June 2012: Jobs Fizzle

80,000 was the number. 200,000 is what we need for this to feel like a recovery. And 8.2 is the number that keeps hanging on.  The nation’s unemployment rate was unchanged at 8.2% (that’s 13 million unemployed workers) for the second consecutive month, the Labor Department said Friday.  Businesses added just 84,000 jobs, while governments cut 4,000. Monthly job growth averaged 226,000 in the first quarter but slowed dramatically to an average 75,000 a month in the second quarter.

In response, the Dow Jones industrial average fell 124.20 points to close at 12,772.47, wiping out the Dow’s gain for the week, and Treasuries rose as investors moved their money into lower-risk assets. And the Presidential campaigns took the opportunity to issue a number of extrapolations and the usual host of inaccuracies and overreaches. The Democrats claimed that the unemployment rate has been trending down since hitting 10.10% in October 2009; what they forget to point out is that that’s because of the large numbers of discouraged workers – almost 1 million — who’ve stopped looking for jobs. The Republicans, on the other hand, said that the jobs report proves that the Obama administration’s policies haven’t worked, forgetting that the US was hemorrhaging 700,000 jobs a month when Obama took office. According to Politifact, Obama’s record is 22 consecutive months of private-sector job growth, beginning in Feb. 2010, during which the number of jobs grew by almost 3.16 million, or about 143,000 per month.

Putting the candidates aside, the reasons for the anemic job numbers have started to sound like a bad drinking-game song being played by the pundits as they make the circuit of the talk shows: The warm weather drew construction and manufacturing activity into January and February, but dampened spring hiring; the manufacturing sector contracted for the first time in three years in June;  retail sales were weak, Corporate profits fell in the first quarter of 2012,  the first decline since 2008, according to the Commerce Department; the European Central Bank cut interest rates – a sign of nervousness about their prospects; the end-of-year fiscal cliff sent ripples through the public and private sectors with its specter of higher taxes and reduced government spending; a lame-duck Congress couldn’t pass a Jobs Bill; Republican governors made draconian cuts and instituted public-worker layoffs at the state level; and the Administration didn’t put a big enough stimulus in place which is creating an undertow. Take your pick.

So, are there any bright spots? A few.  Friday’s report showed ticks upward in average hourly earnings (to $23.50, from $23.44 in May) and the length of the typical private sector workweek (34.5 hours, from 34.4). Also, a curious fact is that the number of teens in the workforce spiked by 140,000 to 4,528,000, or 3.2% of the entire U.S. workforce:  So why are teens making out so well in this first month of summer while everyone else, well, isn’t? The Daily Kos reports from 5 May 2012:  President Obama’s Jobs program, which is lining up commitments from the private sector and from government to create summer jobs and internships for young people, has announced commitments for 90,000 paying jobs, up from the 70,000 previously announced in January.