Employment Update: July 2012

At present the Employment Situation numbers releases by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (link) are the occasion of dueling announcements by the two candidates for the presidency. Hence the numbers are widely known early on the first Friday of every month. My role has devolved to being a record keeper. Mitt Romney saw the July numbers as yet more proof that President Obama has failed; President Obama welcomed added jobs but deplored that they were not greater in number. The stock markets evidently saw the numbers as good news and stocks rose in response.

So what were the numbers? The economy gained 163,000 jobs in July. If we add the effect of net changes made to numbers for May and June by BLS updates, another 4,000 were added to total jobs gained in the year. Every private sector gained jobs except Mining and Logging (a loss of 1,000). Government lost 9,000. As it delights me to point out every month, that’s the sector where the politicians are themselves responsible. They talk the talk but do not walk the walk.

Herewith a graphical presentation:

In the 2008 and 2009 period we lost 8.7 million jobs. In the 2010-2012 period to date, we have recovered 4.7 million jobs—thus a 45.3 percent recovery in 31 months. Assuming that this rate continues into the future, we shall need three years and 2 months more to arrive at the point in employment we had reached in December 2007.

I’ll comment on this further in the next post.