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from the probably-not-coming-back-either dept.
The World Socialist Web Site reports
The US employment report for October released by the Labor Department on Friday, four days before Election Day, provided a snapshot of an economy that continues to be mired in stagnation. The net nonfarm payroll increase was a tepid 161,000, with the bulk of the new jobs, as in previous months, made up of low-wage service and part-time positions.
Economists had predicted a payroll increase of 173,000. Even with a combined upward revision of 44,000 jobs for the months of August and September, the overall rate of job-creation has slowed markedly, averaging 181,000 a month through October as compared to 229,000 for all of 2015.
The number of long-term unemployed remained at 2 million, comprising 25.2 percent of those officially counted in the government tally. These are extraordinarily high numbers for the seventh year of a so-called "recovery".
The decline in the official unemployment rate to 4.9 percent in October from 5.0 percent in September was not the result of workers joining the labor force and finding jobs, but the departure of 425,000 more working-age Americans, bringing the number of such workers who are outside the labor force to a near-record high of 94.6 million.
The labor force participation rate actually declined, reaching 62.8 percent in October versus 62.9 percent the prior month.
Via a paywalled story on May 29, 2012 in U.S. News & World Report, Economics professor Antony Davies, PhD said (Google cache) that it takes 180,000 new jobs a month just to keep up with population growth. So, anything less is actually a loss of US jobs.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Monday November 07 2016, @12:35PM
Inflation is below the "ideal" rate of between about 2.0 and 2.3 percent.
So? What's the point of advocating slight optimization? It's one thing if say, you're a race car driver. Then a more optimal combination of braking and steering could eek out a few feet each lap. But if you're a soccer mom tooling to pick up your kids, then it's just not important. It's better to just get there in one piece. The economy is like the latter not the former.
The problems with the US economy don't come from slight differences in inflation and won't be fixed by the same. You're not even looking in the right places.
My view is that a better approach is more incentives to create and expand businesses, particularly small ones; US workers accept the decline in wages that they're going to get anyway; remove the props that keep cost of living high (particularly, real estate, education, and health care); and simply wait till the global economy gets better in a few decades rather than huffing and puffing (pointless things like helicopter money that don't actually do anything).