03.05.2010 original article
01.07.2011 repaired broken links
06.27.2012 repaired broken links
06.20.2014 minor fixes, title edit, copyright revision
“Weather” or Not, It’s Jobs
original article written by Net Advisor™
WASHINGTON DC. The news in the stock market today is that the market is supposedly up because the latest jobs report was better than expected. This is all very relative thinking. If you expected a Depression, and got a recession are you better off and is that good news?
I would argue that the real reason the market is rallying today is due NOT to the jobs report, it is because the negative jobs report means the FED is not likely to raise interest rates any time soon. That is bullish for the market, not that 36,000 more people lost their job.
The problem is that this model will not work to prop up the market.
The market can’t just perpetually rally on losing more and more jobs, and say, “We’ll, we didn’t lose as many as we thought we were going to lose,” and then say this every month.
We also can’t blame the “weather” for a bad jobs reports.
“New claims for unemployment benefits jumped unexpectedly last week, mostly because state agencies processed a backlog of claims caused by snowstorms the previous week.”
Believe it or not, the entire U.S. economy is not located in Indianapolis, or the middle to upper east coast.
If California (CA) was its own country would rank #8 in the world as an economy based on the states last published report. Granted the state is a bit behind in releasing data from 2007, 2008 and 2009. Given the major recession and economic issues in CA, I would suspect the states global economic ranking has dropped a few more notches.
CA Ranked #8 in Global GDP in 2005 (2006 report)
CA Ranked #6 in Global GDP in 2004 (2003 report)
Future reports should be found here.
I would argue that California, which is lucky to even get rain, and we have NO major metropolitan area that are subject to snow, (Los Angles, San Diego, Orange County, San Francisco), that the state despite its current fiscal and economy challenges outweigh all other states, and most countries (as stated above) by GDP. Thus, one could argue the relevance of snow on the Eastern Seaboard should not be a serious factor for people losing their job due to “weather.” That the U.S. economic condition has a direct impact on how many Americans may be employed or lose their jobs.
The number of long-term unemployment (27 weeks or longer) continued to be about 6.1 million, the same as December 2009 (Source: BLS.gov, page 2, parr 1).
Unemployed and Frustrated? You Are Not Counted in Government’s Jobs Report
Once again, the government has a way of arguably manipulating the actual jobs data by not counting those who “were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work…had looked for a job in the prior 12 months, (but who reportedly) did not look for work in the past 4 weeks.” There are 2.5 million people who are not counted as unemployed because they meet this subcategory.— Source: BLS.gov, page 2, parr 4 (February 2010)
The number of people the BLS says are “frustrated” from this group is 1.2 million (Source: BLS.gov, page 2, parr 5). It would be interesting to see how the government determines who meets the definition of being frustrated (“discouraged workers”) — those who have tried to find work in the last year with no success.
These “marginally attached to the labor force” workers are still unemployed. And because people have been frustrated to find work, does not mean they should be opted out of the government’s true unemployment statistics.
What does make some sense in this latest BLS report is that construction employment fell by 64,000 jobs in February (Source: BLS.gov, page 2, parr 7). Now, we can probably make an argument that in states subject to severe weather, we can call those jobs lost due to weather. Assuming we are not entering in the next ice age, these jobs should pick up by later spring and summer. If they do not, then weather may not have been the true cause for the construction unemployment as it may just be that the economy is still in recession.
The BLS claims that “weather” was a factor in the latest employment report.
— Source: BLS.gov, page 3, parr 7-9 (boxed).
You can almost hear the story at home: I’m sorry hun, we can’t eat this month, or feed the kids, the dog, or the fish called Wanda. It’s (insert government approved weather excuse) raining, snowing, and I can’t go look for a job once all month. How many people who need a job or money, would not attempt to go look for one for an entire month, solely because the weather?
OK, let’s say for a minute you were in the ice age last month, and you just realistically could not snow plow your way out of the house. Does the phone work? Does the Internet work? One could call around for jobs using directory assistance or the phone book, or look up jobs posted on company websites, Monster.com, Careerbuilder, jobs.com, jobs.net, Craigslist, etc. Thus, for government to blame “the weather” for a lack of jobs seems more like a poor excuse to explain why the BLS job numbers don’t look so hot. What excuse will the government come up with in the summer?
Further,
If weather really was the reason why the jobs report was poor, then how come there was an INCREASE of 48,000 temporary workers in the same period? Of those, 15,000 workers are government employees hired for 2010 Census.
— Source: BLS.gov, page 3, parr 1 & 2
Somehow, the government managed to hire people and so did the private sector, and weather was not a factor. The reality is the job market is tight, and “weather” really has little to do about that.
{Please advise of any broken links to government reports. Adobe pdf copies are kept on file and can be re-linked from this domain. Thank you!}
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