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OBAMANATION CHRONICLESUNEMPLOYMENTEmployment: Joblessness RisingObama has promised a national "service" program reminiscent of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt National Recovery Act (NRA) package -- THAT DID NOT WORK. History notes great achievements during that era for spectacular projects but when one looks at the actual employment it was not the blue-collar workers that benefitted the most, but the white collar engineers and upper middle class that garnered money from the government programs. Now Obama will be facing a jobless situation and has promised the creation of 2.5 million jobs -- about the same as what George Bush has done in four years. Obama forecasts are not unrealistic -- but NOT because of his proposed NRA-era program.New claims for jobless benefits surged last week and came in worse than expectations that were already gloomy — and economists say the figures would get even worse without an auto industry bailout. Initial applications for unemployment benefits rose to a seasonally adjusted 573,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. That was nearly 50,000 more than economists were expecting and up from a revised 515,000 the week before. The last time so many Americans filed new jobless claims in a single week was in 1982, although the labor force has grown by about half since then. Adding more damage to the already ravaged labor market, Bank of America said it expected to cut as many as 35,000 jobs over the next three years, including some from investment bank Merrill Lynch, which it agreed to buy in September. (Source: Daily Kos.) Obama has repackaged the New Deal into his "Job Preservation Program." Obama has also started to terrify some conservatives as there is a military element involved in this program -- as yet unspecified -- who will be as well armed as the military. When it was first spoken of by Obama during the campaign, there was instant vocal reaction about this from the right -- fearing the revocation of the 2nd Amendment rights and visions of an Obama militia ready to replace law-enforcement units. No more has been heard of it since. As unemployment soars, Obama continues to promise how he will create more jobs once he's in office -- and all the other folks are out of office. The fleshing out of his "Job Preservation Program" is still forthcoming. One of Obama's key tenets is that America is in economic trouble because ordinary workers have fallen behind and been neglected in public policy, relative to business executives and investors. The test for Obama is how to adjust that balance while also encouraging those very businesses and investors to create or preserve much-needed jobs. During the election campaign, Obama made other labor-oriented pledges, including support for a hike in the minimum wage and for a new law that would make it easier for unions to expand into new workplaces. If Obama pushes to enact those measures early in his term, Mr. Grimes says, "it may make the [economic] recovery harder to achieve." Right now, job creation and preservation hold the key to recovery. With consumers retrenching in the face of tight credit conditions, the economy lost half a million jobs in November, and the layoffs haven't abated this month. Obama, for now, appears to be putting jobs as his top priority, while weighing other labor-related goals:
January 2009Conservative View: Unemployment rate jumps to 7.2% (Jan 2009) Employers shed over a half-million jobs in December as the year ended in the grips of a full-blown recession. The total job loss for 2008 went over 2.6 million, mostly in the latter half of the year, as prospects for growth look dim indeed. Even with all of that truly bad news, the AP manages to add a little hyperbole:The U.S. unemployment rate bolted to 7.2 percent in December, the highest since early 1993, as nervous employers slashed 524,000 jobs. The Labor Department's report, released Friday, underscored the terrible toll the deepening recession is having on workers and companies, and highlights the hard task President-elect Barack Obama faces in resuscitating the flat-lined economy.Uh, okay, thanks for the no-context context. Job losses in 1945 were catastrophic for a nation of 132 million people. We have over 300 million today, and we have increased the workforce by a much larger factor as women have entered the workplace. Total employment in December 1945 was 39.111 million Americans. Total employment in December 2008 was 138.078 million Americans. For the mathematically challenged, the difference between 2.6 million jobs lost in 1945 and in 2008 is that the former represented a whopping increase of 6.2% in unemployment, while the latter represents a 1.89% jump. It's bad, but it's not even in the same ballpark as 1945. And it's worth noting that the US bounced back nicely in 1946, with unemployment below 4%, and managed to do that without massive new deficit spending by the federal government. Furthermore, it's hardly unprecedented. We had more than a decade from 1975 to 1986 when the average unemployment was higher as a percentage than it is now. Three of those twelve years had unemployment higher than 8%, and two of them (1982-3) at almost 10%. In those years, the US had over 10 million people unemployed, worse than now. Obama Readjusts Employment Numbers (Jan 2009) How did we fix that problem? Not through nationalization and massive works projects. We pushed investments and cut taxes in order to get capital flowing in the markets, which created jobs through innovation. So far, Washington has proposed the kind of solution that created the stagnation we had in the 1970s and 1980s, which is capital confiscation, based on a panic that will eventually become a self-fulfilling prophecy. We need to quit shrieking and start learning about recessions and the solutions that actually worked — and failed — in the past. (Source: Hot Air: Ed Morrisey.) Assuming a $775 billion stimulus, the new estimate means we'll be paying $193,750 for each job "saved or created" instead of just north of $258,000. Come 2010, of course, we'll be told that he actually saved many more jobs than even that, so who knows? A little fine tuning of the numbers — they are, after all, "subject to significant margins of error" — and we might get down to under $100,000 per job before all's said and done. Assuming there are no other stimulus bills passed before the midterms, of course. But what are the odds of that? (Source: Hot Air: Allah Pundit.) In a new report, his transition team says his spending plan would create between 3.3 million and 4.1 million jobs. The report was released as Mr. Obama battles fellow Democrats in Congress over the size and details of the bill, which the president-elect wants to total slightly less than $800 billion but which some Democratic leaders say should near $1 trillion.  Jobless amount since WWII -- More job losses (In Feb 2009, Joblessness reached 5 million) March 2009Jobless rate bolts to 8.1 pct., 651,000 jobs lost (Mar 2009) The nation's unemployment rate bolted to 8.1 percent in February, the highest since late 1983, as cost-cutting employers slashed 651,000 jobs amid a deepening recession. Both figures were worse than analysts expected and the Labor Department's report shows America's workers being clobbered by a wave of layoffs unlikely to ease in the coming months. "There is no light at the end of the tunnel with these numbers," said Nigel Gault, economist at IHS Global Insight. "Job losses were everywhere and there's no hope for a turnaround any time soon."February's net job loss came after even deeper payroll reductions in the prior two months, according to revised figures released Friday. The economy lost 681,000 jobs in December and another 655,000 in January. Employers are shrinking their work forces and turning to other ways to slash costs _ including trimming workers' hours, freezing wages or cutting pay _ because the recession has eaten into their sales and profits. Customers at home and abroad are cutting back as other countries cope with their own economic problems. Since the recession began in December 2007, the economy has lost 4.4 million jobs, more than half of which occurred in the past four months. With employers showing no appetite to hire, the unemployment jumped half a percentage point from 7.6 percent in January. That was the highest since December 1983, when the jobless rate was 8.3 percent. All told, the number of unemployed people climbed to 12.5 million. In addition, the number of people forced to work part time for "economic reasons" rose by a sharp 787,000 to 8.6 million. That's people who would like to work full time but whose hours were cut back or were unable to find full-time work. If part-time, discouraged workers and others are factored in, the unemployment rate would have been 14.8 percent in February, the highest on record. The pain hit blue- and white-collar workers, those without a high-school diploma and those highly educated. The jobless rate for people with a bachelor's degree or higher jumped to 4.1 percent last month from 3.8 percent in January. Meanwhile, the average work week in February stayed at 33.3 hours, matching the record low set in December. Job losses were widespread last month. Construction companies eliminated 104,000 jobs. Factories axed 168,000. Retailers cut nearly 40,000. Professional and business services got rid of 180,000, with 78,000 jobs lost at temporary-help agencies. Financial companies reduced payrolls by 44,000. Leisure and hospitality firms chopped 33,000 positions. The few areas spared: education and health services, as well as government, which boosted employment last month. Disappearing jobs and evaporating wealth from tanking home values, 401(k)s and other investments have forced consumers to retrench, driving companies to lay off workers. It's a vicious cycle in which all the economy's negative problems feed on each other, worsening the downward spiral. A new wave of layoffs hit this week. General Dynamics Corp. said Thursday it will lay off 1,200 workers due partly to plummeting sales of business and personal jets that forced it to cut production. Defense contractor Northrop Grumman Corp., and Tyco Electronics Ltd., which makes electronic components, undersea telecommunications systems and wireless equipment, also are trimming payrolls. The country is getting bloodied by fallout from the housing, credit and financial crises_ the worst since the 1930s. And there's no easy fix for a quick turnaround, economists said. President Barack Obama is counting on a multipronged assault to lift the country out of recession: a $787 billion stimulus package of increased federal spending and tax cuts; a revamped, multibillion-dollar bailout program for the nation's troubled banks; and a $75 billion effort to stem home foreclosures. Even in the best-case scenario that the relief efforts work and the recession ends later in 2009, the unemployment rate is expected to keep climbing, hitting 9 percent or higher this year. In fact, the Federal Reserve thinks the unemployment rate will stay elevated into 2011. Economists say the job market may not get back to normal _ meaning a 5 percent unemployment rate _ until 2013. Businesses won't be inclined to ramp up hiring until they are sure any economic recovery has staying power. The economy contracted at a staggering 6.2 percent in the final three months of 2008, the worst showing in a quarter-century, and it will probably continue to shrink during the first six months of this year. Given Friday's grim figures, Gault predicted the economy would probably shrink in the first quarter at a pace of at least 6 percent. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress earlier this week that recent economic barometers "show little sign of improvement" and suggest that "labor market conditions may have worsened further in recent weeks." (Source: INO.com.)  Jobless reports from states show highest rates in decades (Mar 2009) Florida's unemployment rate hit 9.4 percent in February, the highest rate in nearly 33 years, the state labor department said Friday. It was 8.8 percent in January, according to revised figures also released Friday (27 Mar). North Carolina's unemployment rate hit a new recorded high, and South Carolina's came in even higher. North Carolina's rate was 10.7 percent, up from 9.7 percent in January, and South Carolina's reached 11 percent, up from 10.3 percent in January. (Source: McClasky.) March 2009AND THE PUNCHLINE IS: We Don't Know What the Stimulus Package is Talking About: Estimate of Mass. stimulus jobs uncertain at best (Mar 2009) State officials overseeing the federal economic stimulus program in Massachusetts say they have no idea how the White House came up with one key pledge—the promise to save or create 79,000 jobs in the state. They say they're not even sure how to measure saved jobs—and fear the jobs figure sets an unrealistic yardstick against which the success or failure of the program will be measured. "The federal estimate of 79,000, we really don't know what's behind that, we just plain don't," Jeffrey Simon, Director of Infrastructure Investment in Massachusetts, told The Associated Press. "I'm not saying it's not 79,000, but I just don't have any way of knowing that," he said.Simon and his counterparts overseeing the distribution of stimulus funds in Massachusetts said concerns about the state jobs numbers were raised at a meeting earlier this month in Washington between state and federal leaders. Massachusetts Undersecretary of Administration and Finance Jay Gonzalez also attended the Washington meeting and said other states complained that issuing job estimates undercut the administration's vow of transparency because it was unclear where the estimates came from. Gonzalez said he was asked at one point how he might come up with a jobs estimate and pointed federal officials to a state task force report, but cautioned them the estimate was very rough and came with "qualifications all over it." He said he was surprised when the state was presented with the estimate of 79,000. "We have no idea where that number came from and now we're going to be measured against it," Gonzalez told the AP. "They haven't even decided yet how they are going to require that we measure new and retained jobs." Job creation has been a key selling point of the $787 billion federal stimulus package. The Obama administration said they stimulus package will save or create 3.5 million nationwide. Critics say the numbers are fuzzy, particularly when it comes to saved jobs. In a one-page explanation on the federal stimulus Web site, the administration said it arrived at the state numbers by using an average of three different methods of estimating job growth. The first looks at the total working-age population of each state. (If a state accounted for 10 percent of the country's total working age population, it was allotted 10 percent of the national job impact of the stimulus package.) The second uses a similar method based on 2007 employment records, before the beginning of the current recession. The administration said the two methods are reasonable because states with larger populations will get a proportionately larger share of tax cuts, education spending and fiscal relief from the stimulus package. The third method is based on the industrial composition of a state. If a state had 10 percent of the nation's manufacturing jobs, it was assumed to get 10 percent of the manufacturing jobs created by the stimulus package. Despite all the calculations, the administration concedes "state jobs estimates are inherently more speculative than overall estimates." Federal and state officials also may rely in part on a "multiplier effect" when it comes to counting heads. A multiplier effect helps boost the job count by adding in secondary jobs not created by direct aid. If federal stimulus money keeps construction jobs in an area, and those workers allow a local diner to hire an extra cook or waitress, then those additional jobs could be counted as saved jobs. For those working at the state level to get the federal dollars flowing as quickly as possible, the job estimates are proving to be something of a distraction. "We've got our hands full understanding what the bill does, let alone trying to figure out how many jobs," said Simon. (Source: Breitbart.) April 2009>U.S. private sector axes 742,000 jobs in March (Apr 2009) Job losses in the U.S. private sector accelerated in March, more than economists' expectations, according to a report by ADP Employer Services on Wednesday (1 Apr). Private employers cut jobs by a record 742,000 in March versus a 706,000 revised cut in February that was originally reported at 697,000 jobs, said ADP, which has been carrying out the survey since 2001.The big drop foreshadows a huge decline in the non-farm payroll reading in the government's employment report that will be released on Friday, some analysts said. "It's a terrible number. It is almost a loss of three quarters of a million jobs which is possibly the highest we have seen so far over the length of this crisis," said Matt Esteve, foreign exchange trader with Tempus Consulting in Washington. U.S. stock futures and the dollar fell after news of the bigger-than-expected job losses, while U.S. Treasury bonds regained some of their lost ground. Economists had expected 655,000 private-sector job cuts in March in the ADP report, according to a recent Reuters poll. (Source: Reuters.) New data on jobs, housing signal no recovery near (Apr 2009) Worse-than-expected news on U.S. unemployment and home sales Thursday dampened optimism that a broad economic recovery might be near. The Labor Department said initial claims for unemployment compensation rose to a seasonally adjusted 640,000, up from a revised 613,000 the previous week. That was slightly more than analysts' expectations of 635,000. Economists are closely watching the unemployment compensation data because they believe a sustained decline in the number of initial claims could signal the end of the recession is nearing. Jobless claims have historically peaked six to 10 weeks before recessions end, according to a report by Goldman Sachs. Initial claims reflect job cuts by employers. But the latest report shows job losses remain high. The four-week average of claims, which smooths out volatility, dropped slightly to 646,750, about 12,000 below the peak in early April. Goldman Sachs economists have said a decline of 30,000 to 40,000 in the four-week average is needed to signal a peak. Abiel Reinhart, economist at JPMorgan Chase Bank, said further declines in the four-week average "would show that our forecast for a resumption of economic growth in (the third quarter) is reasonable." Other economists said that despite the bigger-than-expected rise in new jobless claims, the range has remained mostly steady for about two months. That's a signal that the pace of layoffs may be leveling off. But in another sign of labor market weakness, the number of people continuing to claim benefits rose to 6.13 million, setting a record for the 12th straight week. As a proportion of the work force, the total jobless benefit rolls are the highest since January 1983. The continuing claims data lag initial claims by a week. Meanwhile, the National Association of Realtors said home sales fell 3 percent to an annual rate of 4.57 million last month, from a downwardly revised pace of 4.71 million units in February. Sales had been expected to fall to an annual pace of 4.7 million units, according to Thomson Reuters. The median sales price plunged to $175,200, from $200,100 a year earlier, but up from $168,200 in February. The results were "a little disappointing" given that homes are more affordable than they've been in years and mortgage rates are near record lows, said Lawrence Yun, the group's chief economist. With unemployment rising and the mortgage crisis far from over, foreclosures and distressed sales are dominating the market -- especially in California, Florida, Nevada and Arizona. The Realtors group estimates about half of sales nationwide are from foreclosures or other distressed properties. First-time homebuyers purchased about half of all homes sold last month. A top banking regulator tried to ease some concerns, saying banks and the housing sector had passed the worst part of their downturns. "I think we're past the crisis stage. We're in the clean up stage now," Sheila Bair, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., said at a financial reform conference. But on Wall Street, stocks turned lower after the disappointing housing figures were released. The Dow Jones industrial average lost about 60 points in midday trading, and broader indices also fell. A year ago new jobless claims stood at 353,000, while there were 2.93 million continuing claims. The Labor Department also said an additional 2.3 million people were receiving benefits under an extended unemployment compensation program enacted by Congress last year, as of April 4, the latest data available. That provides an additional 20 to 33 weeks on top of the 26 weeks typically provided by the states. The high level of continuing claims is a sign that many laid-off workers are having difficulty finding new jobs.Employers have cut 5.1 million jobs since the recession began in December 2007 in an effort to slash costs as consumers and businesses have sharply reduced spending. The department said earlier this month that companies cut a net total of 663,000 jobs in March, sending the unemployment rate to 8.5 percent, the highest in 25 years. Based on another increase in continuing claims, Reinhart expects the unemployment rate will rise to 8.9 or 9 percent this month. Many private economists expect the monthly jobless rate will climb to 10 percent by the end of this year. The jobless rate in the U.S. is expected to average 8.9 percent this year and climb to 10.1 percent next year, the IMF said. The job cuts reflect the depth of the downturn, which has been global in scope. The International Monetary Fund estimated Wednesday that the global economy would shrink 1.3 percent this year, the first drop in more than six decades. The IMF projects the U.S. economy will decline 2.8 percent, the worst since 1946. "The world economy is going through the most severe crisis in generations," Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said Wednesday. The Obama administration is counting on its $787 billion stimulus package, enacted in February, to "save or create" 3.5 million jobs. More job losses were announced this week. Yahoo Inc. said it will layoff 700 employees, the third round of mass layoffs this year. And oilfield services provider Halliburton Co. said it has cut 2,000 positions in the first three months of the year. Among the states, Florida saw the largest increase in claims with 9,303 for the week ending April 11, which it attributed to more layoffs in the construction, service and manufacturing industries. Michigan saw the largest drop in claims with 12,566, which it said was due to fewer layoffs in the automobile industry. (Source: AP.) Hold it -- More light poking through economic clouds (May 2009) It may be a false dawn, but recent data are providing mounting evidence that the U.S. economy is edging toward the long road back to recovery. The freshest evidence came with the government’s monthly report on the jobs market for April, when some 539,000 jobs were lost. Though hardly good news by itself, that pace is slower than the steep slide that has thrown roughly 5.7 million people out of work since the recession began 15 months ago. With similar “green shoots” sprouting up in other measures of the economy —falling inventories, rising home sales and increased consumer confidence — some economists tentatively have begun to say the economy may be near a turning point. "This (monthly jobs number) will be the last really bad economic statistic in this downturn," declared Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com. "We'll look at other negative numbers, but this will be the last bad one." President Barack Obama acknowledged some of the green shoots Friday, while at the same time warning Americans to "expect further job losses in the months to come." "Although we have a long way to go before we can put this recession behind us, the gears of our economic engine are slowly beginning to turn," Obama said in a speech in Washington on education for the unemployed. "Step by step we're beginning to make progress," he said. The number of jobs lost in April was the lowest since October, although still high by normal standards. With a half-million more people out of work, the unemployment rate in April rose to 8.9 percent, the highest since September 1983, up from 8.5 percent in March. In addition, the job market was worse than originally reported in February and March, according to revised data released Friday. The economy lost 699,000 jobs in March, up from the 663,000 originally reported, and 681,000 jobs were lost in February, up from the original 651,000. The April jobs data followed a series of reports that show a job market that is still dismal but improving. New unemployment claims, though still very high, are down from peak levels. “The improvement (in jobs) was widespread across all the major industries that we look at and across all the sizes of payrolls that we look at,” said Joel Prakken, Chairman at MacroEconomic Advisors, which prepares a private job report that also showed improvement. “But let's remember two things: One month does not a trend make and the green shoot is trying to put down roots in very inhospitable terrain. This is still a large decline in employment.” Evidence of a possible turning point goes beyond job market data. Though the gross domestic product, the overall growth benchmark, declined at a 6.1 percent pace in the first quarter, there were positive signs within the report. Much of the drop came from falling inventories. With less unsold goods on hands, companies will be able to raise production quickly once demand bounces back. Forecasters also have been looking for signs of a turn in housing. Since the collapse of the housing bubble sparked the recession, the economy can’t stabilize until the housing industry does. Though residential construction continued to plunge in the first quarter, the slide in home sales, housing starts and permits is slowing. The Fed’s aggressive efforts to push mortgage rates lower, combined with the continued decline in housing prices, has the housing industry hopeful that after three years of misery, spring may be returning this year. "You have tremendous demand coming from people who are entering the housing marketplace," said Joel Miller, of Wall Street Capital Funding, which finances home construction. “Right now those people are really going benefit from the stimulus and other things out there — especially low housing prices.” A pickup in home sales typically spills over into retail sales as home buyers shop for appliances and furnish their new home. Though credit for such purchases remains extremely tight — consumer credit in March fell at the fastest pace in 18 years — consumer spending rose a better-than-expected 2.2 percent the first quarter after falling 4.1 percent in the second half of 2008. Retail sales perked up in April; discounter Wal-Mart Stores and others reported results that beat expectations. (Source: MSNBC.)  The fuzzy math used to count stimulus jobs Does money save existing one, or create one? Depends on how look at it (Apr 2009) When Ed Pegler was laid off from his highway construction job four months ago, the 47-year-old father of two didn't know when he'd be back to work. Then the phone rang. There was a job, paid for by the federal stimulus law. It's a story the White House hopes to repeat 3.5 million times, to prove that the historic $787 billion spending plan is creating jobs and putting Americans back to work. But it's not the whole story. Pegler, of Lancaster, Pa., gets laid off every winter, once it gets too cold to lay asphalt. Every spring, he gets hired back. That's the way it goes in his business. Did the stimulus create his job this year? Did it save a job he already had? Despite setting a high bar for success and requiring states to report every job created, the White House is still figuring out how to answer those questions. It expects to announce its formula for job-counting soon and, until then, it has cautioned against trumpeting numbers. That hasn't stopped contractors, governors and even President Barack Obama himself from doing just that. "This project will start this summer, creating an estimated 900 jobs right away," Obama said earlier this month, describing a Michigan construction project. "Over 2,500 jobs will be created on Missouri's largest wind farm," he said Wednesday. The announcements are coming faster than the jobs can be created, much less counted. Though the stimulus is moving projects through the pipeline unusually quickly, only a handful of the roughly 6,000 transportation projects announced nationwide are under contract. Even fewer have broken ground. But with so much riding on the success of the stimulus bill, the celebration isn't waiting. When Pegler and his co-workers began repairing sidewalks last week in a Washington suburb, they were interviewed by reporters from as far away as Japan. Maryland says the $2.1 million project will support 60 jobs. A company spokeswoman distributed information at the job site and a transportation industry group handed out its media guide. "If it wasn't for some of the stimulus money, we wouldn't be calling these people back to work," said Shawn Casey, 33, of Bel Air, Md., manager for the sidewalk project. For economists, it's far too early to discuss job creation, said University of Chicago economics professor Steven J. Davis, the author of a book and several studies on the subject. Meaningful data won't be available for years, he said. Compounding the problem, Davis said, is that Obama has invented a new standard to measure success: Jobs saved. Measuring job creation is complicated but possible. Counting jobs saved by the stimulus is, if not impossible, murky. "How do you know what a saved job is? How do you know what jobs would have been lost without this?" Davis said. "That was a clever political gimmick to make it even harder to determine whether this policy has any effect." So far, the definitions the White House budget office has offered are circular: "Jobs created" means new jobs created or filled because of the stimulus. "Jobs retained" means existing jobs retained because of the stimulus. Most of the numbers being tossed around, including the 900 figure Obama cited, come from a transportation formula estimating the number of jobs "supported" by government spending. It doesn't count new or saved jobs, and the Transportation Department has cautioned against applying the formula to the stimulus. That doesn't resolve whether Pegler's job was "created." And if his company bids on another project later, will his job be created twice? States have responded to the rules with confusion, and Washington has promised a clarification within the next few weeks. Elizabeth Oxhorn, a spokeswoman for Vice President Joe Biden, said the clarification will meet "the highest analytical standards." "We take this responsibility of counting jobs very seriously," she said. "But ultimately our first priority will always be creating them." Even organizations that stand to benefit from the stimulus say the jobs picture is cloudy. "There will never be a way of counting the particular jobs that were created or saved or supported by the stimulus," said Bill Buechner, the top economist at the American Road & Transportation Builders Association. He said counting saved jobs requires making "a rough guesstimate of what the world would have looked like if you hadn't done anything." Testifying before Congress last week, Ray Scheppach, an economist and executive director of the National Governors Association, said governors are interested in how Washington counts jobs. But no matter what, he said, the numbers probably won't paint an accurate picture. "I'm not sure at the end of the day, even when we get more guidance, that that data is going to be that useful for looking out across states, across programs," Scheppach said, "just because of the difficulty in collecting accurate information." (Source: MSNBC.) (SITE NOTE: Watching Obama is like watching the circus flim-flam man selling snake oil elixirs -- but now he has been elevated to Wizard of Oz status. Now he gets to put on great smoke and mirror shows. Obama still won't tell the adoring public that his Stimulus Package funding for jobs don't really kick in to 2010. So what is creating these "jobs" that he brags about? WE DON'T KNOW. The facts are that UNEMPLOYMENT IS RISING!!!) Jobless rates rise in all U.S. metro areas (Apr 2009) Unemployment rates rose in all of the nation’s largest metropolitan areas for the third straight month in March, with Indiana’s Elkhart-Goshen once again logging the biggest gain. The Labor Department reported Wednesday all 372 metropolitan areas tracked saw jobless rates move higher last month from a year earlier. Elkhart-Goshen’s rate soared to 18.8 percent, a 13 percentage-point increase. That was the fourth-highest jobless rate in the country. The Indiana region has been hammered by layoffs in the recreational vehicle industry. RV makers Monaco Coach Corp. Keystone RV Co. and Pilgrim International have sliced hundreds of jobs. The jobless rate jumped to 17 percent in Bend, Ore., a 9.2 percentage-point rise and the second-biggest monthly gainer. Rounding out the top three was North Carolina’s Hickory-Lenoir-Morganton, which saw its unemployment rate rise to 15.4 percent last month, an increase of 9.1 percentage points. The regions highlight damage inflicted by the recession. Fallout has been especially pronounced in the manufacturing, construction and retail industries, which have suffered heavy layoffs. El Centro, Calif., continued to lay claim to the highest unemployment rate — 25.1 percent. The jobless rate there is notoriously high because there are so many unemployed seasonal agriculture workers. Following close behind were Merced, Calif., with a jobless rate of 20.4 percent, and Yuba City, Calif., at 19.5 percent. The national unemployment rate soared to 8.5 percent, a quarter-century high, in March. Companies have seen their sales and profits hurt by the recession. They have been laying off workers and taking other cost-cutting steps to survive the downturn, which began in December 2007. (SITE NOTE: The U.S. unemployment rate bolted to 7.2 percent in December, the highest since early 1993, as nervous employers slashed 524,000 jobs. After Obama's vaunted Stimulus Package, it is now at 8.5 percent. And it is estimated that it will climb to 10 percent by 2010. Obama's promises are cheap -- but there are no results. Some say it is too early to see the results -- and we again refer to Obama's promises. His smoke and mirrors games are getting ominous of the hiding his failures until it is too late for America to recover. When will Americans supporting Obama realize that the Stimulus Package had NOTHING to do with jobs. It was about turning America into a Socialist state. Obama's cries that it was ALL ABOUT JOBS was a lie and he continues to run his flim-flam schemes on Americans.) Many economists believe employers will stay in cost-cutting mode even if the recession ends this year, as some hope. The nationwide unemployment rate could top 10 percent early next year before it starts to slowly drift downward. Companies won’t feel inclined to boost hiring until they are confident any economic recovery has staying power. More layoffs were announced this week. Textron Inc. said it will expand layoffs, eliminating 8,300 jobs, or 20 percent, of its global work force as the recession weakens demand for corporate planes. The maker of Cessna planes, Bell helicopters and turf-maintenance equipment earlier this year said it would reduce its work force by 6,200 jobs, or 15 percent, mostly at Wichita, Kansas-based Cessna. Elsewhere, General Motors Corp. laid out a massive restructuring plan that includes cutting 21,000 U.S. factory jobs by next year. Clear Channel Communications Inc., the largest owner of U.S. radio stations, said it’s cutting 590 jobs in its second round of mass layoffs this year. And bearings and specialty steels maker Timken Co. indicated it will cut about 4,000 more jobs by the end of this year after earlier suggesting about 3,000 jobs already had been targeted. (SITE NOTE: What Obama is NOT telling is that GM is planning to ship its jobs overseas. Rumors state that China is the most likely location. However, the Brazil operations of automated plants and internal infrastructure is very attractive -- meaning it is minus the UAW pension plans. The main reason is that all the major companies will be moving overseas to avoid the crippling cap-and-trade policies of Obama and his Democratic hoardes.) In Wednesday’s (29 Apr) metro unemployment report, the government said 18 regions registered jobless rates of at least 15 percent. Meanwhile, 15 regions had rates below 5 percent. They include: Ames, Iowa; Houma-Bayou-Cane-Thibodaux, La.; Iowa, City, Iowa; Manhattan, Kansas; and Lubbock, Texas. Both Iowa City, home of the University of Iowa, and Houma-Bayou-Cane-Thibodaux had the lowest unemployment rates at 3.6 percent each. The Louisiana region, with about 200,000 residents, is located on the coast and serves as a vital support area for the offshore petroleum industry in the Gulf of Mexico. Because of deepwater drilling in the Gulf, where projects take years to complete and bring to production, there has been little short-term effect from low energy prices. (Source: MSNBC.) (SITE NOTE: For all of Obama's Stimulus Package flim-flam, unemployment continues to rise. Simply because there are no numbers to PROVE that Obama's plan is a blooming failure does not give Obama the right to state his Stimulus Package is a success. The only thing that anyone can say is that Obama's creating jobs is NOT substantiated by the rising job losses throughout the country.) May 2009You'll never guess which states have most jobless -- Labor could loom large in mid-term elections (May 2009) Unemployment in March was 20 percent higher in so-called "blue states" won by Democratic candidate Barack Obama in last fall's presidential election than in "red states" won by Republican candidate John McCain, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. If unemployment numbers in the blue states do not begin improving soon, the Democratic Party may start expressing concerns about 2010 mid-term election losses in both governor races and in Congress, many political observers say. The baseball statistician and political predictor at FiveThirtyEight.com already has forecast that Obama will need to sustain a 65-percent approval rating to avoid losing the House of Representatives in the 2010 elections in which voters traditionally weigh economic issues particularly strong. WND has already reported that Obama's 63 percent approval rating at the end of his first 100 days was about the same as registered by President Jimmy Carter in 1976 at the same benchmark moment in his presidency. Obama's average job approval rate is currently around 61 percent, according to poll composites reported at RealClearPolitics.com. (SITE NOTE: BUT the approval rate from Rasmussen has Obama with a 4 percent differential between Strongly approve (34%) and Strongly Disapprove (30%).) As the bureau statistics show, no red state had over 12 percent unemployment, while the two states with highest unemployment – Oregon with 12.1 percent and Michigan with 12.6 percent – both voted for Obama. Drawing causal conclusions from these data are difficult. Conceivably, states that were suffering more economically at the end of the Bush administration would have had a greater tendency to vote Democratic in the 2008 election. Still, the Rasmussen Daily Presidential Tracking Poll shows considerable erosion in Obama's support, with a 28 percent differential between those strongly approving and those strongly disapproving on Inauguration Day diminishing to a single digit, 5 percent differential as measured four months later, on May 18. The risk for Obama is that states that voted for him might be disappointed in the economic results so far. The disappointment factor might be especially acute in states such as Michigan where the Obama administration has not been able to keep Chrysler out of bankruptcy courts, despite billions of dollars in government bailouts. Ohio and Pennsylvania might also be disappointed, as Obama has backtracked from his campaign promise to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement so as to recover more jobs for American workers that have been lost under the treaty's outsourcing to Mexico. With California's budget on the verge of collapse and unemployment averaging 11 percent in March, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has threatened to legalize the recreational use of marijuana, in a move that proponents argue would generate some $1.6 billion in tax revenue. (Source: WND.) Government Revises Unemployment Numbers – Unemployed Number Increases To 13.7 Million (May 2009) The total number of unemployed now stands at 13.7 million, up from 13.2 million in March. Job losses in February and March turned out to be deeper, according to revised figures. Employers cut 681,000 positions in February, 30,000 more than previously reported. They cut 699,000 jobs in March, more than the 663,000 first reported. If laid-off workers who have given up looking for new jobs or have settled for part-time work are included, the unemployment rate would have been 15.8 percent in April. Since the recession began in December 2007, the economy has lost a net total of 5.7 million jobs. The number of unemployed workers drawing benefits climbed to a new record 6.35 million. Companies also kept a tight rein on workers hours. The average work week in April stayed at 33.2 hours, matching the record low set in March.Employers last month cut the fewest jobs since 380,000 in October. Nonetheless, the April job losses were widespread. Construction companies axed 110,000 jobs. Factories got rid of 149,000 jobs. Retailers cut payrolls by nearly 47,000. The addition of 66,000 new “federal jobs” helped to temper the overall payroll reductions in April. The pickup in federal employment was mainly due to the hiring of 63,000 temporary Census workers. As the recession eats into sales and profits, companies have turned to layoffs and other cost-cutting measures to survive the storm. Those including holding down workers’ hours, and freezing or cutting pay. Looking ahead, economists expect monthly job losses for most, if not all of this year. The Fed says unemployment will remain elevated into 2011. Economists say the job market may not get back to normal, meaning a 5 percent unemployment rate, until 2013. The Commerce Department on Friday said wholesale inventories dropped 1.6 percent in March, much larger than the 1 percent fall that analysts had expected. That followed a 1.7 percent drop in February, the largest monthly decline on records that go back 17 years. It was the seventh straight month that wholesale inventories fell as businesses struggled to get stockpiles in line with plunging sales. Wholesalers saw sales drop 2.4 percent in March, the fifth decline in six months. (Source: Huffington Post.) (SITE NOTE: Gee, for eight months straight unemployment figures have been RISING!!! When will Obama stop blaming Bush for his problems and face up to the fact that it is HIS problem. His Stimulus Package is not creating jobs!!!) June 2009Unemployment Numbers Dip (Jun 2009) WASHINGTON — The number of people on the unemployment insurance rolls fell slightly for the first time in 20 weeks, while the tally of new jobless claims also dipped, the government said Thursday (4 Jun). The Labor Department report provides a glimmer of good news for job seekers, though both drops were small and the figures remain significantly above the levels associated with a healthy economy.The department also said U.S. workers were more productive in the first quarter than previously estimated, as rapid layoffs forced companies to make do with fewer employees.The tally of first-time claims for jobless benefits declined to a seasonally adjusted 621,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 625,000, nearly matching analysts' expectations. The total jobless benefit rolls fell by 15,000 to 6.7 million, the first drop since early January. Continuing claims had set record highs every week since the week ending Jan. 24. The continuing claims data lag initial claims by one week. Separately, sales fell in May at many retail stores as shoppers spent cautiously, focusing on bargains and food. Discounter Target Corp., warehouse club operator Costco Wholesale Corp. and Macy's Inc. department store reported drops in sales. TJX Cos., which owns the TJ Maxx and Marshalls chains, said sales rose a greater-than-expected 5 percent. Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, did not report monthly sales but did say it expects to hire about 22,000 people for new positions this year. Wall Street's reaction was mixed, with the markets fluctuating between moderate gains and losses. The Dow Jones industrial average added about 9 points in morning trading, and broader indices also edged up. The number of initial jobless claims remains stubbornly high, above the 605,000 level reached five weeks ago. That was the lowest level in 14 weeks. The four-week average of claims, which smooths out fluctuations, rose by 4,000 to 631,250. Productivity, the amount of output per hour worked, rose at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.6 percent in the January-March period, the department said, double the government's estimate last month. The increase came despite a steep drop in output, because companies laid off employees and cut hours worked at an even faster pace. Higher productivity can raise living standards because workers that produce more can earn higher wages without forcing companies to raise prices. Labor costs rose 3 percent, down from the government's previous measure of 3.3 percent. A rapid increase in labor costs could fuel inflation, but most economists aren't worried about rising prices, as the recession is keeping a lid on wage demands. The reports come a day before the department is scheduled to release its unemployment report for May. Economists expect that report will show employers cut a net total of 520,000 jobs last month. That's on top of 5.7 million jobs that have been lost since the recession began in December 2007. The unemployment rate, meanwhile, will rise to 9.2 percent from 8.9 percent in April, analysts forecast. Troubles in the automotive sector could cause unexpected fluctuations in the claims data. General Motors Corp. filed for bankruptcy protection Monday, joining Chrysler LLC, which filed April 30. GM said earlier this week it will close nine factories and idle three others indefinitely as part of its restructuring. The closings, which will take place through the end of 2010, will cost 18,000 to 20,000 workers their jobs. The company already planned to temporarily close 13 plants on a rolling basis this summer. Workers affected by the temporary shutdowns are eligible for unemployment benefits. Chrysler, meanwhile, has temporarily idled all its U.S. factories after filing for bankruptcy protection, resulting in 27,000 layoffs. That decision caused claims to jump in the first week of May. The shutdowns also could affect auto suppliers, which employ 3 million workers. Initial claims are still below the peak for the current recession of 674,000 in late March. Many economists see the decline as a sign that layoffs outside the auto sector have peaked. But the unemployment insurance data remain significantly higher than a year ago, when initial claims were 370,000 and the total benefit rolls stood at 3 million. Among the states, Illinois had the largest increase in claims, with 3,881, which it attributed to layoffs in the manufacturing and service industries. The next largest increases were in Iowa, South Carolina, Texas and Wisconsin. The state data lag initial claims by a week. North Carolina had the largest drop in claims of 3,952, which it attributed to fewer layoffs in the construction, furniture and transportation industries. The next largest decreases were in Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee and Connecticut. (Source: Huffington Post.) Employment Report Fuels GOP Attack on Obama Policies (Jun 2009) Republicans launched a political offensive against President Barack Obama's handling of the economy after weeks of reticence, emboldened by Friday's report of a surging unemployment rate. Political strategists have been pushing GOP lawmakers to attack Mr. Obama's $787 billion stimulus plan and to challenge how the Democratic Congress has handled everything from taxes to unions to energy policy. At the same time, Republicans have worried such attacks would backfire in the event of a recovery. While job losses mounted in May, the numbers weren't as high as expected and suggest the U.S. recession is close to an end, reports Brian Blackstone of DJ Newswires. With Friday's report that the unemployment rate had jumped to 9.4%, the highest monthly reading since September 1983, Republicans put aside those qualms. Rep. Dave Camp (R., Mich.), the senior Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee, declared the stimulus plan a failure. House Minority Leader John Boehner (R., Ohio) proclaimed, "Washington is hanging middle-class Americans out to dry." "This is President Obama's economy now," said House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R., Va.). Republicans noted that a report by the Obama transition team in early January said that without a large stimulus plan, unemployment would go above 9%. It is now above that level, despite passage of the stimulus plan, though less than 5% of funds have been spent. White House economists said Friday that the economic slide built up steam between the time that report was drafted and passage of the plan in February. Some Republicans have been hammering the president's economic policies for months, saying the White House has been spending hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars with nothing to show for it. But until this week, Republican congressional leaders were more muted. Christina Romer, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, countered that she saw some positive developments in the numbers. The Labor Department reported Friday that job losses slowed to 345,000 -- the first time in six months that monthly payroll losses have been less than a half-million. And for the second month in a row, the labor force actually grew. That helped drive the unemployment rate up, but it also suggested more people are feeling positive enough about the economy to look for work. Also, the Bureau of Labor Statistics revised March and April payroll figures to show that the country lost 80,000 fewer jobs than previously thought. Still, "seeing the unemployment rate hitting 9.4% is incredibly distressing," Ms. Romer said. "It is a high number and there's no way around that." Vice President Joe Biden called the situation "tough," despite slowing job losses. "Less bad is not how we're going to measure success," he said. Job-market improvement has always lagged behind economic recovery, often with serious political consequences. In May 1981, President Ronald Reagan faced a 7.5% unemployment rate, which rose to 10.4% in October 1982, before the GOP lost 26 House seats. Rep. Chris Van Hollen, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, noted that Franklin Roosevelt's Democrats gained seats in the midterm election of 1934, with an unemployment rate over 20%, because voters saw the party as trying to lift the country from a depression not of its making. "I give the American people a lot of credit in determining who's working hard to get us out of this recession and who's not," the Maryland Democrat said. Still, the unemployment numbers stirred anxiety on Capitol Hill. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) had to pull a $100 billion war-spending bill from the House floor Thursday after lawmakers revolted over billions of dollars for the International Monetary Fund. The funding is critical if Mr. Obama is to keep a pledge secured by the Group of 20 industrialized and developing nations at the London summit in April. Objections to the IMF funding are bipartisan. Republican leaders are charging that the money will be used to prop up terrorist organizations like Hezbollah. More than 40 Democrats signed a letter saying the IMF funds should not be approved without assurances that they will be used to stimulate economies in poor countries. (Source: WSJ.) As Millions Exhaust Unemployment Benefits – Main Stream Media Abandons Journalistic Ethics For Political Spin (Jun 2009) The total number of people on the unemployment insurance rolls dropped for the first time since early January, the government said Thursday, while new claims for benefits rose slightly. This reporting is so dishonest it makes me want to scream – notice the report dsoes not state that the total number of unemployed has droped – just the number “on the unemployment rolls has decreased”. Nearly half (50%) of recipients at the end of last month had exhausted the 26 weeks of benefits provided under the regular state program without finding work, according to Labor Department data. That’s a record and compared with about 36 percent in December 2007, when the recession began. (A 14% percent increase) The reason the number of people “on the jobless rolls” has dropped is because over a million of the unemployed exhausted the last of their benefits, both State and Federal extensions, thgis past month and are without any unemployment benefit whatsoever . “It is unlikely that new hiring has picked up in any meaningful fashion,” Joshua Shapiro, chief economist with MFR Inc., a consulting firm, wrote in a note to clients. The department said the total unemployment insurance rolls fell by 148,000 to 6.69 million in the week ending June 6, the largest drop in more than seven years. The number of new “claims” toppped 600,000 for the 21st straight week, however, the number of individuals being removed from the rolls because they have either exhausted their benefits or been disqualified from receiving additional benefits, topped 750,000, resulting in what this report claims is a 148,000 person reduction on the “unemployment rolls. This is a classic example of unethical reporting, a politically motivated attempt to create a “positive political spin”. The drop also breaks a string of 21 straight increases in continuing claims, the last 19 of which were records. A dip in continuing claims several weeks ago was later revised higher. Initial claims rose by 3,000 to a seasonally adjusted 608,000 in the week ending June 13, above analysts’ expectations. The four-week average, which smooths fluctuations, fell by 7,000 to 615,750. Continuing claims data lags initial claims by one week. State laws provide for 26 weeks of unemployment benefits. The Federal Government, as part of the stimulus package, provided an additional 13 week extension. Those benefits are now being exhausted and this report implies that the individuals that have exhausted their benefits are no longer unemployed. We are now in the 22nd week in a row where the “new claims average” have topped 600,000. Still, millions of Americans are receiving unemployment compensation under an emergency federal program authorized by Congress last summer and extended by the Obama administration’s stimulus package. About 2.4 million people received benefits under that program in the week ending May 30, an increase of more than 102,000 from the previous week. That’s in addition to the 6.7 million people receiving benefits under the 26-week program typically provided by states. First-time jobless claims are a measure of the pace of layoffs and are seen as a timely, if volatile, indicator of the economy’s health. Initial claims stood at 390,000 a year ago. First time jobless claims stand at 615,000 today. If these same reporters declared last years economy “the worst ever”, how dare they claim an improvement today. Companies have cut a net total of 6 million jobs since the downturn began in December 2007. NO ONE WILL CLAIM THAT EMPLOYMENT HAS INCREASED – IT HAS NOT – THE GOVERNMENT TRACKS THOSE NUMBERS ALSO - THERE IS SIMPLY NOTHING TO REPORT IN REGARD TO NEW HIRING OR JOB CREATION. The Country, as a whole, lost a net 300,000 jobs last month: In April, nonfarm payroll employment decreased in 44 states and the District of Columbia and rose in 6 states. The largest over-the-month employment decrease occurred in California (-63,700), followed by Texas (-39,500), Michigan (-38,400), Ohio (-25,200), Illinois (-23,100), and Wisconsin (-21,100). Michigan experienced the largest over-the-month percentage decrease in employment (-1.0 percent), followed by New Mexico (-0.9 percent) and Kansas, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin (-0.8 percent each). (Source: bls.gov and Yahoo.) The City of Detroit is repsonsible for the Officials it has elected over the last decade and the mismanagement and corruption they have brought to the City and the people of the State of Michigan are responsible for re-electing their current Governor, Governor Granholm’s policies have helped destroy Michigan’s economy over the last 7 years, that said, the facts are this, the City of Detroit claims a population of 900,000 (after years of artficially high census counts, the City’s attempt to artificially increase the amount of Federal funding it receives). At present the unemployment rate is 22.8% , 207,000 Detroit residents are currently “counted” on the “unemployment rolls”. Food Stamps are being provided to 30% of the City’s residents (300,000 residents). An additional 185,000 residents have exhausted their available unemployment benefits and are unemployed, but not counted as being “on the rolls” - that is an additional 20.5% of the population. The “true unemployment rate” in the City of the Detroit is approximately 45%, out of every 10 residents, 4 1/2 are either receiving unemployment or have exhausted their available benefits. THE RECENT SHUT DOWN OF THE AUTO PLANTS IS NOT REFLECTED IN THESE NUMBERS.(Most of the Detroit 3 Plants are not actually located in Detroit, as is falsely reported – they are located in surrounding communities – 7 of GM’s 14 “national” plant closing will take place in Oakland County, a County north of Detroit. Detroit is located in actually located in Wayne County). Michigan’s “statewide” unemployement rate is above 14%, that means 1 out of every 7 workers is currently receiving State or Ferderal unemployed benefits. http://www.mlive.com/business/index.ssf/2009/06/michigan_unemployment_rate_hig.html . The “uncounted” unemployed in Michigan may double the total number. People are falling out of the frying pan and into the fire and all this type of reporting does is mask the true level of suffering being encountered in Middle America today. (Source: Mcauley's World.)  Joblessness Continued to Rise In May In Nearly Every State (Jun 2009) Signs that unemployment pains may be easing in individual US states in April disappeared by May, when jobless rates jumped in 48 states and the District of Columbia, according to data released on Friday (19 Jun). Michigan again reported the highest jobless rate of 14.1 percent, followed by Oregon, which notched 12.4 percent, its highest on record, the U.S. Labor Department said. Not only did Michigan hold the highest spot in terms of unemployment, a position it has had since October, but the state also experienced the largest monthly increase in its rate as two American auto behemoths—General Motors and Chrysler—struggled. Michigan has had an unemployment rate of 7.0 percent or higher since April 2007, and broke past 9.0 percent in December. Oregon, which has seen its rate spike over the last few months, had the largest increase from a year earlier, 6.7 percentage points, the Labor Department said. The national unemployment rate last month was 9.4 percent, and 18 states recorded rates that were higher. In six states and the District of Columbia rates were greater than 10 percent, meaning that in those states at least one in 10 people does not have a job. In Nebraska, the rate fell slightly to 4.4 percent from 4.5 percent in April, and in Vermont, the rate remained unchanged at 7.3 percent.California registered its highest unemployment rate on record, 11.5 percent, and also lost the most jobs, 68,900, of all the states in May. Southern states, too, also reached historical highs, with North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida and Georgia all registering their highest unemployment rates on record. At the same time, the number of jobs dropped in 39 states, but increased in 11 states and the District of Columbia. California had the largest decrease in positions, 68,900,followed by Florida, which lost 61,000 jobs. Massachusetts gained the most jobs, 4,900. (Source: CNBC: Reuters.) CHANGE Nation's Unemployment Rate Climbs to 26-Year High at 9.5 Percent (Jun 2009) Employers cut a larger-than-expected 467,000 jobs in June, driving the unemployment rate up to a 26-year high of 9.5 percent, suggesting that the economy's road to recovery will be bumpy. The Labor Department report, released Thursday, showed that even as the recession flashes signs of easing, companies likely will want to keep a lid on costs and be wary of hiring until they feel certain the economy is on solid ground. June's payroll reductions were deeper than the 363,000 that economists expected. However, the rise in the unemployment rate from 9.4 percent in May wasn't as sharp as the expected 9.6 percent. Still, many economists predict the jobless rate will hit 10 percent this year, and keep rising into next year, before falling back. All told, 14.7 million people were unemployed in June. If laid-off workers who have given up looking for new jobs or have settled for part-time work are included, the unemployment rate would have been 16.5 percent in June, the highest on records dating to 1994. "We were on the road of things getting less bad in the jobs market, and that has been temporarily waylaid," said economist Ken Mayland, president of ClearView Economics. "But this doesn't change my view that the recession will end later this year. We're probably two months away." Since the recession began in December 2007, the economy has lost a net total of 6.5 million jobs. As the downturn bites into sales and profits, companies have turned to layoffs and other cost-cutting measures to survive. Those include holding down workers' hours and freezing or cutting pay. The average work week in June fell to 33 hours, the lowest on records dating to 1964. Layoffs in May turned out to smaller, 322,000, versus the 345,000 first reported. But job cuts in April were a big deeper -- 519,000 versus 504,000, according to government data. Even with higher pace of job cuts in June, the report indicates that the worst of the layoffs have passed. The deepest job cuts of the recession came in January, when 741,000 jobs vanished, the most in any month since 1949. And there was some other encouraging job news Thursday. In a separate report, the department said the number of newly laid-off workers filing applications for unemployment benefits fell last week to 614,000, in line with economists' predictions. The number of people continuing to draw benefits unexpectedly dropped to 6.7 million. Still, job losses last month were widespread. Professional and business services slashed 118,000 jobs, more than double the 48,000 cut in May. Manufacturers cut 136,000, down from 156,000. Construction companies got rid of 79,000 jobs, up from 48,000 the previous month. Retailers eliminated 21,000, up from 17,600. Financial activities cut 27,000, following 30,000 in May. The government cut 52,000 jobs, up from 10,000 the previous month. Leisure and hospitality cut 18,000 jobs, erasing a gain of the same size in May. One of the few industries adding jobs: education and health services, which added 34,000 positions last month and 47,000 in May. Mayland and other economists said a good chunk of June's job losses likely were affected by shutdowns at General Motors Corp. and fallout from the troubled auto industry, which should let up later this summer. The government said employment at factories making autos and parts fell by 27,000 last month. Payroll losses and the unemployment rate are derived from two separate statistical surveys. With the weakness in the job market, workers didn't see any wage gains in June. Average hourly earnings were flat at $18.53. Average weekly earnings fell to $611.49 in June, from $613.34 in May, raising questions about consumers' willingness to spend in the months ahead. The worst crises in the housing, credit and financial markets since the 1930s have plunged the country into the longest recession since World War II. Many think the jobless rate could rise as high as 10.7 percent by the second quarter of next year before it starts to make a slow descent. Some think the rate will top out at 11 percent. The post-World War II high was 10.8 percent at the end of 1982, when the country had suffered through a severe recession. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke predicts the recession will end this year, with many economists forecasting that the economy will start to grow again as soon as the current July-September quarter. But recoveries after financial crises tend to be slow, which is why economists predict it will take years for the job market to return to normal. Some predict the nation's unemployment rate won't drop to 5 percent until 2013.An elevated unemployment rate could become a political liability for President Barack Obama when congressional elections are held next year. The last time the unemployment rate topped 10 percent, the party of the president -- then Ronald Reagan's GOP -- lost 26 House seats in midterm elections in 1982. So far, many people are saving -- rather than spending -- the extra money in their paychecks from Obama's tax cut, blunting its help in bracing the economy. Much of the economic benefit of Obama's increased government spending on big public works projects won't kick in until 2010, analysts say. The White House last week said federal money was being shoveled out of Washington quickly, but states aren't steering the cash to counties that need jobs the most. Large job cuts have continued this week. Newspaper publisher Gannett Co. said it plans to cut 1,400 jobs in the next few weeks, about 3 percent of the work force, as it faces a prolonged slump in advertising revenue. Farm machinery company Deere & Co. said 800 salaried employees, or 3 percent of its salaried work force, took a voluntary buyout offer. (Source: Fox News.)  Stimulus Promised Jobs -- and not only didn't deliver, but we lost even more jobs (Jun 2009)  Despite all Obama's fuzzy-math statistics, the truth is jobs losses continue to mount (Jun 2009)  Under Obama, the debt keeps rising (Jun 2009) July 2009New jobless claims rise more than expected (Jul 2009) The number of newly laid-off workers filing first-time claims for jobless benefits rose last week, the government said, though the increase was mostly due to seasonal distortions. The number of people remaining on the jobless benefit rolls, meanwhile, fell to 6.2 million from 6.25 million, the lowest level since mid-April.The Labor Department said new claims for unemployment aid increased by 25,000 to a seasonally adjusted 584,000. That's above analysts' estimates of 570,000. A department analyst said the increase comes after claims were artificially depressed earlier this month by the timing of temporary auto factory shutdowns, which happened earlier this year than in most years. Still, this week's total is below the 617,000 initial claims reported in late June before the seasonal distortions began. It reflects a trend that economists say indicates a slowing pace of layoffs. The four-week average of claims, which smooths out fluctuations, fell to 559,000, its lowest level since late January. But jobs remain scarce and the unemployment rate, which hit 9.5 percent for June, is expected to surpass 10 percent by year's end. And weekly claims remain far above the 300,000 to 350,000 that analysts say is consistent with a healthy economy. New claims last fell below 300,000 in early 2007. The lowest level this year was 488,000 for the week ended Jan. 3. The seasonal distortions are due to the fact that the auto companies shut their plants earlier than usual this year. Car makers normally close their factories in early July and temporarily lay off thousands of workers as they retool plants to build new car models. Those shutdowns happened in May and June this year as General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC closed plants after filing for bankruptcy protection. That shift in timing caused new claims to fall sharply in the first two weeks of July. Claims are now rebounding from that artificial decline. The recession, which started in December 2007 and is the longest since World War II, has eliminated a net total of 6.5 million jobs. The unemployment rate is expected to rise to 9.7 percent when the July figure is reported next week. More job cuts were announced this week. Verizon Communications Inc. said Monday that it would cut more than 8,000 employee and contractor jobs before the end of the year. Among the states, California had the biggest increase in claims, with 4,290, which it attributed to increased layoffs in the construction and trade industries. Michigan, Florida, Connecticut and Indiana had the next-largest increases. State data lags behind initial claims data by one week. New York had the largest drop in claims, with 22,052, which it said was due to fewer layoffs in the service and transportation industries. Wisconsin, Missouri, Pennsylvania and Ohio had the next largest declines. (Source: Breitbart.) August 2009Real US unemployment rate at 16 pct: Fed official (Aug 2009) The real US unemployment rate is 16 percent if persons who have dropped out of the labor pool and those working less than they would like are counted, a Federal Reserve official said Wednesday. "If one considers the people who would like a job but have stopped looking -- so-called discouraged workers -- and those who are working fewer hours than they want, the unemployment rate would move from the official 9.4 percent to 16 percent, said Atlanta Fed chief Dennis Lockhart.He underscored that he was expressing his own views, which did "do not necessarily reflect those of my colleagues on the Federal Open Market Committee," the policy-setting body of the central bank. Lockhart pointed out in a speech to a chamber of commerce in Chattanooga, Tennessee that those two categories of people are not taken into account in the Labor Department's monthly report on the unemployment rate. The official July jobless rate was 9.4 percent. Lockhart, who heads the Atlanta, Georgia, division of the Fed, is the first central bank official to acknowledge the depth of unemployment amid the worst US recession since the Great Depression. Lockhart said the US economy was improving but "still fragile," and the beginning stages of a sluggish recovery were underway. "My forecast for a slow recovery implies a protracted period of high unemployment," he said, adding that it would be difficult to stimulate jobs through additional public spending. "Further fiscal stimulus has been mentioned, but the full effects of the first stimulus package are not yet clear, and the concern over adding to the federal deficit and the resulting national debt is warranted," he said. President Barack Obama's administration has resisted calls for more public spending, arguing that the 787-billion-dollar stimulus passed in February needs time to work its way through the economy. Lockhart noted that construction and manufacturing had been particularly hard hit in the recession that began in December 2007 and predicted some jobs were gone for good. Prior to the recession, he said, construction and manufacturing combined accounted for slightly more than 15 percent of employment. But during the recession, their job losses made up more than 40 percent of all US job losses. "In my view, it is unlikely that we will see a return of jobs lost in certain sectors, such as manufacturing," he said. "In a similar vein, the recession has been so deep in construction that a reallocation of workers is likely to happen -- even if not permanent." Payroll employment has fallen by 6.7 million since the recession began. (Source: Breitbart.) September 2009Jobless claims show labor market may slow recovery (Sep 2009) New claims for jobless aid fell less than expected last week, and the number of people continuing to receive unemployment benefits rose — further signs that any economic recovery will be hindered by a weak job market and flat incomes.Most economists think the recession is over, but they say the jobless rate will keep rising until at least next summer as the economy struggles to mount a sustained recovery. That means household incomes will remain depressed and consumer spending, which accounts for 70 percent of the economy, will continue to lag. "Firms are still not hiring, and that reflects deep pessimism about the sustainability of the economic recovery once government stimulus programs wear off," said Sal Guatieri, senior economist at BMO Capital Markets. "The lack of job creation remains a big headwind for cash-starved and credit-constrained consumers." The nation's major retailers on Thursday reported lackluster results from August back-to-school sales. Results in established stores fell 2.1 percent in August compared with the same month last year, a compilation of 31 retailers' results by the International Council of Shopping Centers and Goldman Sachs indicated. Some major discounters managed to exceed expectations. The Labor Department said the number of laid-off workers applying for benefits dipped to 570,000 from an upwardly revised 574,000 the previous week. That was a smaller improvement than economists had expected. The number of Americans continuing to receive benefits jumped to 6.23 million, up 92,000 from the previous week and a troubling reminder of the difficulty people are having finding jobs. The continuing claims data lag new claims by one week. The recession, which began in December 2007, has eliminated a net total of 6.7 million jobs. That toll is expected to grow on Friday, when the government reports the unemployment rate for August. Economists predict the jobless rate, now at 9.4 percent, will rise to 9.5 percent, with 225,000 net job losses in August. Guatieri and other analysts said job losses for August might turn out even larger — perhaps topping the 247,000 jobs lost in July — because of the weakness in the unemployment claims figures. "Employers are nervous that the economy is growing only because of policy stimulus and that when the stimulus fades, it will weaken again," said Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics. Christina Romer, a top Obama economic adviser, said last week that unemployment could reach 10 percent this year. And some private economists are forecasting it will hit 10.3 percent next summer before starting to improve. Guatieri expects it to remain near 10 percent for most of next year. On Wall Street, stocks gained after a four-day slide but investors refrained from making big moves ahead of Friday's report on unemployment. The Dow Jones industrial average added nearly 64 points and broader indices also rose. In another report Thursday, a key gauge of activity in service industries, which account for about 80 percent of U.S. economic activity, edged up to 48.4 in August from 46.4 in July. It was the best reading by the Institute for Supply Management's service-sector survey in 11 months. And it pushed the index closer to topping 50, the dividing line between contraction and expansion. Earlier this week, the ISM reported that its manufacturing gauge hit 52.9, the first over-50 reading since January 2008. Analysts said manufacturing fared better in August in part because it had received a boost from the government's most successful stimulus program yet, the Cash for Clunkers deals that spurred auto sales. The Obama administration issued an upbeat assessment of the economy on Thursday. Vice President Joe Biden said the government's $787 billion economic stimulus program had exceeded expectations and changed the trajectory of the economy. "Instead of talking about the beginning of a depression, we are talking about the end of a recession," Biden said in a speech at the Brookings Institution. But some Republicans charged that Biden's comments ignored the fact that millions of Americans remain unemployed. Economists closely watch initial jobless claims, which are considered a gauge of layoffs and a sign of companies' willingness to hire new workers. Claims are well off the recession's high of 674,000, hit in the first week in April. But they are still running far above the 350,000 that many economists view as a sign of a healthy labor market. The Labor Department report showed that the four-week average of initial jobless claims edged up to 571,250 last week, compared with 567,250 the previous week. When federal emergency programs are included, though, the total number of jobless benefit recipients was 9.14 million people in the week that ended Aug. 15, down from about 9.18 million the previous week. Congress has added up to 53 extra weeks of benefits, on top of the 26 typically provided by the states. In the chain store sales report, discounter Target Corp. and warehouse club operators Costco Wholesale Corp. and BJ's Wholesale Club Inc. said sales at established stores dropped but beat analyst expectations. A 5 percent jump at TJX Cos., which operates discount chains TJMaxx and Marshall's, topped expectations. But upscale retailers, including Saks Inc. and Nordstrom Inc., reported a weak month. (Source: AP.) Real unemployment rate tops 16.8% inside numbers point to jobless economic recovery (Sep 2009) During the past months an increasing number of economists have warned of the growing likelihood of an US economic recovery that fails to produce job growth. A bevy of economic reports in the past weeks have sent mixed signals as to economic strength, but overall most economists believe that the US economy has turned a corner. Yesterdays unemployment report, however, adds to the concern that the US is looking forward to a sustained period of high unemployment and lack of job creation. The Department of Labor reported a rise in the adjusted non-farm unemployment rate to a 30 year high of 9.7% after the economy shed another 216,000. However, beyond the adjusted payroll number lies a host of employment numbers that continue to raise concern. The adjusted payroll numbers do not include 2 groups of unemployed workers that the DOL refers to as temporary part-time workers and marginally attached workers. The DOL reported that 9.1 million Americans are currently working part-time due to economic conditions. This group is comprised of workers who have had their hours cut from full-time status or who have been able to find full-time employment. In addition the DOL reported that the number of marginally attached workers grew to 2.3 million. Such marginally attached workers include individuals who are unemployed but have not sought work over the 4 weeks prior to the survey and includes some 758,000 "discouraged' workers that have simply given up. The addition of such excluded groups caused the real unemployment rate to increase to 16.8%. Inside the Numbers A major cause of concern for within the economy is that a pattern has developed in which the real unemployment rate continues to rise at a faster pace than the adjusted unemployment rate. While the adjusted rate rose .3% last month, the real unemployment rate jumped .5%. As a result, the numbers demonstrate that the unemployed are remaining unemployed as the number of marginally attached unemployed jumped to a record high which will continue to place increased strains upon social services. The DOL also adjusted their June and July unemployment figures upward as is typical with late responses and the rush to get the report published. In June the economy shed an additional 20,000 jobs and in July we lost 33,000 more jobs than initially reported. Manufacturing and Construction sectors both shed more jobs than were expected in the month of August raising concerns over the how quickly those sectors are recovering and conflicting with economic data reflecting growth with those industries. The construction industry shed more than 65,000 jobs in July continuing a very consistent pattern of job less over the summer months. August typically represents the height of construction job creation and was not expected to continue to shed jobs in light of promised growth through the Economic Recovery Act. Furthermore, the manufacturing sector reversed course by reporting 63,000 job cuts in August compared to a low-level 43,000 losses in the previous month. Recent economic reports have suggested an increase in worker productivity and increase in the ISM manufacturing index suggesting a turnaround in the sector. However, job data reflects that worker productivity is rising because fewer workers are taking on greater responsibility and the manufacturing sector as a whole may have experienced growth but is still not hiring new workers. The only private industry sector to add jobs in August was the Health Care industry which has added 544,000 jobs since last December. However, the health Care sector only added 28,000 jobs in August reflecting industry hiring which has continued to decline since April. In addition, within the health care sector, hiring has leveled off within hospital industry which was the primary driver of industry job creation. In August the DOL reported further losses within Government employment reflecting the stimulus packages inability to increase federal employment levels enough to offset continued layoffs within State & Local governments. The jobless rate is not increasing as rapidly as it was during the first half of the year. However, employers cut deep and hard during the first quarter of the year and economists had expected employment figures to improve through the fall. Historically, the periods July to August and November to December have provided the strongest levels of employment in the US. July and August numbers are typically strong due the height of US construction levels and increased manufacturing in preparation of an upcoming holiday season (yes, most orders are placed and stores beginning receiving inventory during this period). As a result of continued losses within manufacturing and construction and the onset of fall, we are likely to see the adjusted unemployment rate remain somewhat stable through the end of the year perhaps reaching 10%. However, if consumer spending does not recover prior the holiday season, then we once again likely to see a drastic increase in January and February unemployment data and an adjusted unemployment rate of 10.5%-11.0% by spring. In addition, the real unemployment rate is likely to approach 18% during the same period. According to recent polling, more than 60% of Americans do not believe that the stimulus package is creating jobs. Unemployment data corroborates that concern as the stimulus package has only provided a slow trickle of funds to select industries. The stimulus package has provided a life line to the economy, any time the government spends money at the rate it is, it will positively affect the economy. However, that life line is not enough to save jobs as the stimulus has failed to provide relief to consumers and increase consumer spending. Retailers reported less than expected "back to school" sales in August and are now growing more concern that increased consumer spending may not occur before the onset of the holiday shopping season. Roughly 70% of our economy is driven by consumer spending and with a stimulus plan that failed to provide relief to consumers, a slow recovery in consumer spending will mean an inherent lack of job creation. (Source: Examiner.) America Out of Work: Is Double-Digit Unemployment Here to Stay? (Sep 2009) It was not a lesson Lawrence Summers mastered with great ease. But after nearly a decade working beside sphinxlike Alan Greenspan, and having watched his own tenure as president of Harvard cut short by a phrase that slipped too nimbly from brain to mouth, Summers, director of the President's National Economic Council, has become a restrained public man. Gone are the days when he would glibly compare flailing financial markets to jet crashes, as he did to TIME in 1999. He is mindful of how ill-considered asides by policymakers can cause financial-market angina. So you can probably imagine the ripple that ran through the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington in July when Summers looked up from his prepared speech, flashed a grin and loosed the sort of utterance that once upon a time marked imminent indiscretion. "There was," he told the room, "a fight about whether I was allowed to say this now that I work in the White House." What Summers proceeded to offer was, in fact, an unusually candid insight. And though couched in jargon, it was an insider's confession of why our present economic moment is fraught with both danger and opportunity. There appears to be, Summers told the suddenly very attentive crowd, a strange bit of physics working itself out in our economy. The problem is related to a hiccup in an economic rule called Okun's law. First mooted by economist Arthur Okun in 1962, the law (it's really more of a rule of thumb) says that when the economy grows, it produces jobs at a predictable rate, and when it shrinks, it sheds them at a similarly regular pace. It's a labor version of how the accelerator on your car works: add gas, go faster; less gas, go slower. What made Summers' frank comment important is that it suggests this just-add-gas relationship may now be malfunctioning. The American economy has been shedding jobs much, much faster than Okun's law predicts. According to that rough rule, we should be at about 8.5% unemployment today, not slipping toward 10%. Something new and possibly strange seems to be happening in this recession. Something unpredicted by the experts. "I don't think," Summers told the Peterson Institute crowd - deviating again from his text - "that anyone fully understands this phenomenon." And that raises some worrying questions. Will creating jobs be that much slower too? Will double-digit unemployment persist even after we emerge from this recession? Has the idea of full employment rather suddenly become antiquated? Is there something fundamentally broken in the heart of our economy? And if so, how can we fix it? The Labor Conundrum The speed of America's now historic employment contraction reflects how puzzling this economic slide has been. Recall that the crisis has included assurances from the chairman of the Federal Reserve that it was over when in fact it was just getting started and a confession from a former Fed chairman that much of what he thought was true for decades now appears to be wrong. Nowhere is this bafflement clearer than in the area of employment. ( When compiling the "worst case" for stress-testing American banks last winter, policymakers figured the most chilling scenario for unemployment in 2009 was 8.9% - a figure we breezed past in May. From December 2007 to August 2009, the economy jettisoned nearly 7 million jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That's a 5% decrease in the total number of jobs, a drop that hasn't occurred since the end of World War II. The number of long-term unemployed, people who have been out of work for more than 27 weeks, was the highest since the BLS began recording the number in 1948. Jobless figures released Sept. 4 showed a 9.7% unemployment rate, pushing the U.S. - unthinkably - ahead of Europe, with 9.5%. America now faces the direst employment landscape since the Depression. It's troubling not simply for its sheer scale but also because the labor market, shaped by globalization and technology and financial meltdown, may be fundamentally different from anything we've seen before. And if the result is that we're stuck with persistent 9%-to-11% unemployment for a while - a range whose mathematical congruence with that other 9/11 is impossible to miss - we may be looking at a problem that will define the first term of Barack Obama's presidency the way the original 9/11 defined George W. Bush's. Like that 9/11, this one demands a careful refiguring of some of the most basic tenets of national policy. And just as the shock of Sept. 11 prompted long-overdue (and still not cemented) reforms in intelligence and defense, the jobs crisis will force us to examine a climate that has been deteriorating for years. The total number of nonfarm jobs in the U.S. economy is about the same now - roughly 131 million - as it was in 1999. And the Federal Reserve is predicting moderate growth at best. That means more than a decade without real employment expansion. We're a long way from Hoovervilles, of course. But it's not hard to imagine, if we're not careful, a country sprouting listless Obamavilles: idled workers minivanning aimlessly through overleveraged cul-de-sacs with no way to pay their mortgages, no health care, little hope of meaningful work and only the hot comfort of angry politics. This is why the problem of how America works needs to become the focus of an urgent national debate. The jobs crisis offers an opportunity to think in profound ways about how and why we work, about what makes employment satisfying, about the jobs Americans can and should do best. But the ideas Washington has delivered so far are insufficient. They reflect a pre–9%-11% way of thinking as much as old defense policy reflected a pre-9/11 notion of who our enemies were. The funding for job creation in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was based on an assumed 8.9% unemployment rate. Now 15% is a realistic possibility. And yet we're hearing few interesting ideas about how to enhance America's already groaning unemployment support system as millions of Americans sit idle. Tangled in the debate over health care - and bleeding political capital - the White House may find itself too weak and distracted to deal with the danger of joblessness. We can't afford to wait. The longer someone is unemployed, the harder it is to get back to work, a fact as true for the nation as it is for you and me. As the Peterson Institute's Jacob Kirkegaard explains, "It is entirely possible that what started as a cyclical rise in unemployment could end up as an entrenched problem." Past crises have illustrated that lesson: the longer you wait, the harder it is to contain. This is as true for joblessness as it was for subprime mortgages, al-Qaeda and computer viruses. Right Man, Right Time By one of those strange Sully Sullenberger collisions of preparation and crisis - the sort that put Depression expert Ben Bernanke in at the Fed at the moment of a flameout of 1930s magnitude - Larry Summers made his reputation as an employment theorist. Summers is the nephew of two Nobel economists and was regarded as the smartest undergrad anyone knew, but as he surveyed his research options 30 years ago, he settled on the then relatively unsexy specialty of labor. The subject tickled his sense of skepticism. "The view that was taking hold at that time, a view that unemployment wasn't a terribly serious problem, was importantly wrong," Summers says. "I thought if you could have areas where there was long-term substantial unemployment, then that raised some questions about the functioning of markets." In essence, Summers saw in unemployment a chance to explore how markets don't work - and to think about policies that could correct for the failures. Perfect training for 2009. Many of the ideas Summers developed were codified in a 1986 article titled "Hysteresis and the European Unemployment Problem." Even today it's a piece he's proud of: "Ah, yeah, the hysteresis article," he interjects when it's mentioned. Hysteresis is a word that you (and the rest of us) should hope we don't hear too much of in the coming months. It comes from the Greek husteros, which means late. It refers to what happens when something snaps in such a way that it can never be put back together. Bend a plastic ruler too far, drop that lightbulb - that cracking sound you hear is the marker of hysteresis. There's no way to restore what has just been smashed. The idea that hysteresis happens to economies is one that economists don't like to think about. They prefer to consider economies as yo-yos tethered to the sturdy string of the business cycle, moving up and down from growth to slowdown and back. But from time to time, things do snap. And Summers' argument in 1986 was that unemployment in Europe, the sort that might persist in the face of growth, was an expression of an economy that had snapped. Europe's economy was hit not only by shocks like an oil-price spike, a productivity collapse and rocketing tax rates but also by stubborn unions that made hiring, firing and adjusting payrolls near impossible. Hysteresis, Summers explained, could come from all sorts of shocks like this. And that may be what is playing out in the U.S. If you look at the three great job busts of the past 100 years - the 1930s, the early 1980s and today - you find an important difference. The Reagan recession ended with workers returning to jobs that were the same as or similar to the ones they had lost. But 1930s joblessness was structural. The jobs people lost - largely in agriculture - never came back. Workers had to move to the industrial sector, a transition helped by the demands of a war. It was massive national hysteresis. Sound familiar? "A lot of the jobs that have been lost will never come back," the Peterson Institute's Kirkegaard says. Which means that hiccup in Okun's law is a warning: growth alone won't employ America again. Cash for Clunker Careers What to do? If your goal is to create jobs, you have two choices - and one painful fact - to confront. The painful fact is that the 1930s option, to have the government directly employ millions of people in labor fronts, is not an option today. "There's no way to create real jobs using this approach," says Harvard professor Roberto Mangabeira Unger. In the 1930s, you could throw 10,000 people with shovels at dam or road projects. Today the work of 10,000 shovels is done by a few machines - and it was a lot easier to persuade farmers to switch to ditchdigging than it would be to get laid-off hedge-fund traders to switch to sewer repair, appealing as such an idea might be. So if the government can't hire everyone, where will jobs come from? One option would be to rely on traditional strategies: if we create demand through growth, cheap money and massive government spending, then some jobs will return. In the meantime, train people for whatever work they can get - fast food, nursing, you name it. But if we're in a posthysteresis world, then just adding gas to the economy won't be enough, and making cheap low-end jobs won't deliver a workforce capable of sustaining competitive growth. "There's no use making economic change if you don't have human agents who can take advantage of it," Unger explains. The alternative would involve reshaping what it means to work in America. Such a plan would start by changing what it means to be jobless. To begin with, this would require a massive increase in job retraining, one that assured that every laid-off worker had a chance to learn a new skill and years of funding to master it - instead of the six-month shots now generally offered. The Administration's proposal to increase funding to community colleges is a start. But it's only a start. Ideally, the White House needs to propose an omnibus employment-emergency bill that guarantees jobless workers a basic set of rights for two to three years: health care, access to retraining, subsidized mentoring for careers in high-end manufacturing or health services. Handled well, such a program could be a "cash for clunker careers." Obama should also bring together innovative minds in technology and service - the people who run consumer-driven businesses like Disney and Google - to find ways to make the process of being unemployed less of a bureaucratic and emotional mess. But we've also got to take a careful look at how jobs are created - and what sorts of jobs Americans want to do. The most likely sources of job growth in the next few years are going to be confined to health care, education and restaurant/hospitality services. But we can't nurse, teach and barista our way to real national power. Service jobs alone can't support growth and innovation - which will be essential as we struggle to pay off a historic national debt and fund the retirement of the baby boomers. So in addition to a retraining push, a sensible set of policies would shift the landscape of job creation. It would transfer money out of Wall Street and into community lending to encourage the formation of new companies. It would create local business pods in which neighbors ask, What do we do well here, and how can we do it better? Some of the world's most skilled machinists live in the American Midwest. But their skills are geared to a dying auto industry, and with no bank credit for start-ups and no way to organize, they have no chance to transform themselves into a workforce for globally competitive precision-manufacturing firms. Is there really a demand for machinists? Yes - even in a recession. One rough calculation found that about a million high-skilled jobs remain unfilled. This is why a fresh approach to job-making, one that focuses on mastery of skills instead of simple button-pushing, matters. "If we go back to the old ways," says sociologist Richard Sennett, who has probably studied the quality of American working life as thoroughly as any other scholar in the past few decades, "we just go back to a very unsustainable path." The President's advisers grasp the urgency of the task. "Would I like Americans to be more skilled?" Summers muses. "Yes. Would I like to be able to increase skill faster than is likely to be possible? Sure. Would I like a larger fraction of good entrepreneurial ideas to happen in the U.S.? Of course. There are millions of people who need work." But Summers need only read his own research to recall that traditional government policies are not going to pull us out of the job trap. One of the tropes about Bush's 9/11 and the wars that followed was that they conveniently allowed him to deal with problems bedeviling his young Administration: a lack of focus, difficulty reforming the U.S. military, trouble articulating a global vision. Obama now faces a host of problems of his own: weakening political will, an inevitable "What next?" after health care, a base that has lost energy. His 9/11 is just the sort of transcendent issue that can reconnect him to the theme of hope and change. A tough challenge? You bet. But as Obama's presidency unfolds, it will be the most vital one for him to meet. (Source: Time.) Jobless rates rise in all U.S. cities in August (Sep 2009) Unemployment rates rose in all cities across the United States in August from a year earlier, with 16 recording jobless rates of 15 percent or higher, according to the Labor Department. At the same time, only 11 metropolitan areas said they had gained jobs in August, while 356 had lost positions. For the eighth consecutive month, all 372 cities that the department surveys had year-on-year increases in jobless rates. The largest rise was in Detroit, where the rate rose by 7.9 percentage points, followed by its Michigan neighbor Muskegon, where it increased 7 percentage points. Detroit also has the highest unemployment rate in the country at 17 percent. But Los Angeles lost the most jobs in August from a year earlier, followed by Chicago and Detroit. Looking at the data, the Associated General Contractors of America found that construction employment had dropped in 324 metropolitan areas over the year. Reno, Nevada, lost 35 percent of its construction workforce, it said, showing that the housing bust that has rattled most of the West still continues to damage construction employment. "The problems facing the construction industry aren't just devastating construction workers, they are crippling our broader economy," said Stephen Sandherr, the association's chief executive officer in a statement. The federal stimulus plan in February was intended to address the staggering construction job loss the country has experienced since home sales dropped and home building came to a near standstill. But the contractors' group said the package had not done enough and the country needs a new plan that will reverse its projections that construction payrolls continue to shrink through next year. The U.S. nonfarm employment report on Friday should shed light on how much the stimulus helped put construction workers back to work, especially in the road repaving and infrastructure projects that dominated the $787 billion plan. But the contractors said the city data for August shows that 13 areas saw a total increase in construction of 2,800 people over the course of the year, during half of which the stimulus was in effect. During the same time period, Sandherr said, the industry lost 1 million jobs. (Source: Reuters.) October 2009Jobless claims drop more than expected -- New claims hit nine-month low; wholesale inventories decline (Oct 2009) The number of newly laid-off workers filing first-time claims for jobless benefits fell to the lowest level since early January, as layoffs eased a bit amid a fledgling economic recovery. The fourth drop in new claims in five weeks is a sign the labor market is slowly healing. But employers are reluctant to hire new workers and the unemployment rate is expected to keep climbing well into next year. Separately, the nation's retailers saw modest signs of life from consumers in September, resulting in the first sales gain since July 2008 and fueling some hope for the holiday shopping season.The Labor Department said Thursday that new claims for unemployment insurance dropped last week to a seasonally adjusted 521,000, better than analysts expected and down from 554,000 the previous week. The four-week average, which smooths fluctuations, fell to 539,750, the lowest since Jan. 17. The number of people continuing to claim benefits declined by 72,000 to 6.04 million. Analysts expected continuing claims to rise slightly. "The downtrend in claims is encouraging and points to continued, albeit gradual, improvement in the labor market," Joseph LaVorgna, chief U.S. economist at Deutsche Bank, wrote in a note to clients. Economists closely watch initial claims, which are considered a gauge of layoffs and an indication of companies' willingness to hire new workers. Despite the improvement, initial claims remain well above the 325,000 that economists say is consistent with a healthy economy. Meanwhile, a late Labor Day and delayed school openings helped boost back-to-school sales in September. The International Council of Shopping Centers-Goldman Sachs preliminary tally registered an increase of 0.1 percent for September, compared with a 1 percent drop a year ago. While still tepid, the results mark the first gain since July 2008, when the index rose 1.3 percent. As stores announced their results Thursday, J.C. Penney Co., Macy's Inc., and Target Corp. all reported smaller-than-expected declines in sales at stores open at least a year. Limited Brands Inc., which runs Victoria's Secret and Bath & Body Works, and accessories chain The Buckle Inc. both posted increases for the month. Still, industry worries remain high heading into the holiday shopping season because shoppers, many of whom were afraid to spend a year ago, are now grappling with rising job losses, reduced hours or unavailable credit. The stock market rose in morning trading. The Dow Jones industrial average added about 61 points, and broader indexes also gained. In a third report, the Commerce Department said businesses reduced inventories at the wholesale level for a record 12th straight month in August. In an encouraging sign, sales jumped by the largest amount in 14 months. Economists hope the rising sales will persuade businesses to begin restocking their depleted shelves, a switch that would boost factory production and help bolster broad economic growth in coming months. The jobless claims figures indicate that layoffs are slowing. Employers eliminated a net total of 263,000 jobs in September, the Labor Department said last week. Many economists expect that number to decline this month. When federal emergency programs are included, the total number of jobless benefit recipients dropped by about 90,000 to 8.9 million in the week that ended Sept. 19, the latest data available. Congress has added up to 53 extra weeks of benefits on top of the 26 typically provided by the states, and is considering adding another 13 weeks. Many analysts expect the economy grew as much as 3 percent in the July-September quarter, but most employers are likely to hold back on new hires while they wait to see if such growth can be maintained. The unemployment rate rose to 9.8 percent in September from 9.7 percent, the department said last week, the highest in 26 years. The recession, the worst since the 1930s, has eliminated a net total of 7.2 million jobs. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said last week that even if the economy maintained a 3 percent growth rate for several quarters, unemployment would still be above 9 percent by the end of 2010. More job cuts were announced this week. Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., which makes industrial and scientific equipment, said it will close a plant in Dubuque, Iowa, next year, costing 350 jobs. Wholesale inventories decline Businesses reduced inventories at the wholesale level for a record 12th consecutive month in August, although in an encouraging sign, sales jumped by the largest amount in 14 months. The Commerce Department said Thursday that wholesale inventories fell 1.3 percent in August, worse than the 1 percent drop economists had expected. That followed a 1.6 percent drop in July initially reported as a 1.4 percent decrease. But sales at the wholesale level rose a better-than-expected 1 percent, the fifth straight gain and the largest increase since June 2008. Economists hope the rising sales will encourage businesses to begin restocking their depleted shelves, a switch that would boost factory production and help bolster broad economic growth in coming months. Analysts at Goldman Sachs expect the overall economy, as measured by the gross domestic product, grew at an annual rate of 3 percent in the July-September quarter and will advance at a similar rate in the current October-December period, signaling an end to the country's longest recession since the 1930s. As businesses start restocking shelves, analysts said that will provide support for rising factory production and translate into a higher GDP reading. The concern is that consumer spending, which accounts for 70 percent of economic activity, could falter as the impact of various government stimulus programs begins to wane. Car sales soared in August because of the government's Cash for Clunkers program which provided car buyers up to $4,500 to trade in their old cars for more fuel efficient models. That program ended at the end of August and sales fell sharply last month. General Motors Co. reported that its sales plunged 45 percent in September from the previous year, while Chrysler Group LLC reported a 42 percent decline. Ford Motor Co. had a smaller decline of 5.1 percent. Early reports from the nation's large retail chains showed sales rose last month for the first in more than a year. The International Council of Shopping Centers-Goldman Sachs preliminary tally registered an increase of 0.1 percent, compared with a 1 percent drop in September 2008. The modest increase is the first since July 2008, when the index rose 1.3 percent. Wholesale inventories are goods held by distributors who generally buy from manufacturers and sell to retailers. They make up about 25 percent of all business stockpiles. Factories hold another third of inventories and retailers hold the rest. The decline in inventories is the longest stretch on government records that date to 1992. The previous record was nine straight declines during a period that covered the nation's last recession in 2001. (Source: MSNBC.)  7 Months After Stimulus 49 of 50 States Have Lost Jobs (Oct 2009) The table below compares the White House's February 2009 projection of the number of jobs that would be created by the 2009 stimulus law (through the end of 2010) with the actual change in state payroll employment through September 2009 (the latest figures available). According to the data, 49 States and the District of Columbia have lost jobs since stimulus was enacted. Only North Dakota has seen net job creation following the February 2009 stimulus. While President Obama claimed the result of his stimulus bill would be the creation of 3.5 million jobs, the Nation has already lost a total of 2.7 million – a difference of 6.2 million jobs. To see how stimulus has failed your state, see the table below.  (Source: House Ways and Means Committee.) New jobless claims rise more than expected to 531K -- First-time jobless claims rise more than expected to 531,000, continuing claims fall (Oct 2009) The number of newly laid-off workers filing claims for jobless benefits rose more than expected last week, as employers remain reluctant to hire even with the economy showing signs of recovery. Claims had fallen in five out of the previous six weeks and most economists expect that trend to continue, but at a slow pace, as jobs remain scarce. The report is "slightly disappointing," Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics, wrote in a note to clients, "but it does not change the core story, which is that ... a clear downward trend in claims has emerged" over the past two months. The Labor Department said Thursday that new jobless claims rose to a seasonally adjusted 531,000 last week, from an upwardly revised 520,000 the previous week. Wall Street economists had expected only a slight increase, according to Thomson Reuters. Economists closely watch initial claims, which are considered a gauge of layoffs and an indication of companies' willingness to hire new workers. The four-week average of claims, which smooths out fluctuations, fell slightly to 532,250, the lowest since mid-January and about 125,000 below the peak for the recession, reached this spring. But claims remain well above the 325,000 that economists say is consistent with a healthy economy. The claims figures indicate the economy is shedding fewer jobs, economists said. The drop in initial claims since last month signals that employment losses likely will be below 200,000 in October, the lowest since August 2008, several economists said. Employers cut 263,000 positions in September, the Labor Department said earlier this month, as the unemployment rate rose to 9.8 percent from 9.7 percent in August. The October report will be released Nov. 6. The stock markets dipped in morning trading. The Dow Jones industrial average slipped about 11 points, while broader indexes also fell slightly. The number of people continuing to claim benefits did drop for the fifth straight week to 5.9 million, from just over 6 million. The figures on continuing claims lag initial claims by a week. Many recipients are moving onto extended benefit programs approved by Congress in response to the recession, which began in December 2007 and is the worst since the 1930s. Those extensions add up to 53 weeks of benefits on top of the 26 typically provided by the states. When those programs are included, the total number of recipients dropped to 8.8 million in the week ending Oct. 3, the latest data available, down about 50,000 from the previous week. That decline is likely due to recipients running out of benefits, rather than finding jobs, economists say. The National Employment Law Project, an advocacy group, estimates that about 1.3 million people will exhaust their benefits by the end of this year. Congress is considering adding another 14 to 20 weeks of support, but that bill has been delayed in the Senate. Many analysts expect the economy grew as much as 3 percent in the July-September quarter, but employers are reluctant to hire as they wait to see if such growth can be maintained. More job cuts were announced this week. Sun Microsystems Inc. said it plans to eliminate up to 3,000 jobs, or 10 percent of its worldwide work force, as it awaits a takeover by Oracle Corp., a deal being held up by antitrust regulators in Europe. Among the states, Florida had the largest increase in claims, with 9,976, which it attributed to layoffs in the construction, service, manufacturing and agriculture industries. New York, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Arkansas had the next largest increases. The state data lag initial claims by one week. California reported the largest drop in claims, down 7,062, which it attributed to fewer layoffs in the construction, service, and manufacturing industries.Tennessee, Maine and Nebraska also reported decreases. (Source: AP.) STIMULUS WATCH: Stimulus jobs overstated in report (Oct 2009) The White House is promising that new figures being released Friday will be a more accurate showing of progress in President Barack Obama's economic recovery plan. It aggressively defended an earlier, faulty count that overstated by thousands the jobs created or saved so far. (SITE NOTE: The only problem is that even the main stream media that supports the White House has to admit that the Obama administration has been putting out ridiculously erroneous figures...and the stimulus package did NOT stimulate jobs as promised.) Ed DeSeve, serving as Obama's stimulus overseer, said the administration has been working for weeks to correct mistakes in early counts that identified more than 30,000 jobs paid for with stimulus money. He said a new stimulus report Friday should correct many mistakes an Associated Press review found that showed the earlier report overstated thousands of stimulus jobs. "I think you'll see a pretty good degree of accuracy," DeSeve said in an interview. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs downplayed errors in job counts identified by the AP's review, telling reporters, "We're talking about 4,000, or a 5,000 error." The AP reviewed a sample of federal contracts, not all 9,000 reported to date, and discovered errors in one in six jobs credited to the $787 billion stimulus program - or 5,000 of the 30,000 jobs claimed so far. Even in its limited review, the AP found job counts that were more than 10 times as high as the actual number of paid positions; jobs credited to the stimulus program that were counted two and sometimes more than four times; and other jobs that were credited to stimulus spending when none was produced. For example:
Those errors were included in an early progress report on the stimulus released two weeks ago that featured numerous mistakes, including a Colorado business' claim that its stimulus contract created more than 4,200 jobs. TeleTech Government Solutions actually hired 4,231 temporary workers for its stimulus project, but most of them worked for five weeks or less and the others no more than five months, company president Mariano Tan said. The short-term positions should have been reported as 635 full-time, 40-hour-a-week jobs under the government's method of calculating stimulus work, Tan said. The AP's review sampled some of the contract data reported on the government's Web site, recovery.gov, that serves as the official accounting of stimulus data. The review focused on the most obvious cases of jobs wrongly tied to the stimulus because of record duplications or misinterpretations of how the jobs should be counted. In some cases, businesses reported short-term projects with large job counts, which appeared inaccurate in the records. The AP contacted businesses to discuss their jobs reports and confirmed the errors. Some businesses actually undercounted jobs funded with stimulus money, the AP's review shows, because they reported only new jobs created, not existing jobs saved. But by far the most reporting errors were found in the number of jobs credited to the stimulus. Gibbs said that early data couldn't be reviewed as carefully as new data will be. "Three days after the data was received, it was required to be put on the Web site," he said. The Colorado business' job count, along with many others, has been corrected, Gibbs said, and will be updated in Friday's report. "We disputed, as the AP disputed, the report that came in that calculated a number of jobs but didn't accurately account, the way we account for, a full-time, yearlong employee as being a job," Gibbs said. His comments during his daily meeting with reporters came hours after the White House issued a midnight press release complaining about the AP's review of jobs the government credits to stimulus spending. DeSeve, who criticized the AP's review as misleading, said the administration is aware of problems with the early data. Agencies have been working with businesses that received the money to correct mistakes. Other errors discovered by the public also will be corrected, he said. "As a result, whatever problems the early and partial data had, the full data to be posted on Friday will provide the American people with an accurate, detailed look at the early success of the Recovery Act," DeSeve said in a statement the White House issued just after midnight Thursday. (Source: AP.)  MAJOR HORSE-PUCKEY: Stimulus created over million jobs: US officials (Oct 2009) New data provides the first confirmation that President Barack Obama's economic stimulus plan has so far saved or created more than one million jobs, administration officials said Friday. Statistics provided by tens of thousands of state and local governments, private firms and universitites detail how a portion of the 787 billion dollar rescue package was spent up until September 30. A partial accounting covering half the stimulus money spent since Febrary confirmed that 650,000 jobs were directly saved or created. Officials said that an extrapolation of that employment creation rate to cover all stimulus funds spent said the true figure would show more than a million jobs saved or created during the period. (SITE NOTE: If the stimulus job creation was so grand, how come the unemployment rate is so high? Also the stimulus money is mainly earmarked for 2010 election-year campaigning and who's bsing who?) (Source: AFP.) Even the Obama rooting section at CBS had trouble with the Obama pronouncement. When Katie Couric and the folks at CBS start doubting what the Administration says about how effective February's economic stimulus package was, you know President Obama is in trouble. Consider that on Thursday's CBS "Evening News," Chip Reid began a segment with the following startling statement about a jobs report card to be released by the White House Friday: "Well, Katie, that report is going to claim that the stimulus has already created or saved hundreds of thousands of jobs, but if the administration`s first effort at counting stimulus jobs is any guide, tomorrow`s numbers could be hard to believe." (Source: Newsbusters.) November 2009TILT! The Obama Stimulus jobs report errors are astounding (Nov 2009) In just one slice of the pathetic claim of "640,000 is like a million jobs S&C'd!" we learn that there is nothing but air, and sometimes quite expensive air. Check out these specifics, all from the data compiled and submitted by the Illinois State Board of Education:In the official report, Wilmette Public Schools District 39 was credited with 166 jobs saved by stimulus aid. Superintendent Raymond Lechner said the number should be zero.That's 166+382+665 = 1,213 jobs S&C'd claimed in the report. 166 should be zero. At least 142 too much at D-R. And at least (estimating - note the claim is FTEs) 165 too much at Kank. So 1,213 is reduced by at least 473 to 740. That's a 39% MOE - presuming, of course, that if the stimulus money did not come then the school districts would have closed. Something closer to the truth is more likely a 90% MOE. Can it really be that bad? Let's allow a district to explain itself: Last spring, Dolton-Riverdale received $3.6 million in stimulus money and reported to the state that the money saved 181 teaching jobs. A follow-up report this fall on another installment of $750,000 brought the total to 201. The official state report states that stimulus money saved 382 jobs. But Carolyn Keith, the district's comptroller, said the data from the two reports overlap and should not be added together.Ah, got it! So the 382 was simply two numbers added together that should not have been! Let's do quick check of the evidence:
So, without the stimulus money, the district would have fired 181 / 240 or 75% of its work force. Yeow! Further, the 20 jobs it saved at a cost of $37,500 each is impressive. The total cost of an employee to a company is a multiple of salary (generally three times) when you consider fringe benefits and all the others costs of employing and housing a person in a company. But let's presume these are triage times and they can bring someone in for a simply doubling. That leaves $18,750 for salary, and $18,750 for overhead. At 2,080 hours a year, that's $9 an hour wage. A teacher. At $9 an hour. OK. Notice, of course, that the $3.6 million saved enough jobs to employ those 181 folks at $4.78 an hour. A teacher. Their explanation falls short. But before we hang them, let's add some more rope: The totals do not reflect any school jobs saved or created in Chicago, the state's biggest district and the recipient of at least $293 million in stimulus funds. Chicago schools budget chief Christina Herzog said the district easily saved at least 1,200 jobs because of the stimulus, but didn't report them as such because of directives from the state board. State officials dispute that.An under-count? OK, so presume that the 1,200 jobs were added in. How much did those jobs cost? $293,000,000 / 1,200 = $244,167 each. Nice. So did the money actually go to save or create jobs? Appears not: It appears the state treasury -- not students or school districts -- was the prime beneficiary of the education stimulus jackpot in Illinois. In great measure, funds simply were used to replace general aid payments already owed to local districts by the state. That gave Gov. Pat Quinn breathing room in his struggle to rein in a whopping two-year budget deficit of more than $10 billion.I bristle at the use of the word "jackpot" in this excerpt. My kids will be paying interest on the debt for Lil Blago's 2009 budget correction. Let's see who actually compiled the data that reflected these wonderfully reliable jobs numbers: Confusion reigns over why the numbers for many districts appear so off. Responsibility for collecting data and sending the figures to Washington fell to Quinn's office, which turned the task over to the state board. Board spokesman Matt Vanover said the data might be flawed and said the information was only as good as the numbers sent in by local districts. But officials of several districts contacted by the Tribune insisted they never provided the state with the jobs numbers used in the official tabulation.Looks like a circular firing squad. I thought they only did those things in Iran and Yemen where the gene pool dries in the hot summer nights yet they copulate unsafely regardless. Yak and camel smell remarkably similar, did you know that? I guess I could have guessed it, but I hadn't really thought about it. If these data reflect the quality behind "640,000 jobs saved or created" which magically becomes a million through Bidenesque extrapolation, we need a recount. (Source: Patriot Room.)  STIMULUS WATCH: Salary raise counted as saved job (Nov 2009) President Barack Obama's economic recovery program saved 935 jobs at the Southwest Georgia Community Action Council, an impressive success story for the stimulus plan. Trouble is, only 508 people work there. The Georgia nonprofit's inflated job count is among persisting errors in the government's latest effort to measure the effect of the $787 billion stimulus plan despite White House promises last week that the new data would undergo an "extensive review" to root out errors discovered in an earlier report. About two-thirds of the 14,506 jobs claimed to be saved under one federal office, the Administration for Children and Families at Health and Human Services, actually weren't saved at all, according to a review of the latest data by The Associated Press. Instead, that figure includes more than 9,300 existing employees in hundreds of local agencies who received pay raises and benefits and whose jobs weren't saved. That type of accounting was found in an earlier AP review of stimulus jobs, which the Obama administration said was misleading because most of the government's job-counting errors were being fixed in the new data. The administration now acknowledges overcounting in the new numbers for the HHS program. Elizabeth Oxhorn, a spokeswoman for the White House recovery office, said the Obama administration was reviewing the Head Start data "to determine how and if it will be counted." But officials defended the practice of counting raises as saved jobs. If I give you a raise, it is going to save a portion of your job," HHS spokesman Luis Rosero said. The latest stimulus report, released Friday, significantly overstates the number of jobs spared with money from programs serving families and children, mostly the Head Start preschool program. The report shows hundreds of the programs used nearly $323 million to provide pay raises and other benefits to their existing employees. The raises themselves were appropriate — the stimulus law set aside money for Head Start salary increases — but converting that number into jobs proved difficult. The Obama administration told Head Start officials to consider a fraction of each employee as a job saved. "That's more than ridiculous," said Antonia Ferrier, a spokeswoman for Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner. Many Head Start programs around the country went further, counting everyone who received a raise as a job saved."It's a glitch in the system," said Ben Allen, the research director at the National Head Start Association. "There was some misunderstanding among some in the Head Start community about completing the reporting requirements." Allen said a cost-of-living adjustment "may not be viewed traditionally as a job saved, but one could interpret it that, by providing COLA, you're retaining staff." The Bergen County Community Action Program in Hackensack, N.J., noted the nearly $213,000 it received went to cover raises for existing staff only, but it also reported saving 85 jobs. At Southwest Georgia Community Action Council in Moultrie, Ga., director Myrtis Mulkey-Ndawula said she followed the guidelines the Obama administration provided. She said she multiplied the 508 employees by 1.84 — the percentage pay raise they received — and came up with 935 jobs saved. "I would say it's confusing at best," she said. "But we followed the instructions we were given." Ed DeSeve, who oversees the stimulus at the White House, said the Head Start numbers "represent a few percent of all jobs reported" and said the problems would probably be balanced out by other errors that underreported jobs. "So we don't expect any corrections to this data to meaningfully impact the total 640,000 direct jobs," DeSeve said. More than 250 other community agencies in the U.S. similarly reported saving jobs when using the money to give pay raises, to pay for training and continuing education, to extend employee work hours or to buy equipment, according to their spending reports. Other agencies didn't count the raises as jobs saved, reporting zero jobs. Last week's stimulus report claimed 640,000 jobs saved or created by the economic recovery plan so far. Those jobs came from 156,614 federal contracts, grants and loans awarded to more than 62,000 recipients, worth a total of $215 billion. Obama has promised the stimulus would save or create 3.5 million jobs by the end of next year, and the data released Friday represented the first head count toward that goal. (Source: AP.) Don't count on stimulus job tally -- Many employment reports from sources in Wisconsin are wildly inflated (Nov 2009) Section 8 housing operator 3700 Green Tree Corp. in Milwaukee reported saving 16 jobs from $117,000 in rental assistance for low-income residents. But the housing director said the Housing and Urban Development money prevented only five employees from losing their jobs. A stimulus job report that says more than 10,000 jobs were saved or created in Wisconsin is rife with errors, double counting and inflated numbers based more on satisfying federal formulas than creating real jobs, a Journal Sentinel review has found. In one case, five jobs were mistakenly listed as 50 - and then counted twice. In another, pay raises to workers were listed as saving more than 100 jobs. And in another, jobs were listed as saved even though the money had not been received and no work on the project had begun. The problems mirror those surfacing around the country, as the federal numbers claiming 640,000 jobs created or saved by stimulus money are being scrutinized. Among the Journal Sentinel's findings:
Hard to verify Last Friday, the White House reported that about 640,000 jobs were created or saved by the stimulus package. The numbers, however, are difficult to verify because of the guesswork involved in determining whether businesses had used stimulus funding to retain workers who otherwise would have been laid off. Tom Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste, a national watchdog group, questions the legitimacy of the job figures in Wisconsin and other states. "It's difficult to believe because the quality of the information is questionable," Schatz said. "There is no penalty for reporting inaccurately. It certainly has raised questions in the taxpayers' minds about what kind of value they are getting for the stimulus." Chris Patton, deputy policy director for Gov. Jim Doyle, defended the quality of the information submitted by the state. The Journal Sentinel found no problems with state-submitted data, but rather information that contractors, agencies and local governments reported directly to the federal government. "I think we have a high degree of quality now and on future reporting periods," Patton said. "We can't speak to any inconsistencies outside of the state data." Schatz criticized the stimulus package, saying it just preserves existing government and education jobs. "It's just bailing out the states," he said. "They are not taking steps they should to reduce waste and spending. It really just postpones the day they will have to make tough decisions." Patton said channeling stimulus money to school districts avoided deep reductions. "Without the recovery funding, we would have been faced with a $550 million cut to educational funding that would have had dramatic impacts like layoffs and skyrocketing tax levies," he said. The newspaper's analysis found other inconsistencies:
Indirect impact Officials are touting more than just the direct jobs created or saved, also pointing to harder-to-quantify "indirect" and "induced" jobs. For instance, according to the state, some 470 jobs have been created or saved so far by road and bridge projects funded with grant money from the Federal Highway Administration. The state Transportation Department estimates the "total employment impact" at 974 if direct, indirect and induced jobs are counted, according to federal data. Likewise, the federal government claims about 1 million jobs have been created or saved through the stimulus spending when viewed this way. An indirect job includes one created by an asphalt plant that supplied material for a road construction project. An example of an induced job: A waitress at a restaurant where construction workers eat lunch. More than $10 million spent so far on the I-43 widening project in Kenosha County has created 45 jobs so far, Transportation Department data shows. But the department puts the total employment impact of the interstate project at more than twice that - 113 jobs - if indirect and induced jobs are counted.(Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.)  Unemployment hits 10.2% (Nov 2009) Unemployment hit double digits for the first time in 26 years as more than 558,000 lost jobs in October. The jobless rate went from 9.8% to 10.2%, a leap that quadruples the increase from August to September and indicates a rapidly-worsening situation for American workers: The unemployment rate rose from 9.8 to 10.2 percent in October, and nonfarm payroll employment continued to decline (-190,000), the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The largest job losses over the month were in construction, manufacturing, and retail trade.The job losses accelerated in manufacturing. The average losses in the previous four months was 51,000 per month, but October beat that by 10,000, coming in at 61,000 jobs lost. Construction lost 62,000 in October, down slightly from the 4-month average of 67,000. Retail lost 40,000 jobs — and that may be a very bad portent for the Christmas season, which usually accounts for about 30% of all retail sales. Yesterday’s productivity numbers foreshadowed this result. Productivity hit decade-long highs last quarter, and I asked King Banaian what that meant: UPDATE: Ed Morrissey asks via email whether this has any portent for unemployment? I think it does. The investment in equipment and software may be either of a deepening or broadening variety. If you are dumping many workers you can also cut your capital budget. But if that category turns around while you are still cutting workers — the ADP projection for private sector payrolls is a loss of 203,000 jobs, above the consensus forecast of -175,000 overall jobs — that would suggest capital deepening. I think this is what’s driving increased productivity. This also means each new worker now comes with a higher “capital budget requirement”, and between that and the payroll taxes contemplated under Pelosicare you probably have a greater drag on employment than otherwise contemplated.The breaking of the psychological barrier of double-digit unemployment is a watershed moment for the Obama administration. It has continued to claim success in its Porkulus effort with shell-game “saved or created” metrics for jobs while unemployment rises unabated. Meanwhile, Obama pushed Congress to spend trillions of dollars we don’t have on efforts that have nothing to do with employment or revitalizing the economy. Even the latest CNN poll shows a 17-point swing to the worse for Obama on economics. This is now Obama’s economy. He owns the double-digit unemployment level, having bought it with the $787 billion stimulus plan that he promised would keep unemployment no higher than 8%. Update: From the AP: But the loss of jobs last month exceeded economists’ estimates. It’s the 22nd straight month the U.S. economy has shed jobs, the longest on records dating back 70 years.(Source: Hot Air: Ed Morrisey.)  27 million Americans without full-time work, real unemployment tops 17.5% (Nov 2009) Friday's unemployment report offered no comfort to economists, government officials and the 27.4 million Americans now unable to find full-time employment. In recent months unemployment numbers have produced growing economic concerns over the likelihood of an economic recovery that fails to produce job growth; and this month's unemployment report, coupled with recent GDP estimates point support those concerns. Despite billions of dollars in stimulus spending that continues to flow out of Washington, the Department of Labor report pointed to job loss numbers that have failed to improve amid the spending. The Department of Labor reported a rise in the adjusted non-farm unemployment rate to a new high of 10.2% after the economy shed another 190,000. However, the Department of Labor also reports that the number of unemployed Americans increased by 558,000 last month, representing a sharpest increase in unemployment since this spring. In addition, beyond the adjusted payroll number lies a host of employment numbers including the disturbing reality that 27.4 million Americans are now unable to find full-time employment. As we have pointed out in previous reports, the adjusted payroll numbers do not include 2 groups of unemployed workers that the DOL refers to as temporary part-time workers and marginally attached workers. The DOL reported that 9.3 million Americans are currently working part-time due to economic conditions, an increase of 100,000 workers during October. This group is comprised of workers who have had their hours cut from full-time status or who have been able to find full-time employment. In addition the DOL reported that the number of marginally attached workers stands at 2.4 million. Such marginally attached workers include individuals who are unemployed but have not sought work over the 4 weeks prior to the survey and includes some 768,000 "discouraged' workers that have simply given up. The number of "discouraged" workers increased by more than 50,000 last month. The addition of such excluded groups caused the real unemployment rate to increase from 17.0% to 17.5%, out-pacing the growth rate within adjusted employment figures. Inside the Numbers The DOL report confirms an ongoing pattern that has developed in which the real unemployment rate continues to rise at a faster pace than the adjusted unemployment rate. Such a pattern indicates that not only do more Americans continue to lose jobs, but also that the jobless are remaining unemployed for a longer period of time. The lengthening period of unemployment is reflected by DOL statistics indicating that 35.6% of U.S. jobless have remained unemployed for longer than 6 months. The number of chronically unemployed has consistently increased in the past 6 months. Such a high number of chronically unemployed represents the first time since the 1970's that this condition has existed. The manufacturing and construction sectors continued to shed more jobs in September demonstrating a eerily consistent pattern of job loss that has persisted throughout the 2nd and 3rd quarter. The continued weakness within manufacturing and construction employment was largely unexpected considering the increase in stimulus funding within the industries. The construction industry shed more than 62,000 jobs in October, falling in-line with an average monthly job loss of 67,000 jobs/month since May. The lack of growth in job creation within the construction industry highlights the failure of stimulus funding aimed directly at creating construction-related jobs. In addition, the manufacturing sector reported 61,000 job cuts in October, an increase of 10,000 jobs over the 51,000 job losses suffered in September. Following ongoing trends, the health care industry added an additional 29,000 jobs last month. Since the onset of the recession the industry has added 597,000 jobs. However, hiring within the health-care sector has slowed dramatically since May. Government related job losses stabilized in October as public sector employment remained unchanged. However, the retail sector shed another 40,000 jobs last month, unchanged from the previous month. The continued loss of jobs within retail trade continues to concern economists, considering continued announcements of planned store closings by companies such as borders. Analysts now fear that the traditional uptick in hiring that occurs from October to December may bypass the retail industry this year. According to the Department of Labor, 15.7 million Americans are now unemployed. 9.3 million Americans are unable to find full-time employment and 2.4 million Americans have simply given up. As a result, 27.4 million Americans are now unable to find full-time employment. As pointed out at the end September, the jobless rate is not increasing as rapidly as it was during the first half of the year. However, employers cut deep and hard during the first quarter of the year and economists had expected employment figures to improve throughout the Fall. The Economic Recovery Act promised a increased infrastructure spending and subsequent job creation. A majority of politicians supporting the stimulus package labeled the bill as a "jobs bill". Yet, the lack of targeted stimulus has produced typical unemployment patterns a failure that is highlighted by the reality that the stimulus package was nearly five times larger than any stimulus package in history. Historically, the periods July to August and November to December have provided the strongest levels of employment in the US. July and August numbers are traditionally strong due the height of US construction levels and increased manufacturing in preparation of an upcoming holiday season. A consistent job loss within these industries during the past 6 months raises the likelihood that sustained job creation within these industries will not occur until next summer. As a result, we are likely to see the adjusted unemployment rate remain stable through the end of the year. Economists also warn that if consumer spending does not recover prior the holiday season, then we are once again likely to see a drastic increase in January and February unemployment data and an adjusted unemployment rate approaching 11.0% by Spring. Subsequently, the real unemployment rate is likely to approach 18%-19% during the same period. The unprecedented size of the stimulus package has provided a life line to the economy as the rate of government spending has eclipsed all previous records. However, that life line is not enough to save jobs as the stimulus has failed to provide relief to consumers, increase consumer spending or provided targeted relief to the private sector. Roughly 70% of our economy is driven by consumer spending and with a stimulus plan that failed to provide relief to consumers, a slow recovery in consumer spending will mean an inherent lack of job creation. Economists further warn that a continuous expansion of government, while failing to provide expansion of the private sector, has created an environment in which a double-dip recession is increasingly likely. A vast majority of economists now agree that the current stimulative policies of current administration will lead to a period of slow economic growth and unacceptably high unemployment over the next decade. As of the end of October, more than 1 in every 6 Americans were unable to find full-time employment. (Source: Examiner.) Jobless Claims Drop to 502,000 (Nov 2009) The number of U.S. workers filing new claims for jobless benefits last week fell to the lowest level since January, the government said on Thursday, showing the hard-hit labor market may be slowly improving. Initial claims for state unemployment insurance dropped to 502,000 in the week ended Nov. 7 from a revised 514,000 the prior week. Analysts polled by Reuters had expected claims to slip to 510,000 from an initially reported 512,000. "It shows that companies are cutting jobs at a slower pace than during the financial crisis," said Gary Thayer, chief macrostrategist for Wells Fargo Advisors in St. Louis. "We're trending in the right direction, but we are probably several months away from (rising) monthly payrolls numbers." The U.S. economy lost 190,000 jobs last month and the unemployment rate hit a 26-1/2 year high of 10.2 percent. While employers are cutting jobs at a slower pace than they were at the start of the year, economists expect the jobless rate to trend higher before peaking in mid-2010. Rising unemployment is causing a political headache for President Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats, even though the economy appears to have snapped out of its deepest downturn since the 1930s with growth at an annual rate of 3.5 percent in the third quarter. The Democratic Party lost two state governorships to Republicans in elections this month that focused heavily on the economy, and mid-term elections in November 2010 could eat into the majority Democrats enjoy in Congress. Obama has said his administration is considering a number of options to spur job growth, including ramping up government infrastructure spending and new business tax cuts. On Thursday, he announced the White House would hold a forum on jobs growth in December. "We all know that there are limits to what government can and should do even during such difficult times, but we have an obligation to consider every additional responsible step that we can to encourage and accelerate job creation in this country," Obama said. While initial claims for jobless benefits are down sharply from their March peak of 674,000, analysts say they need to drop below 400,000 to offer a signal of job creation. "The larger question is, are new jobs becoming available? I don't think they are, and that's why I don't think the market will celebrate this today," said Bruce Bittles, chief investment strategist for Robert W. Baird & Co in Nashville, Tennessee. The four-week moving average of new claims, considered a better gauge of underlying trends as it irons out week-to-week volatility, decreased to 519,750, the lowest since the week ended Nov. 29, 2008. It has been dropping since August. The number of workers still collecting benefits after an initial week of aid also fell. These so-called continued claims dropped to 5.631 million in the week ended Oct. 31, the most recent week for which data is available, the lowest level since March. (Source: Fox Business.)   Hope that Recovery On the way Jobs, consumer spending data hint at recovery -- Reports: Jobless claims fall to lowest level in year, incomes grow modestly (Nov 2009) In a hopeful sign for the economy, the number of newly laid-off workers filing claims for unemployment benefits fell below 500,000 last week for the first time since January. Consumer spending picked up in October, new-home sales hit their highest point in more than a year and shoppers' outlook brightened a bit ahead of the crucial holiday shopping season. Combined, the news suggested that the economy should be able to sustain at least a modest rebound. Some economists have worried that the economy was at risk of slipping back into recession. The number of people filing first-time claims for jobless aid fell by 35,000 to 466,000, the Labor Department said Wednesday. That was the fewest since September of last year. And it was far better than the 500,000 economists had expected. Still, analysts noted that jobless claims would have to drop to near 400,000 for several weeks to signal actual growth in employment. Economists estimate the economy will lose a net 145,000 jobs this month. It would have to add 125,000 jobs a month just to keep the unemployment rate from rising. Some economists sounded cautionary notes about Wednesday's positive news. They say the sluggish recovery could limit further improvements in jobless claims, new-home sales and consumer spending, which powers 70 percent of the economy "When taken all together, the reports still paint a picture of a slow economic recovery," said Mark Vitner, an economist at Wells Fargo. Durable goods orders fell One such sign was that orders for costly manufactured goods fell unexpectedly last month. Much of October's weakness came from a big drop for goods related to defense. Excluding those, orders for other types of manufactured goods rose slightly. Still, the overall performance was weaker than economists had expected. Some analysts also cautioned against reading too much into the sharp drop in unemployment claims. They noted that part of the improvement reflected large seasonal adjustment factors, which smooth out changes that normally occur at certain times of the year. Excluding seasonal adjustments, claims rose. That's normal at this time of year when many construction workers face layoffs because of worsening weather conditions. Most economists say the recovery will remain so weak and job creation so slight that the unemployment rate will keep rising. Many think the rate, which hit a 26-year high of 10.2 percent in October, could top 10.5 percent by mid-2010. Federal Reserve policymakers expressed concern at their November meeting that the rate could remain elevated for several years, according to minutes of the discussions released Tuesday. Analysts also noted that the surge in new-home sales was driven entirely by a 23 percent increase in the South. Sales in all other regions fell. Encouraging signs Still, taken together, the reports on jobless claims, consumer spending and home sales were encouraging, and stock prices rose in light volume on Wall Street. New jobless claims dropped below 500,000 for the first time since the first week in January. Weekly claims peaked at 674,000 in March and have since been trending lower. Consumer spending rose a 0.7 percent last month, following 0.6 percent drop in September, the Commerce Department said. It was the best showing since a big 1.3 percent jump in August when the government's now-defunct Cash for Clunkers programs enticed people to buy cars. Incomes, the fuel for future spending, rose 0.2 percent for the second straight month. Consumers spent more on costly "durable" manufactured goods — such as cars and appliances. Such spending rose 2.1 percent. They also boosted spending last month on "nondurables," including food and clothes, and on services. Double-dip Wednesday's figures seemed to blunt some fears that consumers could clam up, sending the country into a "double dip" recession. Yet concerns remain that consumer spending will slow early next year. Consumer sentiment improved slightly in November from earlier in the month, but it was weaker than October as deep anxiety lingered over personal finances, a survey showed on Wednesday. This uneasiness foreshadows another tough year-end holiday season for retailers, some of which already slashed prices to lure shoppers. The Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers said the final figure for its index of consumer sentiment in November stepped up to 67.4 from 66.0 in the first half of the month. Analysts had expected a final November figure of 67.0, compared with a final October reading of 70.6. "The decline in consumer confidence was due to grim assessments by consumers of their finances, the worst ever recorded in the 60-year history of the surveys," Richard Curtin, director of the survey, said in a statement. Savings rate dips With spending outpacing income growth, Americans' personal savings rate — savings as a percentage of after-tax income — dipped to 4.4 percent in October from 4.6 percent in September. Personal income from interest came to an annualized $1.23 trillion, ticking up 0.5 percent from September. People who rely on interest from savings, such as money in certificates of deposit, have been seeing their income fall for months, raising doubts about their ability to spend. New-home sales rose 6.2 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 430,000 from an upwardly revised 405,000 in September. Economists had expected a pace of 410,000. Home shoppers were acting before lawmakers decided this month to extend a tax credit for first-time buyers and expand it to some existing homeowners. Much of October's weakness in durable-goods orders came from an 18.4 percent drop in orders for goods related to defense. Excluding those, orders for other types of manufactured goods rose 0.4 percent in October, after a 1.8 percent rise in September. Orders for electrical equipment, commercial airplanes and parts, primary metals — including steel — and fabricated metals all rose last month. Orders for cars, machinery, computers and communications equipment fell. A drop of 190,000 in the number of people continuing to claim jobless aid marked the 10th consecutive decline, leaving it at 5.42 million, the lowest level since the week of Feb. 28. The continuing claims figure, though, does not include millions who have used up the regular 26 weeks of benefits typically provided by states and are receiving extended benefits for up to 73 additional weeks. (Source: MSNBC.) December 2009   The Death Month is Coming: A Crushing Unemployment Number Is Due Out February 4, 2010 (Dec 2009) January is the death month as far as the Bureau of Labor Statistics is concerned. In January, in their bizarre data models, they kill off thousands of jobs. This January, they could knock off more than 800,000 jobs. Will the BLS figure out a way to fudge this huge negative January unemployment number that is scheduled to be released February 4, 2010? Here's John Crudele with the scoop on what's going on: The Labor Department is hurrying to correct inaccuracies in its monthly employment statistics that could cause the Obama administration big problems early next year.(Source: Economic Journal.)   Unemployment funds going ‘absolutely broke’ -- 40 state programs to be emptied by the jobless tsunami within two years (Dec 2009) The recession's jobless toll is draining unemployment-compensation funds so fast that according to federal projections, 40 state programs will go broke within two years and need $90 billion in loans to keep issuing the benefit checks. The shortfalls are putting pressure on governments to either raise taxes or shrink the aid payments. Debates over the state benefit programs have erupted in South Carolina, Nevada, Kansas, Vermont and Indiana. And the budget gaps are expected to spread and become more acute in the coming year, compelling legislators in many states to reconsider their operations. Currently, 25 states have run out of unemployment money and have borrowed $24 billion from the federal government to cover the gaps. By 2011, according to Department of Labor estimates, 40 state funds will have been emptied by the jobless tsunami. "There's immense pressure, and it's got to be faced," said Indiana state Rep. David Niezgodski (D), a sponsor of a bill that addressed the gaps in Indiana's unemployment program. "Our system was absolutely broke." Give-and-take The Indiana legislation protected the aid checks, Niezgodski said, but it came after a give-and-take this spring in which Gov. Mitchell E. Daniels Jr. (R) said the state had been providing "Rolls-Royce benefits" and several thousand union workers countered by protesting proposed cuts at the state capitol. In January, the legislature is slated to consider a bill to delay the proposed tax increases intended to refill the fund. In Nevada, Gov. Jim Gibbons (R) and legislators have feuded over the unemployment program, which is $85 million in debt to the federal government, with Gibbons accusing the legislature of "callous disregard" for not setting a tax rate. And last week, a state task force in Kentucky recommended cutting benefits about 9 percent and imposing a week's delay in their payment. The average benefit check there is about $309 a week. The task force also proposed raising taxes. "There were some moments of high anxiety" during the negotiations between industry and labor groups, said Joseph U. Meyer, the state's acting secretary of education and workforce development. "But in the end, the realistic options became fairly apparent." Two choices State unemployment-compensation funds are separated from general budgets, so when there is a shortfall, only two primary solutions are typically considered -- either cut the benefit or raise the payroll tax. Industry and business groups often lobby against raising the payroll tax on employers, while unions and other worker groups protest benefit cuts. "We want to make sure Kentucky remains competitive and also maintain an environment of fairness," Meyer said of the negotiations. Nationally, the average tax is about 0.6 percent of payroll; the average weekly check is about $300. Not prepared The troubles the state programs face can be traced to a failure during the economic boom to properly prepare for a downturn, experts said. Unemployment benefits are funded by the payroll tax on employers that is collected at a rate that is supposed to keep the funds solvent. Firms that fire lots of people are supposed to pay higher rates. The federal government pays for administrative costs, and in a recession, it pays for the extension of unemployment benefits beyond 26 weeks. But over the years, the drive to minimize state taxes on employers has reduced the funds to unsustainable levels. "The benefits haven't grown -- that's not the problem," said Richard Hobbie, director of the National Association of State Workforce Agencies. Even so, he said, he expects to see unemployment checks reduced. A shortfall in a state unemployment fund, he said, "usually means cuts in eligibility or benefits." In Virginia, the unemployment program has borrowed $89 million from the federal government, while Maryland has not borrowed, according to the federal data. Wayne Vroman, an expert in unemployment insurance at the Urban Institute, said that entering the recession, state programs were on average funded at only one-third the level they should have been, according to generally accepted funding guidelines. "If you fund a program adequately, you don't need to come to these kinds of difficult decisions," he said. Before the recession, he said, the funding guidelines "were rarely honored." While the amount of the states' loans from the federal government is expected to grow rapidly, it is not expected to add to the federal debt. "In the past, the federal government has always gotten its money back," Vroman said. Struggling to fill the gap In the meantime, however, more states are struggling to fill the gap. West Virginia imposed a freeze on benefit levels this year, and legislators in South Carolina are considering one. "We've obviously got problems with the fund," said South Carolina House Majority Leader Kenny Bingham (R), blaming the trouble in part on the state's unemployment rate of more than 12 percent. The state owes about $654 million to the federal government for unemployment payments. "We're not trying to cut benefits," he said. But "if you jack rates up, those business that are struggling to hang on, you make things more difficult." (Source: MSNBC.)  New U.S. jobless claims unexpectedly fall to 452,000 (Dec 2009) A fitful economic recovery is drawing strength from a stabilizing job market and signs that manufacturing will contribute to the rebound. The latest sign was a government report today that the number of newly laid-off workers filing claims for unemployment benefits fell more than expected last week. And the four-week average for claims, which smooths out fluctuations, fell for the 16th straight week, to its lowest point since September 2008, when the financial crisis hit with full force. Further evidence of a gradually healing economy was a report that orders to U.S. factories for big-ticket durable goods rose in November. The overall increase was less than expected. But excluding the volatile transportation category, the gains were twice what economists had forecast. The Labor Department said the number of new jobless claims fell to a 452,000 last week, down 28,000 from the previous week, on a seasonally adjusted basis. That’s a better performance than the decline to 470,000 that economists had expected. And the four-week average for claims, which smooths out fluctuations, fell to 465,250 — the 16th straight weekly decline. Stocks rose after the positive reports on unemployment and durable goods orders. Major indexes all touched new 2009 highs in midmorning trading. The Dow Jones industrial average rose about 40 points, or 0.4 percent. Unemployment claims have been falling unevenly since summer. That improvement is seen as a sign that jobs cuts are slowing and hiring could pick up early next year. The fall in weekly claims of 28,000 last week, which followed two smaller weekly increases, shows that the halting improvement continues. The Labor Department cautioned that seasonal employment from holidays and other variables in the calendar made last week a difficult one to seasonally adjust. The actual number of new claims was higher than the previous week, though fewer than expected. The process of adjusting for seasonal variation reduced the number. Economists monitor jobless claims as a gauge of the pace of layoffs. Analysts say initial claims need to fall to about 425,000 for several weeks to signal the economy is actually beginning to add jobs. The government said the number of people continuing to receive regular jobless benefits fell by 127,000 to 5.08 million for the week ending Dec. 12. That figure does not include millions of people who have used up the 26 weeks of benefits typically provided by states and are now receiving extended benefits for up to 73 additional weeks, paid for by the federal government. The number of people receiving extended benefits jumped to 4.37 million for the week ending Dec. 5, an increase of 141,807 from the previous week. That big rise slows that the problem of high unemployment persists despite a decrease in layoffs. It also reflects the fact that 38 states are now processing claims for the extension of benefits that Congress approved last month. The Commerce Department said orders for durable goods edged up 0.2 percent last month, weaker than the 0.5 percent gain economists had expected. But excluding transportation, orders rose 2 percent over the October level, double what economists had forecast. Demand for commercial aircraft plunged 32.6 percent. And orders for transportation products sank 5.5 percent as demand for motor vehicles and parts edged down 0.2 percent, the weakest showing in five months. Strength in November was shown in areas such as orders for machinery, which rose 3.5 percent. Orders for primary metals such as steel grew 1.4 percent. And orders for computers and electronic products jumped 3.7 percent, the biggest gain since February. “The fourth-quarter recovery in business investment was a bit stronger than we previously feared,” Paul Ashworth, an economist at Capital Economics, wrote in a research report. Still, he added, “Firms still appear to be unusually reluctant to invest, either because of existing spare capacity, uncertainty or lack or credit availability.” Economists are hoping that the fortunes of the manufacturing sector are beginning to rebound after the recession briefly forced two major U.S. automakers — General Motors and Chrysler LLC — into bankruptcy protection earlier this year. The economy grew at a 2.2 percent annual rate in the July-September quarter, the first growth in the gross domestic product after a record four straight quarters of shrinking GDP. A string of more positive reports is causing analysts to revise up their forecasts for growth in the current quarter to 3 percent or slightly better. Ashworth of Capital Economics noted that companies are rebuilding their stockpiles of goods — one reason why he predicts GDP will expand at an annualized rate of about 5 percent in the fourth quarter. But unless unemployment starts to decline steadily, consumer spending, which accounts for 70 percent of economic activity, could falter. That could jeopardize the fragile recovery from the nation’s longest recession since the 1930s. The jobless rate dipped in November to 10 percent, down from a 26-year high of 10.2 percent in October. Some analysts fear that unemployment will resume rising in coming months and won’t peak until hitting 10.5 percent next summer. Still, the November jobless report showed that businesses slashed their payrolls by just 11,000 jobs on net in November, the smallest decrease since the recession began two years ago. (Source: Chron.)     Obama drags his mess into the new year. January 2010Chart of the Day: Happy Govt Workers (Jan 2010) This comes from Business Insider, and it provides a natural follow-up to my post from last week as to why public-sector workers are more optimistic than private-sector employees. For the first time, the US has more government workers than goods-producing workers: The significant dropoff comes from the sharp increase in unemployment over the last year. As I wrote before, that drop in employment has only impacted the private sector. Government jobs are only off of their peak by 35,000, while the private sector has lost three million positions. But there’s more to this than just the current economic system. That line stretched back to 1939, and in 71 years, there has only been two significant declines in government employment. The first came at the end of World War II, when we released large numbers of workers back to the private sector. The second came in the early 1980s, when Ronald Reagan tried scaling back the size of government. Otherwise, in 71 years, the rate of growth in government employment has been more constant than anything I’ve seen in economics. It has been an inexorable inflation of government, a symptom of the encroaching bureaucracy and capital destruction that has plagued the US since the New Deal. (Source: Hot Air.)  Recovery hopes sag as more jobs lost -- Laid-off workers give up search for new employment (Jan 2010) The U.S. economy ended the worst year of employment losses since the Great Depression with an unexpectedly large new drop of 85,000 jobs in December — dimming hopes of a quick upswing in hiring and intensifying Washington's partisan fight over how to create more opportunities for workers. The unemployment rate for the month was unchanged from November at 10 percent, the government said Friday, but that was only because droves of people — including many discouraged about the prospects of finding work — dropped out of the labor force and were no longer counted as unemployed. "The increased number of discouraged workers is masking the true extent of joblessness," said Anne Kim, economic program director at Third Way, a liberal policy think tank in Washington. The latest report was all the more disappointing because the employment data for November raised hopes that the steep two-year-long employment decline had hit bottom. And revised figures released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed the economy actually added a net 4,000 jobs in November instead of losing 11,000 as initially estimated. But in December, there were once again large payroll cuts in construction and manufacturing, possibly inflated a bit by the weather, as well as smaller losses in other industries. And job increases in health and education services, and the temporary-help industry, were not large enough to offset them. Many economists had projected the December report would show essentially zero job growth, with some forecasting a small increase that would be the beginnings of a robust recovery in hiring in the not-too-distant future. Although administration officials cautioned that the overall unemployment numbers might get worse before the hoped-for turnaround, Obama, speaking Friday at the White House, said overall job trends were still promising. When he took office in the first quarter of last year, the nation lost an average of 691,000 jobs a month. That fell to 69,000 monthly job losses in the fourth quarter. The latest employment numbers "are a reminder that the road to recovery is never straight and that we have to continue to work every single day to get our economy moving again," the president said. "For most Americans, and for me, that means jobs." Partisan fight erupts Republican leaders pounced on Friday's report to attack the Obama administration's deficit spending and economic policies, as they did throughout the past year, while liberal groups insisted that this was not the time to pull back from stimulus programs aimed at spurring job growth and helping the millions of unemployed Americans with safety net programs. "There's no way around saying it was something of a setback from what we had seen in November," said Christina Romer, chairwoman of the White House Council of Economic Advisors. "We now know that we added jobs in November. I want to be adding hundreds of thousands of jobs a month." Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, said the latest report was so bad that it casts doubt of an imminent positive turn in job growth, let alone a robust one. "It's totally plausible we're going to lose jobs for several more months in 2010," he said. If that happens, it would prolong the suffering of millions of American workers and could pose a serious threat to the sustainability of the broader economic recovery, which has been gaining some momentum. Losses outweigh gains Despite recent signs of improvement in the housing and manufacturing industries, Friday's report showed that construction employers cut 53,000 jobs last month, and manufacturing added to the misery by eliminating 27,000 positions. The two industries have borne the brunt of the job losses during the recession. In the larger service-producing part of the economy, payroll declines have eased more significantly, but most sectors are still not adding net jobs. Retailers overall cut 10,000 jobs last month, even as they reported stronger-than-expected holiday sales this week. Leisure and hospitality businesses gave up 25,000 positions, and government payrolls shrank by 21,000. The two major industries that added jobs over the month were health and education, which expanded by 35,000; and professional and business services, where employment rose by 50,000, boosted by the addition of 47,000 temporary-help jobs. Workweek stays short Another leading indicator of hiring, the average weekly workweek in December was unchanged at 33.2 hours, near a record low. Some analysts were expecting the work week to tick up a bit, as employers restore the hours that have been cut for many workers during the recession. But one stark statistic in the latest report is the staggering number of people who dropped out of the labor force in December and in previous recent months. In December, the number of people working or looking for work totaled 153.06 million. That is a decline of 661,000 from November and more than 1.5 million from December 2008. The last time there was an annual decline in the labor force was in 1951. It's not that the U.S. population is shrinking. Before the recession, the labor force had been growing at about 1 percent a year, in tandem with the growth of the working-age population. But the severe recession has prompted many discouraged people to give up looking for work, and others are delaying entering the work force by getting additional schooling or simply staying at home. The economy needs to create roughly 125,000 net jobs a month to keep pace with the growing population and work force, and economists say it will take sustained growth of at least that many payrolls monthly to make an appreciable dent in the unemployment rate. Most forecasters believe it will take several years to make up for the approximately 8 million jobs that have been lost since late 2007. (Source: Tennessean.) Obama pushes for cash for green jobs -- $2.3 billion in tax credits to companies that make clean technologies (Jan 2010) After a disappointing new unemployment report, President Barack Obama pushed on Friday for an expanded government program he said would help create tens of thousands of new clean-technology jobs. "It's clear why such an effort is so important. Building a robust clean energy sector is how we will create the jobs of the future, jobs that pay well and can't be outsourced," Obama said at the White House. It came as Obama sought to pivot back to the domestic economy after two weeks of being riveted to the Christmas Day bombing attempt. The larger-than-expected loss of 85,000 jobs in December, reported earlier in the day by the Labor Department, put new pressure on the administration to step up job creation. "The road to recovery is never straight," Obama said, although he added that the trend is pointing in the right direction. Figures released Friday showed unemployment stubbornly stuck at 10 percent. At the same time, more people were giving up in the search for jobs. Obama announced the awarding of $2.3 billion in tax credits to companies that manufacture wind turbines, solar panels, cutting edge batteries and other green technologies. The money will come from last year's $787 billion stimulus program. He also renewed a call by Vice President Al Gore for Congress to approve an additional $5 billion to help create more such jobs. Obama said the tax credits would create some 17,000 green jobs. Trying to paint the White House as fighting to rebuild the economy, officials said the poor jobs report underscores the challenges the president faces. "Building a robust clean energy sector is how we will create the jobs of the future," Obama said in a brief late-afternoon statement. "The Recovery Act awards I am announcing today will help close the clean energy gap that has grown between America and other nations while creating good jobs, reducing our carbon emissions and increasing our energy security." "There is no greater priority for this administration than getting Americans back to work," Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said in a separate stement. Obama announced tax credits for 183 projects to develop solar and wind power and energy management technologies, among others. Meanwhile, a senior White House economist said the tanking economy is already showing signs of fresh life. "Real recoveries come in fits and starts and November was in some sense a start and December was a little bit of a fit," Christina Romer, chair of Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, said in an interview with The Associated Press. She noted the new numbers are a tenth of the job losses from a year ago and predicted real job growth before the summer. "We're starting to see stabilization in employment," she said. "Obviously, the next step is job growth, we're thinking we're going to see that by the spring." (Source: MSNBC.)  Farewell "Saved or Created": Obama Administration Changes the Counting of Stimulus Jobs* (Jan 2010) The Obama administration has taken some heat and mockery for using the nebulous and non-economic term of jobs being "saved or created" by the $787 billion stimulus program. So it's gotten rid of it. In a little-noticed December 18, 2009 memo from Office of Management and Budget director Peter Orszag the Obama administration is changing the way stimulus jobs are counted. The memo, first noted by ProPublica, says that those receiving stimulus funds no longer have to say whether a job has been saved or created. "Instead, recipients will more easily and objectively report on jobs funded with Recovery Act dollars," Orszag wrote. In other words, if the project is being funded with stimulus dollars – even if the person worked at that company or organization before and will work the same place afterwards – that's a stimulus job. This change has not yet hit the Recovery.gov website, which lists 640,329 "Jobs Created/Saved as Reported by Recipients." Ed Pound, the spokesman for the Recovery Board -- which is charge of Recovery.gov -- tells ABC News "since OMB is not going to use 'jobs created or jobs saved' any more, we're not going to use it either." He said Recovery.gov will probably use something more like "jobs reported by recipients where Recovery funds were expended." Orszag's memo also indicates the reporting of jobs will be less frequent; "recipients will now report job estimates on a quarterly, rather than cumulative, basis." OMB spokesman Tom Gavin said that after talking to funding recipients, good government groups, Democratic and Republican members of Congress and the Government Accountability Office, the administration decided to change its counting mechanism. In its November report, titled "Recipient Reported Jobs Data Provide Some Insight into Use of Recovery Act Funding, but Data Quality and Reporting Issues Need Attention," GAO specifically made recommendations as to how to change the counting procedures, saying the Obama administration should "consider being more explicit that 'jobs created or retained' are to be reported as hours worked and paid for with Recovery Act funds." "Instead of putting the GAO report on a shelf as is typically done we took the recommendations to heart," Gavin told ABC News. "The changes are designed to make the definitions clearer, to simplify the process, and to increase the accuracy of the data that's reported." But Rep. Darrell Issa of California, the top Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, wrote to the chair of the Recovery Act Transparency and Accountability Board Earl Devaney saying that "the new guidance counts every jobs that is funded using stimulus money – even if it existed before the Recovery Act, and was not in any danger of being eliminated – as 'created or saved.' This definition ignores the plain meanings of the words 'created' and 'saved' and makes Recovery.gov's ' 'JOBS CREATED/SAVED' label a falsehood, further eroding the confidence of the American people in their government." "It's funny," Gavin says. "A lot of the people who are being critical of this effort to simplify the process are the same people who three months ago were complaining the process was too complex." (Source; ABC News: Jake Tapper.) YOU GOTTA LOVE THE BULLSHIT LEVEL OBAMA HAS BROUGHT TO THE WHITE HOUSE...RIG THE FORMULA AND CLAIM VICTORY -- AND THEN TAP DANCE WHEN FACED WITH JOB LOSS FACT Stimulus saved or created up to 2 million jobs in 2009, White House says (Jan 2010) The Obama administration credits the $787-billion program with a substantial effect on employment. Still, the U.S. economy lost a net 4 million jobs last year even with the stimulus. The Obama administration, offering evidence that its much-maligned efforts to spur economic recovery have begun to take hold, said Tuesday that the $787-billion stimulus program saved or created 1.5 million to 2 million jobs last year. These latest figures from the White House Council of Economic Advisors are certain to be challenged by Republicans, but the employment and economic effects of the stimulus cited in the report are generally in line with estimates from some leading private economists as well as the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. "This is truly a stunning effect" of the Recovery Act, Christina Romer, chairwoman of the council, said in a conference call with reporters. She expressed confidence that the package of tax cuts and government spending -- the largest of its kind in U.S. history -- ultimately would fulfill President Obama's promise of boosting employment by 3.5 million jobs by the end of this year. As of the end of last year, about a third of the $787 billion had been spent, although about half of the total has been committed. The council's report, mandated by Congress as part of the stimulus act and released late Tuesday, came as Obama mounted a full-court press to defend his record on jobs. That's a major vulnerability for the White House and Democrats in Congress as they head into midterm elections in November with double-digit unemployment predicted for all or much of the coming year. Even with the stimulus, the U.S. economy lost more than 4 million jobs last year, including 85,000 in December, according to the Labor Department. And the unemployment rate last month was 10% -- a figure that is widely expected to inch higher in the months ahead. In its first quarterly report on the stimulus, issued in September, the White House estimated that the Recovery Act had raised employment levels by more than 1 million jobs as of the third quarter. The new report incorporates data from stimulus recipients who said they saved or created 640,000 full-time-equivalent jobs as of the third quarter. The White House's estimate of stimulus-induced jobs for 2009 is based on economic modeling and projections and as such is likely to be met with considerable skepticism from Republicans and other critics who have not only questioned the methodology but also documented cases in which stimulus money went to dubious projects. Romer acknowledged that it was hard to make employment-creation claims when the economy had shed about 8 million jobs in the last two years. But she noted that job losses had declined dramatically since the first quarter of last year, when they were approaching nearly 700,000 a month on average -- far more than the approximately 69,000 a month lost during the fourth quarter. Without the stimulus, Romer said, the economy would be as many as 2 million more jobs in the hole today. In the same vein, she said, without the benefits of the stimulus, the economy would have shrunk instead of growing 2.2% in the third quarter.The report estimates that the Recovery Act added 1.5 to 3 percentage points to gross domestic product growth in the fourth quarter, which is in line with estimates from professional forecasting firms such as Moody's Economy.com and IHS Global Insight. Many economists expect fourth-quarter GDP to show growth of 4% to 5% at an annualized rate. Even so, employers have been reluctant to create jobs. And economists widely expect GDP growth to slow this year, prompting calls for additional government stimulus. Although the Obama administration has been reluctant to propose another large-scale spending plan amid sharp criticisms from deficit hawks, it is considering various ideas aimed at stimulating job growth, such as tax credits for hiring and help for small businesses and for certain potentially big employment producers such as so-called clean energy. The report shows that the stimulus has been slow to create clean-energy jobs, which include wind- and solar-power generation, energy-efficiency retrofitting and high-speed-rail construction. Obama has made clean-energy job creation a centerpiece of his vision for job growth. Though the Recovery Act includes $90 billion for clean-energy programs, only $5 billion has been spent -- with nearly half of that in the form of tax breaks for renewable-electricity generation and other areas. Barely 5% of the $20 billion earmarked for efficiency and the $26 billion tagged for renewable-energy projects has been spent. The Council of Economic Advisors report blames the green-job lag on the time-consuming process necessary to identify and evaluate potential recipients. The report said "most of the clean-energy investments occur through grants and contracts that require that proposals be reviewed before funds are expended." In total, the $5-billion clean-energy spending so far has created or saved about 50,000 jobs directly, a roughly $100,000-per-job expense. The White House estimates that the clean-energy spending will end up bankrolling 720,000 "job-years" by 2012, which is the equivalent of 720,000 jobs lasting one year each. (Source: LA Times.) The TRUTH: 4 million job losses Networks Fail to Criticize Obama Despite Most Jobs Lost in a Year Since 1940 -- Reporters omit failure of stimulus, problems counting jobs created or saved from many jobs stories. (Jan 2010) The national unemployment rate rests at 10 percent after 85,000 more jobs were lost in December, while the number of people too discouraged to look for work increased by 642,000. CNBC’s Steve Liesman called those figures “absolutely devastating.” Yet the network news media refused to hold President Barack Obama responsible for the losses since the jobs release Jan. 8. Obama has been in office for a full year and made a number of “extravagant” promises regarding job growth, yet network news reports remained uncritical with the exception of Sunday talk shows. That’s a sharp contrast to the treatment of Republican administrations’ jobs data. In those cases, the networks were determined to present a negative picture – even when times were good. Anchor Brian Williams began the Dec. 2, 2005 “Nightly News” with a strong note of caution: “Rebound: A slew of good news about jobs and the economy, but are there warning signs ahead?” That’s how he prefaced a report about 215,000 new jobs. Throughout 2005, the networks emphasized layoffs instead of the 2 million new jobs created that year under President George W. Bush. Now in 2009, Obama has presided over the most job losses in a single year since 1940 and some in the media tried to remain cheerful. CNN’s Susan Lisovicz actually cited the 4,000 jobs created in Nov. 2009 as “glimmers of hope” Jan. 8, the same day Christine Romans called 10 percent unemployment “uncomfortable for many people.” “Ten percent unemployment is just something that is not sustainable in a healthy economy. That’s just the bottom line there. But the pace of job loss over the past year has slowed pretty dramatically, and frankly, Heidi, even by the month of November last year we saw some job creation,” Romans said during the 10 a.m. hour. With the exception of a single CBS mention, the networks’ job reports also failed to inform their viewers that 2009 had the highest yearly job losses on record (more than 4.1 million). And when Katie Couric did address the historic nature of the job losses, she underreported the number of jobs lost in 2009 by 700,000. Many of those network stories also failed to admit that the stimulus package hadn’t created jobs. A recent Associated Press analysis of the “shovel-ready” construction part of the stimulus found almost no impact on job creation at the local level. “The effect was so small, one economist compared it to trying to move the Empire State Building by pushing against it,” AP wrote. Obama Says Stimulus Created Jobs, Networks Fail to Contradict Obama made grandiose claims that his $787 stimulus package would halt rising unemployment, preventing it from climbing above 8 percent. During the campaign he also promised to “save or create” 3-4 million jobs. But even with the 10 percent unemployment rate as evidence of the stimulus’ failure, many in the news media have given Obama a pass, refusing to criticize billions wasted on stimulus and some have even continued to support his plan to create jobs by spending even more taxpayer money. Only one story on the networks reported the AP’s findings about the “failure” of the $20 billion stimulus money spent on roads and bridges to create jobs. NBC’s “Today” even repeated the White House call for targeted spending on jobs. On Jan. 11, Jim Cramer supported the notion saying, “If we don’t get more stimulus, we will not have more jobs.” Ironically, Cramer admitted that so far the stimulus package hadn’t created jobs. The White House claimed on Jan. 12 that the stimulus had “created to saved” between 1.7 million and 2 million jobs. But the Washington Post’s Jan. 13 article about those saved or created jobs buried a very significant detail in the middle of that story: “Separately, the White House has announced a change in the way those reports tally jobs, a response to critics that could make the reports more reliable but make it more difficult to gauge the stimulus’s impact over time.” Where’s the outrage over this change in accounting methods? Certainly the networks wouldn’t have put up with this under the Bush or Reagan administrations. AP reported that it is “impossible to quantify exactly what effect the stimulus has had on job creation.” So the administration can claim it created or saved any number of jobs because there will be no way to prove or disprove it. Just counting the jobs is becoming a challenge according to AP, which said: “Those who receive stimulus money can now credit jobs to the program even if they were never in jeopardy of being lost, according to new rules outlined by the White House's Office of Management and Budget.” Downplaying the ‘Bad News’ Although the networks were somewhat downbeat using terms like “disappointed” and “less than stellar” after the jobs report came out Jan. 8, most reporters did not portray 10 percent unemployment as a terrible tragedy. Only one report mentioned that over a half million people were so discouraged in December they dropped out of the workforce, while several mentioned the 17.3 percent “real unemployment” rate. NBC’s Savannah Guthrie reported Jan. 8 “they [White House] tried to put the best face on it here, but there’s no question this unemployment report is a disappointment.” “Disappointment” understated the pain felt by many as 4.1 million jobs disappeared during Obama’s first year in office. In 1982, when unemployment was slightly lower the networks quoted vicious political attacks on Ronald Reagan and showed footage of people living out of trucks under a bridge. Network reports showed desperation, sadness and tragedy as a result of rising joblessness in 1982. NBC pictured lines of people waiting outside a food bank and interviewed crisis counselors in Seattle on May 7. “More callers talk of despair and even suicide,” Don Oliver reported that night, before interviewing Jim and Pam Smalls. Oliver called them “victims of unemployment depression and anger,” because Pam had to seek help from a battered woman’s shelter. Nothing like that appeared in the network jobs reports following the Jan. 8 release. In fact, during 2009 the networks found a man “doing backflips” after he was rehired by his company. Journalists on ABC, CBS and NBC constantly praised Obama for trying to stop rising unemployment in 2009, even as he failed. Month after month they tried to find the “good news” or signs of a turnaround. The networks have been talking about the economic recovery, but even the economy is recovering as the White House and some journalists claim, it may not feel like one to many people. According to BusinessWeek, the “misery index” (the sum of unemployment and inflation rates) is at 11.8 percent. That is the highest since May 1991. “The last time the U.S. misery index was this high, in the early 1990s, gains in consumer prices accounted for almost half its reading. Today inflation makes up less than a fifth of the measure,” BusinessWeek wrote. (Source: Business and Media.) Shame On You Mr. President – Obama Administration Tosses “saved or created” job count – New Job Counts Complete Fiction (Jan 2010) Many of the third world countries who are ruled by dictatorships lie about their economic prowess … there is no hunger in these countries, no one is unemployment, these countries are a paradise for the workers or a “worker’s paradise”. Heath Care for all. Of course the truth has nothing to do with these exaggerated claims … the people wait in long lines for hours to buy poorly made shoes – when there are any shoes to be had at all, food – when it is available - is always short on quality and quantity …. health care is available – for the rich and priviledged. The “leaders” of these Countries propagandize – they never admit the truth ……. Such was the case in the old Soviet Union and the Eastern Block countries. Such is the case in Cuba and Chavez’s Venezuela today, Venezuela where electrical power is shut off to the people for up to 4 hours a day ….. Venezuela, one of the world’s leading oil exporters can’t provide electrical power to it’s own people … power that the people had before Chavez took over the Country …… http://cbs4denver.com/wireapnational/Venezuela.announces.rolling.2.1420607.html Sadly, the Obama Administration has adopted the tactics of these Countries and their oppressive leaders. Propaganda …. I’m stunned that the Adminstration believes the American People will be duped by it’s most recent actions and claims. A fundamental element of Democracy is the ability of the people to believe, is some part, what its leaders say …….. Opinion polls show that we, The American People, overwhelming reject the Administration's claims of “stimulus related” job creation. We, The People, reject these claims because every independent organization to review the Adminstration’s claims have rejected the accuracy of those claims. Even ABC News, one of Obama’s strongest supporters and the the first news organization in what is referred to as the Main Stream Media to endorse Obama, has noted that the stimulus spending has, to date, done nothing to curb unemployment. http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=9527995 ABC News, commenting on a story by the Associated Press noted, “President Barack Obama’s first stimulus has had no effect on local unemployment rates, raising questions about his argument for billions more to address an “urgent need to accelerate job growth.”" “With the nation’s unemployment rate at 10 percent and expected to rise, Obama wants a second stimulus bill from Congress including billions of additional dollars” …….. “But AP’s analysis, which was reviewed by independent economists at five universities, showed the strategy of pumping transportation money into counties hasn’t affected local unemployment rates so far.”There seems to me to be very little evidence that it’s making a difference,” said Todd Steen, an economics professor at Hope College in Michigan who reviewed the AP analysis. And there’s concern about relying on transportation spending a second time. “My bottom line is, I’d be skeptical about putting too much more money into a second stimulus until we’ve seen broader effects from the first stimulus,” said Aaron Jackson, a Bentley University economist who also reviewed AP’s analysis. “For the analysis, the AP reviewed Transportation Department data on more than $21 billion in stimulus projects in every state and Washington, D.C., and the Labor Department’s monthly unemployment data to assess the effects of road and bridge spending on local unemployment and construction employment. The AP’s analysis found there was nearly no connection between stimulus money and the number of construction workers hired or fired since Congress passed the recovery program. The effect was so small, one economist compared it to trying to move the Empire State Building by pushing against it. “As a policy tool for creating jobs, this doesn’t seem to have much bite,” said Emory University economist Thomas Smith, who supported the stimulus and reviewed AP’s analysis. “In terms of creating jobs, it doesn’t seem like it’s created very many.” “It would be unlikely that even $20 billion spent all at once would be enough to move the needle of the huge decline we’ve seen, even in construction, much less the economy. The job destruction is way too big,” said Kenneth D. Simonson, chief economist for the Associated General Contractors of America. “Few counties, for example, received more road money per capita than Marshall County, Tenn., about 90 minutes south of Nashville. Obama’s stimulus is paying the salaries of dozens of workers there, but local officials said the unemployment rate continues to rise and is expected to top 20 percent soon. The new money for road projects isn’t enough to offset the thousands of local jobs lost from the closing of manufacturing plants and automotive parts suppliers.“The stimulus has not benefited the working-class people of Marshall County at all,“ said Isaac Zimmerle, a local contractor who has seen his construction business slowly dry up since 2008. That year, he built 30 homes. But prospects this year look grim.” So what is the Administration’s answer …. the same as always …. as we are learning …… this Adminsitration is a “one trick pony” – spend more, tax more and increase the deficit ….. Focus on “temporary work” created by Government spending and funnel our tax dollars to corrupt poltical cronies …… This is not new – this doesn’t represent CHANGE ….. we will get the same old results …… The Administration has now moved …. not to improve the economy but to change how the Adminstration counts the ficticious jobs created under the first stimulus package …. you remember the laughable “jobs created or saved” reports – you know, where the Administration claimed to have created jobs in fictious zip codes and in Congressional Disticts that did not exist, claims that inlcuded the creation of 50 jobs by buying one lawn mower at a cemetery that employed only 20 people …… The “created or saved” system needed to be eliminated. That system had two fatal flaws – flaws that the Adminsitration could no longer live with. The first flaw, the American People found it to be laughable - no one believed the numbers. The second flaw of the system, the phoney numbers being claimed were not “BIG ENOUGH” …… they needed a bigger lie … because they want more money to throw down this same rat hole. The spurious claim that 640,000 jobs had been created by the first stimuls, simply would not support a call for a second stimulus package. Why actually put people back to work if all you need do is tell a bigger lie …… In the dark of night this past weekend the “most transparent of all Adminstrations in the history of the Country” threw out its old “jobs saved or created” methodology and replaced it with a new means of “fudging the job count”. This slight of hand was reported by the USA today online here: http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2010-01-12-stimulus-counting_N.htm?csp=34 . Stimulus: White House changes job-count rule The White House has abandoned its controversial method of counting jobs under President Obama’s economic stimulus, making it impossible to track the number of jobs saved or created with the $787 billion in recovery money. Despite mounting a vigorous defense of its earlier count of more than 640,000 jobs, to the stimulus, even after numerous errors were identified, the Obama administration now is making it easier to give the stimulus credit for hiring. It’s no longer about counting a job as saved or created; now it’s a matter of counting jobs funded by the stimulus. That means that any stimulus money used to cover payroll will be included in the jobs credited to the program, including pay raises for existing employees and pay for people who never were in jeopardy of losing their positions. http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2010-01-12-stimulus-counting_N.htm?csp=34 How shameful …… giving lavish pay raises to Government employees, both in Congress and out, at a time of economic crisis like this and then classifying the pay raises as a “new” or “saved” stimulus job. “Recipients of recovery money no longer have to show that a job would have been lost without the stimulus help, and they no longer are required to keep an ongoing tally of jobs saved or created. The new rules allow stimulus recipients to limit the job tally to quarterly reports, making it impossible to avoid double-counting a job that was created in one quarter and continued into the next.” http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2010-01-12-stimulus-counting_N.htm?csp=34 Please note that the USA Today article cited in this post (above) was published yesterday, Sunday, January 12, 2010. USA Today, long a supporter of President Obama, cited the Administration’s claim of 640,000 jobs created by the stimulus …. and now …. for the miracles of miracles …. an article from this morning …… Monday, January 13, 2010 …. Associated Press: White House credits stimulus with up to 2 million jobs. WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama is trumpeting a new White House estimate that his top economist calls “stunning”. His stimulus plan has already created or saved up to 2 million jobs. The analysis is part of the administration’s quarterly report to Congress on the controversial $787 billion package of spending and tax cuts he signed weeks after taking office. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100113/ap_on_bi_ge/us_obama_jobs Stunning is an understatement …. when we went to bed last night the most incredibly optomistic estimates produced by the Administration, the estimates loaded with jobs in fake zip codes and non-existent Congressional Districts was set at 640,000 and now, presto chango …. nothing up my sleeve …… in less than 24 hours ….. we now have 2 Million Stimulus related jobs ………… This is beyond shameless …. lying about the success of a failed program, lies that won’t put people back to work, put food on tables or prevent even one additional foreclosure …. lies intended to boost the approval ratings of the politicians in the next set of opinion polls ….lies aimed at funneling more money into corrupt Government spending programs …… Mr. President, frankly I didn’t expect much from you … I hoped for your success if your success was going to be good for our Country…….. I can only imagine how disappointed your supporters must be ….. especially those who thought that by voting for you they were voting for a positive change. Mr. Presdient we are not stupid …. all we need do is look around to see the truth …… when you send someone out to lie on your behalf the lie still attaches to your reputation ……. take a look at your poll numbers – we are not buying your political double talk any longer ……. November is just 10 months away and we are counting the days ………… Stop the lies ….. stop the back room dealing ……. and keep your promises …. (Source: McAuley's World.) State Unemployment Data Darkens Jobs Picture (Jan 2010) Today, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released December's state-by-state unemployment data. It isn't pretty. Even though the national rate was unchanged last month, most states saw their unemployment rates worsen. 43 states and the District of Columbia saw their unemployment rates increase from November to December, many significantly. This is a major change-in-direction from November's good news, when 36 states saw their unemployment rates decline. Let's consider some of the highlights. First, the good news. There isn't much of it. Four states saw their unemployment rates decline: Oklahoma (0.5%), South Dakota (0.2%), Iowa (0.1%) and Michigan (0.1%). Yes, Michigan was one of the four best states this month when considering the direction of unemployment. Three other states had rates unchanged: California, Idaho and Minnesota. Every other state saw its unemployment number increase, both in rate and nominal amount. The biggest losers were Louisiana and Mississippi, both seeing their rate increase by 0.8%. Five more had a 0.7% increase: Tennessee, Massachusetts, Connecticut, West Virginia and Nevada. In fact, 33 states (and DC) had their rates increase by at least 0.3%. As far as number of lost/gained jobs, California was the best, with its unemployed workers declining by 18,300. Michigan was second best, with 11,400 fewer unemployed. It's nice to see those two states at the positive end of the spectrum. The most jobs were lost by New York, which saw 36,400 more jobless. Texas was second-worst, losing 28,700 jobs. Florida followed with 23,500 more unemployed. Massachusetts and Tennessee round out the bottom five, each losing about 21,000 jobs. The best state in the nation for employment remains North Dakota with a microscopic 4.4% unemployment rate, though the rate did increase by 0.3% in December. South Dakota and Nebraska were tied for second with 4.7% unemployment. The worst state is still Michigan, despite its positive month, at 14.6% unemployment. Nevada and Rhode Island are nearly tied for second at 13.0% and 12.9% unemployment, respectively. South Carolina, California and DC are the other states with over 12% unemployment. If you like you data in pictures, here's the usual map showing unemployment by state, via BLS:  (Source: The Atlantic.) Reed, other mayors tell Obama: Stimulus isn't working for cities (Jan 2010) As if the White House isn't already hearing it from others, the nation's mayors delivered a clear message to President Barack Obama on Thursday: His economic stimulus program isn't creating enough jobs. "What we said ... was that the method they used for disbursing the first stimulus dollars was wrong," said new Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, one of more than 200 mayors who met with the president and other administration officials at the White House. "That approach just did not work." Thursday's meeting between members of the U.S. Conference of Mayors and the White House comes amid signs that -- despite improvement in the nation's economy overall -- the country's cities are still suffering. A report issued by the mayors' group this week showed the bulk of the nation's unemployed are in cities. It also predicts that most cities won't see a return to pre-recession employment levels until at least 2013. Metro Atlanta is home to about 60 percent of Georgia's unemployed, according to the report. It also shows that Atlanta is among the country's hardest-hit cities economically. Thursday, Obama sought to reassure mayors that he knows cities need more help. "While Wall Street may be recovering, you and I know your Main Streets have a long way to go," he told mayors. "Unemployment in your cities is still far too high. And because our metropolitan areas account for 90 percent of our economic output, they are the engines that we need to get started again." Obama said the budget he will present next month will include new programs and added funding for the nation's cities. Reed and other mayors want Washington to change the way economic stimulus money and other federal aid are distributed. About 80 percent of stimulus money has gone directly to state governments, they say. Instead of being used to create new jobs, the bulk of the money has been used to save existing state government jobs -- teachers, law enforcement and others -- and for shoring up sagging state budgets. If more money would flow directly to cities, the mayors' group contends, it could be used for local improvement projects that would create more jobs. "Everything is about jobs now," said Burnsville, Minn., Mayor Elizabeth Kautz, president of the mayors' group.The Democrats' stunning loss in Massachusetts' U.S. Senate race Tuesday reinforced that message.White House officials indicated the president is receptive to making sure any future jobs creation package or economic stimulus funding adds more emphasis on federal aid to cities. Reed -- a big Obama supporter in the 2008 election -- said he was encouraged by what he heard Thursday. But, he added, the White House needs to follow through on its promises. Charleston, S.C., Mayor Joseph Riley, who has been in office 34 years, noted what's at stake: "An economic turnabout like this works itself out not at a national level. It works itself out in the towns and cities of our country." (Source: Atlanta Journal Constitution.) February 2010 What you get from a Snake-oil Salesman...Fancy Talk and no results Obama Presides Over Most Jobs Lost Since 1940 (Feb 2010) News media have spun rising 2009 unemployment positively, but more than 4 million lost jobs tops post-World War II high. Unemployment shot up in 2009 from 7.7 percent in January to 10.1 percent in October before settling at 10 percent in December. Behind those percentages were more than 4.1 million people who lost their jobs during the year. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, that’s the most job losses in a year since 1940. (BLS could only provide data from 1940-2009) But don’t expect journalist to label Pres. Barack Obama the worst jobs president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1933-1945). The media spent 2009 trying to shield Obama from the troubling numbers. ABC’s Charles Gibson called the loss of 539,000 jobs in April a “marked improvement” May 8, 2009, because fewer jobs were lost than in March. In June 2009, Gibson was talking again about “hopeful” signs in the job numbers as more Americans were out of work. Also in 2009, CBS’s own economic “grim reaper,” Anthony Mason said the “economy’s showed signs of improving.” While NBC also found “positive trends” to discuss – specifically mentioning “2,100 new reasons” to be “hopeful” in Georgia. The Business & Media Institute compared 2009 unemployment rates in the first seven months of Obama’s presidency to a similar period of rising unemployment under Pres. Ronald Reagan in 1982. BMI found network mentions of the presidential administration were 13 times more negative under Reagan than Obama. The Reagan White House was connected to negative jobs data almost twice as often as Obama and identical unemployment rates (9.4 percent) were “good news” under Obama, but “all” bad for Reagan. (Source: Business and Media Institute.) HALLELUJAH...A BIPARTISAN JOBS BILL IN WORK -- BUT IS IT JUST A DISGUISED STIMULUS II PACKAGE??? Senate leaders near deal on jobs bill -- Proposed legislation would give tax break to businesses for hiring workers (Feb 2010) Senate leaders plan to pass a jobs bill next week as key Democrats and Republicans neared agreement Thursday on a proposal to give businesses a tax break for hiring unemployed workers. Passage would mark a rare bipartisan achievement in a Congress that has been sharply divided along political lines. The Senate will start work on the bill Monday, said Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. If bill is passed by the end of next week, when the Senate takes a President's Day break, it would hand President Barack Obama a badly needed political victory. "We want to work with the Republicans and it appears to me, on the jobs program, they want to work with us," Reid told reporters. "We do believe very emphatically that we will be having a bipartisan bill." Passage of a bill with both Democratic and Republican support would contrast sharply with the way Congress has done business for the past year, a reflection of the Democrats' diminished power since Republican Scott Brown scored a stunning victory last month in a special Senate election in Massachusetts. With Brown seated, Senate Democrats will no longer have a filibuster-proof majority in the body, meaning they will need at least some Republican support to pass legislation. Democrats believe a jobs bill that includes tax breaks Republicans support is a good way to break the ice, while also reflecting Obama's renewed emphasis on job creation. "We heard the message of Massachusetts," said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. "They said focus immediately, and don't take your focus off, jobs, the economy, helping the middle class." The tax break for hiring unemployed workers is modeled after a proposal by Schumer and Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah. The measure is an alternative to Obama's proposed tax cut of up to $5,000 for each new worker that employers hire. The Senate alternative would exempt companies from paying the employer's share of Social Security payroll taxes for new workers hired this year, as long as those people had been unemployed at least 60 days. It would save companies 6.2 percent of the new workers' salaries that are subject to Social Security taxes, and would cost about $11 billion over 10 years, according to updated estimates. The bill under discussion Thursday would also extend unemployment payments for those whose benefits have run out, and would renew a program that offers the jobless a subsidy for health insurance premiums under the COBRA program. About $33 billion in popular tax breaks that expired at the end of 2009, including an income tax deduction for sales and property taxes and a business tax credit for research and development, would be extended through 2010. Reid said Thursday morning he hopes senators will be ready to unveil all the details of a bipartisan proposal later Thursday or on Friday. (Source: MSNBC.)  PROMISES, PROMISES: Jobs Bill Won't Add Many Jobs -- Bipartisan tax credit for hiring unemployed workers won't add many jobs (Feb 2010) It's a bipartisan jobs bill that would hand President Barack Obama a badly needed political victory and placate Republicans with tax cuts at the same time. But it has a problem: It won't create many jobs. Even the Obama administration acknowledges the legislation's centerpiece — a tax cut for businesses that hire unemployed workers — would work only on the margins. As for the bill's effectiveness, tax experts and business leaders said companies are unlikely to hire workers just to receive a tax break. Before businesses start hiring, they need increased demand for their products, more work for their employees and more revenue to pay those workers. "We're skeptical that it's going to be a big job creator," said Bill Rys, tax counsel for the National Federation of Independent Business. "There's certainly nothing wrong with giving a tax break to a business that's hired a new worker, especially in these tough times. But in terms of being an incentive to hire a lot of workers, we're skeptical." Rick Klahsen, a tax expert at the accounting firm RSM McGladrey, said his clients need to see business pick up before they can hire more workers. "If demand were increased, they are saying it will take care of itself because I will then have the motivation to go out and hire new employees," Klahsen said. The bipartisan Senate plan would exempt businesses from paying a 6.2 percent Social Security tax on the wages of new employees, as long as the workers have been unemployed at least 60 days. The tax break would run through the end of the year. A company could save a maximum of $6,621 if it hired an unemployed worker after the bill is enacted and paid that worker at least $106,800 — the maximum amount of wages subject to Social Security taxes — by the end of the year. The company could get an additional $1,000 on its 2011 tax return if it kept the new worker for at least a full year. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office recently concluded that reducing Social Security taxes for companies that add workers would be among the most efficient ways for the government to create jobs. However, in showing how difficult it is to create jobs through tax policy, CBO estimates that such a tax break would generate only eight to 18 full-time jobs per $1 million in tax breaks. The Senate proposal, which is more narrow than the one analyzed by CBO, is estimated to cost about $10 billion. That would add 80,000 to 180,000 jobs over the course of a year. The U.S. economy, meanwhile, has lost 8.4 million jobs since the start of the recession. Nonetheless, supporters say it is cheaper, simpler and less vulnerable to abuse than Obama's plan, which would give a $5,000 tax credit for each new worker that employers hire and cost $33 billion. Either way, Obama and lawmakers in both parties still could claim tangible accomplishments in addressing high joblessness and the inability of Republicans and Democrats to work together to solve problems, both top issues among voters early in 2010 midterm election season. Democratic leaders had originally hoped to pass the bill this week, before record snowfalls effectively shut down Congress and much of the rest of the federal government in the nation's capital. Final action now may not come until March. In addition to a tax break for hiring workers, the Senate package would extend unemployment payments for people without jobs for more than six months as well as subsidies to help the jobless continue paying premiums for health insurance they had been getting through their former employers. It also would extend through 2010 about $33 billion in popular tax breaks that expired at the end of 2009, including an income tax deduction for sales and property taxes and a business tax credit for research and development. Those tax cuts make Republicans willing participants in the bill, despite skepticism in both parties that it will produce an abundance of jobs. At a hearing last week, House Democrats peppered Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner with questions about whether a tax break for hiring workers will increase employment. Geithner defended the idea but acknowledged that businesses won't start hiring until demand for their products and services increases. "I think this will provide a little bit more of a boost, a little more spark to make sure as we grow, we're creating more jobs than we otherwise would," he told the House Ways and Means Committee. Rys, of the National Federation of Independent Business, said the credit could speed hiring once employers need more workers. But, he said, NFIB members aren't seeing many signs of improvement. "Right now, business owners just don't have customers," Rys said. "Until you have work for the employee to do, there's really less of a reason to hire a new worker." (Source: ABC News.) Reid Kills Baucus-Grassley Bipartisan Jobs Bill so HIS bill can go forward Reid kills Baucus-Grassley jobs bill (Feb 2010) Members of the Senate Finance Committee unveiled a long-awaited bipartisan jobs bill Thursday morning — only to have it scrapped within hours by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. The Nevada Democrat killed the bill after hearing complaints from members of his own caucus, who argued that Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) had gone too far beyond the core goal of job creation in order to win over Republican support. It was a major rebuke for Baucus, who’d spent weeks working with Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, the ranking Republican on his committee, trying to come up with a bill that Republicans would support. Reid told reporters that the Baucus-Grassley bill wouldn’t do enough to show voters that the Senate was serious about addressing the unemployment problem. “The message is so watered down, with people wanting other things in this big package, that we’re going to have to come back and finish that,” he said. Reid said his bill would include four basic provisions: Build America bonds, a small-business tax program that allows quick expense write-offs, a one-year extension of the highway act and a bipartisan tax-credit deal struck by Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). “And then when we finish that, we’ll move onto the tax extenders and all the other stuff,” Reid told reporters after the weekly Democratic Senate lunch. “But we feel the American people need a message. The message that they need is that we’re doing something about jobs. We don’t have a jobs bill. We have a jobs agenda.” Reid had initially vowed to have a jobs bill on the floor by Monday. But negotiations were slow — and they were made slower still by the epic storms that hit Washington this past week. Now, Reid said, the Senate will most likely take up the measure when the Senate reconvenes after next week’s Presidents Day recess. The House passed a jobs bill before leaving for the holiday recess in December. Reid said he’d made the decision to scale back from the Baucus-Grassley bill before Thursday’s lunch and that members of his caucus were supportive. But Democrats want to see more in the bill than Reid is planning to put in it. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said she’d like fewer tax cuts and more provisions increasing lending to small businesses. “It is my belief that tax credits only go to people who are making money, and they generally keep it,” she told reporters after the lunch. “That’s the way I feel; I don’t know that anyone else agrees with me.” Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) argued that if lawmakers plan to extend corporate tax breaks, they would also extend employment insurance. “He’s trying to keep it simple,” Harkin said of Reid. “But what I think ought to be in the package is unemployment insurance for one year.” Baucus had loaded his bill with tax cuts in the hopes of attracting Republican votes — a decision that outraged many Democrats who thought his bill would do little to create new jobs. “This has morphed into something different than just a jobs bill,” said Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), who led early negotiations over the bill. “I would prefer a jobs bill that focused on specific job-creating initiatives.” “It looks more like a tax bill than a jobs bill to me,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). “What the Democratic Caucus is going to put on the floor is something that’s more focused on job creation than on tax breaks.” But some Democrats were skeptical that Reid’s bill could get enough Republican support to overcome a filibuster. “I don’t think the Republicans are going to vote for it,” said Sen. John Rockefeller (D-W.Va.). “What have they voted for?” (Source: Politico.) Unemployment drops below double digits but still losing jobs Unemployment rate dips to 9.7 percent (Feb 2010) The nation’s unemployment rate fell to 9.7 percent in January even as the economy continued to shed jobs, sending a mixed message to voters eager to see signs of recovery. That’s the first time the unemployment rate has dropped below 10 percent since October, surely welcome news at the White House, where President Barack Obama has declared job creation his Number One goal for 2010. But the Bureau of Labor Statistics report Friday also contained evidence of just how stubborn the jobless picture continues to be, as the economy lost 20,000 jobs last month and 14.8 million people are still out of work. The new jobs figure was slightly worse than analysts had expected, with most forecasting that the economy had added between 5,000 and 15,000 new jobs in January. The report also sends a mixed signal to jittery global markets already reeling from a massive selloff Thursday. The dramatic drop in stock prices began Thursday on Wall Street and continued overnight in the Asian markets. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped below the important 10,000 threshold for a time in late trading Thursday, but struggled back above the mark to finish at 10002.18. That represented a 2.6 percent decline on the day. Market watchers say today’s number will likely impact that global market trend, as analysts look for any evidence that growth in U.S. gross domestic product is translating into jobs that will help Americans begin to recover their financial footing. The dip in the unemployment rate gives Democrats an opportunity to say that their economic policies are taking effect. Obama plans to meet with small business owners Friday at 12:10 p.m., and he will talk about the new job numbers at 12:30 pm. But Republicans on Friday kept up their attacks on Obama, saying his agenda hasn’t been geared toward job growth. “Hiring grows from investment, and businesses and investors need clarity. Instead, the President, Speaker Pelosi, and Leader Reid perpetuate an environment of uncertainty with the threat of even more mandates and red tape, skyrocketing deficits, and tax increases that prevent job creation,” Cantor said. In late January, government figures showed that the U.S. economy had grown at a blistering 5.7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009, the fastest rate in six years. But the number left some economists scratching their heads, wondering how the economy could grow at such a rate without showing dramatic jobs growth. The White House has publicly worried that employers had learned during the recession to do more with fewer workers and use technology to get more productivity out of their existing workforces. (Source: Politico.)
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