I’ll still stick with Obama. In August 2008 we LOST 216,000 jobs and the unemployment rate was 9.7%.
The World bank has estimated that all developed nations will be recovering slowly over the next few years. I believe the estimate for this year was about 2% growth. Countries that buy from us are in a worse slump than we are.
It is getting better.

“I’ll still stick with Obama. In August 2008 we LOST 216,000 jobs and the unemployment rate was 9.7%”

Less people are working now than when Obama took office:
http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/05/politics/fact-check-obama-jobs/index.html
The reason that the unemployment rate is lower is because so many people lost hope under Obama.

You’re spot on here –

And yet the drop in the topline number at least gives a superficial story for the Administration to tell, and the whole thing will become a he said/she said. It’s sad.

It’s not bad at all for the Obama Admin. Obama can say ‘Unemployment is down from 8.3% to 8.1%!’

The hard truth, DDay, is that most of the electorate will never see the comprehensive breakdown that you’ve given us. Not just from you, but from any source.

Thanks for a great piece.

I think this is a misrepresentation. People haven’t necessarily lost hope. My wife is actively looking for work, still, after 16 months of unemployment. Since she no longer collects UI benefits she is no longer counted in the top line number. She is assumed to have left the workforce, which she has not. She’s just temporarily displaced.

I promise that there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, more like her. Folks that are actively looking for something, anything, but can’t find a damn thing.

“I think this is a misrepresentation.”

No, the reason why we’re at 8.1% rather than 9.7% or some other figure is not because millions have found work, but rather because they’ve given up and are no longer counted even though they’re still unemployed, which DDay addresses this issue in the article. Like I said, more people were working when the employment rate was at 9.7% than are working now with us at 8.1%.

There’s a here and now that is crushing on families.

I got unemployment insurance this summer, as the Los Angeles Unified School District not only cancelled summer school, they threatened to close the entire adult division, in which I teach. It took months of politicking, and our (meager) reward was that one-third of the teachers and support staff were saved — the rest are on the streets. I was one of the lucky ones — I got my job back.

I went to an unemployment office yesterday because they’re behind in payments to me from this summer. Well, it wasn’t exactly an unemployment office — you can’t actually meet unemployment counselors anymore. They’re in secure, undisclosed locations, like Dick Cheney. This was an office where they pretty much told you to go to the phone and call unemployment counselors, a process which can take two or three hours.

Wearying of the sport, I chose to send an e-mail message to the unemployment counselors. The kind and sympathetic Hispanic woman who helped me told me that I was lucky to have gotten my job back and that things are really bad out there. As others have observed in here, Obama could have chosen to be FDR, but he prefers to be Hoover.

so many people lost hope under Obama

Well, that’s a change of sorts.

All I can do is point to anecdotal stories of friends of mine who’ve been out of work for months and months and have been recently re-employed. It is certainly better for them.

Do I think we could do better? Absolutely. The current administration, for as meagre as the numbers have been, has not seen a negative job-creation number in over three years. That, in itself, is a major improvement over four years ago. Has enough been done; are all the folks who want to work employed? No, but how much of that is really under any administration control? How many jobs have the GOP folks created? If they have a better plan, where is it?

A radically conservative friend of mine on FB this morning positively crowed about how bad the numbers were and how this pointed to the imminent demise of the current administration. I’m beyond trying to convince this person that nothing either candidate will do after January 2013 will change what is the new normal. Why anyone would smile over these numbers is something I will never, ever understand.

Has anyone (and I mean this with all due sincerity) considered that our austerity measures implemented at the State and local level might have contributed to this meagre jobs number? We have folks who have left these jobs, primarily by RIF, and those jobs are gone forever. Same in all the other work environments.

As long as we demand that government be smaller, then jobs will be lost. As long as we allow jobs to be shipped overseas, then jobs here will be lost.

It’s math, folks. Pure and simple math.

but rather because they’ve given up

How do you know? How does the US government know? The USG’s main source of data on job searchers is the answers to UI Benefit Claim Form questions.

If you are no longer collecting UI, you are not telling the government every two weeks that you’re looking for work.

That does not mean you’ve given up, simply that you’re no longer counted.

That’s all I was trying to point out.

“The current administration, for as meagre as the numbers have been, has not seen a negative job-creation number in over three years”

Yes, it has seen negative numbers, just that fact is buried so people think it isn’t happening. There’s 400K less people working today than the when Obama first took office. The problem is that the touted numbers don’t reflect that and Obama isn’t going to openly admit to this when he knows people have been deceived:
“And total nonfarm payrolls, including government workers, are down from 133.6 million workers at the beginning of 2009 to 133.2 million in July 2012. There’s been a net loss of nearly 1 million public-sector jobs since Obama took office, despite a surge in temporary hiring for the 2010 census.”
http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/05/politics/fact-check-obama-jobs/index.html

has not seen a negative job-creation number in over three years. That, in itself, is a major improvement over four years ago

I recall reading a couple of years ago, at the height of unemployment, that the US needs to add 226,000 jobs per month just to keep up with people entering the workforce.

So if you look at the Obama Admin’s numbers over the last 3 years, they are all net negatives.

The USG’s main source of data on job searchers is the answers to UI Benefit Claim Form questions.

Not correct.

The household numbers (unemployment rate, etc) come from a survey of 60,000 households every month.

The payroll numbers come from a survey of companies, don’t remember offhand how many.

Oh. My bad.

I stand corrected.

Given the sources you name, though, the number must be wildly inaccurate. A sampling of 60,000 individual households cannot possibly offer a comprehensive picture of the true US employment landscape.

Small samples can be surprisingly accurate depending on how they’re designed. This one is carefully designed to take into account geography, demographics, gender, race, etc.

NYC’s “case” before SCOTUS, twice that I remember, lost both times, is that a sample is more accurate than a census.

NYC has it exactly right.

“If you are no longer collecting UI, you are not telling the government every two weeks that you’re looking for work.
That does not mean you’ve given up, simply that you’re no longer counted.”

OK, I see you know what you’re talking about. What I was taking issue with was the touting by the other poster of the U-3 rather than for instance the U-6, which the U-3 number is virtually meaningless…just because the U-3 number is lower than at some previous period, it doesn’t mean that anyone has found a job. I was trying to convey the 9.7% versus 8.1% really didn’t mean anything changed without getting into the technical details.

Dave, remember when you look at the EPOP, we are in the early baby boom retirement era. Last year about 2.8 million people reached full retirement age of 65. This year it will be about 3.6 million.

Generally, the age cohorts reaching retirement age are about .3% higher for boomers than for older cohorts. This helps explain some of the EPOP differences. I didn’t find any actual data on this effect.

You might want to take into consideration the effect of baby boomer retirements on people leaving employment. The numbers appear to be fairly large, especially when you realize a lot of boomers still have some sort of pension to go with early retirement Social Security.

There’s been a net loss of nearly 1 million public-sector jobs since Obama took office, despite a surge in temporary hiring for the 2010 census.

But this is one of my points. These jobs were probably, most likely, victims of austerity moves. These jobs won’t be coming back, ever, because of the ever increasing demand for smaller government.

What did the austerity movement people think was going to happen? These folks aren’t going to be able to instantaneously transition to engineers, physicians or any one of the raft of job classifications that can’t be filled due to lack of trained resources.

In my opinion, we’ve gotten exactly what we asked for, with consequences.

Countries that buy from us are in a worse slump than we are.

I guess that explains how we will increase our exports to them, like the President said last night. The guy is a disaster in economic policy (not saying the alternative would be any better). Things are not going to get better. They are going to get worse.

Got you. We’re on the same page, just missing each other in verbiage.

They are keeping quiet about it, too, ashamed they can’t find work and blaming themselves rather than the economic policies that are responsible for their situation. As long as this holds, the policies will not change.

The test statistic here is the labor-force participation rate (the proportion of persons in working age (15-65) who are in the labor force. It has fallen dramatically over the past dozen years.

The economy has stabilized at a higher level of structural unemployment. The private sector has right-sized itself, which is good, but it doesn’t and won’t create the extra 20 million or so jobs needed.

When the next wave of resource shortages hits it will restabilize at a yet-lower level of employment.

Graph

The economy has stabilized at a higher level of structural unemployment

I don’t know where you learned your economics, but unless you can show me where there is a large unfilled demand for labour at this point, we don’t have ‘structural’ unemployment. Structural unemployment means there is a serious mismatch between the kind of labour in demand and the kind that is being supplied. The only mismatch we have right now is that there are too many workers for the jobs that are out there. This can only be solved by starving the workers to death (which seems to be the current policy), or creating more jobs.

In the long run, assuming there is going to be one, there will be higher structural unemployment due to the atrophy of the skills of the currently unemployed. This is a well-known effect. But the current high unemployment is not structural and never has been. This kind of crap is exactly what is driving the EU into a deep hole.

When in doubt, lie. Obviously, Obamabot scarcely begins to describe your agenda.

In August 2008 the unemployment rate was reported to be 6.1% and 84,000 jobs were lost. The highest numbers weren’t reached until Obama was president.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/06/business/economy/06econ.html?pagewanted=all

Bogus numbers, the real unemployment is around 11 % without counting
part times and people who don’t search for jobs anymore,counting these people the real unemployment is 14 % easy.I see hell coming next 4 years with president Obama in charge,uncapable of moving economy forward plus
more taxes,Obamalosi care picking pockets etc.

“You might want to take into consideration the effect of baby boomer retirements on people leaving employment”

Actually I am. Shockingly one of the few honest things to come out of this administration was when the head of Social Security explicitly admitted that the reason those taking Social Security had spiked so much was because of the employment situation – people are retiring out of economic necessity because they can’t find jobs, their unemployment runs out and they ahve bills to pay. The Social Security Administration openly admits that increases in both SS Disability and regular SS enrollments have spiked due to the economy, which this takes these people out of the count, but nonetheless they’d work if they could.

If your unemployed you DON’T admit it to anyone even yourself. Saying your UI is like saying your unemployable or a loser. Many employers see you as a bad person or they wonder why you don’t have a job. The only people that “new” jobs are people that have a job already. If your not actually employed your self-employed then. The unemployment nos. are total BS at this pt. in time. The truth is that the rate is more like 20% and growing because the money crowd has largely abandoned the American worker.

I think when pundits say people are “structurally unemployed) they might mean something quite different. I believe they mean that the economy structurally no longer needs them no matter what their skills are or what their work history might be. Companies are making huge profits these days with shrinking US labor forces and that seems to be an accelerating trend. The managements of these companies no longer hire Americans in what they view as an ever increasing “global marketplace.” They also make a larger share of their profits overseas now. American is becoming a garrison state for the wealthy and part of her population’s job is to going to be to police the Empire of the 1%. The ever increasing War Dept. with it’s expanding Mercenary armies, navies and drone air force is where the Money party is creating jobs for some “politically reliable” American young people. The rest of the pop. will be relegated to menial work and eventually semi-slavery ( prisons etc.) The older aging B-boomers are to be handed ever shrinking Medicare vouchers and less SSI and are going to be expected to die off younger and younger as we go forward.

This has to be an unstable situation. Without any demand, high corporate profits simply can’t continue. The paper game will collapse on itself sooner rather than later.

You are correct, Kris, not to mention at the lowest end of the spectrum, where folk have to line up for food or a place to sleep – is that going down? Are the numbers of people in detention shrinking? How are the services for the poor…oh, I said a dirty word.

Yes. And expecting to deploy the Social Security cuts from the Bowles-Simpson commission chairs recommendations at the same time cynically expecting Social Security to become the new UI program is despicably immoral. These program cuts are cuts just as much as unemployment will result in relative poverty and possibly homelessness, ill health and possibly suicide or just plain old vanilla versions of early deaths.

Both parties are complicit in trying to wipe out the vulnerable people.

This was supposed to be a reply to seaglass at 30.

“….how much of that is really under any administration control? ”

Whatever happened to that ‘New New Deal’? I do remember they said they had one. Of course, the PTB are very much orchestrating that jobs will never come back, and they are indeed going to be the ones in charge under the TPP.

Government? Who needs government?

Who is demanding smaller government? I’m not.

A really good point, thank you both.

I don’t think you can paint this as anything but a serious disappointment, at best.

I noticed last night that O didn’t talk about the grand bargain and cutting the deficit by four trillion. Since he knew the numbers, I would guess he thought saying stuff like that would be a bridge too far, so to speak. But once reelected we can count on it and more austerity, the hell with the employment numbers. So the question is what would romney do? He has an opening here to jump in.

Romney: ‘If last night was the party, today is the hangover.’ You think?

West London

Crouch’d on the pavement close by Belgrave Square
A tramp I saw, ill, moody, and tongue-tied;
A babe was in her arms, and at her side
A girl; their clothes were rags, their feet were bare.
Some labouring men, whose work lay somewhere there,
Pass’d opposite; she touch’d her girl, who hied
Across, and begg’d and came back satisfied.
The rich she had let pass with frozen stare.
Thought I: Above her state this spirit towers;
She will not ask of aliens, but of friends,
Of sharers in a common human fate.
She turns from that cold succour, which attends
The unknown little from the unknowing great,
And points us to a better time than ours.

President Catfood has been the biggest cheerleader for austerity and he’s upset that the Republicans didn’t cut a large enough deal with him that would have brougth even more austerity than we have now.

For me I see Romneys everywhere. To me both the President and the Republican Candidate are Romneys as well as many Democrats and Republicans being mini-Romneys. Amongst other reasons I say that because President Catfood’s signature achievement was the nationalization of Romneycare. I’m certain that Romney will win the election, I’m just not sure which one.

Sorry, that is Matthew Arnold, poet.

Obama missed a huge opportunity last night to move away from Romney. He coulda said it is time for another large infrastruture program to put people back to work. But to do that I need a congress that will work with me instead of being obstructionist. So elect democrats. And while I would like to reduce the deficit, now is not the time.

Romney could do the same thing right now and take the fire away from Obama.

It’s called leadership in crisis. But both these guys are, what is the expression I hear all the time here, empty suits.

Semi-Black Romney will win. He’s fightin’ for us, you know! Don’t criticize him…what are you, a racist? Don’t you know how important it is to have a Semi-Black POTUS*?

*-POTUS: Piece of Thoroughly Unscrupulous Shit

96,000 is the seasonally adjusted number and that number is wrong. The actual non adjusted number is 256,000. There are many reasons they use SA numbers but none of them are particularly good. The number is more like a wild assed guess.

Here is an article from someone who follows the real numbers. Read it carefully. I am not saying the jobs situation is good. There are still several million less full times jobs than there were in late 07 early 08. The real estate agents, construction workers and 20 somethings living large bundling mortgages to feed Wall Streets insatiable demand for Mortgage Backed Securities. Those jobs were produced by the housing bubble and are not coming back. That is one of the reasons all politicians loved the housing/mortgage bubble. They loved the upside. Now XX number of citizens are underwater on their home probably to the tune of $X trillion dollars. Oh well, I digress.

http://wallstreetexaminer.com/2012/09/07/wtf-is-wrong-with-the-jobs-data-actual-numbers-were-strong-seasonal-adjustment-is-wrong/