Right now, we’re hearing much celebrating from the media, the White House and Wall Street about how unemployment is “down” to 5.6%. The cheerleading for this number is deafening. The media loves a comeback story, the White House wants to score political points and Wall Street would like you to stay in the market.
Here is the full article.
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Of course it is. Many of us have known this for a while. The current "unemployment rate" is horseshit, and only serves to help the government look good.
Read a report that said by the end of 15 or 16 that the unemployment rate would be under 5%. Sure makes us look good to the rest of the world...
Haha, yeah that 5.6% rate is just Barry's pat on the back speaking point material
I think the more telling metric to be concerned about compared to the unemployment rate is the labour force participation rate. I imagine that the 5.6% unemployment rate is believable due to the fact that we went from at 66-66.5% average between 1988 and 2008 to 63% in 2014 (the lowest since the late 70s). That's roughly 9 to 11 million fewer people participating in our workforce, which is definitely more detrimental long-term than a rising or falling unemployment rate.
Gallup CEO Fears He Might “Suddenly Disappear” for Questioning U.S. Jobs Data
http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000352013#.
He shouldn't have much to worry about considering ppl of intelligence haven't given a fuck about BLS data anyway. It's not that they're lying, it's just that their numbers are shit. They don't factor underemployment (enormous problem) or ppl giving up looking. Also, if you lose 100k full time jobs but gain 110k part time jobs, it comes through as a 10k job gain but anyone with half a brain can realize that's a net negative situation. It's all a moot point anyway because if the job situation was good we'd actually have upward wage pressures. Not to mention real life ppl care far more about their actual experiences (which are negative) than some shitty number issued by a bunch of sketchy politicians trying to pat themselves on the back.
The U.S. economy is far weaker than what the mainstream media is reporting. I'm not going to engage in hysteria and say that we are heading towards another crash, but it's definitely not robust by any means. We are in the midst of very low growth, and I don't see things improving any time soon. With respect to the finance job market (which is what WSO cares about), it's pretty bad. Many of my classmates don't have jobs yet, and people on campus are freaking out.
Banking hiring has been OK, but everything else in finance has been super slow. This could be due to the fact that it's still early February, and a lot of jobs get posted later in the school year. But banks and funds had a bad 2014, so I think that will affect 2015 hiring.
Undergrad hiring is a different beast. Like sales&trading desks, Asset Management, etc., all hire undergrads while MBA on-campus recruiting has been pretty much limited to IBD. As someone who wants to do more macro/asset allocation type roles, it has been maddening since there is zero support from the school.
Welcome to the new world of "page click" news.
The definition of unemployment has not changed. This is not some white house conspiracy. While it is true that certain people, currently a large number, are excluded from the calculation it is nevertheless a consistent piece of data. Furthermore, whether or not the number is as low as it is presented definitional, there have been significant gains over the past several years, with position momentum.
Are you telling me even half of the people you meet, you'd give a job to?
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