Strong upward revisions reported yesterday by the Bureau of Labor
Statistics pushed US payroll job gains to levels not seen since the
dot.com boom of the 1990s. According to preliminary data, the economy
added 257,000 total payroll jobs in January 2015. The report revised
gains for November upward from 353,000 to 423,000 and those from
December from 252,000 to 329,000.
The
government sector lost 10,000 jobs in January. The government sector
had added jobs in November and December, but over the year since January
2014, government jobs were down by 17,000. All levels of government
shed jobs in January, but the federal government showed the largest
losses. All told, the government sector has lost 688,000 jobs, including
a net loss of 55,000 at the federal level, since the inauguration of
President Barak Obama six years ago, contrary to his opponents’ idea
that his administration would give rise to an “explosive growth of government jobs.”
Meanwhile,
private sector jobs have boomed. The economy
added 3,127,000 private payroll jobs between January 2014 and January
2015. That easily eclipsed the peak rate of job creation during the
housing bubble of the early 2000’s, and was the strongest 12-month
showing since 1997, at the height of the dot.com boom. >>>Read more
Follow this link to view or download a slideshow with additional charts of the latest US employment situation
Saturday, February 7, 2015
Monday, February 2, 2015
Fifty Years of Macroeconomic Misery: Arthur Okun's Misery Index and Modern Variants
Remember the 1960s? The 1970s? Back then, inflation surged from one
peak to another but failed to deliver the low unemployment rates
promised by the Phillips curve. In fit of frustration, economist Arthur Okun invented what he called the misery index—the sum of the inflation and unemployment rates. As the chart shows, those were miserable years indeed.
Today we don’t hear much about the misery index. True, the index hit a 20-year peak in the depths of the Great Recession, but people hardly noticed. Now it is back to a relatively comfortable level and still headed down. In an era of chronically low inflation, Okun’s index just isn’t miserable enough to make the headlines. Couldn’t we add something to spice it up a little?
Spicing Up the Misery Index
Economists Robert Barro, and more recently, Steve Hanke, have tried to do just that. Both have added measures of real output growth and an interest rate to the misery index in an attempt to capture macroeconomic factors other than inflation and unemployment that make people unhappy. >>>Read more
Follow this link to view or download a slideshow version of this post
Today we don’t hear much about the misery index. True, the index hit a 20-year peak in the depths of the Great Recession, but people hardly noticed. Now it is back to a relatively comfortable level and still headed down. In an era of chronically low inflation, Okun’s index just isn’t miserable enough to make the headlines. Couldn’t we add something to spice it up a little?
Spicing Up the Misery Index
Economists Robert Barro, and more recently, Steve Hanke, have tried to do just that. Both have added measures of real output growth and an interest rate to the misery index in an attempt to capture macroeconomic factors other than inflation and unemployment that make people unhappy. >>>Read more
Follow this link to view or download a slideshow version of this post
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