The Labor Department is numbers crazy. Wall Street stays drunk with numbers. As each monthly jobs number is released stock prices can soar or drop by large margins. The political pundits spend the hours and days following these reports interpreting them in a way that makes their side look good. There is one jobs number that is seldom discussed and leaves little room for spinning.
The mystery number is how many new jobs are there? How many businesses filed for licenses, how many existing companies expanded, and how many employees will be needed to support these? How many new independent contractors are there? In a country this size there has to be a large number of new positions being created every month for there to be economic strength. New jobs are the key to recovery and growth.
Recently it was announced that there were 432,000 new claims for unemployment for the month. This was viewed as positive since they were predicting 452,000. To me, the number is tragic if there were no new jobs created in the month. On the other hand, this number would not be as bad if we knew that 1 million new jobs were generated during the same time.
The press is quick to point out how many jobs have been shipped overseas. I never hear a single mention of the jobs started right here by new ventures. We fret when hearing about a thousand jobs lost overseas to local people being paid one dollar per hour. But who cares, if at the same time, a thousand new jobs are added here that pay thirty dollars per hour?
I assume most of the jobs info comes from Unions and big business. I wonder how much of the data is directly from small business? Since 70% of the jobs in the country are through small business why is that sector not the most important one to track? I would like to see two reports for each job number from the Labor Department. One report should reflect the numbers from small business and the other from Wall Street companies, Unions, and government.
Here is a simple explanation about how the jobs numbers are viewed. Take a company with 50,000 employees. They can layoff 5,000 people to improve their bottom line and be rewarded on Wall Street for cutting costs and improving profits. The unemployment rate will go up a little but the economy, to the econo-nuts (economists), will be fine. If the company hires back a couple thousand along the way then the economy will be viewed as smoking. All the while we still have unemployment, a majority of the population remains struggling, and we get our butts kicked in the global market.
Obama wants green jobs, I want jobs. When individuals in this country get serious about starting new ventures and getting productive, our economy will swell. First we must get green (money), then we can go green (environment).
Tags: employment, jobs, labor statistics, small business, unemployment