National unemployment rate ticks down to 7%

Hey some good news fortheeconomy in general, we were at 7.3 percent and after four months of 200,000 plus jobs added things are going a bit better, incomes are going up and what was considered healthy gains in manufacturing.

Anyways I thought you guys would enjoy hearing some good news. Feel free to add whatever you like. :)

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-jobs-20131207,0,5416221.story#axzz2mpEnouo2

This seems rather optimistic considering that Bernanke doesn't expect the U.S. to reach 6.5% unemployment till the end of 2015.

is.gdCrunchbase: is.gd is a company (Consumer Web), acquired by Memset. →

What kind of jobs though ? Working at mcDonalds or Burgerking isn't going to help the high rent in the cities. I personally have been thinking of moving out when i'm finished with college and an internship or 2. Also, it's holiday season, seasonal jobs.

THANKS OBAMA.

Yeah, unemployment keeps dropping because more people quit looking for work.

The article covers that, it's actually quite good news.

not so much actually.

Oh this was the other thing I wanted to post. It's officially better than when the economy really went into freefall back in 08.

Quote for truth.

Doesn't matter much when the value of the dollar is lower than ever...

Sorry to be a buzz kill :p

Only because they aren't using the U6 numbers. As per usual, liberals ignore this.

What exactly is your point? People generally don't use the U6 to measure unemployment, liberal or not, because the economic definition of unemployment more closely fits U3 than U6.

It's patently ridiculous to not include those numbers.

There's nothing ridiculous about using the official unemployment rate instead of any of/all the other five in any discussion, when anyone can look them up on the internet and all six of them give the same description of the labour market anyway.

It's very ridiculous to not show the full extent of unemployment in this country. You assume all people know there are multiple numbers when in fact many people do not. Using this number is simply a way for the Obama administration to chalk up a W on a column of Ls.

Someone who doesn't know about the six Us will probably be confused as hell when articles start giving two to six different numbers for unemployment (not to mention having to explain the technical differences between the Us), and the whole "U3, which has been commonly used since 1994, only exists so that Obama could get reelected by wooing the American public with an 8% unemployment rate in 2012" thing doesn't sound very believable.

We, southern Europeans, are happy for you guys.

Care to help someone who is ignorant on what U6 and U3 actually means?

It's best to let the U.S. BLS (Bureau of Labour Statistics) explain, but in layman's terms, U3 is jobless civilians divided by civilians who are able and willing to work (this is also the standard economic definition of unemployment rate, which, along with being easy and simple to measure and explain, makes it the preferred number). U6 is jobless civilians plus part-time workers unable to find full-time jobs divided by civilians who are able to work. Generally U6 will be much higher than U3 and more unstable at any given point in time.

Thank you :)

Which good jobs have been added? And falling off unemployment does not actually mean one is employed. It means they no longer receive unemployment benefits.

I went to bed.....anyways I just always check that box when making a thread.

I'm just going to do a few copy/pastes from the article if you don't mind.

"It's not just the quantity of the jobs but the quality," said Diane Swonk, chief economist at Mesirow Financial. "These are higher-wage jobs, and a shift from a reliance on leisure and hospitality and retail gains we had seen in recent months."

Construction companies added 17,000 jobs in November, up 42% from the previous month, as the housing market rebound created more demand. And the nation's factories added 27,000 workers, the most in 20 months and 69% more than in October.

Unlike past drops in the rate, this one was not driven by discouraged workers giving up their search for work. The percentage of the population in the labor force ticked up 0.2 points to 63% in November, though that is still low by historical standards.

All that being said things are still far from great, but I still thought people would enjoy hearing a bit of relatively good (maybe just decent?) news for a change.

Both parties use the same numbers. Of course its just rustling your jimmies simply because it doesn't fit your narrative.

The unemployment rate lowering combined with the work now being done by more people is a good sign.

90-95% employment rate isn't too bad.

Just wondering if the employment rate is being effected because the baby boomer generation are at retirement age. At my work, there is at least three or four retirements each year and probably be two more next year. I see an age group leaving and a younger age group filling those positions.

Those numbers mean nothing in my mind. Think all the people that had to college-kid-esque $8-10 per hour jobs to get even though they have absurdly higher qualifications than that. That's hardly "employment" to me, I've seen many people do this around the town i grew up in and it's heart-breaking to see.

It'll go back up. Just give it a few months.

Besides, a drop in the unemployment rate doesn't mean the economy's getting better. This isn't the first time there's been a drop in the unemployment rate since '08. What I really wanna see is signs that the economy is truly getting better and not stagnating like it has been for the past few years.

Do you have anything to back up your prediction? Because it goes directly against the trend of the last several years. Take a glance at the official numbers I posted above, and every year you will see it go up maybe a tenth of a point one or two months (never consecutively), but fall far more than that over the course of the entire year.

Also read the article, its got manufacturing and construction numbers along with information about people already with jobs getting raises.

I don't think jobs are the problem for the US right now, but the crippling debt that will be impossible to get out of.

Aw, just let me be a cynical bitch. It's fun.

Sure, things are looking a bit better now...but is there any guarantee that it'll continue to get better and stay that way?

Agreed. We all got too much debt.

It's good to see that a lot of those jobs were manufacturing and production, and it's exactly what the U.S. needs to get out of the mess they are in.

Last i checked, the U.S. had about 80% of its workforce in the service industry; and while this isn't necessarily a bad thing for individual workers (doctors and lawyers are part of the service industry), it makes it nearly impossible to correct economic failures without a strong production workforce of their own.

Which debt are you referring to?

The 25 triillion and >250 trillion in unfunded liabilities.

I'm trying to find any US held debt close to those amounts, but I can't find any. Do you have a source or context to those figures? All I could really find is this: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2013/10/23/does-the-united-states-have-128-trillion-in-unfunded-liabilities/

The debt isn't that big of a problem. Simply put, with historically-slow domestic spending growth, a terribly incomplete and narrowly-shared economic recovery and low interest rates, this is no time to panic about budget deficits.

So people lost their high paying jobs, and are now getting jobs at Mcdonalds?

Inflation is actually a good thing for countries. A 2-2.2% rate is healthy.

Even if the statistics were to use U6 numbers one would still see a steady improvement since all of the numbers shown dating back to 2003 are based on U3 calculations. It's not like the graphic starts with U6 and switches midway through to make the drop look more impressive.

Just as Obama's approval rating dips, the unemployment % rate lowers too? What an coincidence. If we impeach him maybe the unemployment % rate would get a lot better.

What the **** people, it says right in the OP (you don't even have to read the fucking article which isn't that long) that the U.S. economy has added a large number of higher quality jobs this time round.

Based on that article and others I have seen, "unfunded liability" in government terms literally means the sum of projected deficits over an infinitely long period assuming X economic growth, Y spending growth and no change in tax rates/policy. So $128 trillion probably isn't actually that scary or worrying because it's divided over god knows how many decades, doesn't account for potential changes and won't even hit that mark until all of us are dead or dying.

What are you implying, precisely?

@Barbariser: Then why did you bring it up?

He's joking...

Bring what up?

The unfunded liabilities.