Unemployment up to 5%
The numbers are out.. Unemployment rose to 5% in December (up from November’s 4.7%). Though many see this as the harbinger of recession, a 5% unemployment rate is pretty low by historical standards (lower than the unemployment averages in the 70s 80s and 90s)
Job growth is down, however. Nonfarm payroll rose by only 18,000, which is the weakest growth since August of 2003. In December, construction lost 49,000 jobs, and manufacturing lost 31,000 jobs. Most of the increase has come from government hiring, and is not a true indication of economic growth. Also, without the birth/death adjustment, which is an adjustment made based on a hypothesis of how many jobs were created by companies too new or too small to be counted/found by the Current Employment Status, which was 66,000 fake jobs for December, the US would have seen negative growth for December. Yikes.
