Given that we're at least a couple of months away from turnaround in the labor market, the fact that consumer confidence is not doing much worse than treading water is actually a good-news story.
We're still several months away from job growth catching up with labor force growth and driving the unemployment rate back down, but that's really just a matter of time. Our economy is moving again, and once that happens it's actually quite hard to stop the forward momentum.
We're still returning to pre-hurricane levels but in general this is a good report. This is further evidence labor markets are still healthy in the U.S.
We're looking for increases in employment, but because the labor force is growing 1 percent a year, we need 125,000 new jobs per month to stabilize the unemployment rate. We see the unemployment rate drifting slightly higher and lingering higher for the next year.
We're looking for a relatively good year in 2006, given that wages are up and the labor market is fairly tight.
We've got labor peace and it's intelligent. It makes sense. We do have the greatest league in the world.
Nobody would have me in their laboratory for five minutes. I couldn't cut up a frog, and I certainly couldn't perform surgery. I'm better at making it possible for other people.
Nothing is going to happen in terms of improving confidence until something happens in terms of an improving labor market, and that might well take until after New Year's.
I will not be in the position of having management dictated to by labor.
The biggest labor problem is tomorrow.