Where is the US economy headed?

What is your obsession with the oversized graph, keltic? To correct the record, it did not make everybody's post unreadible. It simply required them to scroll sideways to read the post, for that page only. My apologies, and to also correct the record, I probably would not do it again. You would think I had just slapped everybody around here by posting an enlarged graph! At least I don't call other people barnyard names as some other people do here, and get away with it by the way. I guess posting an enlarged graph is the cardinal sin here?

Yeah, enhance your calm

Cycloptichorn

So keltic, if I am a teenage girl and quit high school, go sleep around, have 3 children, bing bing bing, get no education, have no responsible husband, no responsible boyfriend, smoke 2 packs a day, party, and then wonder why I am broke, then you are telling me that is government's fault?

In fact, LBJ's Great Society probably encouraged more of the above scenario, because people found out that having more children and not having husbands enabled them to get more welfare from the government. The decline of stable families is one important reason for many of the societal problems. Maybe you need to blame that as much as the evil corporations? One thing you can bank on, if you reward a behavior, it will increase.

I would need to check the statistics, but I would bet you that there are far less intact families now, percentage wise, than 50 years ago.

P.S. This addition. The only graph online I can find so far (seems to be a lack of interest in this....hmmmm) is the following, which shows an increase from 24% to 28% from 1990 to 2001:

http://www.aecf.org/cgi-bin/kc.cgi?action=graph&area=United%20States&variable=fsp&year=1990&year=2001

Well, if its that big a deal to you, there are proactively remedial options available to you beyond mere complaining - you might install a current browser, such as Firefox or IE7, which, either natively or via plugin, conveniently permit you to resize your page display to suit your preferences, globally or instance-by-instance, or you could increase your monitor's screen resolution, or you could get yourself a more capable monitor, for instance. I'll note for record that with a current browser, "screen stretching" need not be evident even on a 12.1" screen tablet set to 1280x768/32 Bit Color, and just about regardless of browser, rarely if ever occurs on a 24" 16:9 display monitor set to 1600x1200/32 Bit Color.

OK, I'll bite. How do you use Firefox to resize the page display to avoid the problem of page stretching?

I am going to take at shot at this, but I suspect it will end up muddying the water even more.
I wandered around the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (bls.gov) for a while and came up with this for starters: Civilian Non-instititional Population Levels by month since 1993 (Glossary: not inmates of jails or homes for the aged and not on active military service)

January 1993: Age 20 and Over- 180,129,000
August 1998: Age 20 and Over- 189,790,000 An increase of 5.4%

January 2001: Age 20 and Over- 197,955,000
August 2006: Age 20 and Over- 212,442,000 An Increase of 7.3%

I could not find a breakout of 25-54 year olds in the population. In fact I had to start with 16 and older and then subtract numbers from another table of 16 to 19 year olds.

And that is when I had the "aha" sensation---or what I think is "aha" sensation. In 1996 or so, the children of the post war baby-boomers hit the 25-54 year old work force that was the bone of contention here for awhile. And they got jobs, perhaps menial but perhaps in the rapture of the dot.com craze that burst in 2000.
And now, or in say 2000, us "old farts" are falling out of the 25-54 group.

So the term "full time employed" excludes the entire baby boom generation.

Did that put EVERYONE to sleep?

Wow. I sure can kill a thread. Ignore my last post and go back to whatever yall were bickering about.

Work is a good thing is it? That's news to me. I bloody hate it.

The Protestant ethic and all that.

Good old Bill. He got their noses to the grindstone goodstyle.

I read your post, realjohnboy, and found it interesting. I did not do the research you did, but have no reason to doubt it, and if I am interpreting it correctly, it blows keltic's argument completely out of the water. In other words, it depends on what portion of the population is of working age, or in keltic's case - how many percentagewise was in his cherrypicked bracket of 25-54, proving once again that figures don't lie, but liars will figure. That is why I went back to the most simple analysis in my debate with keltic and used the unemployment rates starting before Clinton and extending into the current administration, and it showed we are doing pretty good now as compared to historical cycles. I see no compelling reason to muddy the water by placing customized conditions on which portion of the population to do an analysis.

So you found out that the population over 20 is increasing year from year. Okay. Now consider this: The population UNDER 20 is also increasing year to year. That's because the population of the United States is increasing, period. It has been ever since the first census.


America's population has been going up, up, up since Colonial times.






I'm sorry you could not, because it is there.

Yes, some of the people who were in the 25-54 year old age group in the nineties were no longer in it when we passed 2000. And some of the people who were NOT in the 25-54 year old age group yet in the nineties entered it after 2000.

Isn't that normal?

As I stated before, I selected the 25-54 year old age group for a variety of reasons. A 20 year old working full time might be a fairly recent high school dropout whose work situation reflects that fact more than his age, or if he is a high school grad he might be working an easy-to-get job, rather than a job with a future, because he plans on entering college in the next year or two. I know several people in that age group who are doing that-they are not going after their career yet, they are just bringing in an income until they start college.

And for the over 55 age group, there is the matter of voluntary retirement complicating things.

The people 25 to 54 years old, however, are the people who by and large are on their career track, who have their education behind them except as a part time endeavor, who are raising kids, buying houses and paying off mortgages. If an economy is going to be said to be doing well, people who are in this age group must be doing well.

The people who are younger than this or older than this by and large do not have these responsibilities, as well as further complications I mentioned earlier.

By contrast, the people who are 25-54 are on their career track, and pursuing it for all it's worth.




Oh, no, not at all. I never, ever tried to give the impression that to be full time employed, you have to be between 25 and 54. I only wanted to vive a picture of the employment situation for people who, I am sure most would agree, were in the "heart" of their working careers.

To the folks who still question the choice of the 25 to 54 year old age group, I offer the following comparison.

Suppose we have two different countries with equal populations and equal working populations,.

However, we find that full time employed are growing faster than the population for people 16 to 25 years old and people 55 to 64 years old, but that full time employed people are growing slower than populatin growth for people 25 to 54 years old.

In country B, it is the reverse. 25 to 54 year olds are getting jobs faster than their population growth, but full time employed people are growing slower than population for 16 to 25 year olds and 55 to 64 year olds.

Which country has the better economic situation?

Rather obvious, isn't it? Country B, with the people 25 to 54 years old getting jobs more readily than the older and younger group is in much, much better shape.

In Country B, the younger group might have a little harder time entering the wrkforce, but once they are in there, the opportunites are great indeed. By contrast, in Country A the younger group can enter the workforce easily but once they are in there for a few years, things start getting rough for a long, long time. Who the heck wants that for a future?

In Country B, the employeds in the 55-64 year old group are not keeping pace with the population. This might well be because they did so well during the previous thirty years of working they decided to retire before 65. But even if that is not the case, at least this group had three decades of expanding opportunities to get themselves set up. In country A, people have decreasing opportunites for thirty years, then finally things get better when they hit 55. That is not everyone's idea of a great working career.

Would you rather live in a country where it might take you a few years to get started, but once you get your foot in the door the opportunities multiply, or would you like to live in a country where you can get started easily enough, but once you do you get stuck in a track that doesn't pay off much for three decades, and then things get better?

I think most people would prefer to take a few years to get started, then enjoy the better opportunities.

That is why I focused on the 25 to 54 year old age group. I think tracking this group gives a better picture of what people's working careers are really like than a mere snapshot of all age groups.

President of fantasyland

Bush is blind and deaf to growing middle class anxiety

BY ANDREA BATISTA SCHLESINGER

If you want to learn about the state of America today, you're better off turning to The Donald than to The President.
Donald Trump said last week that "The middle class is disappearing and America is becoming a two-class society. Soon you will be either rich or poor."

This isn't news to squeezed middle-class Americans. But when even Donald Trump is warning about the death of the American Dream, isn't it time for our nation's leader to pay attention?

Apparently not. The cheerleader-in-chief has been traveling the country talking up the strength of the economy. In every official statement President Bush has made about the economy over the last six months, he has been relentlessly sunny, touting the falling deficit and rising Dow. Meantime, under his nose, everything that defines the American Dream of a middle-class lifestyle is at risk.

Sending your kids to college? Tuition has shot up at least 40% for public four-year schools over the last five years.

Owning your own home? Foreclosure rates have increased, new Census Bureau data show that the burden of housing costs has grown significantly since 2000, and with the boom cooling, who knows how many will suffer because they put everything into their homes.

The security of a dignified retirement? With union membership at its lowest, companies defaulting on pensions and personal saving at an all-time low, it's a mirage.

In the face of all this, Bush remains in a state of utter economic denial. At a recent visit to the Meyer Tool factory in Ohio, a state where wages are lower and jobs are fewer than in 2000, he proclaimed that "This economy of ours is strong. And one of the main reasons it's strong is because of the tax cuts that we passed."

Maybe it's strong for corporate America, but not for my dad. Like lots of New Yorkers, he's saddled with skyrocketing fuel bills, an expensive health insurance plan and out-of-pocket prescription and dental costs that are approaching the budget of a small nation.

Even Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson acknowledged that "Many Americans simply aren't feeling the benefits. Many aren't seeing significant increases in their take-home pay."

So Donald Trump, famous for living in the lap of luxury, and Paulson, former CEO of Goldman Sachs with a net worth of $700 million, are more attuned to middle-class economic anxiety than a self-styled populist President?

Bush's bubble isn't just a political problem. You can't create urgency to address our health care crisis without first acknowledging that almost one in two working-age Americans with moderate to middle incomes lacked health insurance for at least part of the year in 2005.

Here in New York, the consequences are even greater. Middle-class neighborhoods are disappearing, and thanks to the high cost of living here, one in two renters spend at least a third of their gross income on housing.

If the President's optimism paid the bills, we'd all be fine. But it doesn't. So it's time that he spend a little less time smiling, and a little more time listening - if not to American families, than at least to Donald Trump.

Unemployment down. Democrats hate this news.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,227282,00.html

Hmm, and what about the US labour costs which are said "to provide further disturbing evidence that inflation is back as a serious threat to the world's largest economy"?

News flash. Unemployment figures only reflect the people who lost their jobs six months ago or less. After that, the government considers you as no longer looking for work.

Republicans won't mention that.

What about the people who lost their jobs a few years ago and still haven't found their way back into the work force?

We know there are plenty still out there, because the growth in jobs has not kept pace with population growth among people 25 to 54 years old-the heart of the workforce.

Anyway you look at it, the jobs versus population growth for the people in the heart of the workforce is as shown below.

You tried the 25 to 54 garbage before, Keltic, so do you have anything pertinent for a change?

It's not garbage. It most certainly is pertinent. And it sheds light on your supposedly "great" unemployment news.

The unemployment figure you quote reflects only the people who have been laid off in the last six months. After the unemployment benefits expire, in most cases the individual is no longer included in that statistic. So if a great many people were laid off a couple of years ago and still haven't found their way back into the work force, it will never be reflected in your figures.

As far as the 25 to 54 year old age group goes, it is simply the heart of the workforce, the age at which individuals raise children and buy houses. You might think that if a 34 year old parent of three children loses his/her $20/hour job at an auto plant the same month a 17 year old starts his first job at Taco Bell that we have an even swap. I do not. Hence, the importance of the examining the employment situation of those in heart of the workforce, that is, the 25 to 54 year old age group.

The fact is, employment in this group has not kept pace with the population growth-it is falling behind. That is a far more accurate picture of the employment situation than your statistic, where people laid off more than six months ago simply no longer count as unemployed if they haven't found a job yet.

Why not simply use the most accurate statistic as it applies to the entire population? No need to skew the result by choosing some arbitrary age window. As for people that are unemployed past the time limit and aren't counted, this has always been true has it not? As for people that give up on employment, there have always been a percentage of those. And job outlooks for college graduates and skilled people are pretty good right now.

No matter how good the economy is during a Republican administration, Democrats will dig up the worst figures they can possibly find. The fact is the economy is pretty good. And besides, the president is not the only factor in the economy, far from it.

http://www.economagic.com/em-cgi/daychart.exe/form

P.S. I can't think of anybody I know of that is unemployed right now, and I know alot of people. If I think hard, I might think of somebody, but honestly, people that have skills, even in the trades, are all employed with pretty good paying jobs, or I know a few people that are self employed and doing fine.

Good link, okie, I get a blank.


FYI, what keltic has posted is not garbage. The overriding information on all these numbers is very simply that under Bush, job creation has been the worst since Herbert Hoover. Job creation must keep up with those entering the work force, which all major economists say is about 150,000 per month. As keltic has said, the government's unemployment rates excludes those no longer looking for jobs. That your personal observations says otherwise means nothing. You must look at the "big" picture concerning the US 1) monthly creation of new jobs, 2) where most new employment is being created (mostly service industry), 3) if wages have kept up with inflation, 4) why industry continues to cut health insurance and 401k benefits from more employees every year, and 5) how the middle class is supposed to pay for the increasing cost of college education, higher fuel costs, and medical care.

You probably haven't noticed, but the biggest auto makers in the US are laying off workers by the thousands. Many factories in the US have been offshored to Asia and other countries. Many high tech jobs have been offshored to India and China; they're growing while we reduce ours.

Many new college grads are having difficulty finding jobs.

Most consumer's debt are at its highest ever.

The federal deficit is being funded by China and Japan.

Our trade deficit is also unmanageable; this only exacerbates the value of the US dollar, because there's too much dollars trasnferred overseas for which there is not enough US production to support. They will begin to buy our assets, and the US will lose control of our productive capacity and real estate.

You think the US economy is good, just because the US government says our unemployment is 4.4 percent? You have much learning to do about macro and micro economics.