Metro Detroit Unemployment Rate enjoys a big drop

[Lowell]

The numbers for April are out and the Michigan unemployment rate dropped another .2 percent and now stands at 8.3, just .2 above the national average.


The drop for central Metro Detroit area was even more dramatic.

A report by the department stated that for the month of April, in the Detroit/Warren/Livonia Metropolitan Statistical Area, the unemployment rate was 8.7 percent, a decrease from 9.6 percent the previous month.
From WJR

Cold comfort for those still seeking work but overall very encouraging.

[Wheels]

You do realize that the people who run out of benefits and the people that stop searching for jobs, are counted as a decrease in the unemployed? Those numers far outway the newly employed.

[Detroitnerd]

Yup, this is the new window-dressing of chronic unemployment: Giving a little hoot and holler when discouraged workers stop looking and when people drop off the unemployment rolls.

[Jimaz]

I'll take it as better news than growing unemployment.

A few weeks ago along 23 Mile Rd I was surprised how many help wanted signs there were. Almost every industrial building had several out front. I'm not sure whether that's the norm up there though.

I'll withhold celebrating until they start adding pages to the want ad "section." Is it correct to call one piece of folded newsprint a "section"?

[313WX]

You do realize that the people who run out of benefits and the people that stop searching for jobs, are counted as a decrease in the unemployed? Those numers far outway the newly employed.

Agreed.

All the other measures of "employment" are still at peak-reccession lows, including in Michigan/Detroit.

[313WX]

A few weeks ago along 23 Mile Rd I was surprised how many help wanted signs there were. Almost every industrial building had several out front. I'm not sure whether that's the norm up there though.

That doesn't mean anything for a couple reasons...

1. Companies will now leave positions open for months and years until they can find the perfect candidate to work their butts off for near-minimum wage.

2. The job may not even exist in the first place. A lot of companis are simply just testing the water with fake job postings.

[Danny]

YAY Obama!

[DetroitPlanner]

Another indicator of a healthy economy is a rebound or a leveling of home prices, WWJ this morning was reporting that metro Detroit was showing a large decline last month. At best we have mixed messages.
http://moneyland.time.com/2012/05/29...than-it-looks/

[Cincinnati_Kid]

Good news maybe, still not out of the woods yet. There are plenty of people still looking for work. And housing is a whole nother story. Until these banks and mortgage companies loosen up their grip, housing is years away from rebounding to pre-recession numbers. It's funny how they were the main culprit in starting all this, and now they want to play hardball with people trying to get mortgages.

[Scottathew]

You do realize that the people who run out of benefits and the people that stop searching for jobs, are counted as a decrease in the unemployed? Those numers far outway the newly employed.

Does one really stop looking for a job if they are unemployed?

I remember when I had a shitty job that I hated, I spent 10 hours a week looking for a job, this was in addition to the 40 hours a week I was working. It took me 3 or 4 months, but I was able to find a very good alternative.

[313WX]

Does one really stop looking for a job if they are unemployed?

I remember when I had a shitty job that I hated, I spent 10 hours a week looking for a job, this was in addition to the 40 hours a week I was working. It took me 3 or 4 months, but I was able to find a very good alternative.

In addition to factoring in who collects unemployment benefits, the BLS surveys about 30,000 to 60,000 households per month.

In those surveys, there's a certain way they word the qustions to figure out who's actively looking for work [[who they consider unemployed) and who's not [[who they don't consider unemployed). Not everyone is actively looking for different reasons, one of which is because they're discouraged about the laxed economic recovery and having been passed up fo too many job openings before.

Those who aren't actively looking aren't included in th U3 unemployment rate [[national ~8%), but the U6 rate.

[hudkina]

The fact remains that Metro Detroit's employment levels are on the upswing. The metro area peaked at the end of 1999 with around 2.2 million people employed. For the next decade it steadily dropped, reaching a low of about 1.7 million at the beginning of 2010. Since then, it's been on the upswing. Right now the local economy is sustaining somewhere in the range of about 1.8 million jobs. While the region has a long way to go to attain its previous peak of 2.2 million, it's at least on the right track.

[rb336]

YAY Obama!

actually, apart from the auto industry jobs, a lot of this is due to the numerous companies Jenny brought to Michigan coming online and hiring. For the last 4 years of her administration, Michigan was ranked either #1 or #2 in bringing new outside investment to the state

[Detroitnerd]

From Paul Craig Roberts:

"The birth/death model, which estimates the net effect of jobs lost from business failures and jobs created by new start-ups was designed for a normal growing economy, not for a prolonged downturn four years old. Statistician John Williams [[shadowstats.com) reports that the BLS adds 48,000 new jobs per month to the payroll employment report based on the birth/death model even though the economy has not come out of the deep recession. In other words, over the course of a year, the birth/death model adds about 580,000 jobs to the reported jobs numbers. End of year benchmark revisions quietly take the nonexistent jobs out of the totals, but these revisions do not receive headlines and pass largely unnoticed."