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A generally encouraging jobs report was released Thursday, inspiring some confidence that the limping economy was recovering. According to Forbes:
The Bureau of Labor Statistics released a surprisingly strong jobs report Thursday morning.
Employers added 288,000 jobs in June, significantly more than the 215,000 economists were anticipating. The unemployment rate, which is drawn from a different survey of households, dropped from 6.3% to 6.1% the lowest rate since September 2008.
Immediately following the news the S&P 500, The Dow Jones Industrial Average and Nasdaq Composite were in the green, continuing positive trends seen leading up to the pre-bell release. The Dow crossed 17,000 for the first time ever seconds after the opening bell before settling around 17,050.
The May payroll number was revised up from plus 217,000 jobs to plus 224,000. April’s employment number was also revised from 282,000 jobs added to 304,000. Total employment gains those months were therefore 29,000 higher than BLS — a division of the Department of Labor — previously reported. Job growth averaged 272,000 for the last three months.
“This was a strong report any way you slice it,” wrote RBS U.S. Economist Omair Sharif in a note on the news. Sharif pointed out that the unemployment rate is “where the Fed thought we would be at year-end, and it’s only June.”
The New York Times' Neil Irwin writes that while the numbers are indeed inspiring, there is good reason to be cautious. The job market has periodically experienced an errant, solid quarter only to plummet again:
So the reasons I’m saving the fireworks for the July 4 holiday, rather than this jobs report, is not because there is some obvious soft underbelly. It’s because we’ve kind of seen this before.
Read the full story: www.reason.com
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Actually, as the last employment figures show, the Obama promise is actually working. Fastest rate of job growth since 1990's. Too bad the GOP is so busy hamstringing our recovery to make Obama look bad, otherwise we'd all be better off by now. And that explains Congress' multi-year abysmal rating by the citizenry. In fact, a recent poll shows 72% of Americans feel their government is out of touch with them and is not interested in their betterment. Says it all. It isn't Obama, it's the Republican House that is screwing the pooch.
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