Economy Booming: Massive Job Growth in April

[Aristotle]

REUTERS:

Employers added 288,000 jobs to their payrolls in April as the nation's unemployment rate slipped to 5.6 percent, reinforcing hopes for a sustained turnaround in the jobs market that had lagged for so long.

Payrolls have risen now for eight straight months, with 867,000 new jobs created so far this year, the Labor Department reported Friday.

...

The nation's struggling factories also appear to be turning around. Based on Labor Department revisions, the manufacturing sector added jobs for three straight months, including 21,000 in April. For the year, manufacturing payrolls are up by 27,000 overall.

Great news!

As usual, Threshold is an interesting microcosm of the US and global economy. A lot of Threshers who had trouble finding jobs in the past couple years (since the tech crash) have become gainfully employed in the last 6 months. Congrats all!

[Nemene]

Yep. Let's just hope the government doesn't make it into a bust when goods start costing to much for America to be as competitive on the world market. We need stability, not a constant boom bust system.

And aside from my dismal predictions/warnings, congratulations to everyone on getting jobs, etc

[Frobozz]

Originally posted by Nemene
Yep. Let's just hope the government doesn't make it into a bust when goods start costing to much for America to be as competitive on the world market. We need stability, not a constant boom bust system.

And aside from my dismal predictions/warnings, congratulations to everyone on getting jobs, etc

I dont know what to say to that. In what ways do we have a constant 'boom bust' system?

[Aristotle]

Originally posted by Nemene
We need stability, not a constant boom bust system.

It is funny how so many people think this about our modern economy. Our major economic indicators vary about 3-4% from the depth of a recision to the height of a "boom."

30-40 years ago, you'd be looking at swings of 20-40%. Now *that* is a boom/bust system.

Obviously, you always want the economy to be perfect, but the degree to which we have managed to flatten the curve over the last 20 years is pretty darn impressive.

[Nemene]

Compared to Britain's roughly 1.9% variance, America's roughly 4.5% is quite large. This does have telling effects on an economy.

Though I do agree, it is ten, if not twenty times better than it was 20-30 years ago.

[Aristotle]

Originally posted by Nemene
Compared to Britain's roughly 1.9% variance, America's roughly 4.5% is quite large. This does have telling effects on an economy.

Can you cite this please?

I don't know what America's variance is in economic indictators from recession to expansion, but it isn't boom bust as you claimed. Now you're turning this into Country A vs. Country B which is an entirely different issue.

You said the US follows a boom/bust cycle, and the facts just don't support that.

If you really want to compare the health of the American economy to the British economy, you realize you're going to get slaughtered, right?

[Enosekel]

Things do look promising, I would say. In the industry I work in, our profits are very much influenced by the successes and failures of large businesses/corporations. Whenever they suffer we really feel it.

After 9/11 our business took a serious nose dive and for the rest of that fiscal year and the entire next year we suffered badly. In 2003 things started to get a little better but only in the first quarter of this year have we seen a significant resurgence in business and now our numbers are looking pretty good, though not as good as pre-9/11.

BTW, my area is corporate training, and so our business depends on companies having the $$ to allocate toward training their execs. Most don't view it as an absolute necessity, so whenever they have to make budget cuts, training employees is always one of the first to go.

Likewise when they start feeling more confident that things are turning around again, one of the first things they do is go back to investing in training again.

So...no facts and figures and not very scientific, but to me it seems we are recovering nicely

------

Edit:

Well I guess I do have a couple facts I can add that support the above!

23% of all new training we've been contracted for recently is for c-level execs, which means strategy, leadership, etc. That evens out to about 10K or more per session per exec. That is a lot of money to plunk down if times are tough financially.

About 35% of the rest of our current business is specifically for high-potentials and new hires to the company-usually college grads fresh out of school. So not only are large employers hiring, they are investing in a LOT of training for their new employees!

[Sebboe]

I think things are getting better. I have seen a lot more jobs in the tech sector in the boston/northern mass/southern nh area.

The only disappointment is that salaries have dropped off a bit but the jobs are still paying more than the national household average.

I know a lot of people who completely abandoned the tech sector during the past few years simply because bills were due and jobs didn't exist. I was hoping that weathering the storm in the tech sector would make myself more valuable as the job started to come back and there were less people to take them or that I would have a big advantage over those people who have been in sales for 2 years and their resume is a bit stale.

I do think that in the long run I will be able to see these advantages, they just aren't here yet. We didn't go from boom to bust overnight and we aren't going to go from bust back to boom overnight.

I've been self-employed for a while but with the right company and the right money I'd be willing to go back to being someone's bitch

The nice thing I have going for me right now as more jobs pop up, if I were to interview, I don't have to go in and worry that if I don't get the job I'm screwed. I can go in, say why they should hire me and why they should pay me at the high end of what they have budgeted for the job. If they aren't willing to make my life better than it is right now, I can just walk away. They can't argue that I need them but I can argue they need me.

For those who are still looking for work, check out "What Color is Your Parachute" It's a good read and is really good for morale.

[Nemene]

Ok. I realise that I was going abit over the top by saying it's boom and bust And I realise that America is generally alot more healthy than Britain economically.

I just want to see America match Britain's 7 years (?) of no going below 0% inflation. Afterall, America having an even more stable economy will probably lead to the rest of the world balancing out abit to, due to the size of their economy.