85,000 Jobs Lost in December
Based on the latest jobs report, is the glass half full, half empty or in shards on the floor? In December, the economy lost almost 100,000 jobs. Depending on your perspective, this is either:
1) WAY better than losing hundreds of thousands of jobs, as we witnessed monthly last winter.
2) A surprising but momentary setback after we gained 4,000 jobs in November.
3) Irrelevant; what really matters is that millions of Americans are out of work, many for unprecedented stretches, with little hope for imminent recovery.
Economists (who really are revealing these days that they don't know any more than the rest of us) agree on one issue here: we need millions of new jobs in order for our economy to recovery. MILLIONS. As long as we're cheering over a couple thousand gained here, sighing over a few thousand more lost here, we're missing the big picture. What are we going to do about substantial and prolonged job creation?
(This graph from the Center for Economic & Policy Research shows that in addition to closing out the decade with job losses, hours worked also declined by almost 4%.)
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