The Nobama Jobs Index Thomas Lifson americanthinker.com January 11, 2014
The official unemployment rate has become a joke, what with massive numbers of people dropping out of the workforce and therefore becoming invisible. The latest report of a decline in unemployment in the face of a pathetic 74,000 new jobs indicates the uselessness of the figure. Fortunately, the editors of Investor's Business Daily have come up with their own indices, and they are well worth a look. For example: 6.3 million: Net new jobs created since Obama's recovery started in June 2009 13.8 million: New jobs that would have been created had Obama's kept pace with the average of the previous 10 recoveries. 3.6%: Growth in private jobs since Obama took office. 43%: Growth in the number of temp jobs. (snip) 58.6%: Current employment-to-population ratio. 61%: Ratio when Obama took office. 62%: Average employment-to-population ratio in the 30 years before Obama took office. $1,006: Drop in median household income during the 2007-09 recession. $2,535: Drop in median income after the recession ended in June 2009, according to Sentier Research.
What Caused the Crash In the Labor Participation Rate? Washington’s Blog January 11, 2014 Zero Hedge notes that the number of Americans in the labor force has dropped to 1978 levels: The civilian labor force ‌ dropped from 155.3 million to 154.9 million, which means the labor participation rate just dropped to a fresh 35 year low, hitting levels not seen since 1978, at 62.8% down from 63.0%.
And the piece de resistance: Americans not in the labor force exploded higher by 535,000 to a new all time high 91.8 million. What’s causing the crash in labor participation? Initially, the number of women not in the labor force climbed to a new high. This is significant because the labor force skyrocketed in the 1960s when feminism encouraged women to work outside of the home:
As the Washington post notes in a fantastic roundup on unemployment: The Urban Institute notes [that] what’s happening is that workers aren’t entering the labor force at the same rates they used to. That’s especially true for women, who are much less likely to enter the labor force today than they were in 2002 and 2003. Many of them, the paper notes, appear to be enrolling in school instead or deciding to start families. An aging U.S. demographic may also play some role in the decline. As the Washington Post notes: Americans over the age of 65 are much less likely to work than prime-age Americans. And since that subset of Americans is expanding its ranks, that drives the labor-force participation rate down. *** Economists disagree, however, on exactly how much demographics are responsible for the current fall in the participation rate. The Chicago Fed estimated in 2012 that retirements accounted for one-fourth of the drop in labor force participation since the recession began. Other analysts, including Barclays, have suggested that aging Boomers could account for a bigger slice of the drop. Meanwhile, a recent paper by Shigeru Fujita of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia staked out a more nuanced view: Demographics, he argued, didn’t play a huge role in the labor-force drop between 2007 and 2011. But since then, retirements are responsible for basically the entire fall of the participation rate. One possible reason is that many older Americans postponed retirement immediately after the financial crisis to rebuild their battered 401(k)s. By 2012 or so, they began retiring en masse. However, Zero Hedge and Bloomberg show that there are countervailing trends:
Most disturbingly, the Post notes that the main factor may be workers simply giving up: The number of Americans working or actively seeking work has actually fallen faster than demographers had predicted:
And here’s another clue that this isn’t just a demographic story: The participation rate for workers between ages 25 and 54 fell sharply during the recession and still hasn’t recovered. Obviously, retirements can’t explain this:
So, what’s going on? One theory is that the weak job market is causing people to simply give up looking for work — they’re crumpling up their résumés and going home. An recent study from the Boston Fed suggested that these “non-inevitable dropouts” might even account for most of the decrease. Among other things, the authors noted that the labor-force decline has been far sharper for all age groups than simple demographics would predict. *** So, why does the size of the labor force matter? If people are leaving the labor force for economic reasons (and they’re not going back to school), it would mean that the economy is in much worse shape than the official unemployment rate suggests. The jobless rate is officially 6.7 percent, but that only counts people who are actively seeking work — not labor-force dropouts. [Remember, you have to include labor-force dropouts in order toarrive at a useful unemployment number.] The size of the labor force also goes a long way to determining America’s growth prospects. If, say, baby boomers are retiring faster than expected, then long-run U.S. economic growth will be lower than projected. *** It could also mean the U.S. economy will be significantly weaker in future. One recent paper from the Federal Reserve estimated that America’s economic potential is now 7 percent lower than it was before the financial crisis — in part because workers who lost
their jobs during the downturn have become less-attached to the labor force. That’s a bad sign. In other words, the crash in labor force participation rate is a very significant indication that all is not well with the economy. Unfortunately – instead of helping to reduce unemployment – bad government policy has made it much worse. And see here and here.
No Jobs For Americans Paul Craig Roberts Infowars.com January 11, 2014
The alleged recovery took a direct hit from Friday’s payroll jobs report. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the economy created 74,000 net new jobs in December. Wholesale and retail trade accounted for 70,700 of these jobs or 95.5%. It is likely that the December wholesale and retail hires were temporary for the Christmas shopping season, which doesn’t seem to have been very exuberant, especially in light of Macy’s decision to close five stores and lay off 2,500 employees. It is a good bet that these December hires have already been laid off. A job gain of 74,000, even if it is real, is about half of what is needed to keep the unemployment rate even with population growth. Yet the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the unemployment rate fell from 7.0% to 6.7%. Clearly, this decline in unemployment was not caused by the reported 74,000 jobs gain. The unemployment rate fell, because Americans unable to find jobs ceased looking for employment and, thereby, ceased to be counted as unemployed. In America the unemployment rate is a deception just like everything else. The rate of American unemployment fell, because people can’t find jobs. The fewer the jobs, the lower the unemployment rate.
I noticed today that the financial media presstitutes were a bit hesitant to hype the drop in the rate of unemployment when there was no jobs growth to account for it. The Wall Street and bank economists did their best to disbelieve the jobs report as did some of the bought-and-paid-for academic economists. Too many interests have a stake in the non-existent recovery declared 4.5 years ago to be able to admit that it is not really there. I have been examining the monthly jobs reports for a decade or longer. I must say that I am struck by the December report. Normally, a mainstay of jobs gain is the category “education and health services,” with “ambulatory health care services” adding thousands of jobs. In December the net contribution of “education and health services” was zero, with “ambulatory health care services” losing 4,100 jobs and health care losing 6,000 jobs. If memory serves, this is a first. Perhaps it reflects adverse impacts of the ripoff known as Obamacare, possibly the worst piece of domestic legislation passed in decades. I was also struck by the report that the gain in employment of waitresses and bartenders, normally a large percentage of the job gain, was down to 9,400 jobs, which were offset by declines elsewhere, such as the layoff of local school teachers. Aren’t Washington’s priorities wonderful? $1,000 billion per year in Quantitative Easing, essentially subsidies for 6 banks “too big to fail,” and nothing for school teachers. It should warm every Republican’s heart. A tiny bright spot in the payroll jobs report is 9,000 new manufacturing jobs. The US manufacturing workforce has declined so dramatically since jobs offshoring became the policy of American corporations that 9,000 jobs hardly register on the scale. Fabricated metal products, which I think is roofing metal, accounted for 56% of the manufacturing jobs. Roofing metal is not an export. Employment in the production of manufactured products that could be exported, such as “computer and electronic equipment,” and “electronic instruments” declined by 2,400 and 3,500 respectively. Clearly, this is not a payroll jobs report that provides cover for the looting of the prospects of ordinary Americans by the financial and offshoring elites. One can wonder how the BLS civil servants who produced it can avoid retribution. It will be interesting to see what occurs in the January payroll jobs report. No Jobs For Americans VIDEO BELOW http://www.infowars.com/no-jobs-for-americans/
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