December payroll employment rises (+155,000); unemployment rate unchanged (7.8%)

[progree]

9. Which economists say 200,000 jobs/mo need to be created in order to grow the economy?

Last edited Sat Jan 5, 2013, 02:55 AM - Edit history (1)

First time I've heard anything like this.

I've heard numbers ranging from 50,000 to 150,000 as the jobs needed per month to be created to keep the unemployment rate stable. I've never heard that the economy can't grow unless X number of jobs are created, heck there are times when the economy grows while jobs are being lost, thanks to productivity gains.

Do you have a link to the Bloomberg article on the payroll tax increase causing a 1% drag on the economy? Could be.. I'm disturbed Obama didn't even make a fight of keeping the payroll tax holiday for another year or two when the economy needs all the help it can get.

Re: BLS's Not in Labor Force, Want Job Now (NILFWJN) -- Not being in the labor force is defined as not having a job and not having looked for a job in the last 4 weeks. One has to look for a job in order to find one. All the wanting in the world is not going to help. Do you have a link that shows it reached an all time record in 2012?

Yes, there is a lot to be gloomy about out there.

I'd rather have Obama than Bush though --

# The economy Bush handed to Obama lost 4.3 million jobs during the last 10 months of the Bush administration. Furthermore, at the end of the Bush administration the rate of job losses was accelerating -- losing 2.28 million jobs just in his last 3 months -- an average of 760,000 lost jobs a month (the average of the last 3 months of the Bush presidency).

# Bush's entire 8 year record: created 1.1 million payroll jobs - by creating 1.8 million government jobs and destroying 0.7 million private sector jobs. ( the actual numbers are, in thousands: Total: 1,080, Govt: 1,753, PrivateSector: -673 ). Yes, it is ironic that a supposed "small government conservative" ended up creating government jobs and destroying private sector jobs.

# Under Obama there have been 33 straight months of private sector job growth (since February 2010), totaling 5.1 million private sector jobs (thru November 2012 with October & November preliminary). Total job growth during this period is 4.6 million jobs ( 0.5 million government jobs were lost ).

(I'll have the Obama numbers in the above paragraph updated through the end of December in 2-3 hours). Likewise the job numbers where the above 3 paragraphs comes from -- http://www.democraticunderground.com/111622439#post2

Oh, welcome to DU!