The U.S. economy created 214,000 jobs in October, the Labor Department reported Friday, pushing the unemployment rate to its lowest level in six years and suggesting the labor market recovery remained intact.
Although October's nonfarm payroll data fell short of Wall Street's estimates, which had expected jobs growth at 231,000, the prior two months were revised upward by a net 31,000 jobs. The report coincided with the Federal Reserve's decision to end its massive bond-buying to stimulate the economy, with the Fed expressing broad confidence in the economy's health. ...CNBC
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And then this horrible news (a reminder from a couple of days ago):
The Washington Post's Jonathan Capehart notes just how bad it isn't since Obama became president.
The unemployment rate is down. When Obama took office in January 2009, the rate was 7.9 percent. At the time, cnnmoney.com said that was the worst jobless rate since 1974. Unemployment would spike to 10 percent in Oct. 2009. The most recent unemployment rate (September) was 5.9 percent, which is the first time since July 2008 that the jobless rate dropped below 6 percent. ...WaPo
Maybe it's time for Bush to stand up and take it like a man.
Gas prices are down. Fortune.com had the best headline on this last week: “Gas prices to drop below $3 for the first time in, like, forever.” ...WaPo
That's not really good news. No long term good news comes from oil consumption. Short term: just extras in some people's pockets.
The stock market is up — way up. Hours after Obama took the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost more than 330 points to close at 7,949.09. On the eve of the 2014 midterm elections, the Dow closed at 17,366. ...WaPo
Big investors and the "top 10%" are laughing all the way to their new house in the Caribbean. The rest of us profit from this only in the sense that it's a general mood lifter.
The economy is growing. The commerce department reported that the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew at an annualized rate of 3.5 percent between July and September. ...WaPo
And, Capehart adds, it's the best showing we've seen since 2003.
The deficit is shrinking. According to a September analysis from the Congressional Budget Office, “The federal government ran a budget deficit of $486 billion in fiscal year 2014, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates—$195 billion less than the shortfall recorded in fiscal year 2013, and the smallest deficit recorded since 2008.” ...WaPo
Capehart thinks Democrats have, on the whole, been self-defeating in their handling of the president in the run-up to today's vote by "holding him at arm's length." All this does, really, is alienate grass roots Democratic voters to the point where they don't bother to vote. "...If those voters use such political expediency by scared Democrats as an excuse to punish them by staying home," he writes, "they will be doing exactly what Republicans want them to do."
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And that's what we did.
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"Although the headline number is decent, the details behind the curtain will be particularly concerning to investors and Main Street," said Todd Schoenberger, managing partner of LandColt Capital. "Wage growth is embarrassingly low, especially considering where we are in terms of the so-called economic recovery." ...CNBC
And which party is holding back wage growth? Um, ... why it's the party that got the most votes. Well, part of that's due to (among others) those Koch brothers who would rather dump billions into preventing wage growth than give their employees a break. We have names for people like that, don't we?
