Economy lost another 533,000 jobs in Nov.

[groovedaddy]

Worst month since December 1974 brings total this year to 1.9 million

WASHINGTON - Skittish employers slashed 533,000 jobs in November, the most in 34 years, catapulting the unemployment rate to 6.7 percent, dramatic proof the country is careening deeper into recession.

The new figures, released by the Labor Department Friday, showed the crucial employment market deteriorating at an alarmingly rapid clip, and handed Americans some more grim news right before the holidays.

As companies throttled back hiring, the unemployment rate bolted from 6.5 percent in October to 6.7 percent last month, a 15-year high.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28067433?GT1=43001

[snappyturtle]

1. What makes this even worse is the lack of creation of new jobs that

we need every month to fulfill the numbers needed for new people entering the job market for the first time. I've heard that number to be 150,000/mo. that's another 1,650,000 jobs! So that's over 3,500,000 jobs lost and not created in the last calendar year.

[Citizen Number 9]

2. "Unemployment rate" seeming even more erratic than usual

We've been losing roughly the same large number of jobs every month, yet some months the rate goes up a couple tenths, and in others it goes up as much as four tenths.

For example, the rate just went up two tenths on loss of 533,000 jobs, but between Sept and October it went from 6.1% to 6.5%, although I don't recall a job loss of a million or more.

I thought the "jobs loss" report was a NET number. There have to be some strange things going on in the underlying numbers to jerk these percentages around.

[pinqy]

3. Different measurements

The "job loss" figures come from the Current Employment Survey, which is a payroll survey of establishments. It does not include farm workers, people working in private households, or the self-employed. The Unemployment Rate comes from the Current Population Survey, which is a household survey. The Unemployment Rate is the number of unemployed (Those over 16 who did not work in the reference week, want to work, have actively looked for work in the last 4 weeks, and are available to work in the next 2 weeks) divided by the number of unemployed plus the employed (those over 16 not in the military who worked at least 1 hour in the reference week). That number of employed is from the household survey, not the payroll survey. The two numbers are never the same.

[sarcasmo]

4. Wait until the December numbers come out, it will be about that same #.