http://www.usnews.com/opinion/economic-intelligence/2014/12/04/job-growth-rises-but-labor-market-woes-remain
U.S. economy added 208,000 jobs in November says a recently released employment report. The Bureau Of Labor Statistics added that although this is a good sign but it does not look like there labor market is gaining any steam.
The article talks about how there is a need to shift focus to wage growth, labor force participation rates, the quality of jobs being created, long-term unemployed workers and the skills gap.
The labor participation rate currently is 62.8% , which has not been seen since the 1970's. October 2014, the bureau calculates that there are nearly 800,000 “discouraged workers” across the country who have given up finding a job. If this continues it seems as if the unemployment would rise as job opportunities decrease.
I think that you are pointing out a very important aspect of labor statistics: that they rarely tell the whole story. It's easy to look at one or two positive statistic but in order to get a clear and accurate picture of the situation, we need a more in depth study. Its time to stop letting government officials trick us into believing the economy is back to normal levels when clearly we still have problems that need to be addressed such as the labor force participation rate and wage growth.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the comment that labor statistics don't usually give us all of the information necessary to assess the state of the economy. We've been seeing a steady decrease in the unemployment rate, but this rate doesn't tell us anything about wage growth, another important factor in determining how our economy is performing. It will be interesting to see what, if anything, is done to improve wage growth in the near future.
ReplyDeleteFed kept emphasizing that the unemployment rate had been fallen, created this "false impression" that the economy had actually grow back to normal level and stood its ground. Personally, I think this is a strategy that the Fed used to motivate more unemployed people to find a job, which hopefully will increase the labor force participation rate.
ReplyDelete