House prices are nearly flat.
Volumes of home sales is at an all time high.
Garden Grove:
http://www.synoia.com/restats/GG%20Stats%20Chart.htm

Westminster:
http://www.synoia.com/restats/WTM%20Stats%20Chart.htm

Fountain Valley:
http://www.synoia.com/restats/FV%20Stats%20Chart.htm

Riverside & San Bernardino Counties are not so good. One can get a newer home there for $100,000 to $150,000, down from $350,000-$400,000 at the peak.

Unemployment starts to fall in September. The forecast was that it would happen in March.

That would still fit my forecast ages ago that Q3 will have GDP growth >= 0.1%, and December 2009 unemployment is <= 9.9%.

_{--Sell Texas to China!}

... it seems to me in a totally subjective manner that the mood is improving although the believe in US exceptionalism may have been dampened permanently.

All totally subjective readings though.

On my last business trip I praised Canada to an IT guy that I am working with in Dallas and he seems to be kind of a stereotypical Texas libertarian. Interestingly enough one who realized how the health insurance industry is strangling the country. He actually inquired what it takes to emigrate to Canada.

The U.S. labor force posted the biggest back-to-back jump in six years, a sign Americans who’d quit looking for work are gaining confidence their search will pay off as the recession eases.

The labor pool rose to 155.1 million in May from 154 million in March, the largest two-month increase since January- February 2003, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. The participation rate, or the share of people either working or looking for a job, climbed to 65.9 percent, the highest since October.

“Some among the ranks of job losers see a greater chance of finding a job and have begun to look in earnest,” John Ryding, chief economist at RDQ Economics LLC in New York, said in a note to clients today. It strengthens the argument that “the recession may have ended in May or June,” he said.

The gain in the labor force in part helps explain why the jobless rate jumped to 9.4 percent in May, the highest since 1983. Payrolls fell by 345,000, the least in eight months, today’s report also showed. The data reinforces signs the deepest economic slump in half a century is starting to abate, even as economists predict any expansion may be muted.

The folks who had given up are coming back into the labor pool. Another sign of the end of a recession.

The fact that the unemployment rate is rising indicates that, while the pace of layoffs may be slowing, and I think these numbers are pure bullshit, those out of work are not finding jobs, or turning down the fairly-plentiful sub$10/hr ones. I turned down a temp job this week because after taxes and commuting expenses, I'd make more on unemployment.

Posted on Fri, Jun. 05, 2009
Kevin G. Hall | McClatchy Newspapers

last updated: June 05, 2009 08:36:18 PM

WASHINGTON — Better-than-expected May employment numbers Friday showed that the breathtaking pace of job losses is moderating, but experts warn that the unemployment rate will continue to climb for months and job growth could remain sluggish for years.

Employers shed 345,000 jobs in May, the fewest since September, and far fewer than the 500,000-plus cuts that forecasters had expected. Job losses also were less bad in March and April than initially reported: 652,000 in March, not 699,000, and 504,000 in April, not 539,000, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said.

Those numbers show a clear moderating trend; they compare starkly with the 741,000 jobs lost in January, the worst month in the stretch.

While that's all better than expected, the BLS also reported that the nation's unemployment rate jumped by half a percentage point in May to 9.4 percent, driven up in part by 350,000 new entrants to the nation's work force. There are now 14.5 million unemployed Americans.

What these conflicting numbers suggest is that even as the U.S. economy begins climbing out of the recession, the labor market will remain depressed for some time.

After the 1990 and 2001 recessions, the economy continued to lose jobs for months. Even once the nation's gross domestic product — the total value of goods and services produced — begins to climb again, probably in the second half of this year, it won't feel much like recovery for the jobless.

"It may be a long time after GDP starts growing before we start adding jobs," said Heidi Shierholz, a researcher at the liberal Economic Policy Institute.

When the recession began in December 2007, unemployment was 4.9 percent. It's now 9.4 percent, and most economists expect it to peak at more than 10 percent by 2010. The highest post-World War II unemployment rate was 10.8 percent in 1982. The peak during the Great Depression was 25 percent.

According to the Economic Policy Institute, the economy must add 127,000 jobs a month just to keep up with population growth. That means that to offset the 6 million jobs that have been lost since the recession began and absorb new workers added to the work force since then, the economy must create 8 million jobs.

In addition, future job losses from the shrinking automotive industry haven't yet registered.

"Obviously, we haven't seen the impact of dealership closings from Chrysler and General Motors. I don't think we've turned the corner yet, and all the signals are kind of mixed," said Ravin Jesuthasan, a manager at the human resources consultancy Towers Perrin. "We're heading in the right direction, but it's tough to say yet that we've turned the corner."

more

here: http://www.ianwelsh.net/job-report-better-than-expected/

^{"All men's gains are the fruit of venturing."}

-Herodotus