Sunday 3rd of November 2024

amazing! Blame the weather and boeing workers!.....

Job creation in October slowed to its weakest pace since late 2020 as the impacts of storms in the Southeast and a significant labor impasse dented the employment picture.

Nonfarm payrolls increased by 12,000 for the month, down sharply from September and below the Dow Jones estimate for 100,000, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. In what had already been expected to be a downbeat report, October posted the smallest gain since December 2020.

 

The unemployment rate, however, held at 4.1%, in line with expectations. A broader measure of unemployment that includes discouraged workers and those holding part-time jobs for economic reasons also was unchanged at 7.7%.

In the report narrative, the BLS noted that the Boeing strikelikely subtracted 44,000 jobs in the manufacturing sector, which lost 46,000 positions overall.

Along with that, the report noted the impact of hurricanes Helene and Milton but said “it is not possible to quantify the net effect” of the storms on the jobs total. The BLS noted that the survey responses for the survey of establishments, which shows the headline nonfarm payrolls gain, was “well below average” and in fact the lowest in more than 30 years, but said that was the case both for areas hit by the storm as well as those outside the zone.

Elsewhere, the bureau said average hourly earnings increased 0.4% for the month, slightly higher than the estimate, though the 4% 12-month gain was in line. The average workweek held steady at 34.3 hours.

Markets, though, largely ignored the bad news, with stock market futures poised for a strong open on Wall Street while Treasury yields plunged. The meager jobs numbers along with wages about in line with expectations help cement another interest rate cut from the Federal Reserve next week.

 

“At first glance, October’s jobs report paints a picture of growing fragility in the U.S. labor market, but under the surface is a muddy report roiled by climate and labor disruptions,” said Cory Stahle, an economist at the Indeed Hiring Lab. “While the impacts of these events are real and should not be ignored, they are likely temporary and not a signal of a collapsing job market.”

The release comes just days ahead of the presidential election in which Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trumpare in what most polls show to be a deadlocked race. With the economy at the forefront of the battle, the light jobs number “casts a murky shadow heading into next week,” said Lisa Sturtevant, chief economist at Bright MLS.

The weak October report also included substantial downward revisions from previous months. August was cut to just a gain of 78,000 while September’s initial estimate came down to 223,000. Together, the net revisions lowered previously reported job creation totals by 112,000.

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/11/01/us-jobs-report-october-2024.html

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJlyOR0VUGs

US Jobs Report Shock: -112,000 Revision to Prior Months as US Labor Market Halts in October

 

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

“It’s hard to do cartoons without a tornado or two…”

         Gus Leonisky

 

MEANWHILE THE CROOKED PERSONNEL OF THE YUCKRAINIAN GOVERNMENT GET SUPER-WELL-PAID BY THE AMERICANS....

boeing, boeing....

November 1 marks the seventh week of a crippling strike of 33,000 factory workers at all Boeing production lines outside the nonunionized plant in North Carolina. Workers are demanding a 40% pay rise, arguing that they have not seen wage increases for years.

The US planemaker improved the conditions in its latest offer on Thursday, hoping to put an end to the painful strike that has paralyzed its two main factories. 

News agency AFP reports that the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers District 751 — the union which represents the workers on strike — endorsed the new offer and set a vote for Monday. The offer includes a 38% wage increase over the four years of the contract and a $12,000 (€11,000) ratification bonus, Boeing said in its press release.

This is the fourth offer made by Boeing since early September, and the third on which members have been asked to vote. The strike is costing the company an estimated $50 million per day, AFP reports.

To calm nerves and avoid a downgrade of its investment rating, Boeing has begun raising about $25 billion in fresh capital by selling stock to try and limit the damage from the money it is losing.

Losses galore

Losses are the order of the day in a truly terrible year for one of aerospace industry's proudest names: loss of prestige, loss of customer confidence and, almost, more loss of life — after narrowly avoiding catastrophe when a door plug blew out during a Boeing MAX flight in January.

And financial losses are mounting higher than ever. For the third quarter of 2024, the company reported the second-worst quarterly result in over a century, marking a $6 billion deficit. This adds up to $7.7 billion for the first nine months of 2024, ending up at an estimated $10 billion in the red for the whole year.

Boeing's accumulating losses have led to announced job losses of 17,000 workers — almost a tenth of the current workforce — and a massive selloff in the US planemaker's shares which have fallen more than 40% since the start of the year.

For Steven Udvar-Hazy, Boeing's current struggles are like a vicious cycle with no easy way out. "Boeing is a tragic case. Almost everything they touch turns to poison," the Hungarian-American billionaire businessman and executive chairman of Air Lease Corporation — one of Boeing's biggest customers — told DW.

Carsten Spohr, the chief executive of German flagcarrier Lufthansa, told journalists recently that he had "never seen anything like it in our industry, to be honest."

 Boeing strike worsens industry's supply woes

There is no alternative for airlines as they are stuck with Boeing or Airbus for supplies of new aircraft. European planemaker Airbus, however, is equally booked out until the early 2030s and fighting its own supply chain problems. Also, some parts suppliers maintain close links to both of the world's biggest aircraft manufacturers and need both as customers.

The strike by Boeing workers is compounding woes in the entire aerospace industry, where everything is connected.

Boeing has a staggering backlog of over 6,000 aircraft ordered, but not yet produced. Airbus is sitting on orders for over 8,600 jets. So Boeing desperately needs to end the strike, and everybody, even at Airbus, wishes for its speedy recovery. This would also be in the interest of airline passengers and the environment, as newer, more environmentally friendly jets, are overdue to replace older, dirtier types now kept in service longer than planned.

'If he can't do it, I don't think anyone can'

Despite the problems, there is widespread agreement among Boeing workers, industry analysts and competitors that the man now at the helm of Boeing is capable of turning the behemoth around. "If he can't do it, I don't think anyone can,” the British business daily Financial Times quoted an industry analyst as saying recently.

Boeing's new CEO, Kelly Ortberg, came out of semi-retirement in August to take the chief executive position at the Seattle, Washington-based planemaker.

On October 11, Ortberg addressed Boeing workers with a no-nonsense assessment of the situation, also laying out his plans to reverse fortunes: "Clearly, we are at a crossroads. The trust in our company has eroded. We're saddled with too much debt. We've had serious lapses in our performance across the company which have disappointed many of our customers,” he said, adding that there were also opportunities for Boeing moving forward.

"Our company backlog is roughly half-a-trillion dollars. We have a customer base that want us and need us to succeed. We have employees who are thirsty to get back to the iconic company they know, setting the standards for the products that we deliver,” Ortberg said.

Ortberg described his mission as turning "this big ship in the right direction and restoring Boeing to the leadership position that we all know and want." But for him to achieve that a "fundamental culture change" was needed and a stabilization of business.

He also pledged that this was not "just lip-service, or commitments to be printed on posters and then be largely ignored, as had been the case since 1997." At the time, Boeing had merged with McDonnell Douglas, shifting the company's focus toward shareholder value as the absolute priority over engineering excellence, the root cause of today's crisis.

Only near the end of his speech, did Ortberg touch on one of the most decisive issues. "Boeing is an airplane company and at the right time in the future we need to develop a new airplane. But we have a lot of work to do before then," he said.

Being risk-averse and streamlined towards maximizing profits, Boeing has lacked product innovation for decades, especially in coming up with a successor to its cash cow Boeing 737. The plane was first flown in 1967 and is still sold today as MAX.

Edited by: Uwe Hessler

https://www.dw.com/en/boeing-turbulence-us-planemaker-hopes-to-end-strike-as-losses-mount/a-70655450

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

“It’s hard to do cartoons without wings…”

         Gus Leonisky