April job cuts rise 17 percent to 40298, Challenger Gray & Christmas report, Unemployment claims rose 14000, Labor force participation rate record lows, Record food stamp usage

“11.4%: What the U.S. unemployment rate would be if labor force participation were back to January 2008 levels.” …James Pethokoukis, American Enterprise Institute, June 2013

“Over the last six months, of the net job creation, 97 percent of that is part-time work,”…Keith Hall, former BLS chief

“According to shocking new numbers that were just released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 20 percent of American families do not have a single person that is working. So when someone tries to tell you that the unemployment rate in the United States is about 7 percent, you should just laugh. One-fifth of the families in the entire country do not have a single member with a job. That is absolutely astonishing. How can a family survive if nobody is making any money? Well, the answer to that question is actually quite easy. There is a reason why government dependence has reached epidemic levels in the United States. Without enough jobs, tens of millions of additional Americans have been forced to reach out to the government for help. At this point, if you can believe it, the number of Americans getting money or benefits from the federal government each month exceeds the number of full-time workers in the private sector by more than 60 million.”…Zero Hedge April 29, 2014

 
You just read that 20 percent of American Families have no one employed.

We have record food stamp usage.

We have record lows of labor force participation.

You will read below that the planned job cuts compare favorably to 1997 levels.

But that is comparing apples and oranges.

Why?

The Labor force participation rate in 1997 was 67 percent.

It is 63.2 percent now.

More people have dropped out of the labor making the current jobs cuts more significant.

The labor force participation rate has plummeted since the Democrats took control of congress in January 2007 and Obama took the White House in January 2009.

From Challenger Gray & Christmas April 30, 2014.

“Job cut announcements by U.S.-based firms were up 17 percent in April, as employers in retail and financial services continued to shed workers in a challenging business environment.

Employers announced plans to shed 40,298 workers from their payrolls in April, according to the monthly report released Thursday by global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. That was up from 34,399 in March and 6.0 percent higher than the 38,121 job cuts recorded in the same month a year ago.

So far in 2014, Challenger has tracked 161,639 announced job cuts, 12 percent fewer than the 183,162 planned layoffs in the first four months of 2013.

“Despite the April increase, the pace of downsizing remains relatively low. We just saw the lowest first-quarter total in 19 years and the year-to-date monthly average of 40,410 is the lowest since 1997,” said John A. Challenger, chief executive officer of Challenger, Gray & Christmas.”

Read more:

https://www.challengergray.com/press/press-releases/2014-april-job-cut-report-job-cuts-rise-17-40298

From the US Labor Dept. April 30, 2014.

“In the week ending April 26, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 344,000, an increase of 14,000 from the previous week’s revised level. The previous week’s level was revised up by 1,000 from 329,000 to 330,000. The 4-week moving average was 320,000, an increase of 3,000 from the previous week’s revised average. The previous week’s average was revised up by 250 from 316,750 to 317,000.”

Read more:

http://www.dol.gov/opa/media/press/eta/eta20140709.pdf