Both consumer spending and business investment growth slowed in the
third quarter.Measures of retail activity in October have largely
exceeded expectations, and holiday sales and hiring are projected to
rise above last year's levels.Yet Main Street isn't enjoying the party
on Wall Street, where the Dow Jones industrial average soared to a new
high Friday. Consumer confidence, as tracked by the University of
Michigan and Thomson Reuters,alligator shear
fell this month to its lowest level in nearly two years, the survey
group said Friday.And while housing prices are recovering, many workers
have yet to see substantial wage gains. The Labor Department report
Friday said average hourly earnings rose just 2 cents last month, to
$24.10, after increasing by 3 cents in September.
Analysts pointed out that the economy, after nearly 4 1/2 years of
recovery, still needs to create 1.5 million jobs to make up the 8.7
million that were lost between late 2007 and early 2010.The number of
unemployed last month stood at more than 11 million,alligator shear
and that doesn't include many who had dropped out of the job market
because they could not find adequate work or were too discouraged.
Nearly 4 out of 10 of the officially unemployed have been without work
for more than six months — double the percentage before the recession.At
the October pace of job creation, "it will still take five years to get
back to the pre-recession unemployment rate of 5%," said labor
economist Heidi Shierholz at the Economic Policy Institute in
Washington.
Still, Shierholz was pleasantly surprised by the strength of Friday's
report, saying the underlying trend of job growth now looks more like
200,000 a month than 150,000 a month."It's not gangbusters, but it's
better," she said.Whether the job numbers are good enough for the Fed
remains to be seen. Policymakers at the central bank are scheduled to
meet Dec. 17-18, so they will have one more monthly jobs report to
review before skin analyzer
considering a reduction in their $85-billion-a-month purchases of
Treasury and mortgage securities — a stimulus program aimed at holding
down long-term interest rates.
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