Economics Update

Employment-population ratio, part time for economic reasons, and hours worked economic graph pr0n courtesy of Calculated Risk

The employment numbers are out, and you can look at the cup as half empty or half full, with non farm payroll falling by 217K, but unemployment (U3) spiking to 9.7%.

Note that the drop was less than the 276K in July (up from 246K following revisions), U6, the broadest measure of unemployment, and the one closest to the Depression era metric,^* spiked to 16.8%.

Other than that, there was not a whole bunch of news, priobably because the upcoming Labor Day holiday, though Treasuries fell, and their yields rose, as a result of the job numbers, which also drove oil and the US dollar up, so the markets considered all this generally good news.

Minor, as I write this though, the FDIC bank closing page does not have any closings yet.

Normally, they like to move on 3 day weekends, it gives them more times to get things done.

^*Though still more conservative than the 1930s version, so we are getting very close to the 25% rate at the height of the Depression.