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June’s monthly jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics came out today, along with the weekly Department of Labor unemployment numbers.
The verdict: The unemployment rate is now 9.5 percent and another 467,000 are off of payrolls for the month. That puts the total number of people on unemployment at 14.7 million.
All of my dreams for a reprieve from jobs’ reports for a few weeks fell on deaf ears. Guess we’re stuck with the bad news.
From the BLS report:
“The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) increased by 433,000 over the month to 4.4 million. In June, 3 in 10 unemployed persons were jobless for 27 weeks or more.“
Bloomberg News had this take on the economic state of things:
“Unemployment is projected to keep rising for the rest of the year just as the income boost from the stimulus package fades, undermining prospects for a sustained rebound in household purchases, analysts said. As companies from General Motors Corp. to Kimberly-Clark Corp. cut costs, the lack of jobs will restrain growth.”This will be another jobless recovery,” said John Silvia, chief economist at Wachovia Corp. in Charlotte, N.C. “We may get positive economic growth driven largely by federal spending, but people on the street will say, ‘Where are the jobs?'”“
While economics and government professor Jeffrey Frankel puts these numbers in some context for the suits on Wall Street trying to extract anything that resembles positive news for the market:
“The bottom line for the economy: despite signs in other areas that the recession is leveling out – most importantly, production — the labor market indicators in themselves are not yet signaling a turning point. Thus the June numbers confirm the evaluation I made a month ago that the apparent good news in May employment was probably an insignificant blip.“
Sorry, everyone. As reported this week, the news for IT is not that much better, though some middle managers and tech staff are seeing slight raises to keep the trains running.
The good news is that it’s a holiday weekend and people can fire up their grills, watch some fireworks and drown their sorrows in independence.