Excerpt
JEFFREY BROWN (Newshour): The jobs report for October came in today. It brought news of slow improvement, but also continued worries that the stubbornly high unemployment picture isn't changing fast enough.
More Americans were working last month, although not as many as economists expected. In all, it amounted to modest improvement, as a congressional committee heard today from Keith Hall of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
KEITH HALL, Bureau of Labor Statistics: We do have job growth and we do have job growth in a few industries. And then the unemployment rate, you know, it was essentially unchanged, but it did tick down a little. I'm not sure I would put a lot of stock into that, because it's a very small change, but that could be an encouraging sign.
JEFFREY BROWN: The numbers behind that assessment included a net gain of 80,000 jobs in October. That was about 20,000 fewer than projected, but revised estimates from August and September showed the economy created 102,000 more jobs than initially thought.
Also headed in the right direction, the number of long-term unemployed, those out of work for 27 weeks or longer, which fell to 5.9 million.
COMMENT: My view on our whole jobs situation is that our economy has just barely filled a 8-year whole (current recession) dug by mismanagement 2000 through 2008, but we are ALSO dealing with a major changes in the job market that started a long time ago and the recession has only magnified.
ALSO
"Shields, Brooks on Americans' Pessimism, Scandal's Impact on Cain Candidacy" PBS Newshour Transcript 11/4/2011
Excerpt on jobs
JIM LEHRER (Editor, Newshour): And to the analysis of Shields and Brooks, syndicated columnist Mark Shields, New York Times columnist David Brooks.
Mark, what is there to say about today's jobs report?
MARK SHIELDS: Jim, there's one number that I think is important in understanding this.
They ask the question, pollsters do every month, do you think the country is headed in the right direction or seriously off on the wrong track. Right now, by a margin of 5-1, Americans think the country is off on the wrong track.
JIM LEHRER: And that's both liberals and conservatives?
MARK SHIELDS: Liberals and conservatives across the board.
JIM LEHRER: Republicans...
MARK SHIELDS: Democrats, yes, old, young.
JIM LEHRER: Yes.
MARK SHIELDS: And you have to go all the way back to January of 2004 before you found a plurality of Americans thinking the country was headed in the right direction. It was 47-45. And then unemployment was at 5.7 -- 94 consecutive months, the psychological condition of the country has been pessimism.
And these numbers aren't going to change it. These numbers aren't going to change it.
I mean, these numbers are better than they are worse. They're more slightly encouraging than they are discouraging, but they aren't going to change the direction of that psychological environment, emotional environment in which the country finds itself.
JIM LEHRER: You see it in the same terms?
DAVID BROOKS: Yes, I agree.
I think we're in for just a long period. There were some little good signs. Catherine Rampell talked about the temporary workers. Productivity was way up. When productivity is way up, they tend to hire later. But it's just going to be a long haul.
And there's been a lot of talk recently about the structural problems underneath the cyclical problems. And, so, for example, there's some theory going around we went through a period decades ago where we really got rid of a lot of industrial workers. Now we could be going through a period where we're getting rid of lot of mid-level white-collar workers as computers take over some of those managerial type jobs.
I'm sort of haunted by a conversation I had about two weeks ago with a business leader. And I was lamenting the terrible shape of the economy, and he said, we have managed to survive in it. We now know how to work in an economy that is growing 1 percent a year. We get great productivity. We are able to build our profits. We have learned to adapt to this.
And that means no hunger to hire more. And that will come, but it's just a long time.
JIM LEHRER: Some of the comments that were made in Jeff's discussion were words like "never," in terms of getting a lot of these jobs back. Some of these jobs will never come back.
And that's what you're saying. People know that. They have figured that out.
MARK SHIELDS: They do know that -- and then Ingrid Schroeder from Pew's statistic that almost one out of three has been unemployed for over a year, I mean, that is...
JIM LEHRER: That's an extraordinary statistic.
MARK SHIELDS: It really is, because that has a depressant on the person.
When you have been out of work that long, it's tougher to get up and have your dauber up and be looking again. You become defensive. You become pessimistic. And employers do -- David's right about productivity's up, but, as a consequence, because it's very much of a hiring market, pay is down and benefits are down. So they're getting talented workers for less than they did before.
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