So much for the Improvement

[Channman 2]

I've returned from my Self Imposed Exile
Un-employment numbers have been revised down to 8.3% giving a boost to President Barack Obama as campaigning heats up. I know most of my liberal friends are jumping with glee...but what is the truth behind all the hipe?

CNBC: Santelli had this to say...


"You know what i said at 8:30 eastern? we want a million jobs an hour. that's what we want. what we got looked like a good report. i said let's get the calculator out and i did. so did my sources and big blogs many people read like zero hedge. the labor force participation rate if you look at nonseasonally adjusted, a fresh low going back to april of '83. if you look at seasonally adjusted a fresh low participation rate going back to december of '81. what does that mean in english? shrinkage. shrinkage. 1.2 million people are now not considered unemployed anymore. they just have left the system. we need to concentrate on the internals and eventually we want to watch the fixed income market to see if some of this sets in as people do their ciphering.

And there is this by Tyler Durden

"A month ago, we joked when we said that for Obama to get the unemployment rate to negative by election time, all he has to do is to crush the labor force participation rate to about 55%. Looks like the good folks at the BLS heard us: it appears that the people not in the labor force exploded by an unprecedented record 1.2 million. No, that's not a typo: 1.2 million people dropped out of the labor force in one month! So as the labor force increased from 153.9 million to 154.4 million, the non institutional population increased by 242.3 million meaning, those not in the labor force surged from 86.7 million to 87.9 million. Which means that the civilian labor force tumbled to a fresh 30 year low of 63.7% as the BLS is seriously planning on eliminating nearly half of the available labor pool from the unemployment calculation. As for the quality of jobs, as withholding taxes roll over Year over year, it can only mean that the US is replacing high paying FIRE jobs with low paying construction and manufacturing. So much for the improvement."

[billvon 3,111]

So -

Employment really isn't improving. Well, it is, but that's because people just don't want to work. Well, OK, more people are working, but they're sucky jobs, not like the totally excellent jobs people got when Bush was in office.

It's going to be a fun election.

[quade 4]

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And there is this by Tyler Durden

The first rule about Tyler Durden, is don't talk about Tyler Durden.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[Channman 2]

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And there is this by Tyler Durden

The first rule about Tyler Durden, is don't talk about Tyler Durden.

10% Un-employment, thats not all that bad I guess if you have a job, a number most Liberals can live with. Hell alot of these libs are spending their time off trashing our city parks or causing havoc in Oakland, when their not raping, over dosing on drugs, taking a dump in our streets, or combing lice out of their hair

[rushmc 23]

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And there is this by Tyler Durden

The first rule about Tyler Durden, is don't talk about Tyler Durden.

10% Un-employment, thats not all that bad I guess if you have a job, a number most Liberals can live with. Hell alot of these libs are spending their time off trashing our city parks or causing havoc in Oakland, when their not raping, over dosing on drugs, taking a dump in our streets, or combing lice out of their hair

Only AFTER their 99 weeks go by

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[billvon 3,111]

>10% Un-employment, thats not all that bad I guess if you have a job

And getting better all the time.

Of course government jobs are in decline while private sector jobs are on the rise. This confuses and depresses conservatives, who desperately need something to complain about.

[Channman 2]

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>10% Un-employment, thats not all that bad I guess if you have a job

And getting better all the time.

Of course government jobs are in decline while private sector jobs are on the rise. This confuses and depresses conservatives, who desperately need something to complain about.

Not buying it.

Gallup
Underemployment, a measure that combines the percentage of workers who are unemployed with the percentage working part time but wanting full time work, is 18.4% in mid-December, as measured by Gallup without seasonal adjustment. This is up slightly from 18.1% at the end of November and similar to the 18.5% of a year ago.

Gallup, which unlike the BLS, does not fudge it numbers...well at least that what they tell you.

Point goes to Channman

[billvon 3,111]

>Not buying it.

Of course not. And for the next eight months or so conservatives will find ever more imaginative and creative ways to prove to everyone that the economy sucks, and that the increase in jobs and the Dow don't mean anything, that there is a secret Gallup impacted-unrealized-debt-to-aligned-derivative-futures ratio that means the economy is going to implode any day now.

And then, of course, they will pray that it implodes.

I recall a thread by Gawain years ago when the recession started in which did the exact opposite. "It's a bad day to be crying the R word!" was the title. He tried to prove that there was no recession starting, that all the numbers didn't mean a thing, that anyone who claimed that there was a problem with the housing market was just a Bush-hating anti-business liberal.

How'd that turn out?

[kelpdiver 2]

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Point goes to Channman

impartial ref, there.

The market response today seems to belie your claims of doom. I couldn't (in brief look on financial pages) confirm the numbers you speak of. If there was a substantial drop in the working force due to people exhausting their benefits, that is a real quibble, though it's been the standard practice since Reagan.

It has long been claimed that Presidents are very good at tooling the economic levers to get nice momentum during the reelection year. I'm not convinced they're that successful, but I'm sure they do try.

[headoverheels 334]

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The market response today seems to belie your claims of doom.

The U.S. market response today was partly a result of the European market earlier today, which was up more that ours.

[popsjumper 2]

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It has long been claimed that Presidents are very good at tooling the economic levers to get nice momentum during the reelection year. I'm not convinced they're that successful, but I'm sure they do try.

True.

It appears to me that they have been successful more times than not. Many get re-elected...which is their main reason for "tooling the economic levers".

My reality and yours are quite different.
I think we're all Bozos on this bus.
Falcon5232, SCS8170, SCSA353, POPS9398, DS239