On a local level, I do not see improvement, although the Dec Xmas rush did seem more robust than before. However, I think weather had a lot to do with a much better 4th quarter. I mean our weather has never been better.

I have not heard of any additional hiring and in fact some of my business friends have actually had to decrease hours.

With respect to 2011, it would seem that earlier in 2011 with more stimulus money left being spent, it would have shown better numbers than during the 4th quarter with clearly much less residual spending from government printing money. Also the political environment could not be less productive than it is now, coupled with Europe that is sliding down a hill, and yet the 4th quarter looks improved. Car sales were better as well. So my guess is that consumers say one thing and do quite another.

The real question isn't whether jobs were created, but what sorts of jobs and are they jobs that will be here a year from now.

The numbers are phony because the Administration loves to "disappear" the thousands who are shoved off the unemployment benefits rolls every month. If the workforce is the same as it was when Obama took office (which I think it's probably expanded since then with new college grads and the like), then the unemployment rate is still between 10.9% and 11.4%, depending on which calculation you choose. Oh, and Serendiphany--wow. You are a true kookaid drinker...

Spiteful, deliberate downsizing of civil service positions? Is that a euphemism for GOVERNMENT workers?

So, when the tax base has dried up, localities were supposed to do exactly WHAT to pay salaries of those 'civil service positions'?

In the early 90's, my hometown school district was going thru financial difficulties, so elected to NOT replace a retiring superintendent of schools. The Super was able to run the district JUST fine for years, and when he eventually left the district, they had to hire FOUR people to 'replace' him. Want to know why? Because the state Board of Education said that a district needs to have 'umpty' superintendants per so many kids--whether or not there was WORK to justify that need.

And you just got to LOVE that about 'civil service' types. They LOVE to force entities to hire more people than they need or can afford to pay.

You Guess: 25% or 8.7%?

Wow!!! Do any of you believe unemployment has dropped to 8.7%? It may be true but don’t let the numbers fool you. Look back over the last 2+ years see how many people exhausted their unemployment benefits and are still out of work, unfortunately these people fall of the unemployment roles and not considered unemployed. And let’s not forget those who owned a business that failed and never received unemployment benefits. Let’s also count new grads that are without work and were never on the unemployment roles.

Now do he math! How many new jobs have been created? At best, reported new job numbers are bogus. For example my teenage son was hired for the holidays along with 6 others. This large gaming store most likely reported these new hires but what they didn’t report was that each one these new hires received one 5 hour shift per week at minimum wage. And let’s not forget reports on new job creation by the government, billions of federal dollars being spent to enhance our infrastructure, new road, etc, these are not sustainable jobs, and when government funding ends so do the jobs. There is only one way to improve these numbers and that is to eliminate NAFTA and bring jobs back to the United States. If we continue to outsource American jobs, then the only option is to charge appropriate import tariffs to offset unemployment benefits for the lifetime of unemployed Americans.

Note: As reported yesterday (1-5-2012) Obama unveils leaner Pentagon budget

The government will be reducing the size of our military by 100,000 troops from Army and the Marine Corps; will they add these ousted soldiers to the unemployment roles?

President Obama shame on you to allow these bogus jobless rates to be published, I find it offensive that you would use deceptive tactics to improve your approval rating. If you want to improve your ratings, please play above the board and truly do something about our current economic situation, no more smoke and mirrors!

AMERICANS NEED REAL JOBS, NOT WORKING FOR MINIMUM WAGE TRYING TO FEED THEIR HOMELESS FAMILIES! BECAUSE THEY HAVE LOST THEIR CAREER JOBS AND EXHAUSTED THEIR UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS.

Oh yeah Mr. President, in case you haven’t heard, many Americans have lost their homes? I guess trying to pay your house payment without a job just doesn’t pencil out, go figure! Do you have a bogus explanation for this? Unfortunately Americans aren’t allowed to run their households with a $14 TRILLION DEFICIT.

From a disgusted 62 year old Veteran

These "numbers' are conveniently "fed" to us, by highly skilled management teams, totally meaningless.

The problem is not really the quantity of jobs, but quality of pay and benefits.

We are being sold a bill of goods that we must remain competitive on the global marketplace by lowering the quality of living for all the workers, this is just another sham to increase the gap between those on top and rest of American society which is on a headlong race to the economic bottom.

Many people are wising up to this scam and they are not going accept this simple-minded form of exploitation. We need to remember that the founding of this country was based on resistance to tyranny of exploitation of our people. A second American revolution to re-establish justice, fairness and respect for those who really create the wealth for the few on top may be in order.

I am looking at several things that are very simple, auto "Dealer Tags" and train traffic.

During the first 2 years of the Obama adm I saw very few autos on the road with dealer tags. Beginning in 2011 I started seeing a few and the further into the year we got the more I saw. In November and December I would see these tage every time I went out on the raod--even short trips. In Texas these are given to people who purchase a car (new and used) to be used in the time it takes for the state to get the new owner a set of tags. The automotive dealerships do not issue "Dealer Tags" to create the illusion of business activity.

I live about 1 mile from a major set of rail tracks that divide northern Fort Worth. I must cross these tracks several times per day. During the first 2 years of the Obama adm I would rarely be stopped by "full length trains", now I count on being stopped at least once per day sometimes more often. The rail companies do not run empty trains up and down the tracks to create the illusion of business activity.

The economy is improving but as severly damaged as it was at the start of the Obama adm it takes a while to heal the economy and the supporting businesses.

You don't believe the numbers? When they reported numbers that reflected less hiring and poorer economic conditions ealier in the year I bet you believed those. That is why republicans are taking such a hit within the congress; people can tell who is really lying to them, who is really against them and who really cares about the future of average Americans.

You must like the ideal that Romneys tax plan is lowering the taxes on the wealthy even more and raising taxes on those making $40,00 a year. If you do not want to vote for Obama then don't, that is your right but quit with the constant lying and the boogey man crap you people keep coming up with.

Bill--my local Wal-Mart and K-Mart DID hire extra workers this year, in an effort to 'prove' that they were improving customer service--both also offered varying levels of layaway (Walmart for the first time in YEARS, in an effort to encourage more people to buy more that they cannot afford).

The kicker is, I do NOT believe those jobs will CONTGINU

Bill--My local Wal-Mart and K-mart both hired more workers in Dec, partly to attempt to prove they were increasing SERVICE, partly to staff Layaway programs to encourage more people to spend money they did not have on things they could not afford.

It remains to be seen how many of those workers will be retained, and how many, if they are retained, will have much lower hours, along with longer term employees.

The fact is, I only have to look around and see all the CLOSED businesses in my town and neighboring ones to be dubious that this new employment figure is a permanent fixture.

And I voted for Obama.

Bill--My local Wal-Mart and K-mart both hired more workers in Dec, partly to attempt to prove they were increasing SERVICE, partly to staff Layaway programs to encourage more people to spend money they did not have on things they could not afford.

It remains to be seen how many of those workers will be retained, and how many, if they are retained, will have much lower hours, along with longer term employees.

The fact is, I only have to look around and see all the CLOSED businesses in my town and neighboring ones to be dubious that this new employment figure is a permanent fixture.

And I voted for Obama.

The hires are nothing more than Christmas jobs, that may carry over through inventory. Then they will be gone.

people spent for this Christmas because they fell like it may be the last time they can

Since obama and the democrats took over: gas up 26%, food up 34%, clothing up 210%, national debt up 50%. yes, 50%. 10 trillion when Obama took office. Now 15 trillion, and another 1.4 trillion needed for next year. 2.5 trillion savings in 10 years: that's only 250 billion a year cuts. Wake up, people, and think. Washington is nothing but lies and smoke screens. Spin how you want, Obama, and all the Democrats and republicans are abject failures.

I am glad I am 63, because with a little luck, I won't be here when America collapses under it fiscal mismanagement.

" No democracy can survive as a form of government. As soon as the public discovers they can vote themselves perks from the public treasury, they will always vote for the candidate who promises to give them the most. And the government will collapse under it's own fiscal mismanagement, and a dictatorship always follows".

Read history, and be afraid, be very afraid.

Religious theocracy?! Wow, your absolute terror of anyone who doesn't agree with you or, even worse, who believes in something greater than themselves is amazing. Liberals always assume that they are intellectually and morally superior to everyone but embrace complete and utter intolerance of everyone who dares to question them.

Go ahead and continue trying to scare people with threats of a "religious theocracy" while you ignore and even applaud the President's blatant attempts to circumvent the Constitution. Don't worry, he's doing it for your own good... to save you from the mean old Republicans.

Pathetic.

It's not just the holding back in hiring but the laying offs that are occurring. How can they say there was an increase in jobs when just as many if not more were laid off in the 4th quarter.

There were companies that laid off anywhere from 200 to 1,000 employess that went completely unnoticed just before Christmas. Then they turned around and posted hourly positions at lower pay and part time in an attempt to replace some of those that were laid off. Or just plain added the workload of those left behind to overwork and underpay.

The CEO of Intel said that it would cost him 1 billion dollars more to build a semiconductor plant in the USA, not due to wages, but due to taxes and regulations. That's an increase of 90% of what it costs to build in other countries. Over 4,500 new regulations on businesses since Obama took office in 2009. That is more than ANY other president in the history of the USA.

Reaganomics is basically the theory that if you cut taxes, the wealthy will use their additional disposable income to invest in additional capacity (i.e. increase the supply), which will increase demand. The increase in demand will lead to economic growth and more jobs, ultimately increasing the tax base, resulting in the original tax cut being paid for by itself.

It's questionable (at least debatable) whether or not it ever worked, but certainly never accounted for the rapid advance of technology (reducing labor content) or the massive movement of jobs off-shore, for the purpose of increasing profits and accessing new potential consumer markets.

Federal government employment isn't a driver either way. For the last generation, the number of federal employees per one thousand of the population has been declining...from a 14.5/1,000 ratio, to around 8.5/1,000 today. Check any Almanac. Most of the growth in the number of government employees has taken place at the state and local levels. The rising costs of the federal government are primarily due to the rising costs of social security and medicare, due to the demographics of an aging population, defense costs, brought on by two wars, and interest on the existing debt. Complicating that is declining revenue due to a weak economy.

But, perhaps, on Reaganomics, we are agreeing. Republicans don't really have any solutions to our economic problems at the moment BECAUSE they remain rooted to a questional economic theory, which is rooted to a closed system national economy, rather than the reality of the global economy of today.

Remember that Reagan's time was PRIOR to the end of communism and the effective use of personal computing in conjunction with manufacturing - i.e. different world.

Clinton signed NAFTA.....................

Point is, BOTH POLITICAL PARTIES are bought and by the same "behind the curtin puppetiers"

BOTH POLITICAL PARTIES are filled with puppets.

BOTH POLITICAL PARTIES have corrupt career politicians who are rewarded for their legislation that helps large corporation generate more income at the expense of the average American worker.

BOTH POLITICAL PARTIES are to blame for this countries mess.

Here's the problem. It's to late. We're already over the cliff.

I feel sorry for the average American who has children.

Dick--you feel sorry for the 'average' American who has children? Really? As a mother of THREE, I didn't HAVE children till I was 28, and we were financially able to AFFORD them. We paid for our kids' college education, didn't borrow to send them, or depend on someone else to do what WE were responsible for. The 'average' American has kids in the same way they buy a huge flat screen TV by putting it on their credit card that is already one of several that are at or nearing being maxed out.

Our government and our PEOPLE seem to think that there is an obligation on anyone to PAY for what other people WANT to have, whether those other people can AFFORD those things or not.

I won't argue with anyone over Clinton. I believe Rubin and Summers were part of the problem, not the solution. Negotiations toward NAFTA began under Bush Senior. I think the concept was "sold" to Congress (Democrats and Republicans alike) as the "answer" to the European Union.

China, India and other emerging economies are only "indirect competition." There are economic areas they would be foolish to get into, because it would tend to cut off Western purchases of the consumer products they produce. Broadly, the West sells them capital goods, which they can use to expand infrastructure, while they "produce" products based on Western engineering and relatively low-skilled assembly work. That will change to some degree, overtime (as in the development of South Korea), but both sides shouldn't be in a hurry to change things.

Aside from Big Agriculture, which also relies on relatively sophisticated bio-chemistry and high tech machinery, most of our "product-to-product" competition is with other advanced industrialized economies (northern Europe, Japan, South Korea, and a few others). Those countries also have "socialized societies," in that they generally have unions, universal health care, social security type pensions, public education, environmental regulation, product safety standards, etc.

With global coordination and agreement on an outline - at least - of global rules, which everyone plays by, we can, in my opinion, return to posterity, based on a basically capitalist system, with regulation and oversight.

I would agree with you that BOTH parties are to blame to one degree or another. But, I think a large part of this is via the failure of academic economics...and their assumption that predictive economic models may be built on "rational decision-making." That methodology, combined with a manic belief, on the Republican side, with free trade and laissez-faire capitalism, and on the Democratic side, with an academic belief in the "Post Industrial Era," tended to blind our politicans on the left and right, to reality and the impact of globalization on the American workforce and middle class.

Jay12456

Outsourcing is a big chunk of Reaganomics. The Free Market policy was enacted to enable public companies to be sold out from under their employees and moved overseas. The laws that previously prohibited this were changed during the Reagan administration. That's why they had a popular actor distract the populous while they sold off our economic future by changing the laws in ant-trust legislation that previously had protected our economic rights. That's right we no longer have the same level of economic rights in the US that we used to have. We are now just peasants in your own country... just what our ancestors left Europe to escape. Anyone upset about this... or are the petty distraction issues more important to the masses than their own families economic future?

You also have to consider the number of people that are retiring or dieing every month. By the way the word is liars.

Joe, and you have to consider the number of people who cannot retire. And by the way, they word is DYING.

I'm a Democrat. Please point me to where Obama cracked down on China's monetary policy? As he promised during the last election.

Frankly, I do not think it's a surprise that our military's focus will now be on Asia rather than Europe.

Good luck to you.

Thank you Ronacrone. :)

We're never going back to manufacturing. I don't think so anyway. China and other countries do it better, cheaper, and faster than we can. Time to adapt to something else. We need to educate or work force. Technology and innovation is what we do best and we need to build a pool of labor who can support that.

Angel.101 we can't lose manufacturing from a national security aspect.

The day after China:

1. nationalizes the US manufacturing in China

2. Attacks Taiwan ?

3. Attacks Japan ?

4. Supports militarily, N Korea v S Korea ?

What do we do? Build manufacturing up from scratch???

We can't lose manufacturing from a national security aspect?

It's gone. Don't sorry. I'm sure we'll still make our own bombs, but that's not going to be a big job creator unless you're counting on WWIII. If China disappears off the face of the planet, someone will move in and fill that void. Maybe even us! But for now, they're here to stay and we need to stop focusing on on those lost manufacturing jobs and start creating ones here. We're America. They still come here to have their kids so they can be American. Clearly we're still on top and we still have something they want.

If I am not mistaken, we're still the largest single manufacturer in the world, although China will probably pass us this year. We just no longer physically manufacture the stuff you see on the shelves at Wal-Mart, the consumer products. We focus on high end capital goods, such as commercial aircraft, advanced medical technology, etc., plus Big Agriculture (much of which today involves sophisticated technology as well), and the design and development of high tech consumer goods.

But, that said, I totally agree with you on educational reform.

Angel.101: "It's gone. Don't sorry. I'm sure we'll still make our own bombs, but that's not going to be a big job creator unless you're counting on WWIII."

We toy with it on a almost weekly basis. Currently it's the Gulf of Hormuz. WW1 was started by an assassination of one countries leader. WW2 , by a attack on Pearl Harbor , with intent to build a Co-Prosperity sphere in asia. Who's currently expanding their sphere??

Scar - I understand where you're coming from. However, I don't think we have failed to notice what is going on in the far East which is one of the reasons Obama announced the permanent establishment of military bases in Australia. We are still, first and foremost, a military force to be reckoned with and we will be prepared to confront any issues that come up in that part of the world -- especially now that we've ended the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which was really draining on our military.

What I am saying is, our military industrial complex will always be churning out new and exciting products. That's sort of what we do. But if our manufacturing sector, and our ability to employ a willing and able labor market was possible just with that, it probably would have happened and we wouldn't have so many unemployed. Plus those skills that are good for building bombs have limited applicability in the real world. Ask any military vet who was trained to build one small portion of an armored tank in the Army and now can't find a job because he doesn't have a skill anyone needs (true story - I know someone with this problem and he is not alone).

We manufacture big things like commercial aircraft. OK. But that's not putting the vast majority of people to work either. Jobs these days require skilled labor and that requires training and access to education. Those simple manufacturing jobs have all gone over seas. We must re-educate our labor market, and encourage young people entering the work force after high school to pursue careers in technology and skilled trades. I have noticed that there are now technical high schools that train their students in fields that are in demand so they are ready to work as soon as they leave high school. Nursing, computer science, etc. I am often skeptical of big business when they stick their noses in areas that have traditionally been left to states and governments to control, but in this case, I would like to see more involvement and partnerships from corporations. Screw privatizing schools. They should be public and we should let corporations pour money into them and train these kids to do exactly what they need in their business. Give these kids a practical, easily applicable skill...without the high cost of going to a University or for-profit school who claim to teach young people skills that the job market desires, but has proven to be far from the truth. We need nurses, engineers, scientists, and skilled labor. There is no reason kids in high school shouldn't be learning those skills. No need to wait for college or pay exorbitant amounts for trade schools - IF they even make it out of high school in the first place. We have an abysmal drop out rate. One reason is because education no longer has any practical applications in the real world. Schools are behind the times. I bet more kids would stick it out if they were being introduced to a practical, marketable, profession with the knowledge that they would have a job waiting for them upon graduation or a skill they can use right away. Four more years of college sounds daunting and a waste of time to a lot of young graduates. And if I had stopped to think about it, I may not have done it myself.

It took me 8 years to graduate from law school, including undergrad, and 75% of that time was spent learning crap that I will never need simply because the school told me I had to be "well rounded". What a scam and a waste of my time and money. Plus if I had to do it all over again I would not pursue a career in law. It's a total dead end. I would have been better of going to a community college for a year and becoming an x-ray tech. I am in the process of switching careers to something medical related. But I was one of those who was told growing up that simply having a college degree meant your financial security would be set. Not so especially since the cost of going to a University is just unbelievable. I'm thinking the best way to get rich is to open up a school!

Anyway - I know this was a lot but I've actually really thought about this quite a bit. We are a nation of go-getters. But the world has changed and we need to adapt. Let them make our cheap toys in China. What we really have here can't be copied or made into a cheap knock-off and sold half price. And they'll always be playing catch up when it comes to our military might and innovation. I don't even care that China or Iran or whoever has one of our drones to reverse engineer. The stuff we have that they don't know about would probably blow everybody's minds.

Ah...an ex-real estate broker? Real estate will come back...but not for awhile. The economy has been basically a "phony economy" since the Clinton years and the dot.com scam. Bush recovered from that scam by simply replacing it with another, the sub-prime mortgage scam.

We can recover, but it will take time and reorienting the economy back toward high tech manufacturing, which should create jobs and better our trade deficiencies.

Not to say that there will not be budget cuts and tax increases...that as well.

Much of the unemployment problem is related to the housing bust and to education. My kids, all of whom have technical degrees, are doing fine.

Are you talking about Mexican-Americans or are talking about illegal aliens? Either way they work for what the market will bear. They just work harder and longer to make a living and are happy to have a job.