Job losses weren’t as bad as predicted:
The pace of layoffs slowed in April, with employers cutting 539,000 jobs, the fewest in six months…..The Labor Department tally wasn’t nearly as deep as the 620,000 job losses that economists were expecting.
And there’s some other positive signs as well:
“It’s a confirmation that we’re in the early stages of a turn,” said Ethan Harris, co-head of United States economic research at Barclays Capital. “We’ve just had a big dose of monetary and fiscal stimulus, and we’re getting further and further removed form the confidence shock of last fall. All these forces are sort of gathering right now.”
The credit markets, where the financial crisis began, have stabilized after a vast support effort from the government and central banks, and some lending is gradually returning to normal. Consumer spending is no longer plunging, and buyers are coming back to some battered housing markets, even as home prices continue to fall nationwide.
Nevertheless…the Pelosi recession continues.
But my biggest fear now is that this recession won’t be deep enough to convince the public of the need to move to the gold standard.
The Cat Who Would Be Tunch
The reduction in the rate of job losses is somewhat encouraging. However, the “adverse” case that was used in stress tests (unemployment at 8.9% in 2009 and 10.3% in 2010) for the banks is already a reality. In other words, that $75 billion capital requirement for the ten banks is already sketchy. Any further shocks because of some unknown in the future could easily push those banks over the edge.
4tehlulz
RAND PAUL 2010
Michael
Rush says there is no recession, and that his contract helps prove it (notwithstanding the numbers of layoffs at Clear Channel and the fact that his contract is dragging down the whole thing). And in his last trip to Vikings Resort in the DR, the girls there told him that their revenues were fine.
You need to apologize right now for implying that there’s anything wrong with the economy.
Joshua Norton
Whew. Glad that’s over. It really sucked being poor.
Cat Lady
I CAN HAZ JOB BACK NOW PLZ?
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
This is good news for McCain!
bago
Nothing like waking up, seeing it’s 7, and being relieved that that means 7 am.
Rick Taylor
Yay!
The Cat Who Would Be Tunch
@Michael: Did he really say this recently? If so, then yeah…genius. A sample size of 1 is all you really need to use to determine the state of the US economy.
@Cat Lady:
What the hell were you doing working in the first place, woman? How dare you!
LD50
I’ve always wondered how unemployed wingnuts convince themselves of this.
I suppose this is the purpose affirmative action serves for them.
Hunter Gathers
The House GOP turns the fear up to eleven.
Scared yet?
Notorious P.A.T.
I remember when Sarah Palin was a heartbeat away from the presidency and her ticket was polling better than the Democrats’. I may never be scared of anything again.
Comrade Kevin
I’m sure the 539,000 people who lost their jobs in April, and those losing their jobs in May, will be thrilled to know that we’re turning the corner. Hallelujiah!
Hunter Gathers
@Notorious P.A.T.:
To be honest, the second the old man named the snowbilly his VP, I was convinced Obama was going to win, my only question was by how much. I knew about her beforehand, and knew how nutters she is. They didn’t vet her, because if they did, she would not have been named.
The media was on a 2 week sugar high after she was announced. And, thankfully, Katie Couric and Tina Fey completely destroyed her.
You betcha!
anonevent
I say we go to a uranium standard. It has built-in inflation and it would become an economic issue if someone were to actually use it in a bomb.
Notorious P.A.T.
@Hunter Gathers:
If I ever meet Katie Couric, I will hug her. If she lets me.
Bill H
But it does give Obama room to permit the financial sector to remain essentially unchanged. There may be some tinkering with minor regulation, but the big banks will remain in control, we will still be selling CDS instruments, we will still be securitizing debt in ever increasingly obscure ways, we will still be selling derivitives, financial houses will still combine the functions of deposit/investment/insurance, and the economy will still be fueled by credit and consumer spending.
So all of the factors which led to this collapse will still be present to a) prevent a significantly robust recovery and b) cause the next collapse.
Legalize
Yeah … “girls” ….
DougJ
A-freaking-men. Those were the scariest weeks of my life to date. I really thought it might be the end of civilization as we know it.
ArtV
Sorry, but I remain unconvinced.
We still lost over a HALF-MILLION jobs last month. That’s a shitload in my book.
We’re losing perspective here in the desperate search to find anything positive about the economy.
If you add back in the 72,000 temp jobs the gov’t filled for census work, you get back over the 600k mark. And bear in mind that every month this year the final numbers have been revised upwards.
Even if the jobs lost number is cut in half next month we still have ~15% real unemployment.
Walker
We have reached a critical point in the second derivative; optimism is not necessarily warranted.
Especially, when you look at the scary graphs and see that we are currently in a trough of mortgage recasts that is about to get scary again very soon.
Irony Abounds
Also keep in mind that March’s job losses were increased by around 70,000 up to 699,000. I’m not poo-pooing the slowdown in the decline, but when over 500,000 in job losses is deemed to be good news, you get the true flavor of how bad this recession is.
oh really
The recession is unrelated to the need for the gold standard. We need to return to the gold standard because it’s a necessary part of our doing business as the “modern” 18th [sic] century country we should be.
Thankovsky
I’ve been pondering this myself; if this recession is enough to put the fear of God in the American people over the need for bank/shadow bank/mortgage regulations, how long will that fear last? Obama is clearly a smart guy, so I imagine this is part of his calculus as well. Still, the trick will obviously be getting Geithner and his team, to say nothing of Congress, to strike while the iron is hot.
Thankovsky
@ArtV:
Yeah, but huge job losses were always going to be a defining feature of this recession. The reason why this report is good news is that, since the losses are significantly less than what was predicted, it may be a sign that we’ve bottomed out. The sooner we bottom out, the sooner we’re out of this recession, and thus, the sooner we can start creating jobs again.
I know it still sucks that half a million jobs were lost, and the fact that it’s not as sucky as we thought it would be shouldn’t diminish our zeal to get major regulatory reforms implemented. But it’s still net-positive news: those who lost their jobs in April are now more-likely to have new jobs a year from now, as opposed to five years from now.
alamacTHC
“Gold standard”? WTF???
Oh. It was a joke. I get it now…
…because NOBODY serious is pushing the “gold standard” nonsense. Fixing the amount of currency to a commodity is as silly as restricting the number of breaths you take to the number of games won by the Mets. (Okay, the Cubs.) The needs of an economy should depend upon its performance and the amount of money already in the system, not some arbitrary, independent variable like the price of gold (or coal, or turnips, or whatever), which inevitably would lead to gross mismatches between the economy’s needs and available capital.
But it IS a good joke–ya almost got me there!
DougJ
Ron Paul is.
Raul
@ArtV:
It’s not a Net ( total unemployment – Reemployed) Figure. It is over half a million people out the door.
As for the census people, they could have been collecting unemployment already. They are being added back to the to employed workforce. The total workforce includes the currently employed and those collecting unemployment benefits. Under those with benefits, you have current claims and the people with the extension; which are usually a very small number under better economic conditions. Most people hardly ever qualify for any kind of extension after their benefits run out. This is why the majority of effective extensions are handed out by order of the federal government. Why not the state? Because they feel you shoud move back with relatives–preferably in another state.