Some of the gains were seasonal or based on inventory restocking.

Yes.

Rs tactics are to trash U.S. economy. They’ve determined their tactics and they’re sticking with them, no matter how silly they have to sound.

I don;t know about the rest of the country, but here in Texas, we’re STILL in a twelve foot hole with an eight foot ladder.

Yes, the Repugs have made no secret of wanting only bad news for us before the election. When people work so militantly against the American people, we usually call them traitors.

You still have the ladder?

If we take a look at this graph, and do some very rough extrapolation, we can see that it would be around two more years before we get back to the neutral line. Something else to look at in that graph is that before 1990, all of the increases in employment after a recession bottoms are very steep but after 1990, the recovery is much more shallow and prolonged. Why? My guess is that prior to 1990, the conventional DC wisdom was jobs recovery first and everything else will follow and after 1990, politicians became much more concerned about the so called “job creators”, through abuse of lobbying and campaign contributions bribes.

Yes. There will be no recovery of the kind of previous recoveries. It will be a decade or more — and maybe never — before wages of low- and middle-income Americans rise in real terms.

That is why I am so negative and bitter about all this. The Rs are evil, yes. But I have very mixed feelings about letting this asshole in the WH declare victory for his so-called “policies.” They are totally bankrupt and he deserves the worst punishment the economy can dole out.

It’s just that innocent Americans will suffer. And that gives me great pause.

THe book I’m reading, “Our Patchwork Nation”, says that we won’t get back where we were until 2017. Lots of hurt from now until then. BTW, I highly recommend this book.

200,000 new jobs in December? The initial November number (120,000) was revised down to 100,000. I expect a revision of the December number down to about 150k-160k.

The only reason the unemployment rate is dropping is the huge numbers who have given up looking for work. 194,000 gave up in December, and about 315,000 gave up in November. But for those who have given up looking since the recession began the U3 rate would be above 11%.

It was December. There was some kind of retail bounce represented.

Despite feelings I wonder what you, and other Liberals, would suggest Dems in Congress & Obama do to begin to rebuild the middle-class and return 99%ers to decent levels of wealth, retirements and so on.

The first things that come to my mind are to raise tax rates on the rich to pay down debt and to change the way corporate executive pay is decided to reduce it some. I’d also like to see changes in the tax system to change incentives which bring more investment money to domestic America.

Can’t get excited about what Repubs or Dems say. The economic news is NOT good:

When unemployment in Greece and Spain are determined according to U.S. methods, all three countries have about the same rate.

In other words, unemployment in the U.S. is approaching 25% by EU standards. These figures are available on the U.S. Dept. of Labor site,
http://www.bls.gov/fls/

you, and other Liberals

Does that include you?

Or was that a Freudian slip?

The first things that come to my mind are to raise tax rates on the rich to pay down debt

Why worry about the debt?
We should be borrowing as much as we can and use it to rebuild our infrastructure. Get our economy growing again and the debt will take care of itself.

Oh, where to start. All Obama and the Dems can accomplish here would be to get out of the way. Have you heard about the EEOC telling employers they can’t require HS diplomas of employees? It’s just another reason to not risk a new hire.

Secondly, raising taxes is not going to pay down debt. The deficits are larger than all the income tax, collected in all the country, for all the year.

As for incentives, none are needed. The oil and gas boom in North Dakota is exhibit A.

In the 90′s I grew hoarse (as a letter to the editor writer :-) )pointing out the different UE reporting methods, and the different CPI methods between Japan and the EU and the US – at this point it is clear that the media refuses to listen.

With the 3% drop from Clinton era 67.1% to 64% in the Civilian Labor Force Participation Rate, the election year game has become how to see the response to the survey as if the person was not actively looking for work (I know there is a 4 week etc set of rules, but …) so as to report a lower UE rate. The danger of course is that the reporting may generate optimism that moves folks into the “looking” and produces a spike up in UE just before the election, destroying the attempt to mimic the “trend is your friend – Reagan 84 election (where he started 84 with UE above 8% but had a trend down and it was “morning in America”)”

Seasonally Adjusted

Unemployment Rate:
8.5% in Dec 2011 Historical Data – HOUSEHOLD DATA

Change in Unemployment Level:
-226,000 in Dec 2011 Historical Data

Change in Employment Level:
+176,000 in Dec 2011 Historical Data – HOUSEHOLD DATA
+200,000 in Dec 2011 Historical Data – Establishment data, seasonally adjusted

Change in Civilian Labor Force Level:
-50,000 in Dec 2011 Historical Data

Civilian Labor Force Participation Rate:
64.0% in Dec 2011 Historical Data – - HOUSEHOLD DATA (unchanged from prior month)

Employment-Population Ratio:
58.5% in Dec 2011 Historical Data
Annual Averages

Unemployment Level:
13,747,000 for 2011

Republicans are assholes, but so is Barack Obama. Obama deserves to lose the election for his assaults on the constitution and his refusal to hold Wall Street fraudsters and members of the Bush administration accountable for their crimes.

Oh, where to start.

I would grab my ears and pull real hard.

Have you heard about the EEOC telling employers they can’t require HS diplomas of employees?

That is an over-simplification of what the EEOC said. Further, the EEOC’s opinion does not have the force of law.

What the EEOC said is that requiring a high school diploma may violate the American with Disabilities Act if the diploma requirement is not related to the skill set necessary to do the job. There are jobs that can be done without a HS diploma, such as those done by high school students.

Individual income tax collected about $1.1 Trillion but if you limited deductions for those over %100,000 it could cause it to grow to about $1.5 trillion. Corporate income tax collected 181 billion, but at 35% and no special “welfare”deductions or deferrals it would be about $500 billion. Plus there is a $400 billion annual increase in individual income taxes if the Clinton Tax rates are allowed to come back (they come back if there is no change in the law). Still current law (Clinton rates are back) only provides $2.1 Trillion individual and $400 Billion in 5 years ($617 billion deficit projected).

Get economic growth above 3% and there is another couple $100 billion.

But your point is well taken – the $1.3 Trillion size of the 2011 deficit is not sustainable and the $617 billion deficit projected for 5 years from now just gets us back to the level that George W Bush ran with every year (the budget deficit changes year to year under GW were mostly Soc. Sec surplus changes year to year – and SS does not really affect the national Debt size).

Of course some economists insist that budget deficits are never a problem as you don’t borrow – you just issue more money until inflation is a problem at which point you raise taxes to pull money out of the system. But a discussion of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is for another day.

Uhhh im sorry but the economy in this country and around the worl will never improve. Why? Because its like this by design. I would really like to know though how will it get better by 2017 exactly? By itself?

We won’t really see how GOP responds to a “decent” jobs report until we have one. This simply wasn’t it. At current pace, using this ‘decent’ jobs report, we will not get back to pre-recession levels until 2027.

Fact: this is a poor, bad, failing, not-good jobs report. Fact: It is one of a long string of similar job reports that are partially brought on by Obama’s policies. Just because the GOP are responding to it like idiots doesn’t change these facts.

“this asshole in the WH …. deserves the worst punishment the economy can dole out.”

Add prosecution for war crimes, and impeachment for the high crime of refusing to prosecute admitted torturers in violation of the Convention Against Torture and the U.S. Constitution. Whichever comes first.