The US Economy

Then there was the debate agreement just today...

Sorry, timber, my mistake. I didn't bother to look at dates, and forgot Kay had made more than one speech during the past couple of years. Just reading parts of your post was my mistake, because I thought you left out some parts of his speech - even though it may have supported your highlighted sections of his speech in your post.

Huh?


NP, buddy. We all make 'em. In fact, in this instance, we both mafe 'em :wink:

Wunner if this thread'll come back to life if it gets a little nudge. Just to offer a point-of-discussion, I'll offer this:

Some would pose the recently created jobs do not really replace those "lost", as these new jobs are "lower paying". Such folks disregard the fact that, according to The Bureau of Labor Statistics the average private sector weekly wage in Q4 2000 was $474.03 for an average 34.4 hour workweek, whereas the average private sector weekly wage in Q1 '04 was $523.95 (up from Q4 '03's $520.55) for an average 33.7 hour workweek, or roughly 10.5% higher wages for roughly 2.5% fewer hours worked than in the last quarter of The Previous Administration. The same official tables show that in Q4 2000, total US private employment tallied 135,593,000, versus the most recent period's total of 138,388,000. Now, if nearly 3 million more people are employed today than were employed at the end of 2000, and the average worker today is earning nearly $50.00 more per week in a shorter workweek than was the average worker in the comparison period, it is difficult to make an argument either for wage dilution or for overall job loss; any way I look at it, there are, in absolute terms, more wage earners today, and, individually, those wage earners today are earning more money for their labors, while putting in less time per week doing so, than was the case when The Current Administration took the helm. I fail to see how more people, in the absolute, earning more money, in the absolute, over less time, in the absolute, as compared to the situation, in the absolute, at the close of The Previous Administration evidences any sort of employment crisis attributable to The Current Administration. I absolutely can't get there from here.

timber, Looks like good numbers to me! I think we are finally on a solid recovery, but it will be slow. The employment numbers for the past three months are very encouraging.

c.i. : noticed the word recovery is in green and underlined: are you trying to play a little joke on us ? brw. i would think that the economic recovery will be helped by a drop in oil price (courtesy of colonel gaddafi ). isn't it interesting that the saudis are now claiming that lybia is planning terror attacks - seems to me, the saudis are concerned that lybia's re-entry into the the north-american oil market will not benefit them. hbg

hbg, There must be a special programming on A2K that highlights certain words to connect to some link. I've notice it this past several days. It ain't me do'n it. We'll have to ask Craven.

Its "Sponsored Links", c.i. , something being tried out to help A2K pay for itself. You might think of it as advertising you can choose whether to pursue, as opposed to the more common popups and banners and the like. Hover your cursor over the green link, and you'll get a balloon that tells about the sponsor site. If it appeals to you, click on it, if it doesn't appeal to you, just ignore the green links. Its advertising that's up to you.

It is, I think, about as unobtrusive a form of commerical presence as I've ever bumped into. Doesn't bother me in the slightest.

I'm all for it; somebody has to pay for this site, and this is an excellent way to do it. c.i.
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There's a report in today's San Jose Merc in the Business Section that shows that high tech companies are doing much better than last year. We should begin to see more hirings, but it was reported this past week by Hewlett Packard that they're laying off over 1,000. There is also a report that CEO Fiona Carley is not doing well as the head of the company; she stinks.

That's "Carly (short for 'Carleton") Fiorina", c.i.

And heres an actual HP-related headline, from late last week:



Fiorina does not enjoy the unqualified support either of the Board of Directors or of The Shareholders ... indeed there negative opinions of her performance as CEO. Nonetheless, no credible challenge to her leadership of the company is evident. Damnit. I don't like her either ... speaking as an actual shareholder of HP and a former shareholder both of Compaq and HP, prior to the merger, which I opposed.

If this is the most protracted recession of recent history, it's also likely to be the one with the slowest recovery. I'm hoping the next expected wave of inflation hasn't been set off by the energy cost crisis.

Gas prices are actually going down slightly in my area. At the el cheapo station where I buy it the price has dropped four cents. It's still above $2.00 but headed in the right direction.

I paid $2.39 for premium today at Costco. The same price as two weeks ago.

I paid $2.07 which is a dime below the average around here.

c.i. : i was playing dumb re. the green/underline. had already discused it with ehbeth; what i found kind of funny was that the explanation that popped up, bore no reletionship to the word - i guess that's one of the problems of having a program decide what action to take. the highlight has now disappeared. hbg

Like magic.

The links to shop via A2K I believe expire when one logs off and logs back in. I've not explored this any further with A2K administration but that's my experience.

Is this in nominal dollars or in real dollars? If it's in nominal dollars, then 8% of this 13% increase is just inflation. This would leave the US with a 5% wage increase over 4 years, which is better than nothing but not exactly a miracle.


That's not what the BLS is telling me. When I follow the "national employment" link on their home page, then click the dinosaur next to "change in payroll employment", then select "other formatting options" to get the actual employment number rather than the rate of its change, I get 132 million and something for the last quarter of 2000 and 131 million and something for May 2004. I looked for the "private employment" number you were referencing, but couldn't find it, which may well be my fault. But judging by the numbers I did find on the BLS homepage, the Current Administration is still about 1.2 million jobs short. Which is more of a setback than it looks like, because the working age population has grown during the last four years. (I think by about a percent per year. If this point is controversial, I'll be happy to look it up.)

Thomas, I support your thesis on what's happened to wages and employment during the past four years. What I keep hearing about wages is that people losing their high wage jobs are being replaced by lower wage jobs - generally speaking. As for the employment/unemployment numbers, we keep hearing about the unemployment rate, but that's a bad gage of what is happening because many people that cannot find jobs drop off the charts and no longer counted as "unemployed." We must also remember that the population of the US is increasing by several million every year, so the higher wage, lower unemployment numbers just don't add up. I've heard several pundits say that the unemployment increased by 1.2 to 2 million during Bush's tenure. That pretty much agrees with your number. I guess we can find statistics to argue for both sides of the argument, but the interpretation is what gets muddled.