Today it was announced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics that the unemployment rate slightly dropped to 9.1% and 117k new jobs had been created. OK then time to look at the scorecard to find out the winners:
Wall St? -- Well they were were predicting 9.4% unemployment. I guess 'hoping and praying' would be a more accurate way of putting it. The market didn't drop 512 pts yesterday because someone's toast was a little overdone. A high unemployment rate would have been the perfect exclamation point to receive QE3 next week. They still will in all reality but this report may have been the difference between receiving $1 Trillion and now only getting $600 billion. So if that happens, you bet Wall St will be thinking along the lines of "Those damned common peon people cost us $400B" If you think Wall St doesn't look at you that way, you're naive.
The Federal Reserve? -- Well since they want to give the money to Wall St as badly as Wall St wants it, its hard to say the Fed was happy with the numbers (Remember there's economic and political incest among all facets of government; Wall St enters public service and those of public service eventually enter Wall St.) Normally they want job numbers to improve but only connected to a thriving and bustling Wall St.- its called 'trickle down' economics and most of American has been indoctrinated over the past 30 years to believe it works (which it doesn't)
The Unemployed? How can they possibly be happy-- unless they became one of the most recently employed in July. You need 200k jobs created monthly to keep up with population expansion, and job creation around 400k/mo to make any kind of serious dent over time in the figures. Also just because 117k jobs were created, doesn't mean no jobs were lost last month. And unlike those in the past who lost their jobs, got state assistance then extended benefits via the Federal govt, that isn't continuing beyond this year thanks to the President not fighting for it in this week's debt ceiling deal. Maybe it will be extended again in Dec. in exchange for making Bush tax cuts permanent or some other Sell-Out.. we'll see when we get to Christmas season.
~ The most important information to take out of the BLS report is there's been little if any change in the jobs situation... since April's report.. So that's um.. April.. May.. June.. July.. Yes, 4 straight months or 1/3 of a full year.
The reason you are unemployed is not your fault. Business does not want to hire you, particularly corporations. They rather hoard their cash.. or put it in the market and buy up their own stocks which artificially pumps up the value so to novices, it looks like that company is strong. Or corporations get more of a rate of return in a bank than it would be giving you employment. And remember, if businesses are hiring, then why is QE necessary?
Think of it this way- You hear staunch fiscal conservatives say that unemployment benefits discourage people from working because it is free money and thus these people have no motivation to work, yadda yadda. OK, let's say that's true (which it isn't except for a small minority), how is that different than QE where you get free money because you're not hiring and the money is supposed to be used to motivate you to expand, but if you do so, you stop getting the money?
All in all, no one can really take today's numbers as a 'victory' or be happy- it is just another statistical report that will be instantly forgotten by 5p today and Monday will begin a new week in the world of market manipulation and economic stagnation referred to as 'Recovery'
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