11 Signs the Job Market Is Improving in 2011

Not at all, not at all ... so many other reasons, though.

Besides, everyone loves optometrists.

and dentists

shoot..i meant to type dontists

All the preconditions for much better jobs growth are in place—strong profits, wide margins, strong balance sheets. Demand is improving. You should get a nice boost here with the tax cuts. Confidence is improving. Credit is flowing more normally, particularly to smaller businesses. If history is a guide, this is about the time in the last two business cycles that businesses started to step up and hire," he said.

Isn't that great news Wbottom?

love that paragraph.

steve, you started the "employers begin rehiring" thread FIFTEEN months ago. wake me up when the unemployment rate is down to 6-7%.

spunky, spunky, spunky. How's all that Merrill Lynch stock you bought?

'Please don't hate me b/c I'm an optomist.

steve,
that should read, 'Please don't hate me b/c I'm beautiful.

alan....love...everyone loves optometrists

> steve, you started the "employers begin rehiring" thread FIFTEEN months ago.

Not to mention the whole "stampede of Manhattan condo buyers" thing.

Of course, SteveF keeps missing that he should have bought stocks all along to take advantage, not RE.

and this little ditti...
Oh where 'oh where has my little job gone
Oh where 'oh where could it be?
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/08/business/economy/08jobs.html?exprod=myyahoo

spunky not only bought Merrill Lynch and Citigroup and every new-dev condo he could get his hands on at the peak, he was a financial services headhunter.

How's that working out for you, steveF-ie?

Why am I still not optimistic?

I am hopeful the job market will continue to improve. Mostly, I want it to happen for the unemployed because it can be crushing from a personal standpoint. I also want it because an idle workforce is wasteful of our country's resources, and the growth of our country's productivity depends on it.

That being said, I don't think it will help you with your RE problem.

People who deal with consumers know that the 10% unemployed don't matter to their businesses, it's the 90% employed who are doing just fine. Take a look at the dichotomy of the performance of better vs. entry level-catering retailers if there's any question.

oh riversider....you are on a stupid run today of unusual proportions.

Wait, 9.4% will end up as artifact. Next month when the numbers get revised and the new rate is still closer to 10% and the revised number is close to 9.7%. I heard O bragging about the number and how 103K jobs is not all what we need but, the trend is your friend. What if it's really trending in the other direction.

Stevjhx - SteveF isn't spunky. How do I know? Spunky probably managed, like petrizitz, to already sell his properties. SteveF is still sitting on his! Else we'd never hear from him. Problem is, while stocks, bonds and commodities have rallied nicely, SteveF still can't get above water on his properties. But does he ever try!

9.4 is a result of the labor participation rate dropping, not job creation. Corporates are flush with cash and are very profitable but that may not necessarily result in job creation this time around. What incentive do business owners have to hire more? Is the output gap really narrowing? Is the US really where you want to build your next factory and hire more workers? Is M&A, stock buybacks, dividend payments, or investing overseas not an alternative? We had a structural loss in jobs from real estate and those jobs are not coming back. We can pray for a technology driven revival in American industry but at this point that doesnt look like a 2011 event. Maybe we can hope for a weaker dollar and have an export driven recovery. In my opinion that's our best hope.

we are facing a situation in which our country can no longer fund its own spending. we kept borrowing ourselves into tomorrow as we made an implicit agreement with China to let them be the world's factory as we kept consuming and borrowing from them. While we borrowed and consumed, they saved and invested. And at this rate in less than a decade 1/5 of our GDP will be going down the drain as interest expense...

China all the while has been rolling the duration of their funding shorter and shorter in tenor and can stop the party whenever they'd like to. This combined with the fact that we are going to run out of money as a country sometime in the next 4-5 months is a scary thought. We have a conservative congress unwilling to extend our debt ceiling so the only out we have is sharp cuts in govt spending, specifically defense spending + social security.

If we werent just recovering from the worst recession in the last 80 years this may not be as bad. Fiscal austerity during good times is usually prudent. But we are in a time when we need the gov't to spend and we need taxes lower to stimulate aggregate demand. We recklessly kept lowering taxes and increasing spending during the boom (thanks GW!) so we're going to pay for it now.

It's going to get uglier before it gets better. Feb or March we're going to have a sharp selloff in SPX as the budget issue starts making more headlines. It may come earlier if European credit meltdown continues in January.

One sign we haven't considered is that now maybe LICCdope has a job.

"In actual numbers, there are 7.24 million fewer jobs now than in December 2007.

If the economy adds 100,000 jobs per month, it will take about 72 months (6 years) to return to the December 2007 level. At 200,000 per month, it will take 36 months. At 300,000 per month(unlikely any time soon) it will take 2 years."

"And that doesn't include the need for about 125,000 job per month to offset population growth. It will be a long long uphill climb."

http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2011/01/seasonal-retail-hiring-rebound-in-2010.html

Have a nice day.

"...the need for about 125,000 job per month to offset population growth"

Don't worry about that. Who said you need job growth to lower unemployment rate? At the rate that people are giving up and dropping off the total work force last month, the unemployment rate will be back to 5% by November of this year.

"stevjhx - SteveF isn't spunky. How do I know? Spunky probably managed, like petrizitz, to already sell his properties. SteveF is still sitting on his! Else we'd never hear from him. Problem is, while stocks, bonds and commodities have rallied nicely, SteveF still can't get above water on his properties. But does he ever try!"

Funny.

The real unemployment rate - if you include folks who stopped looking - was 16% as reported on NY1.