Drudge headline: "4.6%" Is that Bush's new Approval Rating?

Help me out here.

households. The other survey: (And, remember that folks whose unemployment benefits have expired disappear from the Dept. of Labor's unemployment headcount).


Economists tend to put more stock, however, in the much broader business survey of 400,000 work sites that is used to calculate the payroll figures.

In May, job cuts at factories, retailing and other fields tempered job gains in education and health care, financial activities and elsewhere.

The payrolls performance was much weaker than the 170,000 jobs that economists were forecasting would be added in May. They also were predicting the unemployment rate to hold steady at 4.7 percent.

Adding to the weakness in the payroll picture: job gains for both March and April were lowered. Employers actually added 126,000 new jobs in April, instead of the 138,000 previously reported. For March, employment grew by 175,000, rather than 200,000.

. . .that know what they're doing, put even more stock in moving average values of the employers' survey, so that each datapoint is not assumed to be meaningful.

But, there aren't any good economists at Treasury. Yeah i said it! None!
The Professor

whew!

Somehow it just doesn't seem like Kansas City is just rolling in jobs.

with nary an interview

These are all jobs for which I'm "overqualified," because that's all there are.

So, I've dumbed-down my resume but it hasn't seemed to make a difference. For someone over 40, there are scam jobs and that's it around here.

Seems kind of pointless to just send resumes hither and yon.

Can you do the resume so they can't tell how old you are? Don't put down all of the experience.

Hell, I don't know what to do, either.

it is trivial for many companies to find out your age.

I'm also handicapped by having been relatively prominent in my field for a decade or so.

Everybody in my field knows me, too. I'm not sure it is a big help.

etc, ) off it, STAT.

my husband's contract with a university, after only 6 months was non renewed (one year contract) But...we gave up our home in Wisconsin, and a very very good job with the state to move here (NY) for that job. We thought for sure he'd get picked up right away, but many resumes went out, only a few interviews and nothing. We were starting to hit panic mode. So one night, husband drank a sixpack started googling tech jobs in the state and started sending out not only his resume, but a cover letter, that at first I found questionable (basically said, hey, I'm very damn good at what I do, but listen, I'm American Indian so I wear my hair long, and and have piercings based on tradition.. these things I will not comprimise) I think he sent it to 20 places, and the following day a company called him. He went for an interview and ultimately he didnt get the job...BUT the owner of the company had just taken over yet another organization and needed someone just like my husband. So to the HR person passed my husband's information over to him and ultimately they created a position just for my husband.

Not sure how many chances you've taken in your job quest, but i'm sure glad my hubby got drunk that night and did what he did!

sigh...

A better measure of employment is the labor participation rate - which still does not account for underemployment on part-time workers who wish to work full-time.

Such as i mentioned in my earlier post. It's based upon a sound statistical method of moving averages that allow predictions of the "truth" to within 0.06%, as opposed to the massive month to month swings we see in the current data.
The Professor

I don't know anyone that doesn't have some type of job.

The problem is the quality of the job and the wages. Over the past decade, the quality of jobs have declined and the wages are basically in a holding pattern.
If you look at careerbuilder.com or Monster.com or Hotjobs.com. Yes. There are jobs in your area.

But manufacturing jobs have disappeared, and people who used to work those are now working at places like Wal-Mart or Home Depot. That is what has happened...

Thats how much you make per year on minimum wage.

5.15 * 40 * 52