U.S. Budget and Economy

On February 6th, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released its Employment Situation report for January of 2008. Following is the opening paragraph: Nonfarm payroll employment fell sharply in January (-598,000) and the unemployment rate rose from 7.2 to 7.6 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. Payroll employment has declined by 3.6 million since the start of the recession in December 2007; about one-half of this decline occurred in the past 3 months. In January, job losses were large and widespread across nearly all major industry sectors. The following graph shows the labor force, household survey employment, nonfarm employment, and unemployment rate since 1998: The actual numbers and sources for this and the following graph can be found at this link . As can be seen, employment has decreased and the unemployment rate has increased sharply since December 2007, especially in the past few months. Also noticeable is the fact tha...

Note: There is a updated version of this post at this link . On January 30th, the Bureau of Economic Analysis issued its initial estimates of the real gross domestic product in the fourth quarter of 2008. Following is the beginning of the accompanying news release : Real gross domestic product -- the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States -- decreased at an annual rate of 3.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008, (that is, from the third quarter to the fourth quarter), according to advance estimates released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the third quarter, real GDP decreased 0.5 percent. The Bureau emphasized that the fourth-quarter “advance” estimates are based on source data that are incomplete or subject to further revision by the source agency (see the box on page 4). The fourth- quarter “preliminary” estimates, based on more comprehensive data, will be released on February 27, 2009. The release goes on to describe the...