You Call This An Economic Recovery? 44 Million Americans On Food Stamps and 10 Other Reasons Why The, page 3

reply to post by ironfalcon

I just stumbled across these articles looking for something else.

They explain what the MSM is not telling us about the "RECOVERY"

This Goldman Sachs Guru Sees 2011 as 'the Year of the USA

Even Employment Could Pick Up

O'Neill anticipates strong stock market gains of 20% in the year ahead. And while the jobs picture has continued to struggle even as the market surprised to the upside, that could change as well. "The growth is likely to be strong and robust enough to lead to declining unemployment which, if correct, should mean that the worst of the social consequences of the credit crisis should start to ease," he wrote.

Bonds would get hit as yields rise in anticipation of growth, and the dollar could rally substantially, he predicted.

And the companion piece referenced: What the Rising Stock Market Doesn't Say About Jobs

...If the stock market reflected the entire economy, then Americans could cheer the new annual highs in equity prices as a harbinger of good times ahead.

But the stock market reflects only the outlook for corporate profits, not the economy as a whole...

Anemic Growth in Private Sector Jobs

...The unemployment number itself comes from the Household Survey, a phone canvas that asks people if they have a job, or if they're looking for a job. If you aren't employed but also aren't looking for a job, you don't get counted among the unemployed. Instead, you're a "discouraged worker" who no longer figures in the unemployment rate. If you worked even an hour or two that week, you're counted as employed....

The number of people "participating" in the economy as workers or job-seekers is the basis for the unemployment rate. If more people drop out of the labor force, then even if no jobs are created, the unemployment rate will decline....

Next, let's look at data from the ADP National Employment Report, a private sector estimate of total employment that breaks down the jobs data into small, medium and large businesses....

That means 7.75% of all private sector jobs vanished. Even though U.S. GDP is clocking in at a solid growth rate of 2.5%, the economy added only 221,000 private sector jobs in the six months from February to July 2010, according to the ADP data.

That's about half the annual growth estimated by the BLS Household Survey. But even the higher BLS estimate is nowhere close to the GDP's growth rate. If employment had risen 2.5% in the past year, the economy would have added 2.65 million jobs, not 819,000....

If we look at the data from July, 2008, just before the global financial crisis hit that September, the U.S. had almost 116 million nonfarm, private sector jobs. Two years later, in July 2010, that figure was almost 107 million jobs -- a decline of 9 million private sector jobs.

In other words we lost about 10% of our jobs and have "gained" 819,000 or less than 1% in the last year.