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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Aug 4, 2007 3:57:25 GMT -6
Despite the alleged "increase" in jobs for the month of July of 92,000, total employment reported by the BLS actually declined -30,000 (from 146,140,000 in June down to 146,110,00 in July.) Maybe this under-reported and inconvenient truth had something to do with the stock decline on Friday (8/3/07). Also worth mentioning is the birth/death model addition to the employment report of 26,000. As has been pointed out by others, this addition seems completely unjustified in a slowing economy. The most obvious conflict comes from the previous additions of these "imputed" jobs to the construction jobs total. For the month of July 8,000 "imputed" jobs were added to the total for construction jobs (which still left a total construction job change of -12,000). Most people on this planet know that home construction is sinking rapidly. And it is not being compensated for by increases in commercial construction. Thus, it's difficult to accept the BLS's premise that employment in new construction business is greater than the jobs being lost. Home construction and spending are down over 20% for the year. Which makes a construction employment decline of at least 20% very likely. Yet the BLS stats show almost no decline in construction employment. The economy and the job situation are worsening. The government has continued to paper over these declines, hoping to deceive the American public. But they're running out of paper. Eventually the sorry state of affairs will become obvious to all. It's just a matter of time.
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Post by blueneck on Aug 4, 2007 5:39:52 GMT -6
I just don't get this huge push of commercial construction. Office buildings popping up all over the place at a time when there are plenty of existing vacancies and the new ones do not fill up either. What jobs are they building them for?- most of these types of jobs such as accounting, call centers and IT are rushing off to India. How does one make any money with a mostly vacant building?
Same with these strip malls, we have dozens of existing vacancies as well yet these are popping up all over too. On Nightly Business Report last night they said even the service sector had a net job loss this period. This is even more insidious as they build a center and the shops come in for a while, rather than maintain and rennovate the existing properties they just keep moving into new ones - contributing to suburban sprawl, and blighting the centers they leave.
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Aug 4, 2007 13:23:18 GMT -6
I've noticed exactly the same thing about the construction of new office buildings. There seem to be lot of them going up in Southern California, with almost no occupants.
A baseball batting range I used to go to has been taken down in the last year. The space is now occupied by 50-100 new offices-- with 0 occupancy.
Like homes, there is an abundance of office spaces. There just aren't enough people or businesses to rent them. And the owners of the office space refuse to drop rents to put people in those office spaces.
With a slowing economy, the demand for office spaces is not increasing. But apparently builders can take out loans to build them, and then pay their own salaries out of those loans.
It's interesting how many salaries are now being paid through borrowed money, rather than sales revenue. This is another paradigm of the 21st century's "new economy."
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Post by beachbumbob on Aug 4, 2007 15:30:03 GMT -6
can we say "chinese suckers??" they be holding those failing bonds
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