A couple of points that I didn’t have a chance to make in an earlier post. The U-6 measure of unemployment, which according to the BLS includes “total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total…
According to preliminary data released this morning by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. economy added a seasonally adjusted 120,000 jobs in November. The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate fell from 9% to 8.6%. That’s about the number of jobs…
As Georgia legislators prepare for the 2012 session, let’s hope they ignore distractions like the proposed bills that would place a heavier burden on the state’s laid-off workers. Lawmakers should be spending their time looking at ways to improve the…
Georgia is the only state in the country to have statistically significant job loss over the last year. A new report from the Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia predicts that it will be 2020 before Georgia…
Earlier today, I posted the latest data from the S&P/Case Shiller Home Price Indices, which showed Atlanta metro area home prices declining dramatically in September: “On a monthly basis, Atlanta actually posted a record low rate of -5.9% in September…
Periodically, after I have written about Georgia’s dismal employment picture, a reader asks something like this: “Well, we’re having the same problems that everyone else is having, right?” In the broadest sense that all states have faced difficult times in…
I’ve written a lot about increasing income disparity and wealth disparity in America. A consumer economy cannot thrive with such trends in place and worsening: with a larger and larger percentage of the population having little or no disposable income,…
The quarterly economic forecasts of Rajeev Dhawan, director of the Georgia State University Economic Forecasting Center, always deserve attention. He has consistently been a clear voice of reason amidst a lot of hype about the state’s economy. The AJC’s Atlanta…
I’ve reported routinely on the stagnating job market in Georgia generally and Savannah specifically. The jobs data has been getting gloomier of late, and today’s release of October data from the Georgia Department of Labor is pretty disturbing. The Savannah…
I’ve already posted this map from the Philadelphia Federal Reserve, which regularly updates its employment-based coincident and leading indices of economic activity: Note that that map is for September; we’ll get an October map in another week or so. Since…
I’ve repeatedly written about Georgia’s weak employment data. A recent study, highlighted in this piece in the WSJ, notes the extreme differences from state to state when it comes to regaining all the jobs lost during the recession and its…
From the Atlanta Business Chronicle’s Atlanta fourth-highest in recession job losses: Of the 100 largest American cities, Atlanta had the fourth-highest private-sector job losses from September 2007 through September 2011, according to an On Numbers analysis of new data from…
We need to add at least 100,000 jobs per month to the nation’s economy to keep pace with population growth, so it’s hard to get too excited about the data for October. From the Bureau of Labor Statistics: Nonfarm payroll…
The Daily Beast recently compiled a list “America’s Brokest Cities” using “data points weighted equally: the most recently available unemployment rate (August 2011), median household income, and average debt. Data is from a recent report by Experian and the Bureau…
