It starts to look like a half-million long-term unemployed got jobs in June.

Being the gambler that I am, the chance that this gets reported versus some Russian stuff being reported is:

Jobs Report: +250

Russia stuff: - 180

We haven't seen this kind of upward wage pressure and upward job mobility for working-class and middle-class people in decades. Those are the people who have not made the same economic advances that businesses and investors and professionals have made in recent decades. People are also having more opportunity to work a single full-time job rather than two part-time jobs. And employees have their greatest opportunity to increase their wages when they switch jobs.

The point of a Trump economy was to see working class and middle class citizens make some economic headway, to have some economic mobility.

But will it be reported as such?

No -180

Yes +250

On that note, the unemployment rate rose despite the job additions, thanks to yet more odd numbers from the Household survey. The number of people in the civilian workforce leaped up 601,000 from the previous month, while the number of people not in the workforce dropped sharply by 413,000. At the same time, however, the number of unemployed rose by 499,000. Either we just had a flood of people back into the workforce, or more likely, BLS needs to do some serious work on its survey techniques.

I still think the true unemployed figure is higher than the feds report, as the feds only report those seeking work but not having it unemployed. Discouraged workers who gave up looking don't count as unemployed.

So if the US economy is hiring more people, that should mean more discouraged workers will start looking for work, entering the "unemployed" category.

In this scenario, the unemployment figure will have a hard time dropping to an impressively low level, as it's ranks will be continuously restored from the unseen and unmonitored discouraged worker category.

So I say that even if future NFP levels show continuous good hiring, the unemployment rate will basically not drop lower.

Dems blast booming jobs report, Trump worker agenda, ‘reckless’

I still think the true unemployed figure is higher than the feds report, as the feds only report those seeking work but not having it unemployed. Discouraged workers who gave up looking don't count as unemployed.

But if those formerly permanently-unemployed start showing up and getting jobs, that gives you sort of a bottomless employment pool. So you could have situations where the number of employed keep growing and growing well beyond the available pool of 4%-5% of officially unemployed as the feds count them.

That means we could have a lot of people return to work that were never expected to work again in this economy. They would just appear in the stats where they have been invisible for years as unemployed.

But if those formerly permanently-unemployed start showing up and getting jobs, that gives you sort of a bottomless employment pool. So you could have situations where the number of employed keep growing and growing well beyond the available pool of 4%-5% of officially unemployed as the feds count them.

Yes, exactly. I guess some portion of discouraged workers would see a job opportunity, jump on it and become immediately employed. Others would realize more job opportunities abound and start looking, adding them to the "unemployment force", as it were. Either way, employment goes up while unemployment remains the same.

Would the feds dare publicize the "discouraged worker" numbers?

I've historically been pessimistic on the US economy, long term especially as automation puts an end to routine manual labor, but we'll see what happens.

I guess not!

I thought all this talk about Tariffs was going to kill jobs?

It still could. So far, not really.

The economy has underperformed for a long time under 0bama/Bush/Xlinton.

I've historically been pessimistic on the US economy, long term especially as automation puts an end to routine manual labor, but we'll see what happens.

I'm optimistic in the long term, because eventually, thanks to automation, the cost of manufacture of fundamental necessities will drop to pennies, which means that there may not be the jobs, but there will no longer be the need FOR a great deal of work, as clothing, food, etc. will be essentially free.

but we'll see what happens.

The culture of morons whose indoctrinated battle cry de-joure is "White Privilege!", could not see/find their own arse with both hands and a mirror.

Would the feds dare publicize the "discouraged worker" numbers?

No more likely than telling them diamonds are just coal-shyte.

I'm optimistic in the long term, because eventually, thanks to automation, the cost of manufacture of fundamental necessities will drop to pennies, which means that there may not be the jobs, but there will no longer be the need FOR a great deal of work, as clothing, food, etc. will be essentially free.

I agree. We could see a new standard of "full time work" being a 20 hour work week instead of 40, which has been the norm since Henry Ford settled on it as the most amount of time an average worker could productively sustain.

But that presents a serious, brand new paradigm shift in the economy that civilized society has no experience with. How will it work? Do we become Marxists by imposing negative tax rates for people (every citizen gets an allowance from the government) and heavy tax rates for the few big corps that run all the automation... i.e. Amazon?

Maybe the economy is not your strong suit.

How will it work?

Probably poorly. Like everything else that we humans do. The concept is often good. The execution generally sucks, pretty much no matter what it is. So we muddle along and get by until we close our eyes for good.

We'll wait.

We'll wait.

You'll be waiting a long time. I don't work for you.

Believe the employment stats or not as you wish.

I don't work for you.

And I wouldn't employ something/one who lacks the integrity to disclose the truth about where all that A$$Paper came from....

Which is why YEB got his arse tossed on the cart ;p