Tag: unemployment

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Obamanomics : Is work Obsolete ?

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August 7,2015
the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ, The number of people not in the labor force reached another record high in July, according to new jobs data released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The BLS reports that 93,770,000 people (16 and older) were neither employed last month nor had made specific efforts to find work in the prior four weeks.This is an increase of 144,000 over June’s record when 93,626,000 were not in the workforce.

labor force participation rate remained the the same as June at 62.6 percent. Before last month the labor force participation rate had not been that low since October 1977, when the participation rate was 62.4 percent .Despite hovering near the 38 year low. the unemployment rate remained at 5.3 percent suggesting more people were searching for jobs during the 1970’s and the incentive not to work was not as high.

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Lies, damned lies and government unemployment statistics… on America’s birthday, no less!

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Posted by Scott St Clair On July 02, 2015

By Scott St. Clair | The Save Jersey Blog

More from Scott https://savejersey.com/2015/07/unemployment-statistics-obama/

Progressives, liberals, socialists, Democrats  and the media (one and the same?) who crow about the current “low” unemployment rate never want to admit that the reason it’s gotten to 5.3 percent — the “official unemployment rate,” or U-3, as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics — is because the bureaucrats at BLS and the politicians in the White House artificially have tossed millions upon millions of long-term, out-of-work Americans off the roles by arbitrarily declaring that they’re “no longer in the labor force.”

There are lies, damned lies and government unemployment statistics. I’ve written about this before, but you can never have enough economic bad news, especially on the eve of our national birthday.

The more accurate U-6 rate, which is what economists look at for unemployment numbers and includes those marginally attached to the workforce, has the unemployment rate at 10.5 percent. But even that is too optimistic.

There are some – count John Williams at ShadowStats.com and me among them – who contend that the REAL unemployment rate has to include EVERYBODY, not just those the government wants included and did, until 1994 when they rigged the way the numbers were calculated to exclude the long-term unemployed.

That unemployment rate – the REAL rate – is 23.1 percent, a number that, unlike the U-3 and the U-6, hasn’t significantly gone down in over two years. At its highest in 1933 during the Great Depression, the unemployment rate was at 25 percent.

While Williams is not without his critics, they focus more on his terminology and harping about the edges of his calculations rather than his central thesis that a whole lot of folks who should be counted as in the labor force aren’t being counted.

Since, for statistical purposes, the U-3 only counts workers in the labor force, the measurement automatically drops whenever the labor force shrinks in size, which it does whenever the government wants it to. In theory, I can get the unemployment rate to ZERO by simply declaring all unemployed persons  to be no longer in the labor force. BAM – problem solved.

Adding insult to injury, whatever job creation we’ve seen has been in low-wage and part-time positions.  Mid- and higher-range positions are down some 1.2 million since 2009. When you go from making $75,000 per year on a full-time basis to making $7.50 per hour on a part time basis, most people consider that to be a severe hit, but the federal government considers it a net win – after all, you’re working, aren’t you?

A record 94 MILLION Americans are no longer considered as being in the labor force. That’s substantially greater than one in three, resulting in a participation rate — the total of Americans working or “looking” for work — of 62.6 percent, a number not seen since the worst days of the Carter administration.

To illustrate graphically, here’s a comparison of the U-3, the U-6 and John Williams’ ShadowStates Alternate rate that factors back in the workers the government has kicked off the labor force roles:

Consider: Even with a margin of three to five percent unemployment, which would encompass workers in between jobs or otherwise transitioning, which some are always doing, well over one-third of all Americans who should be working, could be working and would be working if the government had any business sense about it are not working.

Net, net, net: Continuing  and accelerating economic stagnation and deterioration, zero wage growth, sluggishness and that brother-in-law of yours who’s been out of work since the fourth season of Breaking Bad will still be sleeping on your couch, eating your food and drinking your beer for as far as the eye can see.

When some left-wing loon posts one of those stupid “Obama’s so great — he’s lowered the unemployment rate” bumper-sticker memes on Facebook, show them this post and ask what other lies the administration and its lackeys and toadies are telling?

The numbers…always look at the numbers.

Brother, can you spare a dime?

 

 

https://savejersey.com/2015/07/unemployment-statistics-obama/

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Economists have discovered how bad the economy really is

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Economists have discovered how bad the economy really is

By Matt O’Brien April 21 at 8:00 AM

Unemployment is almost back to normal, but the economy isn’t.

That isn’t because the unemployment rate is a conspiracy to make things look better than they really are. It’s because even though the unemployment rate tells us the most about the labor market, it doesn’t tell us the full story. All it does is show us how many people who are actively looking for work can’t find it. But that leaves out the “shadow unemployed” who want full-time jobs but have either given up looking for them or can only find part-time ones. That usually doesn’t make that big a difference, but it does now, because, even six years after the crisis has ended, there still isn’t much that’s usual about this economy.

Now if you add it all up, this shadow unemployment means our jobs hole is more than three times as big as it looks. That, at least, is what economistsDanny Blanchflower and Andrew Levin found when they looked at how low the unemployment rate is versus how low we think it could go, how high the participation rate is versus how high we think it could go, and how many people can only find part-time jobs. That first part tells us how much further unemployment itself could fall, the second how many discouraged workers could come back, and the last how many people would work more if they could. In other words, it shows us the gap between how many full-time jobs we have and how many full-time jobs we need. The result, as you can see above, is that instead of being a million full-time jobs short, like the unemployment rate says we are, we’re about 3.5 million short.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/04/21/economists-have-discovered-how-bad-the-economy-really-is/

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Gallup CEO: Number of Full-Time Jobs as Percent of Population Is Lowest It’s Ever Been

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Obama-Golf

Gallup CEO: Number of Full-Time Jobs as Percent of Population Is Lowest It’s Ever Been

Posted by Jim Hoft on Thursday, February 5, 2015, 11:48 AM

Gallup CEO and Chairman Jim Clifton doubled-down on his comments earlier in the week on the misleading Obama unemployment rate.

Clifton went on America’s Newsroom today to explain the misleading government numbers.

“The number of full-time jobs, and that’s what everybody wants, as a percent of the total population, is the lowest it’s ever been… The other thing that is very misleading about that number is the more people that drop out, the better the number gets. In the recession we lost 13 million jobs. Only 3 million have come back. You don’t see that in that number. “

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2015/02/gallup-ceo-number-of-full-time-jobs-as-percent-of-population-is-lowest-its-ever-been-video/

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The Big Lie: 5.6% Unemployment

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The Big Lie: 5.6% Unemployment
by Jim Clifton

Here’s something that many Americans — including some of the smartest and most educated among us — don’t know: The official unemployment rate, as reported by the U.S. Department of Labor, is extremely misleading.

Right now, we’re hearing much celebrating from the media, the White House and Wall Street about how unemployment is “down” to 5.6%. The cheerleading for this number is deafening. The media loves a comeback story, the White House wants to score political points and Wall Street would like you to stay in the market.

None of them will tell you this: If you, a family member or anyone is unemployed and has subsequently given up on finding a job — if you are so hopelessly out of work that you’ve stopped looking over the past four weeks — the Department of Labor doesn’t count you as unemployed. That’s right. While you are as unemployed as one can possibly be, and tragically may never find work again, you are not counted in the figure we see relentlessly in the news — currently 5.6%. Right now, as many as 30 million Americans are either out of work or severely underemployed. Trust me, the vast majority of them aren’t throwing parties to toast “falling” unemployment.

There’s another reason why the official rate is misleading. Say you’re an out-of-work engineer or healthcare worker or construction worker or retail manager: If you perform a minimum of one hour of work in a week and are paid at least $20 — maybe someone pays you to mow their lawn — you’re not officially counted as unemployed in the much-reported 5.6%. Few Americans know this.

Yet another figure of importance that doesn’t get much press: those working part time but wanting full-time work. If you have a degree in chemistry or math and are working 10 hours part time because it is all you can find — in other words, you are severely underemployed — the government doesn’t count you in the 5.6%. Few Americans know this.

There’s no other way to say this. The official unemployment rate, which cruelly overlooks the suffering of the long-term and often permanently unemployed as well as the depressingly underemployed, amounts to a Big Lie.

And it’s a lie that has consequences, because the great American dream is to have a good job, and in recent years, America has failed to deliver that dream more than it has at any time in recent memory. A good job is an individual’s primary identity, their very self-worth, their dignity — it establishes the relationship they have with their friends, community and country. When we fail to deliver a good job that fits a citizen’s talents, training and experience, we are failing the great American dream.

Gallup defines a good job as 30+ hours per week for an organization that provides a regular paycheck. Right now, the U.S. is delivering at a staggeringly low rate of 44%, which is the number of full-time jobs as a percent of the adult population, 18 years and older. We need that to be 50% and a bare minimum of 10 million new, good jobs to replenish America’s middle class.

I hear all the time that “unemployment is greatly reduced, but the people aren’t feeling it.” When the media, talking heads, the White House and Wall Street start reporting the truth — the percent of Americans in good jobs; jobs that are full time and real — then we will quit wondering why Americans aren’t “feeling” something that doesn’t remotely reflect the reality in their lives. And we will also quit wondering what hollowed out the middle class.

Jim Clifton is Chairman and CEO at Gallup.

https://www.gallup.com/opinion/chairman/181469/big-lie-unemployment.aspx

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The Unemployment Puzzle: Where Have All the Workers Gone?

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The Unemployment Puzzle: Where Have All the Workers Gone?

The U.S. unemployment rate is down, but rising numbers of Americans have dropped out of the labor force entirely

A big puzzle looms over the U.S. economy: Friday’s jobs report tells us that the unemployment rate has fallen to 6.7% from a peak of 10% at the height of the Great Recession. But at the same time, only 63.2% of Americans 16 or older are participating in the labor force, which, while up a bit in March, is down substantially since 2000. As recently as the late 1990s, the U.S. was a nation in which employment, job creation and labor force participation went hand in hand. That is no longer the case.

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What’s going on? Think of the labor market as a spring bash you’ve been throwing with great success for many years. You’ve sent out the invitations again, but this time the response is much less enthusiastic than at the same point in previous years.

One possibility is that you just need to beat the bushes more, using reminders of past fun as “stimulus” to get people’s attention. Another possibility is that interest has shifted away from your big party to other activities.

Economists are sorting out which of these scenarios best explains the slack numbers on labor-force participation—and offers the best hope of reversing them. Is the problem cyclical, so that, if we push for faster growth, workers will come back, as they have in the past with upturns in the business cycle? Or do deeper structural problems in the economy have to be fixed before we can expect any real progress? To the extent that problems are related to retirement or work disincentives that are either hard to change or created by policy, familiar monetary or fiscal policies may have little effect—a point getting too little attention in Washington.

https://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304441304579477341062142388?mod=WSJ_hppMIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsSecond&mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702304441304579477341062142388.html%3Fmod%3DWSJ_hppMIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsSecond

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Face it, liberals: Obamacare will increase the federal deficit

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Face it, liberals: Obamacare will increase the federal deficit

David Hogberg • | FEBRUARY 14, 2014 AT 7:17 PM

Liberals have accepted that Obamacare will increase the federal deficit. They just don’t know it yet.

When the Congressional Budget Office released its Budget and Economic Outlook on Feb. 4, which was quite devastating for Obamacare, liberal commentators were desperate to find the pony in it. Many of them touted claims that the report shows that Obamacare will reduce the deficit.

What the report actually did was refer to a previous CBO report showing that, from 2013-2022, Obamacare reduces the deficit by a cumulative $109 billion. That’s true in the “balance sheet” method that CBO must use to evaluate Obamacare or any other piece of legislation. In other words, the CBO can only count the revenues Obamacare raises against the benefits it must pay out.

Yet Obamacare has impacts beyond those that appear on a balance sheet. If it influences the economy negatively, it can also affect the budget. And that is exactly what the CBO found.

Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion and exchange subsidies will encourage some employees to work fewer hours. Because Medicaid and exchange subsidies are based on income and decline as one’s income rises, the CBO anticipates workers will reduce their hours in order to maintain their Obamacare benefits. By 2024, those reduced hours will reach the equivalent of 2.5 million jobs.

https://washingtonexaminer.com/face-it-liberals-obamacare-will-increase-the-federal-deficit/article/2544076

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Unemployment Tumbling in New Jersey as Many Leave Labor Force

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Unemployment Tumbling in New Jersey as Many Leave Labor Force 

The unemployment rate in parts of southern New Jersey dropped the sharpest in the country over the course of 2013, though it was likely because more people dropped out of the workforce rather than found new work.

Unemployment in the three metropolitan statistical areas around Atlantic City, Ocean City and Vineland remained above 10%, according to a Labor Department report released Wednesday. A slowdown in the casino industry in Atlantic City could be one reason for higher unemployment there. Newer gambling spots outside Atlantic City, including in neighboring Pennsylvania, have taken business from New Jersey.

But even though the rates are high, they were down by four percentage points or more in each area in December 2013 from a year earlier. Hurricane Sandy, which ravaged much of the Jersey shoreline in October 2012, could be partly to blame for the areas’ particularly elevated unemployment rate in 2012, said Patrick O’Keefe, director of economic research at CohnReznick, an accounting and advisory firm.

The overall decline also is likely because so many people in New Jersey have dropped out of the labor force. Some 63.9% of people in the state were working or looking for work in December 2013, down from 66.4% at the start of the year. That 2.5 percentage point drop in what is called the labor force participation rate compares to just a 0.8 point drop in the national rate. (Portlock/Wall Street Journal)

https://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2014/02/05/unemployment-tumbling-in-new-jersey-as-many-leave-labor-force/?KEYWORDS=new+jersey

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N.J. reports 36,300 jobs lost last month

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N.J. reports 36,300 jobs lost last month

New Jersey added a minuscule 10,100 jobs in 2013 after losing more than 36,000 jobs in December — the biggest single-month job loss in 23 years — painting a bleak picture of the state economy and raising questions about its health and direction.

The jarring December figures released Thursday, which economists cautioned may be a statistical blip, translate to a .26 percent job gain for the year, and represent a sharp reversal from the slow-but-steady job increases of recent months that suggested a slight strengthening of the economy after a weak summer.

The December drop of 36,300 jobs — 33,200 private and 3,100 public — was so broad-based that economists said it was difficult to pinpoint a particular reason. They offered several possible explanations, including unusually cold weather, which could explain the loss of 6,500 construction jobs, and could have caused the temporary loss of work for day and freelance workers.

Economists noted, however, that the figures for the entire year will be revised in March, a process that has in the past resulted in some significant changes in monthly totals. (Morley/The Record)

https://www.northjersey.com/news/NJ_reports_36000_jobs_lost_last_month.html#sthash.i1AmLiPZ.dpuf

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Wall Street advisor: Actual unemployment is 37.2%, ‘misery index’ worst in 40 years

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Wall Street advisor: Actual unemployment is 37.2%, ‘misery index’ worst in 40 years

BY PAUL BEDARD | JANUARY 21, 2014 AT 1:08 PM
TOPICS: WASHINGTON SECRETS JOBS TREASURY ECONOMY FEDERAL RESERVE INFLATION WALL STREET UNEMPLOYMENT
40 years ago, former President Ford issued “WIN” buttons, short for “Whip Inflation Now.” The…

Wall Street advisor: Actual unemployment is 37.2%, ‘misery index’ worst in 40 years

BY PAUL BEDARD | JANUARY 21, 2014 AT 1:08 PM

Don’t believe the happy talk coming out of the White House, Federal Reserve and Treasury Department when it comes to the realunemployment rate and the true “Misery Index.” Because, according to an influential Wall Street advisor, the figures are a fraud.

In a memo to clients provided to Secrets, David John Marotta calculates the actual unemployment rate of those not working at a sky-high 37.2 percent, not the 6.7 percent advertised by the Fed, and the Misery Index at over 14, not the 8 claimed by the government.

Marotta, who recently advised those worried about an imploding economy to get a gun, said that the government isn’t being honest in how it calculates those out of the workforce or inflation, the two numbers used to get the Misery Index figure.

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“The unemployment rate only describes people who are currently working or looking for work,” he said. That leaves out a ton more.

“Unemployment in its truest definition, meaning the portion of people who do not have any job, is 37.2 percent. This number obviously includes some people who are not or never plan to seek employment. But it does describe how many people are not able to, do not want to or cannot find a way to work. Policies that remove the barriers to employment, thus decreasing this number, are obviously beneficial,” he and colleague Megan Russell in their new investors note from their offices in Charlottesville, Va.

https://washingtonexaminer.com/wall-street-advisor-actual-unemployment-is-37.2-misery-index-worst-in-40-years/article/2542604