Friday, March 4, 2011

The U.S. Unemployment Situation


Historically, the metric for employment is 3% GDP growth creates 1.5 million jobs.

This is the number of jobs needed to cover the net between new entrants and people leaving the labor force.

Many believe that economic growth will be between 3.5% - 4% for 2011.

This infers creation of about 2 million jobs as a max. limit, or just 500,000 over what is needed to cover net new entrants to the workforce.

The employment news for Feb. seems to confirm the 2 million estimate, however, there is a long way to go for the year. I believe this is a bit optimistic because there will be downward pressure on state and local employment levels.

While the increase in jobs is good news, investors should not become too excited on the economic effect.

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