The rate unexpectedly fell to 10 percent, from 10.2 percent in October, as employers cut the fewest number of jobs since the recession began. The government also said 159,000 fewer jobs were lost in September and October than first reported.
Finally a bit of good news, or it assuredly could have been worse news. The Novemeber Unemployment report from the BLS is out and the rate dropped to 10%, from 10.2% last month.
The unemployment rate edged down to 10.0 percent in November, and nonfarm payroll employment was essentially unchanged (-11,000)
Oops, wait a second, the total number of jobs is unchanged or lowered by -11,000 jobs? Where did the 0.2% of the unemployed go then?
Further in the report we find:
The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over) rose by 293,000 to 5.9 million. The percentage of unemployed persons jobless for 27 weeks or more increased by 2.7 percentage points to 38.3 percent.
Today BoA paid back TARP funds so they could pay a new CEO absurd amounts of executive compensation. That leaves Citigroup as the only TARP recipient who has not paid back the money from the $700 Billion.
it may be difficult for the bank to reimburse the government anytime soon, given continuing problems with troubled assets and loan losses. It also must navigate some tricky tax issues that would accompany any repayment.
Citigroup has been pummeled in all parts of its financial empire, from credit cards and complex mortgage bonds in the United States to exposure to soured bonds in Dubai.
The Non-Manufacturing ISM index dropped to 48.7%. This is 1.9% lower than last month an indicates a contraction in sectors that are not manufacturing. Not Good!
We have had 19 months of Employment has contracted for 19 months in a row.
New Orders Index decreased 0.5 percentage point to 55.1 percent, and the Employment Index increased 0.5 percentage point to 41.6 percent. The Prices Index increased 4.8 percentage points to 57.8 percent in November.
Here is what sectors are in this index as well as which ones contracted:
WASHINGTON, December 2 – Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) today placed a hold on the nomination of Ben Bernanke for a second term as chairman of the Federal Reserve.
“The American people overwhelmingly voted last year for a change in our national priorities to put the interests of ordinary people ahead of the greed of Wall Street and the wealthy few,” Sanders said. “What the American people did not bargain for was another four years for one of the key architects of the Bush economy.”
As head of the central bank since 2006, Bernanke could have demanded that Wall Street provide adequate credit to small and medium-sized businesses to create decent-paying jobs in a productive economy, but he did not.
Congress will have to raise the current debt ceiling of $12.1 trillion in coming weeks to prevent the Treasury Department from defaulting on its debt.
The House voted in the spring to raise the ceiling to $13 trillion, likely not enough to last through the 2010 elections at current borrowing rates, but the Senate has yet to act.
The new chic thing to do if you're an interest group these days is to get on social networking sites. The idea being that having a page out there that people fan, write on the wall of, or follow gives you the sheen of democratic legitimacy.
Being able to say that your page has a million fans lends credence to the idea that the particular brand of policy that you are selling has some popularity. Now, of course, the great thing about the internet is that it make it possible to get in touch with all the nuts and bolts in society, well at least the nuts.
But...... the really fun part isn't that Ron Paul can manage to get himself 150,000+ facebook fans in between the moments when he's lamenting the outcome of the War Between the States.
The really fun part is when attempts at astroturfing on social networking sites bite back.
On The Economic Populist you might have noticed the middle column. We try to list other sites and blogs who have exceptional insight and writing on what is happening in the U.S. economy.
Sometimes though, one cannot say it better but miss those who did.
Must Read #1
James Hamilton, over at Econbrowser has a easy to read, lots of graphs analysis post on some recent reports on auto sales, home sales, ADP jobs report in Anemic Recovery. If I wrote up my own thoughts on many of these reports, it would be almost identical so check out his site. Here's one:
I'm seeing the same story in new home sales. These are up on a seasonally adjusted basis mostly because they had previously been so very low, not because the market is remotely back to normal.
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