A lot of spin but no more actual jobs. (photo: Robert Couse-Baker via Flickr)

Well the December Jobs and Jobless reports are coming in and while there’s still the big one from the US DoL’s Bureau of Labor Statistics due tomorrow (Friday, 1/7/11), we can already see the spinmeisters in operation.

First off is the monthly report from ADP that is released on the first Wednesday of each month (yesterday) detailing the job growth or shrinkage in private sector employment for the previous month. Via McClatchy:

WASHINGTON — Private businesses hired new workers at a surprisingly energetic pace in December, according to a widely tracked job-tracking report released on Wednesday.

The ADP National Employment Report showed that private-sector employment rose by 297,000 in December. That’s the highest monthly gain since the report’s inception in 2000, and it’s double or triple what was expected by mainstream economists.

Most important, job gains that high are what’s needed to knock down the stubbornly high unemployment rate, which has been stuck at just under 10 percent for more than a year. Currently it’s at 9.8 percent, with a new official BLS report on December employment due on Friday.

Now, if we can have another four plus years of similar growth, we might make a dent on the current Unemployment rate of 9.8%. But you will pardon me if I’m a bit skeptical about this wonderful news. December is a time when there are a lot of short term hires due to the holiday season. I assume that ADP does make some adjustment for the seasonal factor and while 297K new jobs is definitely a good start, as I (and others) have noted recently, even if those jobs are something more than short term, minimum wage positions for the holidays, the odds are good that a lot of them are of the Perma-Temp fashion, with limited to no benefits. So I guess I’m going to hold off on the cheerleading the report.   . . . Read the rest of this entry →

Yesterday, I wrote about the idiocy of the cheerleaders who keep making speeches about how wonderful everything is in the economy so they’re not going to do anything different. Then today, ADP released their Jobs Report on private sector job creation for July 2010.

Private-sector employers added jobs for the sixth month in a row in July, according to a report by payroll processing firm Automatic Data Processing (ADP). ADP said private-sector employers added 42,000 jobs to their payrolls during the month, following an upwardly revised 19,000 increase in June.

Forty-two thousand jobs sounds good right?. Well, when you consider the economy needs to add 100K to 150K jobs each month just to absorb all the new folks coming in, no it doesn’t sound all that good.

Then you combine this with a second report out early today (from the same CNN story linked above)

In a separate report, planned job cuts rose for a third straight month in July, fueled by continued weakness in the government and non-profit sector, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. Employers announced plans to eliminate about 42,000 jobs last month, Challenger said. That was up 6% from June, when job cuts rose to 39,000.

The Challenger, Gray report does not surprise me all that much. The weekly report of new jobless claims for last week showed 457K new jobless claims (with concurrent puffery about how it was progress since the number of new claims had dropped all of 11K from the previous week)

Initial claims for state unemployment aid dropped 11,000 to 457,000, the Labor Department said on Thursday.

Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast claims slipping to 459,000 from the previously reported 464,000 the prior week, which was revised slightly up to 468,000 in Thursday’s report.

The four-week average of new jobless claims, seen as a better measure of underlying labor market trends, fell 4,500 to 452,500.

I just do not see how it is considered a "positive" when the weekly new jobless claims for each week stays above 450K. Of course, I obviously know nothing other than there are roughly 15 million unemployed people currently looking for work as well as another 10 million or so underemployed, working in part time minimum wage jobs.

Also today was a NY Times The Caucus blog post on how the Obama administration is using Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner as the point person on economic issues. The same Tim Geithner who authored this ludicrous opinion piece in yesterday’s NY Times. Today, Geithner is giving a speech where he is supposed to attack Republicans for wanting to extend the Bush tax cuts.

The speech is to be given at a bipartisan event whose hosts are the Center for American Progress, a Democratic research and advocacy organization, and the American Action Forum, a Republican-oriented group recently formed to emulate the Center’s success. Mr. Geithner also will have a discussion with the Center’s president, John Podesta, formerly a chief of staff in the Clinton White House, and with Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum, who formerly was an adviser to Senator John McCain’s presidential campaigns and a director of the Congressional Budget Office.

Of course, Geithner won’t commit the administration to a veto of an extension of these tax cuts. And we’ve seen this dance before haven’t we? The administration makes noises of being for or against something (Public Option in the health care dance?) yet won’t promise a veto.

In a little good news/bad news though are two other stories from the NY Times. From today’s edition, is a story about businesses and governments offering pay cuts rather than job furloughs. That’s actually the good news story! Although the second story might be seen as good news for some as well. A story already up on the Times web site for publication in tomorrow’s edition is probably more bad news (though it does offer a laugh or two.) It seems that some law firms and businesses are outsourcing parts of their legal work to India:

India’s legal outsourcing industry has grown in recent years from an experimental endeavor to a small but mainstream part of the global business of law. Cash-conscious Wall Street banks, mining giants, insurance firms and industrial conglomerates are hiring lawyers in India for document review, due diligence, contract management and more.

So, just what jobs are left that MUST be done in the US?

And because I can:

Cross Posted from Just A Small Town Country Boy