Where is the US economy headed?

These graphs that portrays how the different party presidents perform on job creation will never be accepted by conservatives, but they do want more tax cuts for the wealthy at a time when our national debt blows a big hole in our economy.

How do you think Obama is going to "jump start" job growth?

Good evening to yall.
So the BLS unemployment rate came out today for November: 10.0% vs 10.2% in October. That was a big surprise. Few folks predicted a decrease.
The spin-masters are out in force, in the media, in blogs, and on A2K with the usual arguments, ranging from the conclusion that this indicates we have turned a corner to the claim that the government (read Obama) has cooked the statistics...resulting in the best job report in 2 years.
Take your pick, or choose something in between.
My take, if anyone gives a ****:
> The net loss in jobs for November was 11K, a far cry from recent months where the number was in the 150-300K. That is a plus;
> Some folks may have given up on looking for jobs, and therefore are not included in the "unemployed" category. That is a minus;
> Conversely, some folks who may have previously dropped out may be back to actively looking for work.

> 50K folks got temporary work in November. That is a minus in that it might be only temporary, but a plus in that employers have work that needs to be done. Perhaps those hesitant employers will make those jobs permanent;
> Similarly, the average work week of "full-time" employees grew to 33 hours. That is about 1 hour a week more than October. We need to see that number grow closer to 40 hours before employers hire and train new workers.

One stat that is tossed out often is the number of Americans who are employed. One poster on A2K in particular loves to put that out regularly.
We in the U.S. create 127K net new working age folks a MONTH. That is young people entering working age population minus those leaving the work force. We need the economy to produce 127K new jobs each month.

One final note: On another thread, a poster asked about unemployment by age. I can't find my cheat-sheet on linking threads. I am sure one of yall can do it:
> Google "U.S. Unemployment Rates by Age;"
> There is a link from the NY Times called "The Jobless Rate for People Like You." Interactive by age, gender, race and education level.

Interesting John. Do you know the comparitive unemployment rates for those who are active members of religious denominations and those who are not?

You actually read my post? No one does that. Their eyes tend to glaze over.
I will work on unemployment by religious affiliation.
(um, is veganism a religion?)

rjb, Good post; I agree with your opinions. As you said, the increase in hours worked is a good sign, but many companies are still doing more with less hours. It amazes me to see productivity of American workers continue to increase, but the benefits for them are slow in coming.

There are now 10-million receiving unemployment benefits, and that's where our government must make a difference to create jobs. This can be done through several tax credits and incentives for companies to hire and train new workers.

We'll have to wait and see what Obama comes up with for his job creation plan.

Could he not get you digging holes and filling them in again. That's an eco-friendly way to create jobs. Possibly the only one.

One of these days, you might get lucky and say something worth while.

I was only thinking of him going to Copenhagen with a policy of creating millions of polluting jobs.

Finally something we agree about. Actually I was flabbergasted to learn that our unemployment figures are based on nothing more than a statistical sampling, via phone calls, which makes it every bit as worthless as a political poll. This is our government, folks, the government that can keep track of a cow with mad cow disease if it traveled around the world, but cannot keep track of its own citizens, who is a citizen and who is not, and cannot run anything within budget, and now wants to institute another boondoggle bureaucracy to run health care and health care insurance. It would be funny if not so sad, and if so many people did not fall for the garbage coming out of Washington D.C.

Governor Romney ran on the assertion that "Washington is broken," and truer words have seldom been spoken, folks. The man was absolutely right, and would be more right today if he said it today, vs a couple of years ago. We need somebody in Washington with something between their ears besides hot air to help run the place and try to straighten the mess out.

Okay, well; what do you think would be a better way to determine unemployment rates? Before blaming the government for being incompetent, spend a few minutes and ask yourself how intrusive the other options would or could be.

Cycloptichorn

What, pray tell, did you think the figures were based on?
The % may be 10.2 or 10.0 but as long as the methodology is the same, which it has been for years at the BLS, the numbers month to month are, in my mind, useful. They indicate, perhaps, a trend.
I find it disingenuous for you to criticize the source when you decide you don't like the result.

Typical okie; poo poo the results he doesn't like. Even then, he creates results from his own imagination not supported by any credible source.

The Roosevelt administration significantly increased spending and taxes from 1933 to 1940, but total employment decreased dramatically in that period. But in 1941 when the federal government began significant increases in military spending--purchases of weapons and other ordinance, and increase in the size of the military--total employment began to increase dramatically and total unemployed began to decrease dramatically.


Since January 2009, the Obama administration is significantly increasing spending and is promising to significantly increase taxes, while decreasing military spending. Throughout this process total employment has decreased dramatically.

I don't honestly know, but I guess I assumed it was based upon the count of people being unemployed, applications for unemployment and the count of people that quit drawing it. Never having been on unemployment, I didn't know, I thought maybe people reported getting a job to the unemployment office in the event they did, after filing for unemployment.

Given the fact that unemployment payments are costing people, it does not seem all that intrusive to me to ask people to file a report on whether they found work or not. Upon reflection, I can see the job of determining unemployment is not so easy, but hey they provide us numbers all the time on how many new jobs there are and so forth, I assumed those were based upon something more credible than a phone poll, but perhaps not?

I think there should be better ways to get actual numbers than a phone poll, after all we all know the margin of error that are inherent in political polls, so at the very least perhaps they should own up to the fact that the unemployment rate has a statistical margin of error built into it, and I have never heard anything like that mentioned. I guess the thing that bothers me is that the public has been led to believe these numbers are more exact than they probably are. I am not going to propose another method here, nor am I going to say it is any more in error now than before, but I do think the government should own up to the potential margin of error and report it along with the figures put out there. I also think that we need more oversight into some of this stuff, as it seems to me that this lends itself to alot of skullduggery.

A couple of posts crossed betwixt Okie, Cyclop and Johnboy. Thanks for your responses.

I think I assumed it was based upon actual tabulation of people applying for unemployment, continuing on unemployment, and those that had found jobs. Having not been on unemployment ever, I was not familiar with the kinds of reports required, and given the mood in which the government gives out the figure, it gave me the impression that it was far more credible than a phone poll of only a percentage of people in the country, probably a small percentage. I have now learned to use Reagan's old saying, trust but verify, and much of the time when I try to verify, I find out the devil is in the details.

Who said I did not like the result? Is that your assumption? Based upon what? And at no time did I say the methodology does not indicate a trend, it most assuredly does, but mostly what I am saying here is that the American people I think takes the number to mean alot more than a trend, they take the number as a hard number, not some approximation based upon a phone poll. I think at the very least the government should put an asterisk next to the number every time they publish it and then provide an explanation of how it is derived.

Also, I think another point is that the methodology has indeed been changed and tweaked from time to time, and yes that bothers me, I think it lends itself to artificial manipulation, and I also think you could use different people to do the polling supposedly with the same methodology and you could come up with slightly different results. I doubt the results could be repeated with much precision. I would like to see them try it, that would be interesting.

I am not being disengenuous with my criticism, I am criticizing the government inefficiency, whether it be under Obama, Bush, or whoever.

You're able to criticize polling, but how do you account for the fact that statistical polling are usually accurate to <5% error in most cases? Are you also an expert on statistics and polling - in addition to everything else?

You're able to criticize polling, but how do you account for the fact that statistical polling are usually accurate to <5% error in most cases? Are you also an expert on statistics and polling - in addition to everything else?

Many polling organizations have existed for several decades, and their accuracy rates have improved.

This drop is insignificant.
Temporary Christmas jobs are the reason for the minuscule change.

My take:
The situation will continue to worsen in January, but that's no big surprise.