The "Real" Employment Situation Report - February 2012

If you listen to the bleating of the mainstream media and economists there is absolutley nothing to worry about and Friday'semployment report proves it.  The official unemployment rate remained steady at 8.3 percent, and 227,000 jobs were added.  Just don't look at the number of long-term unemployed, or those without jobs for more than six months, that stayed the same at 5.4 million.  Don't talk about the number of those working part time but wanting to work full time, at 8.1 million, which remained unchaged as well.  Most importantly don't mention that the number of new entrants into the unemployment ranks rose sharply last month as we discussed in this past weekend's newsletter .  If you are lucky enough to have a job, and particularly an hourly pay job, there was little change in hours worked per week and real disposable incomes continue to lag behind inflation.  With oil and gasoline prices on the rise the noose around the household budget was just drawn a bit tighter.

But politics, however noisy, is less important than the ongoing structural realities that this report and its cousins describe. It's less about the headline number than about the emerging trends, which are also captured by a number of private surveys including one recently released by Gallup .

Those trends reveal the existence of a very large class of unemployed, underemployed, and employed but poorly paid workers. They reveal as well an even larger class of well-paid, engaging, and dynamic jobs. Gallup this ...