The Republican Nomination For President: The Race For The Race For The White House

@Thomas,

Almost 250,000 jobs added. If that continues for the next 8 months, despair is in order for the GOP.

Oh.. wait.... they will just accuse Obama of cooking the numbers.

1 Reply

@revelette,

revelette wrote:

I did read most of the report and while it is true that there remains a large percentage of discouraged workers there has been increased job growth in a lot of areas in these last few years.

This small amount of job growth is not a result of any of Obama's efforts.

It is the people refusing to allow Obama to kill off our free market economy, it is the risk takers.

Obama has nothing to do with job growth, he's all about growth of
government and growing the number of people accepting food stamps

1 Reply

@H2O MAN,

You are free to argue that, but like it or not, the President always gets credit or blame.

You can't blame him so much without the reverse being true that he will get credit when good things happen.

0 Replies

@revelette,

Fair enough. I didn't say there was no job growth, I said it isn't the dominant cause of the decreased unemployment rate.

2 Replies

@parados,

parados wrote:

Almost 250,000 jobs added. If that continues for the next 8 months, despair is in order for the GOP.

The economy needs to add 150,000 jobs per year just to keep up with the growth of the working-age population. Sure, an extra 100,000 is good news, but they don't make as much of a dent as you would expect. Indeed, I would argue that getting excited over news like this is to practice the soft bigotry of low expectations. Job growth like this was routine under president Clinton*. And Clinton wasn't trying to come out from under a Great Recession.
_______
* I can't link to the data. To see it, go to bls.gov, click on the dinosaur besides "Payroll Employment", and select "From: 1993" "To: 2000".

2 Replies

@Thomas,

Quote:

I would argue that to celebrate news like this is to practice the soft bigotry of low expectations

I would argue it's a political reality. To add 250,000 jobs a month for the next 8 months would be the best year in over a decade. While it isn't gangbusters, it will still make a political statement that will not be good for the GOP Presidential candidates.

The economic reality is that a trend will probably increase over time. More jobs means more people buying goods they have done without for a while which in turn means more jobs.

1 Reply

@Thomas,

And, once again, what's a job? How can economic activity be measured by jobs if there's no definition of what they consist of and/or what the pay is?

0 Replies

@parados,

parados wrote:

I would argue it's a political reality.

The two are not mutually exclusive. The soft bigotry of low expectations may well be a political reality. Case in point: Each of this season's Republican candidates would have been deemed miserable just 20 years ago. Neither Romney nor Gingrich would have had a snowball's chance in a supernova against George H. W. Bush---and that would have been a Good Thing.

parados wrote:

The economic reality is that a trend will probably increase over time. More jobs means more people buying goods they have done without for a while which in turn means more jobs.

And I will celebrate it if and when it happens. For now, labor-force dropouts remain the dominant trend in the job market. When I say I'll celebrate "it", the word "it" means that the employment-to-population ratio begins to recover.

1 Reply

@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

I said it isn't the dominant cause of the decreased unemployment rate.

you referenced the discouraged worker group - which the report at your link says is essentially unchanged from a year ago

1 Reply

@ehBeth,

No, it's the employment-to-population ratio that's unchanged. That means the discouraged-worker rate must have risen, or else the reduced unemployment rate would have increased the employment rate.

2 Replies

@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

No, it's the employment-to-population ratio that's unchanged. That means the discouraged-worker rate must have risen, or else the reduced unemployment rate would have increased the employment rate.

from your link

Quote:

In January, 2.8 million persons were marginally attached to the labor
force, essentially unchanged from a year earlier.

<snip>

Among the marginally attached, there were 1.1 million discouraged
workers in January, little different from a year earlier.

1 Reply

@Thomas,

Quote:

And I will celebrate it if and when it happens. For now, labor-force dropouts remain the dominant trend in the job market. When I say I'll celebrate "it", the word "it" means that the employment-to-population ratio begins to recover.

No trouble with that at all. If we would lower our minimum wage to 75 cents per hour...and find lots and lots of Americans willing to work for that price, we could have full-employment almost immediately. Certainly a good portion of the jobs lost to third world workers would return.

1 Reply

@Thomas,

Sorry. I'm using two terms synonymously, so I should probably state explicitly that they're the same thing:

employment rate = employment-to-population ratio (in percent)
unemployment rate = unemployment-to-population ratio (in percent)

0 Replies

@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

Fair enough. I didn't say there was no job growth, I said it isn't the dominant cause of the decreased unemployment rate.

While you do (and have been for a few months now) make a good argument about the decreased labor force participation and how it affects the job rates, I think the overall trend is still a positive one for Obama. If he's able to state, in September or October, 'Our economy has added (almost) 2 million jobs this year alone,' it's going to go over well with voters.

Cycloptichorn

1 Reply

@Cycloptichorn,

I'll be very curious how his campaign team presents this to the public. 3 years ago he stated that if the job market isn't fixed in 3 years time that it would be a one term presidency. They're going to have to do quite a bit of convincing that this mission was accomplished.

(ie: It will take more than putting up a banner on a carrier and just claiming victory)

1 Reply

@ehBeth,

I was going by their tables. Judging by your quotes, their language does not fit their numbers. You can't have fewer unemployed workers and the same number of discouraged workers and the same labor-force participation. That's arithmetically inconsistent. Maybe they're burying it under the hedge-words "essentially unchanged" (but changed) and "little different" (but different).

1 Reply

@Thomas,

I honestly don't think you've worked the numbers out correctly.

1 Reply

@Questioner,

Questioner wrote:

I'll be very curious how his campaign team presents this to the public. 3 years ago he stated that if the job market isn't fixed in 3 years time that it would be a one term presidency. They're going to have to do quite a bit of convincing that this mission was accomplished.

(ie: It will take more than putting up a banner on a carrier and just claiming victory)

What does 'fixed' mean? We aren't in a position to be adding 3, 4, 500k jobs per month. Barring some large government stimulus, or amazing new event driving mass job creation, we're going to continue to see a slow recovery like this for several years.

Here's a chart of private-sector job creation over the last few years:

http://m.static.newsvine.com/servista/imagesizer?file=steve-benen31F0AEC6-F3E6-4882-67C1-1CF2F7957109.jpg&width=600

Here's a chart of weekly initial unemployment claims:

http://m.static.newsvine.com/servista/imagesizer?file=steve-benen89551041-C0D9-02F1-CC53-09B33F61B778.jpg&width=600

The number of jobs we lost between October of 2008 and March of 2009 was just, staggering. Those jobs aren't going to magically come back, no matter what anyone does. The question is, can Obama argue that the trend is turned around, and that our job creation engine is working again? I think he very well can.

Cycloptichorn

2 Replies

@Cycloptichorn,

I have no doubt he can argue it. I'm just hoping that he can argue it well enough to get the couch-sitters off their asses and into the booths.

The problem with promising a magical future is that people expect you to actually follow through with it. While those of us that aren't actively arguing against another Obama term can see obvious signs of improvements (despite the GOP's attempts to sabotage the country and keep job growth down via congressional stonewalling) it's still not the fairy-tale ending that we were sold at the beginning of his campaign.

Fingers crossed here.

2 Replies

@Frank Apisa,

Frank Apisa wrote:

No trouble with that at all. If we would lower our minimum wage to 75 cents per hour...and find lots and lots of Americans willing to work for that price, we could have full-employment almost immediately. Certainly a good portion of the jobs lost to third world workers would return.

I doubt that. Five or so years ago, when Congress enacted a stepwise raise of the minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25, the Wall Street Journal had an article about the percentage of workers affected. Before the raise, as best I remember, two percent of workers earned 5.15, two more percent earned between $5.15 and $7.25. (I can't verify the numbers because I don't subscribe to the Wall Street Journal anymore.) We know the raise didn't dis-employ a lot of the workers affected (which, by the way, contradicted my libertarian predictions and is one of the reasons I have backtracked a great deal on my libertarianism). I doubt that reversing the raise, or going even further, would re-employ a lot of workers.

1 Reply

The Republican Nomination For President: The Race For The Race For The White House

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