"While the unemployment rate has
edged down by 0.2 percentage points to 9.5 percent since
May, this is attributable to people who gave up looking
for work and left the labor force....By age group, the big
gainers continued to be the over-55 cohort, which added
54,000 jobs in July, bringing the 3-month gain to 182,000.
Older women accounted for 167,000 of this rise in employment.
By contrast, employment for women between the ages of 35-44
fell by 253,000 (1.8%) and for women between 45-54 by 186,000
(1.2%) since May....There is zero evidence to support the
claim that firms are reluctant to hire because of uncertainty,
since this would imply that they were increasing hours.
Nominal wages rose at just a 1.4 percent annual rate, also
not a good sign. With the end of
the inventory cycle, a huge wave of state and local cutbacks
and further declines in house prices on the way, the situation
looks bleak for the second half of 2010.
Baker,
CEPR, 8/6/10
"The
net loss of jobs reported in today’s employment report
captures a job market stuck in neutral. Roughly one in six
workers are either unemployed or underemployed, and the
labor force continues to decline. It is time for the government
to do substantially more to create jobs so the backlog of
unemployed workers can get back to work." Shierholz,
EPI, 8/6/10
"Well, the good news is that the
manufacturing sector continues to add workers, adding 36,000
jobs last month for a total of 183,000 new jobs since its
low point in December 2009.....But the bad news is that
while this is an improvement over this time last year, at
the pace of private sector job creation over the past three
months it will take just under 13 years to regain the jobs
lost since the Great Recession began in December 2007.....The
labor market data continue to show that those without a
job are having an exceptionally hard time finding new employment,
but there are also more worrisome signs of an increase in
newly unemployed workers." CAP
Boushey, 8/6/10
The
National Jobs for All Coalition is a project of the Council
on Public and International Affairs.
National
Jobs for All Coalition
c/o Council on International & Public Affairs [CIPA]
777 United Nations Plaza, Suite 3C
Tel:
212-972-9879. fax is 212-972-9878.
NY, NY 10017
Email: njfac [at]
njfac.org
