Paul Solmon at PBS' The Business Desk:
My preferred word to describe today's unemployment numbers comes from Robin Harding in this morning's Financial Times:
"perverse" (though you need a subscription to read the article). That
is, a paltry 74,000 new jobs were added to the economy, according to the
survey of employers. Our own inclusive U-7 statistic for those who want
a full-time job but can't find one barely budged, from 15 percent to
14.97 percent, including more than 24 million of us.
Our
"Solman Scale" measures the "U-7," adding to the officially unemployed
part-timers looking for full-time work and "discouraged" workers --
everyone who didn't look for a job in the past week but says they want
one. Note that seasonally adjusted household data for previous months
has been revised using updated seasonal adjustment factors, as the
Bureau of Labor Statistics does at the end of each calendar year.
Because of these revisions, November figures referenced in this month's
Solman Scale may be slightly different from in their original release last month and last month's Solman Scale.
On the other hand, however, a remarkable half-a-million fewer
Americans were reported as "unemployed," driving down the unemployment
rate from 7 percent to 6.7 percent. How to explain the perversity? I'd
highlight several factors.
One, to paraphrase the DJ in "Groundhog Day": it's been COOOLD out
there. Construction jobs were down in December, for example. Any wonder
as to why?...MUCH MORE
