90 seconds at 9 am: Eyes on jobs

90 seconds at 9 am: Jobs growth in the US surprises with prior period revisions higher too; iPhone strikes continue; Aussie construction falling fast; NZ$ stays high

8th Oct 12, 8:51am by David Chaston

Here's my summary of the key news overnight in 90 seconds at 9 am, including news the US unemployment rate fell sharply in September to its lowest level since January 2009, suggesting that summer job growth was stronger than previously thought and providing new fodder for their presidential race that has focused on competing views of the nation's economic health.

This latest data shows a labour market that has perked up somewhat since the spring but is still only growing modestly.

The US unemployment rate slid to 7.8%, falling below 8% for the first time since President Obama's election.

The rate has fallen half a percentage point in theee month; it was 8.3% in July.

Employers there added a seasonally adjusted 114,000 jobs in September, but there were significant data revisions for previous months.

The new figures showed that the US added 181,000 jobs in July and 142,000 jobs in August, and that third-quarter job growth was far higher than in the spring.

In China, Foxconn, the assembler of Apple's iPhones, had to stop production for the second time in as many weeks after factory-line workers at one of its plants protested against the pressure of increased quality-control measures.

In Australia, their building industry shrank in September by the most in 12 months, led by a deepening downturn in residential and commercial construction, according to an industry group survey.

The NZ$ starts this week at 81.8 USc and just under 73 on the TWI. These levels are almost the same as the average rates for September.

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12 Comments

by powerdownkiwi | 8th Oct 12, 10:08am 1349644087

What constitutes a 'job' in the US?

Does it vary from State to State? Does the minimum wage vary ditto? What are we lauding here?

by Christov | 8th Oct 12, 10:42am 1349646133

Hey come on PDK, you don't think Key pulls that long bow for all it's worth, if it wasn't for immigration to Aus...these boys would need to employ an army of spin to tweak the stats here....

Being in the business of ' looking for a job' is now considered an occupation, or a form of retraining in the least.

by gelous | 8th Oct 12, 10:26am 1349645198

Remind me - what is the variance on the US jobs data?

by steven | 8th Oct 12, 12:55pm 1349654144

Well you can ignore the error if you take a trend and that trend shows an improvement.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/the-payroll-data/

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/06/constant-demography-employm…

Its arguably not much but it is positive.

It would be interesting to compare that to change to debt changes and petrol price changes.

regards

by Christov | 8th Oct 12, 10:36am 1349645800

The data while suspicious in it's timing, will be a relief for the Democrats, another finger and toe hold for Bernanke, an infusion for the Speculative Markets, and some great manure for the garden if newsprint is still biodegradable.

Ya just rub the lamp and it comes up ...shinning.

by Christov | 8th Oct 12, 12:01pm 1349650861

I won't Hugh.....their ability to recover though, will be continually hampered by systemic flaws in fiscal policy combined with their willingness to expose their own economy to exterior pressures though Foreign Policy misjudgements. As I said here once before Hugh ,the U.S. dollar economy is now far far bigger than the U.S. economy.....resulting in an inevitable conflict of wellbeing for the smaller of the two. I realize the U.S. has entrenched their position in regard Foreign Policy, but until there is a reduction in Global affairs they are prepared to financially commit to...the local economy will be exposed to outside shocks.

by Roger Witherspoon | 8th Oct 12, 12:48pm 1349653696

I went to a talk recently given by the US ambassador to NZ. Apparently they have just started to plan Foreign Policy on a four year review basis, like the military already do. They also plan to coordinate their Foreign Policy with the military policy.

The talk gave me a unique insight into why US Foriegn Policy appears so chaotic; because it is chaotic. Scariest talk I've been to in a while.

by steven | 8th Oct 12, 1:01pm 1349654468

However texas is apparantly regarded as a low wage state and that attracts companies, which in turn attracts employees. So doing a single city look at and then projecting that State and indeed country wide seems very dubious.

In terms of US recovery I think its a pig in a poke....they dont have enough energy or other materials long term....they have used them mostly up.

The countries likely to do better are the ones left with natural resources...though once they are used up they also face the same problem....

regards

by speckles | 8th Oct 12, 12:53pm 1349654002

The microeconomic stats across my desk show for the seven key States, jobs up however income per person down per new employees..the middle class crunch continues i.e constant theme is accepting jobs at a lower income level

by prosperopink | 8th Oct 12, 4:56pm 1349668605

from infowars.com

Looking at job growth another way?

The number of Americans with a job fell by 195,000 in July.

Then it fell by another 119,000 in August.

But somehow in September it miraculously exploded in the other direction and 873,000 jobs were added to the economy?

If you believe that, I have a bridge that I want to sell you.

Somehow, the largest increase in jobs in 29 years happened just when Barack Obama needed it the most.

Nah, that doesn’t sound fishy to me at all.

We are being told that a big reason for the huge increase was the number of Americans working part-time for “economic reasons”. That number surged from 8.0 million in August to 8.6 million in September.

Why the sudden jump?

Nobody can really explain it.

And if you look at the U6 unemployment rate, nothing has really changed at all. U6 is still at 14.7 percent just like it was last month.

But the media is not going to talk about the U6 rate. Instead, all of the headlines are going to be about “7.8 percent”.

According to the survey of employers, the U.S. economy added fewer jobs in September than it did in August, and it added fewer jobs in August than it did in July.

So according to the survey of employers, the employment situation in the United States is getting worse.

But according to the household survey, we just had the greatest month of job creation since the first term of Ronald Reagan.

Something does not add up.

by Andrewj | 8th Dec 12, 10:41am 1354916503

http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=214659

by Colin Riden | 8th Dec 12, 11:51am 1354920663

Sobering data Andrew - lets see what version David runs with on Monday.