JustOneMinute

July Jobs

I believe it is growth in our time. The July jobs report should (barely) appease those worried about a double (or is it now triple?) dip recession. And that is about the only good thing to be said:

Continuing a long slog upward from the depths of the recession, the American economy added 163,000 nonfarm payroll jobs in July, the Labor Department said on Friday. That compares to a revised 64,000 jobs added in June.

July’s job growth was higher than economists had been expecting, but no one is yet popping champagne corks. The unemployment rate ticked up to 8.3 percent from 8.2 percent.

“It’s a lot better than we’d been seeing in the last few months, but it’s still short of the kind of job growth we were seeing at the beginning of this year,” said Paul Ashworth, chief United States economist at Capital Economics.

As for the pace of hiring through the rest of the year, he said, “I think this is about as good as it’s going to get.”

For context, the economy now produces as many goods and services — more, in fact — than it did before the downturn officially began in December 2007. But it does so with almost five million fewer jobs.

And the rate at which the economy has been adding jobs in the last few months is just barely fast enough to absorb the growth in the labor force.

“In the weakest recovery since the Great Depression, nearly the entire reduction in unemployment since October 2009 has been accomplished through a significant drop in the percentage of adults participating in the labor force — either working or looking for work,” said Peter Morici, a professor at the University of Maryland.

Economists had been expecting that another poor month of job growth would virtually guarantee more stimulus from the Federal Reserve. After its meeting this week, Fed officials said they acknowledged that the economy was slowing and stood ready to take additional stimulus measures.

Now, it’s not clear what Friday’s numbers portend for Fed action.

...

Economists are not expecting job growth to pick up much anytime soon. Concerned about the European debt crisis and the draconian American fiscal tightening scheduled for the end of the year, companies are starting to retrench.

...

Government payrolls, which have been shedding workers almost every month for the last two years, have been a drag on overall employment growth. In July, total government employment — that is, at the federal, state and local levels — fell by 9,000 jobs.

Forecasts for gross domestic product growth in the third quarter of this year have fallen in recent days on the heels of other disappointing economic news from manufacturing and consumer spending.

As Obama explained, it worked, and it's still working.

Badminton Brainlock

The Olympic organizers decided to introduce a round-robin format to the Olympic badminton tournament, rather than the single-elimination tournament done in the past.

A blind man could have seen what would happen next, but of course, blind men aren't actively playing or organizing badminton tournaments:

On Wednesday, four women’s doubles teams — two from South Korea and one each from China and Indonesia — were disqualified. But the circumstances were complicated by the fact that the rules of the sport seemed to give the athletes an incentive to lose.

The eight players were found to have tried to lose their matches intentionally, apparently because they had determined that a loss would allow them to play a weaker opponent in the next round.

...

Badminton officials introduced a preliminary round at the Olympics this year so that each team could play at least three times and not risk traveling thousands of miles only to be eliminated in the first match. But athletes and coaches have always looked for any available advantage, including throwing a match to save energy or to face an easier opponent in the next round.

This goes on all the time in soccer. And of course, top athletes routinely ease up in their qualifying heats. Anyone expecting a record from Usain Bolt or Michael Phelps in a qualifier is almost surely in for a disappointment.

Oh, well - yet another bureaucratic fail as the law of unintended consequences strikes again.

 

Here Stay Da Judge

Judge Lester won't recuse himself in the Zimmerman trial: CNN, NBC.

Eventually we expect the two page order to be available at the court's website, and a defense response at the Zimmerman site.

And The VP Pick Is...

Ross Douthat thinks Romney will Go Dull with Portman.