MAY JOBS REPORT DISASTER: UNEMPLOYMENT HITS 9.1%

MAY JOBS REPORT DISASTER: UNEMPLOYMENT HITS 9.1%.

MAY JOBS REPORT DISASTER: UNEMPLOYMENT HITS 9.1%

As a follow-up to several of my posts:

• THE SCARIEST JOBS CHART EVER
• Thoughts from an Unemployed Professional

Here is the current US economic  situation as of today…  There is no joy in Mudville!

It’s Friday, June 3^rd, the end of week 23 and the May jobs report is out.  As others have said, it is a disaster!  Briefly:

•  The unemployment rate is now 9.1%, but the average work week has risen from 34.3 to 34.4 hours per week.  Average hourly earnings grew 0.3% vs. expectations of 0.2%.  This is more evidence that additional people are not being hired; existing workers are
  worked harder!
• There were just 54,000 new jobs created in May, 2011.  The forecast was 154,000 – three times reality.  I need to get a set of those rose-colored glasses that they wear in Washington DC.  (Along with one of those white fedoras that Mat Lauer sported in Rome this week!)
• Private sector jobs?   No joy; just 83,000 jobs were created and again, way below expectations.
• Manufacturing employment went down 5,000 jobs.  This is the very sector we need to pull us out of this longest-running recession in modern times!

You can read the full Bureau of Labor Statistic report, ‘THE EMPLOYMENT SITUATION — MAY 2011’ here.

You can read Joe Weisenthal’s excellent report, May Jobs Report Disaster – Unemployment reaches 9.1% in Business Insider.

From my side of the peninsula, a double dip recession is inevitable!  Mind you that I am no economist but common sense tells me that with interest rates near zero (no chance of lowering them further) and the fact that almost half of the current mortgages in many areas of our country are ‘underwater’, and manufacturing jobs gone for good, how can you come up with any other conclusion?

If you have any money available for investment, buy gold or silver.  I’d love to tell you to get back into the stock or bond markets, (futures are sliding hard on the news today), I just can’t in good conscience tell you to do anything else!

What a mess!

Cliff