Archive for October 8th, 2010

Gallup pegs unemployment @ 10.1% … says "expect BLS report to understate"

October 8, 2010

There are 3 main sources of unemployment data: ADP, Gallup, and the BLS, with the latter — the gov’t number — comes out today.

This week, ADP report that 39,000 private sector jobs were lost in Sept.

Now, Gallup is reporting a .7% rise in the unemployment rate to 10.1%, and an increase in the underemployment rate to 18.8%. Charts and link below.

So, the Recovery Summer Tour — showcasing the trillion dollar faux stimulus program — started with unemployment at 9.6%, and ends with the rate at 10.1%.

Some recovery …

Gallup says that most of the job losses came in the last 2 weeks of the month and probably won’t be reflected in today’s BLS numbers … they’ll show up in a revision that comes — you guessed it — 3 days after the mid-term elections. 

Hmmm.

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” The government’s final unemployment report before the midterm elections is based on job market conditions around mid-September. Gallup’s modeling of the unemployment rate is consistent with Tuesday’s ADP report of a decline of 39,000 private-sector jobs, and indicates that the government’s national unemployment rate in September will be in the 9.6% to 9.8% range. This is based on Gallup’s mid-September measurements and the continuing decline Gallup is seeing in the U.S. workforce during 2010.

However, Gallup’s monitoring of job market conditions suggests that there was a sharp increase in the unemployment rate during the last couple of weeks of September. It could be that the anticipated slowdown of the overall economy has potential employers even more cautious about hiring.”

http://www.gallup.com/poll/143426/Gallup-Finds-Unemployment-September.aspx

Posted in Employment - Jobs, Unemployment | Leave a Comment »

Either they don’t know how business works, or they just don’t care … here’s more evidence

October 8, 2010

According to the WSJ …

The issue: 2011 tax-withholding tables.

Treasury officials must release the tables, which determine the take-home pay of millions of wage-earners, by mid-November because it takes payroll processors weeks to adjust their systems before Jan. 1.

But congressional leaders recently postponed voting on taxes until after the election and lawmakers don’t reconvene until Nov. 15.

The Senate is scheduled to take up several nontax issues when it returns and is expected to leave for Thanksgiving soon after, possibly pushing a vote on taxes into December.

Treasury officials’ most obvious option is the least attractive. If they publish tables based on expiration of the Bush tax cuts, which occurs Jan. 1, millions of low- and middle-income taxpayers who have paid little or no income taxes for a decade would likely see increases in January.

It’s estimated that higher withholding could take up to $10 billion a month out workers’ pockets due to higher tax rates alone.

Excerpted from WSJ: Delays to Tax Tables May Dent Paychecks, Oct. 7, 2010
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704689804575535861229293800.html?mod=WSJ_hps_LEFTWhatsNews

Posted in Taxes | Leave a Comment »

It’s those shades of gray that are keeping you from making a decision …

October 8, 2010

Excerpted fro WSJ: Why So Many People Can’t Make Decisions, Sept. 27, 2010

Some people meet, fall in love and get married right away. Others can spend hours in the sock aisle at the department store, weighing the pros and cons of buying a pair of wool argyles instead of cotton striped.

Seeing the world as black and white, in which choices seem clear, or shades of gray can affect people’s path in life, from jobs and relationships to which political candidate they vote for, researchers say.

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People who often have conflicting feelings about situations — the shades-of-gray thinkers — have more of what psychologists call ambivalence, while those who tend toward unequivocal views have less ambivalence.

High ambivalence may be useful in some situations, and low ambivalence in others.

And although people don’t fall neatly into one camp or the other, in general, individuals who tend toward ambivalence do so fairly consistently across different areas of their lives.

Now, researchers have been investigating how ambivalence, or lack of it, affects people’s lives, and how they might be able to make better decisions.

Overall, thinking in shades of gray is a sign of maturity, enabling people to see the world as it really is. It’s a “coming to grips with the complexity of the world.”

If there isn’t an easy answer, ambivalent people, more than black-and-white thinkers, are likely to procrastinate and avoid making a choice. 

People with a strong need to reach a conclusion in a given situation tend to black-and-white thinking, while ambivalent people tend to be more comfortable with uncertainty.

Because of their strongly positive or strongly negative views, black-and-white thinkers tend to be quicker at making decisions than highly ambivalent people.

Ambivalent people, on the other hand, tend to systematically evaluate all sides of an argument before coming to a decision. They scrutinize carefully the evidence that is presented to them, making lists of pros and cons, and rejecting overly simplified information. 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703694204575518200704692936.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read

Posted in Decision-making | Leave a Comment »

Registers Are Ringing … at the Dollar Stores, that is.

October 8, 2010

TakeAway: As people make fewer costly shopping trips to stock their pantries and increasingly can only afford inexpensive items in small quantities, stores are scrambling for the once-ignored low-end customer.

Some customers at Wal-Mart and the major dollar chains have such modest budgets that the retailers report upticks in spending at the beginning of the month, when government benefit checks and many paychecks come through.

Some of the stores have even managed to reach some middle-income shoppers, by increasing products from well-known brands such as Hanes, Quaker Oats and Nabisco. 

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Excerpted from the New York Times, “Stores Scramble to Accommodate Budget Shoppers” By Stephanie Clifford,September 22, 2010

Dollar stores have shown the biggest gain in shopper visits over the last year out of all the retailers that sell basic consumer goods. Manufacturers are racing to package more affordable versions of products common at those stores, and other budget retailers, feeling the loss of customers, are trying to duplicate their success.

 Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, is adding thousands of items to its shelves, including inexpensive ones, and is asking dollar-store suppliers to create small, under-a-dollar packages for its stores, too.

 In areas with high unemployment, Wal-Mart is grouping together its less than $1 items in a clear challenge to the dollar stores. About a quarter of Wal-Mart’s stores are beginning to offer items for under $1, such as a four-pack of toilet paper, boxes containing just a few garbage bags and single rolls of paper towels.

The dollar stores have best been able to capitalize on the downmarket trend because of strategies they embraced during the recession, when the stores kept things cheap and expanded their merchandise.

During the recession, Wal-Mart pulled back on very inexpensive products, suppliers said, to make the stores look less cluttered and to appeal to shoppers who might be testing out that retailer instead of, say, Target. That decision has it now playing catch-up.

The dollar stores have found creative ways to keep their prices low. When commodity costs rose for suppliers, for example, the dollar stores asked them to decrease the number of sandwich bags in a box or pushed them to come up with a cheaper version of the products.

Edit by AMW

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Full Article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/22/business/22dollar.html?_r=1&th&emc=th 

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Posted in Mktg - Positioning, Mktg - Product Line Mgnt, Retailing | Leave a Comment »