Posted on 03/09/2013 1:04:40 AM PST by Kaslin
The American economic juggernaut keeps churning out good news folks. According to government economists 236,000 jobs were created in February, plus or minus a margin of error of 100,000 jobs.
Anyone wanna take the under here?
In other news, the BLS revised January jobs data down 38,000 jobs so that the net number of jobs created in the first month of the year was a negative 21,000 jobs.
That’s right; 21,000 fewer jobs in January than in December.
No wonder consumer confidence is moving up. The government is lying every month about something, anything, and the people are buying it, at least for the time being.
I don’t know about anyone else, but it makes me feel a lot more secure that I have a government so resourceful that in a pinch they can just make stuff up, plus or minus 100,000 jobs.
I do wish they’d stop pinching me, however.
Because, the news for government economists and policy-makers is even better on unemployment.
Prior to the fall, 2012 general election getting into full swing, unemployment was steadily moving downward as a record number of people dropped out of the workforce; workers giving up hope of ever finding jobs.
Thanks to math sponsored by government economists, for every one (1) person not looking for work, you can subtract one (1) person from the unemployed. In that way it’s much easier for government bureaucrats in DC who have a median household income of $86,000, to tackle unemployment without the whole “Hey, maybe we should create jobs?” mentality mucking everything up.
The fall saw a short hiatus in that trend as the media suddenly had pangs of conscience about reporting real jobs numbers and the administration moved government spending into the third quarter of 2012 to create the appearance of jobs creation until after the election.
Even so unemployment remained flat in the fall.
But now that the government is freed once again of having to justify its existence, unemployment is going down as more people drop out of the workforce and stop looking for work.
According to the BLS, labor participation rates for February dropped from 63.6 percent in January of 2013 to 63.5 percent in February of 2013, a difference of 0.1 percent.
And that’s why today the New York Times can claim “Unemployment at Four-Year Low!” as the BLS unemployment figures reflect a drop in unemployment from 7.8 percent to 7.7 percent, a difference of …0.1 percent.
Ta da!
And the great thing for the government policy-makers is that they only had to create half the jobs in order to maintain the illusion of economic improvement at a FOUR-YEAR HIGH!
Both great taste, AND less filling the competing brands!
In February 2007, when the terrible, evil George W. Bush was president, there were 2,427,000 more jobs than there are today.
In February 2007, when the terrible, evil George W. Bush was president, there were 5,167,000 fewer unemployed.
As our colleague Peter Schiff points out, the last time the labor situation was so dire was during the 1981 recession.
“The continuing decline in the labor force participation rate was at least as important a factor as the new jobs created in bringing down the official unemployment rate to 7.7%,” writes Schiff. “The participation rate has now dropped to 63.5%, the lowest level since 1981 when the rate had plunged due to a terrible recession. It is important to realize that at that time women had not fully entered the labor force.” [My emphasis]
So here’s to the margin of error, government economists and a smaller labor participation rate.
Thanks to them we’ll tackle unemployment for twice as long, with half as many jobs.
And no one will notice.
236,000 jobs created, and 336,000 people dropped out of the job market. Or something like that. 8.5 Million less jobs now than when the community organizer was anointed. What a great country!
It is worse than that. The JOBS numbers are monthly....the unemployment claims numbers are WEEKLY! You never hear a media mouthpiece for Obama EVER say this. Only that the “jobs created” numbers ‘seem to be’ ‘look like’ ‘show a trend upwards’ and the rest of their lying BS.
I don’t believe anything, any representative of the government who is under control of the Executive Branch says, period. They are liars.
Worse still, there was a net decline of 70,000 full-time jobs, meaning most of the newly created jobs are part-time. Factoring in the huge 236,000 drop in labor force participation, indicates that most of those new part-time jobs were taken by people already employed part-time, picking up a second part-time job to make ends meet. It appears that the rumors are true of companies cutting full-timers to part-timers in response to ObamaCare.
Quite frankly, despite today’s euphoria over the BLS report, these are the most troubling employment stats I’ve seen in the last four years. It is my non-professional opinion that this economy has entered its death throes. It will not survive another fours years of this. No way....
All you need to know.
Every month they give two numbers. The one that gets media attention, and the revised number. if the first one is favorable to the dems, it is promoted by the media. The second one is generally unfavorable, so it is ignored.
Question: the next month’s number. Is it in comparison to the previous month’s FIRST number or the REVISED number?
I want to know.
I wonder if she counts as 200% employment (2 jobs) or only 168% ([28+39]/40).
FWIW, neither job pays very well and, as a social work major, she is well aware of government programs which would enable an equal or better lifestyle than she gets working two jobs. But we didn't raise her that way.
This is just step-1 of the setup for next month.
Next month when the employment numbers go down and unemployment goes up (as reported by the Obama administration) the reason will be:
(insert drum roll here)
SEQUESTRATION and those dag-nab un-patriotic, intractible republicans.
I start my 5th part time job on Monday. 3 are on call, casual. One is 1-2 days per month. This new one is 20-30 hours per week. That will end up being my priority. I am retired but inflation is kicking my butt. There will be few if any jobs that are full time in the future.
I start my 5th part time job on Monday. 3 are on call, casual. One is 1-2 days per month. This new one is 20-30 hours per week. That will end up being my priority. I am retired but inflation is kicking my butt. There will be few if any jobs that are full time in the future.It's impossible to do this much damage to the economy by accident or through incompetence alone in only four years.
It has to be intentional.
Maybe something like a plan for "fundamental transformation".
“Worse still, there was a net decline of 70,000 full-time jobs, meaning most of the newly created jobs are part-time.”
That is an important point; this is a DIRECT RESULT of ObamaCare, too. There is no recovery, and the average person knows it; Romney lost because Obama’s media convinced enough voters that he couldn’t deliver one, not because Americans believed Obama was engineering one.
The “Rise of the 29ers”
I suspect it helps the unemployment stats because most places will have to hire additional 29ers to pick up the slack.
“FWIW, neither job pays very well and, as a social work major, she is well aware of government programs which would enable an equal or better lifestyle than she gets working two jobs. But we didn’t raise her that way.”
She is making the right call in terms of having discretionary funds and options the perpetually dependent don’t enjoy (the major option being she won’t have to live around the perpetually dependent, with all that entails). A much larger problem is the demographic consequence of this; the electorate is changing very quickly as the white birthrate (at least in my area, which still has plenty of white people) has dropped to 0. Future elections will reflect this (if the past two didn’t); this isn’t a black/white issue, but a white/”other” issue, and the consequences are permanent.
“I suspect it helps the unemployment stats because most places will have to hire additional 29ers to pick up the slack.”
That is exactly what happened; companies that might have hired 4 full-time people hired five or six “29ers”. The consequences of the Obamunists are simply ignored by his media (as was also the case of the “cash-for-clunkers” impact on the used-car market).
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