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What the Media Didn’t Tell You About Friday’s Unemployment Spike
Townhall.com ^ | 8 June 2008 | Jerry Bowyer

Posted on 06/08/2008 8:20:37 PM PDT by K-oneTexas

What the Media Didn’t Tell You About Friday’s Unemployment Spike By Jerry Bowyer

It wasn’t Bush, it wasn’t greedy corporations, or free trade, or history’s most over-predicted recession. It was not the oil companies, income inequality, or the excesses of cowboy capitalism. None of these things caused the unemployment rate to jump a half a percentage point in one month.

Ask yourself a few questions: Why did unemployment surge at a time when unemployment compensation claims are historically low? More to the point, how could unemployment spike this much without a coinciding spike in corporate lay-offs?

The answer to all of these questions is same: because very few people lost jobs last month. This huge jump in the size of the unemployed comes from new entrants to the economy – hundreds of thousands of them. In short, well over 600,000 people who were not job seekers in April became job seekers in May. And who starts looking for work at the end of Spring? That’s right – students. Hundreds of thousands of students are looking for work right now, and they’re not finding it.

Congress is to blame. Last year Congressional Democrats (along with some Stockholm-Syndromed Republicans) passed the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007, which started a phased hike of the minimum wage from $5.15 an hour to $7.25. Free market economists warned them that this would increase unemployment – that rapid increases in unemployment compensation hit teens and minorities the hardest. But the class-warriors are running the people’s house now, and they would hear none of that, so they took to the floor, let loose the dogs of demagoguery, and saddled America’s pizza parlors, municipal swimming pools, house painting businesses and lawn mowing services with a huge cost increase.

Now, we see the perfectly logical outcome of wage controls – rising unemployment among the most economically vulnerable. The chart above tells the story: Friday’s unemployment spike occurred overwhelmingly among teenagers, and secondarily among African Americans. Just like we said it would. A kid who is at entry level of job skills may be a good deal at 5 bucks an hour, but not at 7. Our anointed leaders gets to glory in their generosity (with other people’s money) and just so long as very few people in the media know that a demand curve slopes downward (a good bet, there), no one calls them on it.

This summer the left will make political lemonade out of a tough student job market. Heck, it may provide a small army of angry unemployed youth to man the campaign, hungry for hope and (loose) change, never once realizing that they’re working to entrench the leftie war on business which left them jobless this summer in the first place.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: economy; minimumwage; newsblackout; unemployment
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I could not find the chart mentioned in the article.
1 posted on 06/08/2008 8:25:05 PM PDT by K-oneTexas
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To: K-oneTexas

Hmmmm...


2 posted on 06/08/2008 8:27:07 PM PDT by Army Air Corps (Four fried chickens and a coke)
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To: K-oneTexas

makes sense.

but the pubie party doesn’t have teflon undies,

and the pubies are in for a shock this fall.


3 posted on 06/08/2008 8:27:37 PM PDT by ken21 ( people die + you never hear from them again.)
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To: K-oneTexas

So, the Dems are making the economy tank so they can make Americans angry enuf to vote for change.


4 posted on 06/08/2008 8:30:20 PM PDT by Ciexyz
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To: K-oneTexas; devolve

In my south Texas town, there are ‘help wanted’ signs in many prominent business windows!

They are also good at rounding up the illegals here, and illegals don’t work in these type of businesses.


5 posted on 06/08/2008 8:30:33 PM PDT by potlatch (MICHELLE OBAMA - The gift that just keeps on giving....!)
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To: K-oneTexas

Excellent read. Makes good points.


6 posted on 06/08/2008 8:31:40 PM PDT by zeebee
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To: K-oneTexas

**Why did unemployment surge at a time when unemployment compensation claims are historically low? More to the point, how could unemployment spike this much without a coinciding spike in corporate lay-offs?*8

College grads and high schoolers looking for jobs. Anyone could see past this headline if they had any brains. Happens nearly every year.


7 posted on 06/08/2008 8:33:09 PM PDT by Salvation (†With God all things are possible.†)
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To: Ciexyz

“So, the Dems are making the economy tank so they can make Americans angry enuf to vote for change.”

Exactly!


8 posted on 06/08/2008 8:33:59 PM PDT by rockinqsranch (Dems, Libs, Socialists...call 'em what you will...They ALL have fairies livin' in their trees.)
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To: K-oneTexas

I totally forgot about the raise in min. wage. No wonder the college grads and especially the high schoolers are not getting jobs.

People can hire adults for that wage!


9 posted on 06/08/2008 8:34:53 PM PDT by Salvation (†With God all things are possible.†)
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To: K-oneTexas

Go ahead let the rats have control...Greater depression part deux... Ignorant Americans that vote for Obama deserve nothing less.


10 posted on 06/08/2008 8:36:56 PM PDT by Typical_Whitey (Prepare to do your time as Corvee labor on the Plantation of Barack and Michell Obama.)
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To: K-oneTexas
Conservatives argued at the time that a rise in the minimum wage would increase unemployment. We were scoffed at then. Now it has happened, and the Democrats fingerprints are nowhere to be found. It sure is a nice gig to not have to take responsibility for one's harebrained schemes.
11 posted on 06/08/2008 8:41:24 PM PDT by fhayek
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To: Salvation
<i>... if they had any brains</i> <br>

<br>

Well, lets see ...

SURGE IN UNEMPLOYMENT STOKES GLOOM (published June 7, 2008)

Democrats on Capitol Hill and advocates for the unemployed pointed to the spike in joblessness in arguing for the swift extension of federal unemployment ...
www.newsobserver.com/business/story/1099622.html 

 

Well Dems = no brains. Scarecrows one and all. 



12 posted on 06/08/2008 8:52:17 PM PDT by K-oneTexas (I'm not a judge and there ain't enough of me to be a jury. (Zell Miller, A National Party No More))
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To: K-oneTexas
In my south Texas town, there are ‘help wanted’ signs in many prominent business windows!

Same in my area. Begging for employees in many companies. I could work 6 jobs if I wanted to and had the time.

13 posted on 06/08/2008 8:55:13 PM PDT by lawnguy (The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil-Cicero)
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To: Ciexyz
Angry Americans are the result of their reaction to the result of Dems doing what Dems do--trash capitalism; promote class warfare; pander ro the have nots; beat up the haves; and piously point to the Repubs who are by then hunkering in a corner defensively covering their heads, instead of covering their @$$e$ by speaking truth to lies.

vaudine

14 posted on 06/08/2008 9:00:11 PM PDT by vaudine (RO)
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To: Army Air Corps

Hmmmm...yes, the democrat run congress strikes again....


15 posted on 06/08/2008 9:02:59 PM PDT by television is just wrong
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To: K-oneTexas

That makes perfect sense!


16 posted on 06/08/2008 9:04:21 PM PDT by swatbuznik
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To: K-oneTexas

So unemployment also surged in May 2007? I don’t think so...

Did it surge in May of 2006, 2005 or 2004? Um, I don’ think so.

This article is pure BS. IF unemployment always surged in May, it would be seasonally adjusted for. This article is a complete like, but all the FreepyAnnas will buy it hook line and sinker without even asking the question about the change in the unemployment rate from April to May for the past 50 years.


17 posted on 06/08/2008 9:06:23 PM PDT by Freedom_Is_Not_Free
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To: Freedom_Is_Not_Free

“complete lie” that is. Sorry, I type too fast and don’t proofread well when I am mad about being lied to.


18 posted on 06/08/2008 9:07:29 PM PDT by Freedom_Is_Not_Free
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To: K-oneTexas

I thought they seasonally adjusted the numbers since every May the same thing happens with new graduates.

John


19 posted on 06/08/2008 9:09:49 PM PDT by Diggity
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To: K-oneTexas
Media= chicken little.
20 posted on 06/08/2008 9:12:00 PM PDT by yldstrk (My heros have always been cowboys--Reagan and Bush)
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