Job and Wage Gains as Americans Rejoin the Work Force


By NELSON D. SCHWARTZFEB. 6, 2015


The economy barreled through the last three months with strong momentum, the Labor Department said Friday, as American employers added 257,000 jobs in January, wage growth rebounded and more people went looking for work in an improving labor market.

With new figures on the last two months of the year, 2014 turned out to be the strongest year for job gains since 1999. The government revised upward the already healthy figures for payroll gains in November and December, increasing their estimate by 147,000. All told, the economy added, on average, 260,000 jobs a month over the course of the year.

“This is the best employment report we’ve had in a long time,” said Guy Berger, United States economist at RBS. “The labor market looks like it’s in really good shape as we head into 2015.”

The Labor Department said on Friday that the unemployment rate inched up to 5.7 percent, from 5.6 percent. But even that apparent setback was mostly good news, as it was primarily because more Americans said they were encouraged enough by their job prospects to actively look for work.

Average hourly earnings rose 0.5 percent in January, the biggest monthly gain in more than six years, though it followed a disappointing drop in December. Over the last 12 months, wages advanced at a 2.2 percent pace, significantly ahead of the inflation rate.

The overall picture was so strong, Mr. Berger said, that the Federal Reserve might begin its long-awaited move to raise short-term interest rates in June, a step many economists had been expecting to be delayed until September.

“I still think it will be September, but the odds of a June increase have gone up somewhat,” Mr. Berger added. “The fact that the economy didn’t lose a step in January bolsters the case that inflation could hit the Fed’s target.”

Other experts echoed Mr. Berger’s take. “Employment growth is astonishingly strong,” said Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, in a note to clients immediately after the 8:30 a.m. release. “With every indicator we follow screaming that payrolls will be very strong for the foreseeable future, wage pressures will intensify.”

A few other signals are still flashing yellow, however. Data last week showed economic output grew at a slower-than-expected 2.6 percent rate in the fourth quarter of 2014.

And on Thursday, the government reported a big jump in the country’s trade deficit in December, as imports surged and exports fell. With the dollar's gaining strength and the euro and other currencies’ weakening, the trade balance may continue to weigh on the economy in 2015.

Economists had been looking for a gain of 230,000 jobs last month, but statistical quirks and the end of the holiday retail season have traditionally made January a difficult month for experts to get right ahead of time.

Government statisticians try to adjust for the annual exit of workers from stores after the end of the holiday shopping season, but this factor is always a wild card. Similarly, snowy weather in some parts of the country can also throw the numbers.

Another quirk last month was the annual adjustment of population figures used to calculate the unemployment rate in the household survey, a separate poll from the data gathered from establishments that produces the monthly change in payrolls.

In general, the household survey tends to be more volatile than the establishment survey, but this is exacerbated as benchmarks are adjusted at year-end.

Along with job creation and the unemployment rate, traders on Wall Street and policy makers are also closely watching for any sign that long-stagnant average hourly earnings are finally beginning to rise at a healthy pace.

Last month, hourly earnings rose 0.5 percent, above the consensus forecast of 0.3 percent, compared with a December drop that caught economists by surprise.

Although the unemployment rate has been steadily falling since peaking at 10 percent in October 2009, wage gains have been paltry. January's increase represents the fastest monthly gain since late 2008.

Even in months when wages did rise more sharply, hopes of sustained gains have been dashed by weakness the next month, a pattern repeated in November and December, when a 0.2 percent jump was immediately followed by a 0.2 percent dip.

The Federal Reserve, in particular, has been trying to gauge whether workers’ paychecks are rising and whether the labor market slack built up since the recession is finally receding.

The central bank has indicated that it will begin the long-anticipated process of raising short-term interest rates from near zero later this year, but persistently low inflation and little evidence of building wage pressures could delay that.

Mr. Berger, the RBS economist, cautioned that more monthly wage gains were needed before the 0.5 percent gain last month could be declared the beginning of a trend, but said it was a healthy development after December’s unexpected decline.

“The data can be noisy but it's hard to find anything negative in this report,” Mr. Berger said.

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What ever possessed you to post on an open public forum that:
1. You are homosexual, in a relationship with another man whom you call your "husband".

2. You call yourself his "wife", and say that you adopted two little boys who called you "Mom".

3. You and he raised those boys to become homosexuals, and you said "Gee, what a coincidence that they have the (non-existent) homosexual gene like me".

You did in fact post this on OPP, and then you complain about being reviled? Did you think we would all go " Awww, how sweet"? Didn't it ever occur to you that you were admitting to sexual abuse of children?

Two flaming homosexuals living in San Francisco, with two little boys in their clutches. What did anyone think would happen?

Most people have no idea what it's like in San Francisco. Overt homosexual behavior is everywhere. They do anything they like, anywhere they feel like doing it. No wonder you thought you could get acceptance of your pedophilia here, with that mindset. But you can't.

You may be past whatever statute of limitation California has on this, I don't know, but you will never be past the guilt for what you've done and our knowledge of it here on OPP.

Blacksheep, I think it's time I get some things off of my chest. There are things that occurred a while back that you aren't aware of. As you know I left OPP for an extended duration. One of the reasons was due to the fact that I became the victim of an Internet stalker via a Website Forum. The man somehow got ahold of my address and showed up at my house. The police are still trying to figure out how he did it. At that same period you had been attacking me constantly here on OPP. To make a long story short, my husband made me take a leave of absence from posting anywhere. It wasnt until recently that he agreed to let me back on. I just want you to know that you have upset me in ways that nobody else ever has. You attacks are personal and I have sat crying about the things you say to me on many occasions. I hope youre proud of that fact. I would wake up in the middle of the night having these visions of you standing in my bedroom doorway. It was all too frightening. I love OPP because it is a unique site that allows all people of differing views to share their thoughts. I learn a lot on this site. You hate me because of my LGBT orientation and that is bigoted. You should accept people for who they are. You are a very nice looking intelligent man Blacksheep and you should channel your energy in a more productive and uplifting way. Do you realize you have never said one single nice thing about me? My husband and I talked about you last night and he began giggling. I asked him what was so funny and he said "it's just the fact that if Blacksheep was ever in your presence he would melt like butter." we laughed together as its so true. Ha! FYI, there are many Patriots who post on OPP who are Bi-Curious and there is no doubt that if they ever met me I could turn them in one session. Watch what you say to people Blacksheep. Let's make a truce and agree to disagree. P.S. you really should relinquish the arsenal of guns you now possess. The Feds will be taking them from you shortly anyway.

According to the Koran, Allah claims to be the greatest of the "Mockorain" ---- liar, deceiver, shyster, conniver, cheater. So according to the Bible that would make Allah, Satan himself.

According to the Bible we are in the end times right now and startlingly accurate predictions about future popes, from St. Malachi, from the 1100s, state that this Pope is the last Pope before Christ's return. Through the accuracy of these predictions, this is all self proving. See this video and you will be convinced: HTTPS://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yVdXrHYj7Q (5 1/2 Minutes) St Malachy's Predictions on future Popes -- This apostate Pope fancies himself as a great peace maker and is working diligently to bring about world peace by combining all the world's religions in to what will become the coming N.W.O's one world religion.

WED JAN 28, 2015 AT 01:27 PM PST
Sorry, conservatives: Dearborn isn't a no-go zone for anyone
byJon Perr

attribution: Dearborn City Council TV
This week, the Hindu-turned-Catholic Bobby Jindal doubled down on his bogus "no-go zones" claim at the center of his anti-Muslim crusade for the White House. He quickly had company in the form of Iraq war cheerleader and anti-Islamic xenophobe Frank Gaffney, who declared that Dearborn, Michigan, is already one of those no-go zones in America.
Of course, these right-wing myths aren't just an insult to the Muslim residents of Dearborn. The slander is an affront to all. Just ask Pastor Dustin Weber of the Dearborn Free Methodist Church. After all, he was just one of the many Christian ministers to deliver a prayer to open a meeting of the Dearborn city council.

Following in the footsteps of disgraced Nevada Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle, Gaffney took to the airwaves to make the charge:

Not only did anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist Frank Gaffney use his interview on "Washington Watch" last week to compare President Obama to Osama bin Laden, but he also claimed that Sharia law has popped up in the U.S.
According to Gaffney, Dearborn, Michigan -- a regular target of debunked claims about Sharia law that Gaffney calls "Dearbornistan" -- has become a "ghetto enclave in which it's Muslim-only and others, if they are not effectively proscribed or prevented from going in, know that it is too dangerous to go."

For over a hundred years, Dearborn has had a large and thriving Arab-American community. While the greater Detroit area per capita has the largest Muslim population in the nation, Dearborn is also home to Lebanese and Iraqi Christians as well. But in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks, the diverse city of 97,000 has become the place "where Americans come to hate Muslims." As Daniel Denvir explained in 2012, whether it is Koran-burning pastor Terry Jones, the California-based Bible Believers or RenewAmerica:
Dearborn is a must-visit location on 21st-century America's newly established anti-Muslim protest circuit.
Continue reading about Dearborn below.
Coming to fight in their imaginary battle against Sharia law, the Bible Believers protested the city's annual Arab International Festival. In 2013, the Christian missionaries brought a pig's head and signs insulting Islam's prophet. The 2014 event over Father's Day weekend was cancelled.

After the failure of a previous lawsuit to stop local mosques from broadcasting the call to prayer five times each day, incendiary blogger Debbie Schlussel is spearheading a new campaign to silence Muslims' First Amendment rights in Dearborn. Schlussel, who lives in nearby Southfield, is representing a group of Dearborn residents suing the city to prevent any Muslim cleric from delivering the rotating invocation to open city council meetings.

As it turns out, the Supreme Court in the 2014 case of Town of Greece v. Galloway ruled that sectarian prayers at town council meetings do not violate the Constitution's religious establishment clause. That's a good thing for the clergy members like Pastor Weber and Father John Kopson of the Church of the Divine Child. After all, their prayers opened the last two meetings of the Dearborn city council presided over by Muslim attorney Susan Dabaja. Those invocations were followed by the Dearborn councilors doing what their counterparts do all over the country.

They rose to recite the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.

UPDATE: As Jen Hayden reported earlier this month, two Muslim charities donated $100,000 to help thousands of Detroit households at risk of having their water shut off.

ORIGINALLY POSTED TO JON PERR ON WED JAN 28, 2015 AT 01:27 PM PST.

ALSO REPUBLISHED BY MOTOR CITY KOSSACKS AND DAILY KOS.

I don't like the term profiling, that is not what law enforcement does. The officers watch suspicious activity or people and cars that are acting in unusual manners. That can be because they are looking for a suspect involved in a past activity, or in a probable one. A specific vehicle or type of vehicle(street racing) or gang type etc. They are doing a job that includes prevention. How is this bad or wrong. This is BS, these folks are paranoid or just whining for attention. I have been stopped because I was the wrong color in a neighborhood but the officers where doing their jobs, I was the suspicious one driving around. I lost a job because of race but I didn't cry about it I moved on to better things and held no ill will. This racial BS is all bigoted people of Color not 99.9 percent of the white population. I have done home service repair in the Chicago area north and south, anyone who has lived there understands the difference, but the only people who ever had an issue with my race were of a black color. There were not many but there were enough to leave a lasting impression. So a persons sensitivity being based on a few is wrong. Those crying foul are just unforgiving and need something more peaceful to do then trying to drum up hate and look for wrongs with others rather than looking in the mirror at that hate in themselves.