Even in the likely event that the fall in labor market participation is partially reversed in coming months, it is still indicative of the recession's continued impact on the labor market. Most of the relevant cyclical indicators in [Friday's] report support this more pessimistic interpretation, suggesting that the drop in unemployment does not imply the end of the recession. |
Explaining the unique characteristics of this unbalanced recovery is more like 'Murder on the Orient Express' than finding a smoking gun in somebody's hands. There are a lot of suspects. |
Firms have to be very concerned about rising prices. They're protecting their profit margins. They're going to be looking at every nook and cranny to absorb this increase. |
Firms were trying desperately to maintain the levels of output without expanding the work force, and in some cases contracting it. |
Folks are coming back into the labor market, but they're not finding jobs there. The tepid pace of job growth was too low to keep unemployment from rising. We're looking at a fairly weak recovery, at least initially. |
Folks at the top of the income scale definitely notice when they're paying $3.50 a gallon for gasoline. But for them, that doesn't necessarily mean they are going to have to cut back elsewhere, ... Younger families have lower incomes. |
Given the growth of the population and labor force and improvements in productivity, we need to be adding somewhere in the neighborhood of 150,000 jobs per month to nudge unemployment down. |
has primarily to do with the compensation the typical worker earns. |
He talks about lending a helping hand to the poor and disadvantaged. But these policies push the other way, toward lower wages and less racial inclusion. |
Home appreciation was offset by lousy wage growth and debt accumulation. |
However, a far larger gap exists when we compare net worth: minorities' net worth was about 27 percent of whites, about half the size of the income ratio. |
I and others have been looking desperately for silver linings in this tragedy and if Katrina were to motivate Congress to look at this issue seriously, that would be great. |
I don't see many firms that are that cash-constrained; they're customer-constrained. |
I think the fingerprints of a faltering job market are all over this report. We've got more people working, but they're failing to get ahead. |
I wouldn't be surprised if unemployment held constant or dropped a tenth of a percentage point. But will [that] signal we're heading back to a healthy labor market? No, because the economic fundamentals, in terms of growth, just aren't there. |