Does that make James Pethokoukis and me “jobs truthers”?
How about Jack Welch?
Rick Santelli saw it coming,
How about these economists: Unemployment drop ‘implausible … a statistical quirk’?
Perhaps the unemployment figures are based on a poll.
“The decline in the jobless rate came primarily because the labor force participation rate fell to 63.5 percent, its worst level in more than 30 years.”
New Jobs at 96,000, Missing Expectations; Rate Hits 8.1%
Employment growth remained weak in August, with just 96,000 new positions created but the unemployment rate dropped to 8.1 percent, according to a report that raises the possibility of more Federal Reserve easing.
The decline in the jobless rate, from 8.3 percent in July, came primarily because the labor force participation rate fell to 63.5 percent, its worst level in more than 30 years. The civilian labor force contracted by 368,000.
…
…job reports for June and July were revised lower. The June count fell from 64,000 to 45,000, while July’s number came in at 141,000 from an originally reported 163,000.
Now the depressing details of the jobs report:
– Nonfarm payrolls increased by only 96,000 in August, the Labor Department said, versus expectations of 125,000 jobs or more. The manufacturing sector, much touted by the president in his convention speech, lost 15,000 jobs.
– Since the start of the year, job growth has averaged 139,000 per month vs. an average monthly gain of 153,000 in 2011.
– As the chart at the top shows, the unemployment rate remains far above the rate predicted by Team Obama if Congress passed the stimulus. (This is the Romer-Bernstein chart.)
– While the unemployment rate dropped to 8.1% from 8.3% in July, it was due to a big drop in the labor force participation rate (the share of Americans with a job or looking for one). If fewer Americans hadn’t given up looking for work, the unemployment rate would have risen.
– Reuters notes that the participation rate is now at its lowest level since September 1981.
– If the labor force participation rate was the same as when Obama took office in January 2009, the unemployment rate would be 11.2%.
– If the participation rate had just stayed the same as last month, the unemployment rate would be 8.4%.
To me, this makes the Democratic convention not just bad, but infuriating. This many Americans are suffering and they put Sandra Fluke on a stage to talk about her need for free birth control? Insulting.
Ignore the Unemployment Rate, Take Aspirin
More here.
Spain: Go elsewhere, young man (and woman)!
As the country hopes for a huge bailout, Spanish newspaper El País has an article in Spanish inciting Spaniards of all ages to legally look for work anywhere in the world, since Spain’s unemployment rate is a mind-boggling 25%.
By “anywhere in the world”, I really mean anywhere, including Communist China. The only continent they don’t mention is Africa.
Time to pack your bags? A review of opportunities abroad.
- The labor market is not recovering, and emigration is the most frequent alternative.
- Europe is the preferred option for Spaniards.
- Latin America and USA follow. China has opportunities for the most daring.
English-speakers in engineering, tech, and health-related professions are in demand. The article says that recruiters from Norway, Austria, Holland, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, United Kingdom, France and Switzerland are hiring Spaniards. Singapore, Israel are also hiring. The Latin American countries are ranked by most-restrictive (Brazil and Chile) to least restrictive. The only country they do not recommend is India.
They have a world map showing the local unemployment rates, and jobs in demand.
This is terrible in two ways: Spain had briefly recovered from the centuries-long diaspora of its best and brightest, most of which were not schooled but found education and opportunity in other lands (as my grandparents did). Now the brain drain is striking twice as hard, with Spanish engineers looking for work elsewhere, even unemployment among engineers is “only” 8%.
The article goes on to compare entrance restrictions among countries, and advises anyone contemplating China to look in medium-sized cities, settle for much lower pay, and, if you are going to live there while job hunting, to give yourself six months to learn the local language and have 4,000-5,000€ to live on.
It ends by saying,
Now all you need to do is to gather your courage and pack your bags. These countries offer a better job future than Spain. Without a doubt.
Back to the future, again.
“You didn’t build that.”
If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.
How “You didn’t build that” became “He didn’t say that”, via Instapundit,
There is no nebulousness here. Beyond the paragraph quoted above, Obama calls government spending “the investments that grow our economy.” He ridicules the tendency of Americans to brag about being hard workers with a variant of “So’s your old man.” (“Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.”) He instinctively names “a great teacher” when looking for somebody to credit for causing success in the working world. The president has boldly presented his view on how an economy works. His supporters should give him the respect of taking his words seriously.
Mitt’s response:
These hands ad:
‘You Didn’t Build That!’ … Oh Yeah?
And,
The Ultimate Takedown of Obama’s ‘You Didn’t Build That’ Speech
Today’s chart: Private sector
This is not the McCain campaign,
Check out this ad just released that hits Obama both on the Solyndra scandal and unemployment on the SAME DAY the media is now digesting the rise in unemployment to 8.2% for the month of May.
Speaking of unemployment,
There wasn’t much good news in the Labor Department report Friday, but the news was especially bad for Hispanics, for whom the unemployment rate spiked to 11 percent in May — up from 9.8 percent just a month ago
And 766,000 More Women Unemployed Today Than When Obama Took Office, and Core 25-54 Employment Rates Still Near Historic Lows.
8.2% unemployment. Hey, @davidaxelrod, what was that you were saying about Romney’s 4.7% unemployment rate in MA yesterday? #tcot #p2
— RB (@RBPundit) June 1, 2012
CBO: Real unemployment at 15%
From the Congressional Budget Office report,
Understanding and Responding to Persistently High Unemployment, February 2012, (h/t Big Government)
United States is experiencing the longest stretch of high unemployment since the Great Depression
How bad?
Many people would like to work but have not searched for a job in the past four weeks, or are working part-time but would prefer full-time work. If those people were counted among the unemployed, the unemployment rate in January 2012 would have been about 15 percent.
Since High Real Unemployment Data Reflect Poorly On Obama, the Brokest Nation In History Fusses Instead About Sex, as Mark Steyn points out (h/t Instapundit):
Just to emphasize, this isn’t the doom-laden dystopian fancy of a right-wing apocalyptic loon like me; it’s the official Oval Office version of where America’s headed.
Additionally,
And, as Chart 5-1 on page 58 of the official Obama budget “Analytical Perspectives” makes plain, your feckless, decadent rulers have no plans to do anything about it.
Timothy Geithner, Secretary of the Treasury, actually said,
on behalf of the Obama White House, to Rep. Paul Ryan: “You are right to say we’re not coming before you today to say ‘we have a definitive solution to that long term problem.’ What we do know is, we don’t like yours.”
Hear him say it,
Back to Mark Steyn,
Instead, the Democrats shriek, ooh, Republican prudes who can’t get any action want to shut down your sex life! According to CBO projections, by midcentury mere interest payments on the debt will exceed federal revenues.
For purposes of comparison, by 1788 Louis XVI’s government in France was spending a mere 60% of revenues on debt service, and we know how that worked out for His Majesty shortly thereafter.
Meanwhile, a post-menopausal Andrea Mitchell is scandalized over a very old joke.
Mitchell, married to former chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank Alan Greenspan, apparently can’t take her mind off sex long enough to peruse the real scandal.
With real unemployment at 15%, and gasoline prices expected to rise above $4.50/gallon by Memorial Day, you can’t help but wonder what distraction the media is going to concoct next.
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The out-of-touch State of the Union
If you read or watched the SOTU, all you can conclude is that the words spoken are out of touch with reality.
Fact Checking the SOTU: Corporate Taxes
Let’s do some fact checking on President Obama’s corporate tax comments in last night’s State of the Union.
Claim: “Right now, companies get tax breaks for moving jobs and profits overseas.”
False: There are no such breaks. Instead, we punish U.S. and foreign businesses for investing and creating jobs here.
Claim: “If you’re a business that wants to outsource jobs, you shouldn’t get a tax deduction for doing it.”
False: There is no such tax deduction.
Claim: “No American company should be able to avoid paying its fair share of taxes by moving jobs and profits overseas.”
False: America is not a prison camp. Besides, imposing a 40-percent tax rate on corporations that invest here is not a “fair share.”
Claim: “From now on, every multinational company should have to pay a basic minimum tax.”
False: We’ve already got a corporate “alternative minimum tax,” and it’s an idiotic waste of accounting resources that ought to be repealed.
Clearly, Obama can not run on his record,
And that doesn’t count the recycling,
So he’ll blame Congress, even when This President has been “obstructed” less than anyone since LBJ.
People are hurting, and badly. The official unemployment rate may have fallen, slightly, but the real unemployment rate — the number of working-age Americans who aren’t working — rose from about 12% before the 2008 crisis, to about 23%, and hasn’t come down. That includes people who have retired early because they can’t find work, spouses who used to earn a second income but have gone back to homemaking because work isn’t available, self-employed people whose businesses have collapsed, young people who live in their parents’ basement because they can’t afford tuition and can’t find work.
(h/t Instapundit)
As for the energy part, check out what the Institute for Energy Research has to say.
While you’re at it, Warren Buffett profited from the Obama administration’s decision to deny the Keystone Pipeline. Guess whose secretary was sitting next to the First Lady?
UPDATE,
TigerHawk put the SOTU through the shredder. Go read it all
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