn't approve the revenues unt
still waiting (Score:1, Informative)
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2017/09/28/u-s-economic-growth-revised-up-3-1-rate-q-2/711674001/
That 3.1% growth was higher than anything under Obama, as confirmed by far, alt-right Nazi organization politifact:
http://www.politifact.com/illi... [politifact.com]
Oh snap, they're MSM and left wing hacks respectively
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Still waiting for slashdot to post an article about the growth rate surpassing 3% as described in that nasty conservative rag USA Today:
https://www.usatoday.com/story... [usatoday.com]
That 3.1% growth was higher than anything under Obama, as confirmed by far, alt-right Nazi organization politifact:
http://www.politifact.com/illi... [politifact.com]
Oh snap, they're MSM and left wing hacks respectively
Is that news for nerds, stuff that matters? This story is marginal, and that one would be no better.
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Well yeah. Thanks to Obama.
It's funny that people such as yourself who use the term MSM as a pejorative, claiming their "fake", are quick to use those same "fake" news sources to bolster your misguided claim the con artist has had anything to do with growth or employment.
It's even funnier, perhaps pathetic is the correct word, when in March of 2009 when Obama took office, you were quick to blame him for the bad economy, loss of jobs and the banking crisis when only a few months before it was Bush handing o
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Fascinating. I didn't realize economic growth was such a delayed thing or he was still pulling the strings in secret. Too bad the voters probably won't pick up on that.
One for every occasion (Score:2)
Let's get in the wayback machine and go back to May 4, 2012.
https://twitter.com/realDonald... [twitter.com]
You will notice that in this tweet, Donald Trump is complaining about a labor force participation rate of 64.3%, and that there should be 300,000 new jobs per month.
Last month, the labor force participation rate was 63.1% and the economy lost 33,000 jobs.
Before you say, "but, hurricanes!", let me remind you that before last month, there were 83 consecutive months of job growth in the US. The longest uninterrupted p
84 months of growth (Score:2)
We are finally finally seeing rising wages after the sevre Great Recession eliminated so many jobs.
33,000 lost is no biggie in the grand scheme. Now if we loose more next month then I will worry as it shows a trend of contraction
10K baby boomers retire every day. (Score:2)
A loss of 33K jobs in a month is pretty much in the noise level.
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this doesn't include Puerto Rico (Score:1)
Neither Puerto Rico nor US Virgin Islands are part of this measure.
It's far worse.
Unemployment elsewhere: (Score:1)
Re: Don't worry ... (Score:1)
Can you really blame us for voting him in? I mean this is a guy who has a hurricane machine since he obviously caused the bad weather this article is talking about. Would you want to vote against someone with a hurricane machine? We had no choice!
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Wait what? Hurricanes are caused by global warming now? What caused Hurricanes Andrew, Betsy, and Camille then?
We've been lucky to have a long stretch without any major hurricanes hitting the US. So I guess any hurricane now has to fit the agenda?
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Wait what? Hurricanes are caused by global warming now?
Here's what has happened over the last few decades: "it is virtually certain that intense tropical cyclone activity has increased in the North Atlantic since 1970."
Here's what we expect with global warming:
Although projections under 21st century greenhouse warming indicate that it is likely that the global frequency of tropical cyclones will either decrease or remain essentially unchanged, concurrent with a likely increase in both global mean tropical cyclone maximum wind speed and rainfall rates, there i
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wave after wave of Hurricane due to global warming
Whew! It's a good thing we haven't been having any global warming for so long, with that huge stretch of no major hurricanes of any kind landing in the US despite the climate alarm industry telling us year after year that THAT year was going to be the one with a huge number of record hurricanes. During which we got exact none. Year after year. Or was it that global warming was WORSE decades ago, when there were more storms landing then during all of those recent years? Gotcha.
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Ok. I'm holding my breath for exactly that. I'm sure it will happen any day now.
Yep. Any time now.
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