Where is the US economy headed?

marsz, I've heard about that poor dad rich dad promoter was a fraud a long time ago. He never tells anyone how you go about really getting rich except in general terms - which doesn't mean a thing when one is cash poor.

That old adage, if it's too good to be true...

mm, You are an ignorant fool! Nobody knows how presidents will turn out after they are voted into office.

The number dropped because 600,000 previously employed people had determined that their job outlook was so bleak, that they simply stopped looking. That's in addition to the 250k jobs lost.

The statistic is the statistic, and it was measured the same way this time around as it has been for decades; but the reality is that it's not looking too rosy out there.

I think we'll still hit 10% and the 'other' number for unemployment/underemployment will break 20%.

I googled another way to look at the numbers:

"The share of adults with jobs actually fell: to 59.4 percent, from 59.5 percent."

Hours worked has dropped to a very low number (lowest in 40 years at least, maybe longer)

maporsche, What the government does not keep track of are those unemployed who quit looking for jobs. In addition to all that, our country must create jobs to meet the demands of high school and college graduates that's estimated to be about 2,000,000 jobs every year.

I think your 20% is too conservative.

You're probably right.

I thought that this admin would be more honest.
So if they arent counting those who quit looking for work, that means that the actual numbers may already be over 10%.

That does not inspire confidence in Obama's economic plan.
Especially since they pushed for the last stimulus plan partly by saying that it would keep unemployment under 10%.

mm, You are dumb! It has nothing to do with Obama's "plan." The unemployment count the government have used to share with us has never included the jobless who quit looking for jobs.

Why don't you crawl back into your cave and disappear for the benefit of all on a2k.

Yeah, if you'll recall, this was also what people on the left and myself were saying when the Bush administration quoted low unemployement figures while at the same time losing thousands of jobs.

The statistic is a decent baseline for comparison; but like all statistics you need to look beyond the simple number (something the media, and those who support the various administrations at the time, don't like to do).

It used to include the people who stopped looking; but it's been probably 40 years since it had.

No kidding

The numbers have been above 10% for a long time now.
BUT, the Obama admin DID SAY that the stimulus plan would keep unemployment under 10%.

And again you resort to insults.
You have accused me of calling you a racist, even though you ignore what I actually posted.

You have also said you had me on ignore.
If you did, why are you answering me.

That's a massive margin for those that bet $100 or more a tick on a minute by minute basis on those betting markets everybody has access to.

I told you to go gold at about $365. Compare your feats of investment with that.

Dip your bread in ci. Put your money where your mouth is.

That's because you're using the same old numbers used when the projections were made before the huge increase in unemployment. This has been clarified by Cyclo on many posts now, but you are too ignorant to see it.

I doubt very much many of us were tracking unemployment rates 40-years ago and followed those stats to recent times.

Good evening. I hope yall have had as much fun as I have had wandering around the BLS Unemployment Data sites today. You do wander there, don't you?
I find it amusing that, when the "official" unemployment number came out, showing 9.4% vs 9.5% July vs June, the bleating started about this being good news. The liberal media jumping on a phony statistic -the same statistic reported monthly for years - to prove President Obama has turned the economy around.
This .1% uptick is meaningless, really. We will need to see many more months of this.
If you want to bore people at the water-cooler on Monday:
- U3 is the BLS official rate of unemployment: 9.4% vs 7.2% when President Bush left office.
- U6 is the rate of unemployment + underemployment (employed but involuntarily having hours cut): 16.3% in July vs 16.5% in June. The rate when Mr Bush left office was 13.5%.
U6 was changed in 1994 to exclude people who had been unemployed for more than a year.

They are almost meaningless; it depends on whether the downtrend in unemployment follows with many more months of the same. It could start at a .1% decrease, but without that number increasing steadily, it doesn't mean much. It's the same with the increase in the number of people employed; it'll be very slow at the beginning, and .1% will be good if that follows with more increases.

I just wouldn't hold much promise yet, because we're still losing over 10,000 jobs every day, and we're not creating enough jobs to help our new grads from high school and college.

People expecting over-night change in these numbers really don't understand the economy.

Well ci. We cannot be expected to think you do.

You keep banging on about unemployment as if it is some sort of moral issue and at the same time you promote Darwinian, atheistic materialism which has nothing to say on such matters except that the weakest go to the wall.

Sir William Temple said--" Nor do I know, if men are like sheep, why they need a government: or if they are like wolves, how can they suffer it."

A Darwinian is a wolf. Little Nell was a sheep. Or Mother Theresa.

Unemployment has economic advantages. It holds down wage inflation. It helps restructure the economy. It produces mobility in the work force. It makes the economy leaner and fitter. It provided a reserve labour force.

There are no moral positions in economics.

Why don't you make your mind up whether you are a Darwinian materialist, red in tooth and claw, or a deeply concerned Girl Guide, instead of posing as one on one thread and the other on another.

If you spent more time studying instead of asserting that other people are "ignorant", "IDiotic", "stupid" and without "understanding" perhaps you might be able to make up your mind.

Where did I state unemployment was a "moral issue?" You can't be saying stuff that you create in your own brain, then credit us with your creation. Don't you even learn that in the UK?

Our economic system is not imposed upon us, it is a creation of ours and thus is WHOLLY a product of our morality.

Re unemployment: most families need either paychecks or government assistance via the social safety net in order to acquire the means for survival. America has over the last twenty years shredded the safety net that had been in place, for instance our unemployment insurance payouts are a fraction of what they once were (factoring in inflation) and unemployment accounts have been poorly funded (about half the states are now out of money). Also, less than half of those who become unemployed are covered by the sytem, the majority are excluded by way of rule making. We now have high unemployment, a weak safety net, and just to add indignity we have a government unemployment number that automatically denies that the long term unemployed are unemployed. It is assumed that they have not gotten of their fat ass and tried to work, so these people are now called "discouraged workers" and don't count as unemployed. They go into the system that was formerly called the welfare system which is now called the "right to work" system were they only can collect monies for a short time, and only if they are actively working to make themselves more employable.

This system as a result from our moral position that those who don't work are freeloaders and don't rate help from those who are working. It is built around the assumption that jobs will always be available for anyone who really wants one. But not only is this a lie, because recessions and depressions are a natural part of our economic cycle, but we also have a lot of jobs that provide a wage that is too low to live the American dream on. The lack of safety net has skewed to pay scale down so far that a huge segment of the working class are now effectively exploited, they produce but the rewards for their work are taken by those they work for. Low paying jobs must exist, but the number must be limited and those who have those jobs must have upward mobility into better paying job. we once had that, but have lost it.

The unintended consequences of the system that was driven by our moral position that everyone should work has created a system that offends our morality because it exploits and because the game (the economic system) is rigged to benefit those who are already winning at the expense of a fair shot for the current non-winners.

The anger and lack of faith in the economy that is now exhibited by the majority of Americans is a RESULT of the economic system being morally offensive. it will either by reformed or it will be changed by force, but the status quo will not stand.