U.S. Companies Add Fewer-Than-Estimated 91,000 Workers in August, ADP Says

[Freddie Stubbs]

Source: Bloomberg

Companies in the U.S. added 91,000 workers to payrolls in August, according to a private survey.

The increase followed a revised 109,000 gain the prior month, according to data from ADP Employer Services. The median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News called for an advance of 100,000.

The economy needs to generate more jobs on a sustained basis in order to bring down unemployment, which has been at 9 percent or higher in 25 of the past 27 months. A Labor Department report in two days is projected to show businesses added 100,000 jobs in August, down from a 154,000 increase in July, according to the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg.

“The labor market continues to struggle,” Sean Incremona, a senior economist at 4Cast Inc. in New York, said before the report. “There is too much uncertainty that is restraining firms from committing resources to hiring.”

Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-31/u-s-companies-add-fewer-than-estimated-91-000-workers-in-august-adp-says.html

[Enrique]

1. "there's too much uncertainty..."

:eyes:

[MannyGoldstein]

2. Uncertainty as to whether consumers will have money to buy stuff

This is a chicken-and-egg situation - businesses need demand to hire more people, but people need jobs to create demand. Precisely where Keynsian pump-priming through government spending is needed. Instead, all we get is insanity from the Right, and "yes we will obey the Republicans, you FDR Democrats can take a flying fuck" from elected Democrats.

Our country is broken.

[No Elephants]

5. What's been done so far has been the wrong thing, IMO.

We need federal JOBS, not an alleged jobs program of more privatization and more tax cuts and loopholes. And MORE regulation, not less. Both those things were FDR.

Hoover expected rich volunteers to help the poor. That's close to hoping that, if we only make big business rich and happy enough by cutting enough regulations and enough taxes and giving them enough loopholes and tax incentives, they'll start hiring---in the U.S.

Along comes the New York Times today with a piece by Joe Nocera about Obama’s financial regulatory “reform” plan that’s particularly interesting in tandem with Baker’s piece:

Three quarters of a century ago, President Franklin Roosevelt earned the undying enmity of Wall Street when he used his enormous popularity to push through a series of radical regulatory reforms that completely changed the norms of the financial industry. Wall Street hated the reforms, of course, but Roosevelt didn’t care. Wall Street and the financial industry had engaged in practices they shouldn’t have, and had helped lead the country into the Great Depression. Those practices had to be stopped. To the president, that’s all that mattered.

On Wednesday, President Obama unveiled what he described as “a sweeping overhaul of the financial regulatory system, a transformation on a scale not seen since the reforms that followed the Great Depression.” In terms of the sheer number of proposals, outlined in an 88-page document the administration released on Tuesday, that is undoubtedly true. But in terms of the scope and breadth of the Obama plan — and more important, in terms of its overall effect on Wall Street’s modus operandi — it’s not even close to what Roosevelt accomplished during the Great Depression.

http://harpers.org/archive/2009/06/hbc-90005235

[Fuddnik]

3. One thing I'm certain about.

ADP is ALWAYS wrong on the optimistic side. I don't know why anyone even bothers to listen to them.

Another certainty. It's worse.

[cstanleytech]

4. When will the idiots learn that trickle- down economics without a stick in place

to encourage the wealthy to actually hire more people dont work, they didnt work when Ronald Reagan tried it nor did they work in George (The Shrub) Bush JR tried it and for that matter they didnt work when Obama extended them.

[valerief]

6. All the action is overseas. That's where the rich's tax cuts are going. nt