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State unemployment rate drops again
By adamg on Thu, 06/14/2012 - 9:07am
The Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development says preliminary figures from May show a statewide jobless rate of 6.0%, down from 6.3% in April - and well below the national average of 8.2%.
The private sector added 6,700 jobs in May. Six of the ten private sectors added jobs in May with the largest gain in Professional, Scientific, and Business Services followed by gains in Trade, Transportation, and Utilities; Other Services; Information; Education and Health Services; and Manufacturing.
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Comments
Nutjobs
The number is heading in the right direction but I realize that it's not a perfect measure. I just love how whacko commenters on Boston.com think Obama and Patrick are cooking the books and somehow if a republican was in office the numbers would be accurate.
Well
For one don't praise Gov for job creation..... http://www.bls.gov/eag/eag.ma.htm Look at the states by industry. Private sector is creating jobs not Deval and Obama. The sector with the greatest growth and most sustained is Business Services.
Looks like the private sector
Looks like the private sector is doing fine.
Ya
In Mass, not so well in the rest of the Country.
But I thought
MA is anti business and a cesspool of socialism?
Anyways, maybe this good news will put a stop to the mayor giving away taxpayer dollars to StateStreet. The economy is pickup up, they don;t need a handout to move somewhere cheaper and lease out their tower for even more.
MA is anti business and a
MA is anti business and a cesspool of socialism?
It is, but we also have lots of smart institutions which keep the state in the black despite having absolute idiots in elected office.
Cambridge is a microcosm and metaphor for the entire state!
Ones mans idiot
is another mans savior.
I think Brown and Menino are idiots and need to go.
You probably agree with Menino, but are glad Frank is retiring.
Everyone loves "their rep", but hates "congress". It's sort of amusing, but it ain't fixing any problems.
Tribalism sucks.
Applaud
Very well put, expect the backlash from the libtartd in 1...2.....3..... "Obama is the Messiah""
Obama
is a bad socialist. Take out the bipartisan bailouts and he's presided over the largest reduction of government workers in modern history.
Which makes me wonder why true conservatives would be so fast to throw him out. He's been Norquists best ally in action in a long time... if what Norquist says he believes, is what he believes.
I would think it
Because of his spending.
What spending?
Sorry, but you don't get to chose facts. Take away the bipartisan recovery measure and again I ask, what spending?
Do unpaid tax cuts also count? Or should we zero those out of the above chart as well?
Didn't you get the memo?
Republicans get to make up facts now.
Nothing will convince Rozy of anything his own bigotry and partisanship hasn't told him already.
Who controls spending?
Last I checked it was Congress and almost all of those large spending increases were presided over by Democrats and the small increases by Republicans. The exception would be Bush 2's first term when we were at war - Afghanistan fully justified, Iraq not so much - but war nonetheless. Also keep in mind that Bush II's first term, in addition to war he was combating a recession left over from the Clinton administration as he was at the end of the second term fighting a recession and financial crisis that occurred on his watch.
Trying to get away from partisan politics - no matter who's in charge we need to get our spending under control and neither Obama nor the current Congress seems intent on that. Federal spending exceeding 20% of the total economy is not sustainable.
I don't care who wins in November - as long as they commit to getting spending back to the more historical and sustainable levels of 17-19% of the economy.
Ok Stevil
So, we shouldn't change a thing right? And we should keep Obama in office, since this president and this congress has led to the largest drop of spending in quite some time.
The graph above pretty much tells us all we need to know. The GOP is about as serious at spending reduction as the Dems. But at least the Dems are somewhat concerned with deficit reduction.
Reagan vastly expanded government and gov expenditures. Cheney and Bush claimed deficits don't matter.
If we continued Clinton's economic plans and tax rates, the debt would have been paid off.
My problem is that the GOP is not about good government, low taxation, paying off the debt and efficiency.
They've transformed into a radical group who are 100% anti-tax and anti-government while increasingly allying themselves with white nationalist movements. It ain't conservative in the least.
Not sure what that shows me
That both sides are equally bad?
Couple of things - first of all it was shown years ago (I believe CBO numbers - possibly OMB) that the "balanced budget" and paydown of the debt claimed by Clinton and the Republican congress in the late 1990s was based an an erroneous analysis. It simply wasn't true - certainly better than what we got, but not true. Everyone quotes the much ballyhooed original, but erroneous analysis.
Second - I really don't care who wins the election - I don't particularly like either candidate. However, here's the deal:
The Republicans control the house - that's not changing. The Dems control the Senate - that will probably change - but by no means certain. I hope it does - because I think the biggest problem we have is a split voice out of congress so absolutely nothing productive happens. I'd like to see the Republicans take the Senate.
Here's what will probably surprise you. If that happens, I hope Obama stays in office. Whether it's Mass or the country single party rule is a dangerous thing - the Dems proved that in the early 90's and the R's in the early part of the last decade (which is why I voted Kerry).
I would like to see a single voice out of congress and an opposite voice from PA Avenue and I don't care which side has which office(s). In my scenario above Obama can choose to negotiate (i.e. become like Clinton whom I have increasing respect for especially seeing what we've gotten since) or he can be the obstructor in chief. He has the biggest ego of any president in my lifetime - so my guess is he figures out how to get things done.
I care less and less about party BS on both sides. I want the budget to be as small as possible and I want people to let others live and let live (so I'm actually pro most Democratic social issues). Things are too serious and the stakes too big.
That's why I'm voting for Brown, I'm going to be campaigning for him and I will be giving him some cash - not a lot - but it'll pay for some stamps and letterhead. From there - my vote here doesn't count much either way - Obama will win MA. My presidential vote goes to the party that I think will lose the Senate - TBD.
Obama isn't the messiah
Even though I'm an atheist, I've read the Bible cover to cover and I don't recall Jesus particularly being in favor of drone strikes.
Updated
Let he who is without sin launch the first drone.
Only if the trend continues
Only if the trend continues for another 10 years at the current rate to get us back to where we were in 2008. =(
Actually
If you stopped watching the news and look at the numbers yourself you would realize that in some industries we have exceeded 2008 levels.
http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/SMS2500000600000000...
This is obtained through free market capitalism but liberals believe is from Obama’s magic wand.
Tinfoil territory
Doesn't help when the defacto leader of the party is a narcissistic, lying con man that eggs on this sort of insanity.
Some day the GOP will change and find their conservative roots again. But it's going to get worse before it gets better.
It doesn't matter who's in
I used to work on the ES-202 program (employment data base for the nation from where all the unemployment and employment statistics are drawn) and was the senior economist on the program at BLS in DC for 15 years. It doesn't matter who is in the white house, back in 1991, due to a change in coding policy, employment in the US dropped significantly from 1990 to 1991 and then back up in 1992. Everyone was saying Bush cooked the books. The bottom line is that the employment statistics are an administrative statistic gathered from the UI tax reports each employer sends in every quarter. I have no love for either idiot in the White House or on Beacon Hill, but I know there is no cooking.
Fortunately in the People's Republic of Mass there are greater opportunities for employment than in most of the nation. And, most of the employment is professional pink or white collar... That is primarily why unemployment is lower. However if you were to look at statistics from the Local Area Unemployment Statistics program, you would see certain areas of the state as high as 10%, as well as certain areas well under the state average of 6%.
Job number makes sense to me.
So far as I am concerned, this is completely consistent with what I am seeing in general and on the roads in particular. Eventhough more and more people are riding the T, the traffic on 128 is as bad (or is that "good") as I have ever seen it, and it does not seem to be easing into the summer lull as it has in the past.
Unless there a whole lot of people are headed to the beach or on a joyride each morning between 7 and 9, there seems to be a hell of a lot of people going to work.
You may be right, but
I think that if a nuke struck on Monday, the Tuesday morning commute on 128 would still suck.