114
   

Where is the US economy headed?

 
 
spendius
 
  1  
Reply Tue 30 Jun, 2009 03:27 pm
@cicerone imposter,
The election was on Nov 4th ci.

Isn't it the point that some revision of campaign promises started on Nov 5? The Bonfire of the Vanities night.
0 Replies
 
cicerone imposter
 
  1  
Reply Wed 1 Jul, 2009 09:14 pm
It's going to be a very slow recovery:

Quote:
Jobs data signals hurdles amid factory glimmer
By John Parry John Parry Wed Jul 1, 4:53 pm ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) " U.S. manufacturing mustered its highest level of activity in nearly a year in June but surprising weakness in private sector employment signaled how feeble an economic recovery might be, reports released on Wednesday showed.

Some parts of the economy are showing signs that the 18-month-old recession, the most protracted in decades, may soon end, but job losses are seen accumulating long after economic growth resumes.

"Even though the economy is starting to show signs of being about to turn, that's not the case for the labor market," said Nigel Gault, chief U.S. economist at IHS Global Insight in Lexington, Massachusetts. "The labor market is still getting worse, but it's getting worse more slowly."

U.S. private employers slashed a bigger-than-expected 473,000 jobs in June, according to a report from ADP Employer Services, released a day before the closely watched U.S. government nonfarm payrolls report is due out.

However, the ADP report showed the pace of private job losses slowed from the 485,000 lost in May. Since the labor market typically continues to deteriorate even after recessions end, the report left optimists' hopes intact that a feeble economic revival is around the corner.
hawkeye10
 
  1  
Reply Wed 1 Jul, 2009 11:05 pm
@cicerone imposter,
Quote:
It's going to be a very slow recovery:


even when the job loses stop we are going to continue to see the unemployment situation worsen. There are a boat load of people who had planned to retire but who have now seen their nest egg (to include home value) shrink by 25% or more. They rightly conclude that their only option is to work 5-8 more years. These are job years that will not open up for new hires.

I don't see anyone who is optimistic that we can get the real unemployment rate down substantially in even the moderate time frame, five years. We will see the unemployment stats improve some as many give up and leave the job market, but this pain caused by massive unemployment looks to be the new normal. This will translate into stresses on our political system, as the pissed off youth become more radical than we have seen them in 40 years.
hawkeye10
 
  1  
Reply Wed 1 Jul, 2009 11:35 pm
@hawkeye10,
were a lot of unemployed will end up is in the former welfare system. However, with the state budgets a mess, the system now being set up to guide people to nonexistant jobs, and the fact that individuals will time out of the system in only a couple of years the system will not be able to satisfy the needs.

Will we bring back welfare? this seems unlikely, but the politicians will face the choice of either doing that or promoting political radicalism. Both parties have now substantially lost faith with the American people, so I think that they can not prevent the rapid rise of radical movements in America, but the establishment might try to head them off with welfare checks.

more on the former welfare system stresses
http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13915814&source=hptextfeature
0 Replies
 
realjohnboy
 
  1  
Reply Thu 2 Jul, 2009 01:51 pm
@realjohnboy,
realjohnboy wrote:



Job losses by month since things really started to deteriorate (source: Bureau of Labor Statistics):
9/2008: -321,000
10/2008: -380,000
11/2008: -597,000
12/2008: -681,000
1/2009: -741,000
2/2009: -681,000
3/2009: -652,000
4/2009: -519,000 (revised 7/2 from 504,000)
5/2009: -322,000 (revised 7/2 from 345,000)
6/2009: -467,000

Rockhead
 
  1  
Reply Thu 2 Jul, 2009 01:56 pm
@realjohnboy,
the light aircraft workforce here is on forced furlough (unpaid) for at least 2 weeks...

(and has been reduced by almost 50%)
realjohnboy
 
  1  
Reply Thu 2 Jul, 2009 04:44 pm
@Rockhead,
Rockhead wrote:

the light aircraft workforce here is on forced furlough (unpaid) for at least 2 weeks...

It has been noted here often, RH, that the job losses and the unemployment rate (9.5%) don't include those folks who have jobs but have seen their work-week fall. An estimate is that adding the underemployed creates a number of something like 16.2% of the workforce.
hawkeye10
 
  1  
Reply Thu 2 Jul, 2009 06:17 pm
@realjohnboy,
Your number is a bit low ball:
Quote:
A broader measure of unemployment, which also includes people who are working part-time but want a full-time job and who have given up looking for a job out of frustration, also rose, to 16.5 percent from 16.4 percent

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/02/AR2009070200354.html?hpid=topnews
realjohnboy
 
  1  
Reply Thu 2 Jul, 2009 06:33 pm
@hawkeye10,
Duly noted, hawkeye. I suspect the number is even higher. A number of my employees are not working full weeks because they realize our sales are flat. But they have other interests: art, music, theater and have their expenses under control for the moment.
realjohnboy
 
  1  
Reply Thu 2 Jul, 2009 06:54 pm
Chinks In The Dollar$ Armor

A few days/pages ago we talked about how China was making noises about wanting to not have the U.S. dollar as the global currency. A few eyebrows were raised. China, which has a huge trade surplus with the rest of us, owns some $700B in U.S. Treasury Bonds. If they started to sell them, or stopped buying new ones, we could be in a world of hurt.
So today comes this story. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) gets money to stabilize fragile economies from donor countries. But the IMF is running out of money.
So, for the 1st time, the IMF is going to issue bonds; they will sell $70B in bonds, and they will (this gets a bit complex) not be denominated in U.S. dollars.
Rather, they will be a blend of the U.S. dollar, the Euro, the Pound and the Yen.
China seems to be buying $50B, with $10B each going to Russia and Brazil.
0 Replies
 
roger
 
  1  
Reply Thu 2 Jul, 2009 07:25 pm
@realjohnboy,
San Juan County, NM just reported 6.7%. Not too bad compared to the national average, but it is about double (Thats X 2) the rate a year ago. Our industries are natural gas production, and tourism if you want to read anything into that. We also have several coal fired power plants next to a couple of coal mines.
0 Replies
 
hawkeye10
 
  1  
Reply Thu 2 Jul, 2009 09:00 pm
@realjohnboy,
Quote:
Duly noted, hawkeye. I suspect the number is even higher. A number of my employees are not working full weeks because they realize our sales are flat. But they have other interests: art, music, theater and have their expenses under control for the moment.


that comes out in the hourly work data, but I think that it is not fully reflected in the unemployment data. The average hourly full time week at last report was 33 hours, the lowest on record (if memory serves, I saw this report in one place only and can not find it at the moment).
hawkeye10
 
  1  
Reply Thu 2 Jul, 2009 09:15 pm
@hawkeye10,
here is the documentation:
Quote:
In June, the average workweek for production and nonsupervisory
workers on private nonfarm payrolls fell by 0.1 hour to 33.0 hours--the
lowest level on record for the series, which began in 1964
. The manu-
facturing workweek rose by 0.1 hour to 39.5 hours, and factory overtime
was unchanged at 2.8 hours.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm
0 Replies
 
mysteryman
 
  1  
Reply Fri 3 Jul, 2009 09:46 am
What I wonder is how high unemployment truly is.

After all, many of you were saying that the unemployment numbers under Bush were to low, because it supposedly didnt count those who had stopped looking for work and had run out of benefits.

Now, I dont see any of you even mentioning that.
Arent those people still out there?
Why arent you mentioning them now?
realjohnboy
 
  1  
Reply Sat 4 Jul, 2009 08:42 am
Good morning, and I hope yall have a fine 4th.
Rasmussen is taking the weekend off from polling, but in the "Predict the Outcome" game they left this challenge re a poll they will be doing on Monday and Tuesday.
What % of 1000 adults will say "Yes" to this question:
"Should the federal government provide bailout funding for states with serious financial problems?"
Remember, the game is not to state how you would respond, but rather how the poll of 1000 will respond. A lot of people are predicting/wanting a result of 0%.
I said 33% which I think will turn out to be too high. The question has the word "bailout" in it, which many folks are getting damn sick of hearing. (Evidence of Rasmussen's supposed conservative bias?)
My thinking is some/many of the folks polled will come from states with big
deficits and weak legislatures dealing with finding solutions.
0 Replies
 
realjohnboy
 
  1  
Reply Sat 4 Jul, 2009 09:32 am
@mysteryman,
mysteryman wrote:

What I wonder is how high unemployment truly is.

After all, many of you were saying that the unemployment numbers under Bush were to low, because it supposedly didnt count those who had stopped looking for work and had run out of benefits.

Now, I dont see any of you even mentioning that.
Arent those people still out there?
Why arent you mentioning them now?

I may be barking up the wrong tree, MM. But here is what I found at the BLS regarding long term unemployment.
"The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) increased by 433,000 in June to 4.4 million. 3 in 10 unemployed persons were jobless for 27 weeks or more (see table A-9)."
From table A-9 (using the seasonally adjusted columns) showing the number of people out of a job for 27 weeks or more:
6/2008: 1.6M (meaning they had lost their job before 1/2008)
2/2009: 2.9M (= job loss before 9/2008)
6/2009: 4.4M (= job loss before 1/2009).

I don't know if this is pertinent. Feel free to wade through the BLS numbing data.
Foxfyre
 
  1  
Reply Sat 4 Jul, 2009 09:44 am
@realjohnboy,
MM's observation is correct though. You don't have to do much of a search to find Huffington Post, Salon.com, Daily Kos et al running article after article in the last year or two complaining that the Bush administration was lowballing the unemployment numbers. Both the mainstream and internet media have been quite silent on that point lately though.

I have found useful information from this site before and so far they seem to be reliable, but include my usual disclaimer that I do not know anything about this group other than they have an interesting website:

Quote:
July 2, 2009...11:28
The REAL Unemployment Rate

The real unemployment rate released on July 2nd by the Bureau of Labor Statistics is now 16.5%, a full 7 points higher than the officially reported rate.

The June numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, using the bureau’s expanded “U-6″ rate, show an amazing 16.5% rate of unemployment, not the 9.5% that was being reported.

The real rate includes marginally attached or ‘discouraged’ workers which the BLS reports- “Are neither working nor looking for work but indicate that they want and are available for a job.” Or full-time workers who have been relegated to part-time workers.

It does not include self-employed workers whose incomes have severly diminished. It doesn’t look at former full-time staff employees who have accepted short-term contracts without benefits and at a fraction of their former salaries.

The current downturn has pushed up unemployment rates over any previous postwar recession in the nations history. From 4.9% at the start of the recession to the current (official " but synthetic) rate of 9.5%.
http://pvgroup.wordpress.com/2009/07/02/the-real-unemployment-rate/
realjohnboy
 
  1  
Reply Sat 4 Jul, 2009 10:04 am
@Foxfyre,
You will get no argument from me, Fox, that the 9.5% rate that was reported is low. 16.5% is the number, if we account for underemployed etc. We have talked about that discrepancy for a long time here.
I was attempting to get my head around MM's notion re folks who have given up on finding a job. The best handle I could find was the number of people out of a job for 27 weeks or more. 3 out of 10 unemployed per BLS.
Does 27 weeks = dropping out? I don't know.
Rockhead
 
  1  
Reply Sat 4 Jul, 2009 10:08 am
@realjohnboy,
I can't answer that RJB.

I will point out that I was unemployed for 6 months, but am not part of the statistics, as I don't use unemployment services or benefits.

There are more folks like me than you think.
realjohnboy
 
  1  
Reply Sat 4 Jul, 2009 10:50 am
@Rockhead,
Rockhead wrote:

There are more folks like me than you think.

On a number of A2K threads, RH, I have portrayed myself as being a dumb redneck. That is, perhaps, only half true. I live in a city, but I can drive west about 30 miles, taking about 2 hours, and end up in the long and narrow hollows tucked into the Blue Ridge Mtns. Places where, quite frankly, I was looked upon suspiciously; an outsider. Folks who might come down to do day-jobs and pay taxes, but never asked or wanted anything back from the government.
Years ago, I was peripherally involved in a program run by the states, a freight railway company, private donors and med students. A short train would lumber through the rural areas of VA and WVA, giving away trinkets, and trying to establish some sense of trust such that the med students could provide a basic level of health care.
These folks, at least the ones I met, didn't trust the gov't. They felt they didn't need the gov't. The family members, not the gov't, take care of each other.
There are probably many places in the U.S. where that is the norm .
Sorry to drift off-topic.
 

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