Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Friday, February 3, 2012

Good News Everybody (NFP edition)

By Dave Anderson:


An actual piece of very good news on the job front via the BLS:


Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 243,000 in January, and the
unemployment rate decreased to 8.3 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor
Statistics reported today. Job growth was widespread in the private
sector, with large employment gains in professional and business
services, leisure and hospitality, and manufacturing. Government
employment changed little over the month....


The unemployment rate declined by 0.2 percentage point in January to
8.3 percent; the rate has fallen by 0.8 point since August.


All backward looking data has also been revised upwards.  243,000 new jobs in a month is a pace that is sufficient to actually tighten up the labor market and thus improve wages/income.



3 comments:

  1. LOL. Look a bit closer if you think this is "good news".
    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/record-12-million-people-fall-out-labor-force-one-month-labor-force-participation-rate-tumbles-
    The labor force participation rate continues its death spiral.

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  2. Well, that rate of job creation would get us out of the hole in something like seven years. Better, certainly, and good news, but hardly a bell ringer.
    I didn't follow OhNo's link, but is Zero Hedge really claiming 12 million dropped out of labor force? Please. It was 1.2 million, and that was affected by a 10-year adjustment having to do with the census.
    The bad news is that participation in the labor force is not improving to any degree that matters, only 0.2% since the bottom of the current recession. The portion of the working age population that is employed is not improving, and it is that which we should be watching.
    Remember, too, that the numbers are "household survey" and "birth-death model" government calculations, and are "seasonally adjusted" and manipulated. I did not trust the "models" and adjustments when Bush was in office, and I don't trust them now.

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  3. I am lecturer working in Greenwich university as years going on rate of the students in the universities is increasing. These many students probably getting job is good but when you are calculating with bureau of labor statistics it is too bad, why these students need a degree for a labor work. Any way we should be happy for decreasing the unemployment when compare to before years.
    Thanks for posting such a great article

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