More fun with unemployment numbers: week of October 31

[cjppjc]

Re: More fun with unemployment numbers: week of October 31

Based on news reports and anecdotal information, I suspect that one thing that's happening is that in anticipation of a near-term recovery, many employers are cutting back employee hours instead of laying them off. Someone who works 10 or 20 hours less per week is not technically unemployed.

This is exactly what was happening before. In anticipation of a recovery or not, one of my employers was just squeezing more work in less hours. This is not true anymore as Christmas approaches.

[MulaMan]

Re: More fun with unemployment numbers: week of October 31

and someone that used to work 40hrs per week and now works 80hrs a week for the same pay, just in order to get health care for her family, is not counted as 2 employees.

If we had public run health care removed from employers then this would be 2 employess at 40hrs per week and unemployment would go down drastically and the economy would improve....

[Jay]

Re: More fun with unemployment numbers: week of October 31

A tremendous amount of money was spent to keep housing prices whole. A whole hole. Hurray for assets and banks! But no new jobs. Where would the jobs come from?

You describe picture perfectly.

Why is there the political will to make the banks whole or expand the war but not to put people to work on a new grid?

Maybe because those who have the real power and money know that we are F'd either way and are in hunker down mode. Why filter cash through the population via new potentially inefficient bubbles that you might not be able to control, when you can try the old pathways of debt servitude which you already have a monopoly on. If the ship is going down either way, they stay with what is already in their wheelhouse and keep the masses muted as best they can in the meantime. When this thing called the economy finally lands with a thud, they just want to be left with as many chips as possible. So there will be more debt issuance until the dollar bleeds to death. I want a thatched hut, a pile of dried leaves in the corner to sleep on and a pig.

[cmalbatros]

Re: More fun with unemployment numbers: week of October 31

After a few slow weeks of "production" I find myself now joining the ranks of government workers where i will be gainfully employed as a timber lifter signing onto the dole. Was "laid off" on Friday, expected employee output has increased by 33% in 3 yrs, with product (lawnmowers and other power equipment from THD) ownership and quality changing for the worse. Pay increased 7%, medical increased by 20%+, all in all a lot more work for a lot less money. Warren Buffet and Scott Fetzer can go suck **** as far as i'm concerned

[Rajiv]

Re: More fun with unemployment numbers: week of October 31

Unemployment rate -- with and without the recovery plan.

When the “Recovery Plan” was being sold, the public was presented a chart of what the Unemployment rate would look like with and without the plan being implemented. Of course it was implemented, and here’s how the “rate” is stacking up:

So what actually happened? As of this morning, the Bureau of Labor Statistics tells us that we lost 190,000 non-farm jobs, and that the unemployment rate has risen to 10.2%.

That’s pretty startling. The reason, though, is that fewer people dropped out of the labor force last month. As I’ve mentioned ad nauseam in past posts, the labor market is responding sort of oddly in this recession, with millions of people simply dropping out of the labor force. They’re not counted among job seekers or even discouraged workers – they’re gone completely from the statistics. So a more useful number, I believe, is the number of jobs remaining in the country. Here’s that graph:



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But forget the quantitative treatment for a moment and consider what the Obama team’s graph said on a qualitative level. The graph says that within a couple of quarters, the stimulus package will stop the increase in unemployment and reverse the employment trend. That was the real mission of the stimulus. Stop job loss. Get the private sector hiring again.

So no matter how convoluted and fanciful the “jobs created or saved” numbers get, we just have to remember what the point used to be, and realize how far short we’ve fallen. And whose fault that really is.

[c1ue]

Re: More fun with unemployment numbers: week of October 31

Maybe the Obama team got the captions crossed. The bell curve was 'with the stimulus plan' and the other curve was 'without the stimulus plan'.

[touchring]

Re: More fun with unemployment numbers: week of October 31

http://www.dol.gov/opa/media/press/e...ta20091337.htm



There you have it. We have more claims filed than 1 year ago, but things are getting better?

c1ue, let's face it, unemployment in the US doesn't matter any more. Wall Street is now owned and working for the Chinese, the Arabs, the Indians, and the Europeans, it doesn't matter if half of Americans are unemployed and a quarter on the streets.

Wall Street has decoupled from America.

[we_are_toast]

Re: More fun with unemployment numbers: week of October 31

c1ue, let's face it, unemployment in the US doesn't matter any more. ...

Sure it does! People who have been in poverty for a while don't vote. People who have recently been introduced to poverty, vote the bums out.

Get ready for Stimulus II and it will be all about jobs.

[touchring]

Re: More fun with unemployment numbers: week of October 31

Sure it does! People who have been in poverty for a while don't vote. People who have recently been introduced to poverty, vote the bums out.

Get ready for Stimulus II and it will be all about jobs.

So how is this stimulus going to help unemployment in America? If you're going to spend the stimulus money in Walmart, it's going to help unemployment in China, Vietnam, Asia.

And on top of that, more money for the african venture - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...110818002.html

The US is facing structural unemployment which cannot be fixed by either monetary or fiscal policies.

[c1ue]

Re: More fun with unemployment numbers: week of October 31

Sure it does! People who have been in poverty for a while don't vote. People who have recently been introduced to poverty, vote the bums out.

The statistics don't seem to support this assertion: while the rich do vote more, they don't dominate the vote by any stretch of the imagination.

http://edition.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004.../epolls.0.html

VOTE BY INCOME	BUSH			KERRY		NADER
TOTAL	2004	2000	2004		2004
Under $15,000 (8%)	36%	n/a	63%		0%
$15-30,000 (15%)	42%	n/a	57%		0%
$30-50,000 (22%)	49%	n/a	50%		0%
$50-75,000 (23%)	56%	n/a	43%		0%
$75-100,000 (14%)	55%	n/a	45%		0%
$100-150,000 (11%)	57%	n/a	42%		1%
$150-200,000 (4%)	58%	n/a	42%		*
$200,000 or More (3%)	63%	n/a	35%		1%

As for Stimulus II - I thought Stimulus I was all about jobs.

Obama speech after passing of Stimulus I:

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/02...y4807704.shtml

Today [February 17, 2009] does not mark the end of our economic troubles. Nor does it constitute all of what we must do to turn our economy around. But it does mark the beginning of the end – the beginning of what we need to do to create jobs for Americans scrambling in the wake of layoffs; to provide relief for families worried they won’t be able to pay next month’s bills; and to set our economy on a firmer foundation, paving the way to long-term growth and prosperity.

...

What makes this recovery plan so important is not just that it will create or save three and a half million jobs over the next two years, including nearly 60,000 in Colorado. It’s that we are putting Americans to work doing the work that America needs done in critical areas that have been neglected for too long – work that will bring real and lasting change for generations to come.

Riiiiiiiiight.

[Kcim67]

Re: More fun with unemployment numbers: week of October 31

Maybe the Obama team got the captions crossed. The bell curve was 'with the stimulus plan' and the other curve was 'without the stimulus plan'.

Ahhhh it was that nasty Obama man that caused all this mess right. Doh Homer!

[Quincy K]

Re: More fun with unemployment numbers: week of October 31

So how is this stimulus going to help unemployment in America? If you're going to spend the stimulus money in Walmart, it's going to help unemployment in China, Vietnam, Asia.

And on top of that, more money for the african venture - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...110818002.html

The US is facing structural unemployment which cannot be fixed by either monetary or fiscal policies.

To this point, monetary and fiscal policies have helped both the stock market and unemployment. Money contninues to get injected into the markets by government entities such as GS in which laymen then
extract the equity through gains that then filters into the economy saving jobs. Wash. Rinse. Recycle. Since deficits don't matter for the US, we can see this kind of subsidy for the indefinate future.

If the market would have stayed at the March lows, where would the UE rate be right now?

We are way past the Rubicon. Inflate or die.

[we_are_toast]

Re: More fun with unemployment numbers: week of October 31

The statistics don't seem to support this assertion: while the rich do vote more, they don't dominate the vote by any stretch of the imagination.


Quote:

VOTE BY INCOME BUSH KERRY NADER TOTAL 2004 2000 2004 2004 Under $15,000 (8%) 36% n/a 63% 0% $15-30,000 (15%) 42% n/a 57% 0% $30-50,000 (22%) 49% n/a 50% 0% $50-75,000 (23%) 56% n/a 43% 0% $75-100,000 (14%) 55% n/a 45% 0% $100-150,000 (11%) 57% n/a 42% 1% $150-200,000 (4%) 58% n/a 42% * $200,000 or More (3%) 63% n/a 35% 1%

Let's take a look at this. I'll agree I shouldn't have said "don't vote" I should have said don't turn out like other voters. Now it's not necessary to "dominate" to turn the world around.

From this graph you can see that 34% of the population has incomes of less than $30,000 while from your chart we see that they only accounted for 23% of the votes. While the $75,000 + group accounts for roughly 25% of the population but accounted for 32% of the votes.

The lower income group went for Kerry with roughly 60% while the upper income group went for Bush by roughly 57%. I'll let you do the math, but you can clearly see that if the income groups voted in proportion to their population, we wouldn't have had a Republican president since Ronald Reagan and it would be a very, very, different world.


As far as stimulus programs; Stimulus I was sold as stopping the cliff diving the economy was in, getting things back on track. Stimulus II will be sold as jobs, jobs, jobs, 24/7. It won't be about tax breaks, or getting banks to lend... it'll be jobs. The politics is simply to negative for the Dems to go into 2010 with unemployment rising. And it's just to hard to pass up the opportunity to get the Republicans to vote against a hard core jobs program. It's just a matter of when's the best time to announce it.

[metalman]

Re: More fun with unemployment numbers: week of October 31

After a few slow weeks of "production" I find myself now joining the ranks of government workers where i will be gainfully employed as a timber lifter signing onto the dole. Was "laid off" on Friday, expected employee output has increased by 33% in 3 yrs, with product (lawnmowers and other power equipment from THD) ownership and quality changing for the worse. Pay increased 7%, medical increased by 20%+, all in all a lot more work for a lot less money. Warren Buffet and Scott Fetzer can go suck **** as far as i'm concerned

sorry to hear that, cmalbatros. it's a fine mess, ain't it?

[c1ue]

Re: More fun with unemployment numbers: week of October 31

As far as stimulus programs; Stimulus I was sold as stopping the cliff diving the economy was in, getting things back on track. Stimulus II will be sold as jobs, jobs, jobs, 24/7. It won't be about tax breaks, or getting banks to lend... it'll be jobs. The politics is simply to negative for the Dems to go into 2010 with unemployment rising. And it's just to hard to pass up the opportunity to get the Republicans to vote against a hard core jobs program. It's just a matter of when's the best time to announce it.

I fear you are suffering from inability to focus on the facts.

The transcript of Obama's speech remarking on the passage of the stimulus bill mentions the 4 lettered work 'bank' exactly once:

As important as the step we take today is, this legislation represents only the first part of the broad strategy we need to address our economic crisis. In the coming days and weeks, I will be launching other aspects of the plan. We will need to stabilize, repair, and reform our banking system, and get credit flowing again to families and businesses.

Banks were stabilized and repaired with massive taxpayer funds.

They have not been reformed nor is credit flowing by any measure.

On the other hand, the 4 letter word 'jobs' was mentioned 5 times:

Today does not mark the end of our economic troubles. Nor does it constitute all of what we must do to turn our economy around. But it does mark the beginning of the end – the beginning of what we need to do to create jobs for Americans scrambling in the wake of layoffs; to provide relief for families worried they won’t be able to pay next month’s bills; and to set our economy on a firmer foundation, paving the way to long-term growth and prosperity.

Today does not mark the end of our economic troubles. Nor does it constitute all of what we must do to turn our economy around. But it does mark the beginning of the end – the beginning of what we need to do to create jobs for Americans scrambling in the wake of layoffs; to provide relief for families worried they won’t be able to pay next month’s bills; and to set our economy on a firmer foundation, paving the way to long-term growth and prosperity.

Because we know America can’t outcompete the world tomorrow if our children are being outeducated today, we are making the largest investment in education in our nation’s history. It’s an investment that will create jobs building 21st century classrooms, libraries, and labs for millions of children across America.

Further, thanks to the action we have taken, seven million Americans who lost their health care along with their jobs will continue to get the coverage they need, and roughly 20 million more can breathe a little easier, knowing that their health care won’t be cut due to a state budget shortfall.

Because we know we can’t power America’s future on energy that’s controlled by foreign dictators, we are taking a big step down the road to energy independence, and laying the groundwork for a new, green energy economy that can create countless well-paying jobs.

The lower income group went for Kerry with roughly 60% while the upper income group went for Bush by roughly 57%. I'll let you do the math, but you can clearly see that if the income groups voted in proportion to their population, we wouldn't have had a Republican president since Ronald Reagan and it would be a very, very, different world.

And again you show your ideological idiocy. It is a pity you don't take even 5 seconds to check your statements before you utter them.

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/news/06/04/gelman.html

The new study, "Rich State, Poor State, Red State, Blue State: What's the Matter with Connecticut?" finds that income matters more in "red America" than in "blue America." In poor states, rich people are much more likely than poor people to vote for the Republican presidential candidate, but in rich states (such as Connecticut), income has a very low correlation with vote preference. As the report states, "The Republicans have the support of the richer voters within any given state but have more overall support in the poorer states. Thus, the identification of rich states with rich voters, or more generally, the 'personification' of so-called red and blue states, is misleading."

Oops!