December job numbers are a big ol’ beat.
The U.S. created 292,000 new jobs in December, as hiring sped up toward the end of the year. Economists polled by MarketWatch had expected a gain of 215,000 nonfarm jobs. The unemployment rate remained at 5%, largely because almost a half-million people joined the labor force.
Employment gains for November and October, meanwhile, were revised up by a combined 50,000, the Labor Department said Friday. The government said 252,000 new jobs were created in November instead of 211,000. October’s gain was raised to 307,000 from 298,000, marking the biggest increase of 2015.
In a surprise, average hourly wages paid to American workers fell a penny to $25.24. Still, hourly pay has risen 2.5% in the past 12 months, matching a six-and-a-half-year high. The amount of time people worked each week was unchanged at 34.5 hours. The labor-force participation rate rose a tick to 62.6%.
So for 2015 we had some damn good numbers on the job creation front and 70 straight months of private sector job growth over the last six years. Wages are starting to come around too.
How the Fed’s rate hike will affect things in 2016, we’ll see.
Open thread.
Baud
Yeah, and China is out there.
I still say we’d be in a Golden Age right now if the country hadn’t turned its back to Democrats in 2010.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone :)
rikyrah
Oh that Obama….he’s ruining the economy….
LOL
I will continue to ask this question:
What would our economy look like if one political party had NOT decided to commit ECONOMIC TREASON against this country beginning January 20, 2009?
Baud
I wonder if this
is related to this
Baud
@rikyrah:
Worth repeating. Golden Age.
rikyrah
They POISONED these people.
POISONED THEM.
………….
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 1/7/16
Water donations run dry in Flint, no action from Governor Snyder
Stephainie Gosk, NBC News correspondent, talks with Rachel Maddow about how the people of Flint have been relying on scarce water donations to replace their toxic water supply as Governor Rick Snyder has increased the amount he’s talking about the crisis without taking any actual short-term action for the people of Flint who are without options.
MattF
I blame Obama.
Patricia Kayden
Thank you once again, President Obama.
Germy
On PBS:
Lamh36
said last night I don’t care who her husband was…the widow Kyle was a high profile plant just so she could be splashed over the media as a high profile but unofficial surrogate for NRA and the pro-gun lobby…I don’t care how “polite” she was. Last night was just her debut.
So now just here we see her in CNN morning news with the tag line that she “challenged” Obama…uh huh
Oh please her “we don’t outlaw murder” question last was handled as the misinformed BS question it was by POTUS and Obama won the night at the townhall.
rikyrah
UH HUH
UH HUH
…………….
GOP Rep. Moves To Censure Obama Over Executive Action On Guns
By ALLEGRA KIRKLAND
Published JANUARY 7, 2016, 2:06 PM EST
Staunch gun rights advocate Rep. Steven Palazzo (R-MS) introduced a resolution on Wednesday to “censure and condemn” President Barack Obama over his newly announced executive actions on gun control.
“For seven years, the President has gradually expanded his powers through executive overreach,” the Mississippi lawmaker wrote in a statement published on his website. “His actions this week to take away the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens is just the latest, if not most egregious, violation of the separation of powers found in the United States Constitution.”
The executive actions announced Tuesday by the president include expanding background checks for gun purchases and investing $500 million in mental health treatment.
While gun reformers see the actions as small but necessary steps towards regulating firearms in the United States, Second Amendment advocates like Palazzo have dismissed the actions as unhelpful overreach by the executive branch.
As the National Constitution Center notes on its blog, censuring a government official amounts to little more than a “public shaming.” But as TPM previously reported, when Republicans in Congress were considering censuring Obama in late 2014 over his executive actions on immigration, censuring a President actually may run afoul of the Constitution.
Gin & Tonic
The formatting on the thread below this one is fucked.
Amir Khalid
What is the meaning of this term I keep seeing, “constitutional carry”? Is it the position that every American has a right to carry any type of gun, anywhere they please, concealed or not, without any restriction at all? Because that sounds nuts.
raven
@Amir Khalid:
OzarkHillbilly
@Amir Khalid: Yes, that is the position a number of people hold.
geg6
Okay, it is currently 55F in my office. And no guarantees that the heat will come on any time soon. Or even within the next 4 hours. Why did they make me come in?
Benw
@Baud: President C3PO would usher in a gold-plated age.
VOTE DROID 2016
GregB
I simply can’t believe these economic numbers. We all know that the Obamacare was a job killing bill. John Boehner told us over and over.
FlyingToaster
@OzarkHillbilly: And the people who want to carry their handgun everywhere get all butthurt when they find out that will get them arrested in [fill in the blank state].
Here in the People’s Republic, we don’t allow open carry, unless you’re wearing a fucking uniform. And if you’re from out of state, you’ll have a very difficult time convincing one of our police chiefs to give you a permit.
Interestingly, our tourism economy doesn’t seem to be suffering; maybe it’s all those furriners coming to see our revolutionary sites. Or those jamokes ain’t got no money anyhow.
wormtown
Coach Z!
OzarkHillbilly
Police Fatally Shoot Armed Man Ranting About Obama’s Gun Control Policy
I blame Obama.
enon
a more detailed look at zero hedge (analysis is good; comments read like stormfront) indicates most of these jobs are bartender/restaurant staff:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-01-08/why-no-wage-growth-multiple-jobholders-surge-highest-august-2008
Peale
Who is the worst person this week? Rick Snyder or Rahm Emmanuel? Are the environmental protection departments of Michigan perhaps worse for their citizens than any police department? I think the competition might be Rio de Janeiro at the moment.
SiubhanDuinne
@geg6:
It seems particularly shortsighted, because chances are good that at least some of your co-workers (I hope not you!) will end up getting sick and have to take several days off as a result.
OzarkHillbilly
@Peale:
That’s easy! Obama.
Botsplainer
Not at my jorb right now. At vet with sick dog.
OzarkHillbilly
Oh. My. Farcking. Dawg. My state makes me so proud: House Bill No. 2059:
Top THAT Louisiana.
hattip to Shakezula at LGM.
Botsplainer
@enon:
Boomers need lots of service. They got the best of educational spending, lavish investment in infrastructure, and 2/3 were conservative. As they blow the inheritance of granny, a megashitton of their investments and home equity and social security money on themselves, remember that being largely conservative, they’ve stubbornly opposed reinvestment and tax increases.
PurpleGirl
@Botsplainer: Poor doggie, hope it isn’t anything serious.
Tim C.
Every time someone does a Homestar joke, I smile. thanks. :)
Gin & Tonic
@enon: Zero hedge has been a nut farm for quite a while now.
Amir Khalid
@Baud:
How significant is a one-cent drop in the average hourly wage? Is it within the margin of error?
GregB
@Gin & Tonic:
I checked Zero Hedge and there was some reply post referring to the President as a “Ni**er in the first few posts.
enon
@Gin & Tonic: i find the posts often to be a bit more useful with the detail; but goddamn, the comments are nothing but off the charts white rage … like i said, they read like stormfront.
Peale
@enon:
You mean the types of jobs that are created to fill demand from an increased number of people able to afford a night out?
OzarkHillbilly
@Amir Khalid: There is serious talk of getting rid of the penny. That’s how serious a penny drop in wages is.
FlyingToaster
@OzarkHillbilly:
…
There’s a reason I left in 1979, and didn’t stop until I reached the ocean. [Mostly, it was the religious whack-jobs I went to HS with that started me searching for out-of-state schools. And now they’re running the state.]
WTF is going on in Jeff City these days? First the Limbaugh bust, and now hook-ups categorized as a “gift”. All while the place is falling down around them. Yeebus.
pluege
“How the Fed’s rate hike will affect things in 2016, we’ll see.”
the Fed will hike again and gasoline prices will increase dramatically in the spring. Both moves have nothing to do with the markets, however and everything to do with the US presidential election in the fall.
The plutocrats’ goal is to have a tanking economy in the fall to help the republicans, giving them lots’ of obama/Democrats bad for the economy and doom and gloom talking points. In other words, 2016 will be 2000 deja vu.
People have short memories and most people have not benefitted from the current economic improvements. Anything less than stellar economic performance during late summer and fall will be sold as disastrous Democratic mismanagement. Dumb people will be very vulnerable to the plutocrats exaggerations and lies.
Just One More Canuck
@OzarkHillbilly: I think my favourite part of that section is, “The reporting of sexual relations for purposes of this subdivision shall not require a dollar valuation.” How would you go about putting a fair market value on that?
Tripod
@Peale:
Manufacturing = hard working white men
Restaurant & retail = woman, minorities & gays
rikyrah
New Orleanian of the Year 2015: Leah Chase
On the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, we salute a civil rights pioneer
by Helen Freund
January 04, 2016
With its first issue of each year, Gambit honors a New Orleanian of the Year for all he or she has done for the city. This year’s honoree is a familiar one: Leah Chase, the pioneering chef who turns 93 this week and who still can be found working at her iconic Treme restaurant, Dooky Chase’s.
Though many are familiar with Chase’s gumbo, greens and hospitality, her role in achieving equality for African-Americans is less discussed, at least by those who have bestowed upon her some of the nation’s highest culinary awards for her Creole cuisine.
On this, the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, we honor Leah Chase for setting a particularly special table: one where much of the Southern civil rights movement was planned.
You won’t see her memorialized in grainy black-and-white photographs of civil rights protests, holding up protest signs or sitting handcuffed beneath the scornful gaze of baton-wielding police officers. But in June 2014, when more than 100 veterans of the Louisiana civil rights movement gathered in New Orleans to commemorate the Freedom Summer and honor the civil rights activists of the 1960s, it was Leah Chase’s restaurant that everyone remembered.
”It was just a place where we felt safe,” recalled Doratha “Dodie” Smith-Simmons, a key figure in the civil rights movement who was a Freedom Rider and member of the New Orleans chapter of Congress of Racial Equality (CORE).
”For a lot of the people and students who came down here to work on voter registration, their fondest memory was of going to Dooky Chase’s for a meal,” Smith-Simmons says. “Because of what Leah and her husband did, people didn’t forget that.”
2015 marked the 50th anniversary of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, a crowning achievement of the civil rights movement that prohibited racial discrimination in voting. Its passage came a year after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and in the years leading up to both historic events, Dooky Chase’s became a well-known meeting place for leaders and activists.
Germy
@Tripod:
I keep reading that all the manufacturing jobs have “gone away” (china). Does this explain all the angry formerly-hard-working white men keeping tRump huge in the poles?
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@FlyingToaster:
I live 20 minutes east of Jeff City and work here. “Falling down around them” is a feature, not a bug. Remember that the batshit, insane legislature has a serious case of Kansas Envy, thus, are trying to out-Brownback, Brownback. The only thing standing between them and that lofty goal is our moderate Republican, term-limited, governor, Jay Nixon (D).
As for the sex stuff, quite frankly this is nothing new. Having lived here 20 years, this crap always happened but the long-term pols knew how to keep it quiet because it hurt their reelection chances. Now since everybody is term-limited, these yahoos don’t have to worry about much back home because they’ve gerrymandered their districts into re-election impunity until they’re term-limited out. I’ve actually heard at least two of these assholes specifically say “oh, we’ll pass this now and don’t have to worry about the long term implications since we’ll be term-limited out” in regards to certain legislation.
Germy
@pluege:
Did you see this?
Could a Global Economic Slowdown Undo Hillary Clinton?
Matt McIrvin
@Germy: It’s a large part of it! And it explains a bunch of other stuff going all the way back to the northern branch of the Reagan Democrats.
There was a period of a couple of decades or so in the mid-20th century when a man could support a family in comfortable middle-class style on a factory job. It did not last long, and it may never have been sustainable, but there was a lot of good in that arrangement. But it was also, by modern standards, a racially exclusive and gender-limited version of the American Dream; the neighborhoods kept out black people and women were limited to a subordinate role. And when it started to disintegrate, all sorts of resentments got mixed together.
enon
@Germy: idk… likely to include all of those manufacturing plants in cities like detroit and flint michigan, or the mills jobs in the southern states that employed significant numbers of black americans; but have now been hollowed out and left abandoned.
Peale says:
January 8, 2016 at 10:54 am: no, i’m referring to those dunkin donut/sub-minimum wage jobs, where employees are dependent on tips instead of a paycheck to survive.
Germy
@Matt McIrvin:
I remember reading somewhere that it was the reason for the rise of Rock ‘n Roll music. The working class became the tastemakers.
What bugs me is how the formerly-comfortable workers place all the blame in all the wrong places. And vote for people who’ll push them down even lower.
raven
@rikyrah: BB and Van even sang about it!
Another Holocene Human
@Baud: Hourly wages probably dropped due to employers hiring more employees rather than relying on overtime. During the Great Recession and even for years afterwards employers just leaned on their employees to do shedloads of overtime rather than hire more employees.
Another Holocene Human
@rikyrah: Sick.
cintibud
@Germy: I’m skeptical about that. Not because there’s a shortage of plutocrats who would trash the economy to further their own goals, but because what more could be done that the GOP isn’t already trying to do? If they refuse to raise the debt limit and the economy crashes, won’t that be seen as the GOP’s fault (by 50+% of voters, that is)? If things start going south couldn’t a Democratic candidate get a lot of political capital by vowing “no bailouts to the banks” and urging more financial reforms? (Hard to say if that would be enough, but I think a strong anti-plutocrat case could be made). Besides, I doubt Janet Yellen will be trying to sabotage the man who appointed her.
Not saying the bottom can’t drop out, just that I don’t think that can be engineered any more that has already been done. Still could make a big difference in the election.
catclub
@enon:
The analysis is somehow always negative. It is often accurate.
I admit they often do present facts.
Another Holocene Human
@Germy: Some of those jobs went away with the buggy whip. Robots weld carbodies now … open pit coal mining kills jobs along with the environment … computers sent millions to the unemployment lines.
China got our textile industry first, and that was dominated by women. Steel is another story, but that was directly ceded to Canada by W as a fuck you to a state that voted against him.
Ruckus
@Germy:
It’s quite common for people to hit upon the first thing that might cause a problem, whatever that problem might be, the easy answer so to speak. It’s usually wrong and today (and possibly forever) in politics they also get told the wrong answer and then that wrong answer is reinforced. Guns are not the problem, minorities are taking your jobs, etc, etc. People have gotten so used to this that one can’t even explain why they’ve come up with the wrong answer.
Shorter.
Simple people come up with simple answers to not quite so simple issues because it’s easy, fast and who cares if it’s wrong.
Another Holocene Human
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage: Term limits are a scam. They benefit one party: big money special interests. They fuck over citizen interests, almost as if they were designed … oh wait.
catclub
@pluege:
So they also manufactured a tanking economy in 2008, right? To ensure Obama gets elected.
1. The economy has to be tanking well before the fall.
2. I will be very surprised if gas prices spike up. They spiked up in summer 2008. was that also to help the GOP
get re-elected?
These plutocrats don’t seem so terribly competent.
Sherparick
@rikyrah: Yea, Thanks Obama. The Kenyan Muslim Usurper’s plan to destroy the country by taking it out of the Great Recession is truly diabolical. Almost as bad as that archfiend FDR’s creation of the New Deal and two generations of prosperity.
(One of the things that left me truly gobsmacked, and realizing that most right wingers live in an alternate reality, is the Ronald Reagan’s famous or infamous 1964 speech for Barry Goldwater. In it, he does not describe the country as it existed in 1964, a country near the peak post war prosperity and, broadly shared; a country that had defeated two wicked and powerful nations across two oceans in the greatest war in human history, a country that bestrode the world in a (mostly) benevolent empire, while hemming in and containing its only rival on a path that 25 years later would result in its rival non-violent defeat and dissolution, (the country was about to hit a big pothole called Vietnam, but nothing in this speech would have steered us away from that moral, political, and military catastrophe). Instead, he describes a country in an apparent economic crisis, about to being overwhelmed by sinister foreign enemies, aided by knaves, fools, and traitors, who just so happen to dominate the Democratic Party. https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?p=ronald+reagan%27s+1964+speech+for+goldwater&ei=UTF-8&hspart=mozilla&hsimp=yhs-004
Wing nuts then, wing nuts now, wing nuts forever. Sadly, there is no such thing as “peak” wingnut.
FlyingToaster
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
Oh FFS. I grew up in KC — Waldo in the 60s and Clayton Addition in the 70s — and the Kansas side had shit-all, including dishwater beer for 18-year-olds at Shoneys and nothing to do except go to Missouri.
Don’t these people have children or grandchildren or neighbors? Is the concept of a social contract too advanced (seeing that most kids master it in kindergarten)?
Matt McIrvin
@catclub: My impression from reading people like DeLong and Paul Krugman is that they think Zero Hedge’s analyses are increasingly unhinged, and are sliding gradually into something close to Austrian economics, in the name of DOOOOOMMMM.
And DeLong in particular is hardly a guy with a rosy view of current economic policy.
chopper
@enon:
ah yes, “the Natural News of finance blogs”.