Feeling the pinch? [updated]
[If you read popular blogs, skip this post because I quote directly from them. I have friends and family who come here and don't read other blogs, so this is a post for them. Usually I'd do my own research, but I'm just lazy tonight.]
On jobs:
1,000 jobs created in December.
Let me say that again. 1,000 jobs were created in December. In all of the U.S.
The expectations were 100,000 to 150,000 new jobs for the holiday season.
But no. We came in slightly under those estimates. For a total of 1,000.
...And to further add insult to injury, November's job growth of 57,000 was revised downward to 43,000.
He goes on to quote an article discussing our weakening dollar.
The dollar fell to a record low against the euro on Friday following a shockingly weaker than expected report showing U.S. nonfarm payrolls increased by only 1,000 jobs in December.
...The news triggered a sharp sell-off in the dollar against most key rivals. The greenback had been broadly higher just ahead of the jobs report.
Want more great news? Atrios gives you some from the Slacktivist.
Most Americans have more debt on their credit cards than money in their mutual funds.
But remember, Bush says that economy's doing great!
Update: While I'm plagiarizing for my friends, I'll quote something else Atrios stated better then I could:
I'm not going to question the characters of the fine fine career professionals who worker at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. I'm sure they're above taking part in any manipulation of the statistics for political purposes. But, I would like to point out that it was really convenient that the October and November jobs estimates were revised downwards in the latest reports. Otherwise, rather than 1,000 job increase we saw we could have seen a 50,000 or more job loss for the month. That wouldn't really change the economic picture in a substantial way, but it would change the headlines.
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