Recently Allan Meltzer, a former Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve, wrote a widely noted and provocative article in the Wall Street Journal called “What Happened to the ‘Depression?’” He called for an end to deficit-inducing stimulus because the cries of Depression from noted mainstream economists has been proven false.  His thesis is that these [...]

The Department of Labor reported that jobless claims in the latest week decreased 4,000 from a revised 574,000 in the previous week.  The figure was higher than analysts anticipated. Initially, the last week was reported as 570,000.
The 4-week average is now 571,250, marking the eighth consecutive week that initial claims for unemployment insurance have [...]

If you recall, at the end of May, I wrote a post “Both initial claims and continuing claims now pointing to recovery” that said jobless claims data were pointing to an imminent recovery.  The general gist of my argument was recovery would come by year’s end or early in 2010. But we needed to focus [...]

The Employment Situation Summary for July was released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), showing a 9.4% unemployment rate and 247,000 jobs lost in July.  These numbers were better than anticipated, with the unemployment rate actually falling from 9.5%.
In its release, the BLS emphasized the fact that employment figures are improving. While the [...]

US private employers shed 371,000 jobs according to figures released by ADP today.  Expectations had been for a loss of 350,000. As this report was released two days before the employment situation summary that gives us the unemployment rate and the government’s official estimates for non-farm payrolls, it is a good proxy for what to [...]

Citigroup has just released a forecast which is very troubling in regards to employment and growth in the Spanish economy.  With unemployment already having hit 17.9%, Citigroup expects layoffs to increase this to 22% in 2010.  Below is my translation of the Spanish-language article in Finanzas.
The stabilization that the Spanish labour market seems to have [...]

The labor market in the United States lost 467,00 jobs in June.  But this was just the headline number as unemployment rose to 9.5%.  Unfortunately, the deep dive shows a situation that mirrors this weakness.
Establishment Survey
Below is a snapshot of the Establishment Survey data over the last 18 months (click chart to enlarge).

What you should [...]

Now, Bill Gross, the Bond King, knows that bonds go up in price when bad economic data comes out.  So, leaving aside the desire to talk one’s own book, I think Gross makes a number of good points on CNBC about the unemployment data which came out at 830 ET.  His basic point is this: [...]

Here is how the Bureau of Labor Statistics describes the situation.
THE EMPLOYMENT SITUATION: JUNE 2009
Nonfarm payroll employment continued to decline in June (-467,000), and the unemployment rate was little changed at 9.5 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. Job losses were widespread across the major industry sectors, [...]

The payroll data this morning were pretty good given the job losses came in nearly 200,000 less than expected.  But further digging suggests the number is not nearly as bullish when parsing the data.  Below are a few data points.
ESTABLISHMENT SURVEY

BULLISH: The headline jobs number of a 345,000 loss comes from the establishment survey and [...]