Where is the US economy headed?

"Official" BLS Unemployment Numbers out Friday at 8:30 am ET. I am betting on an unchanged 9.7%.

Nazism and Fascism are just steps in between a free society with free market capitalism and a totally communist or Marxist State, ican.

rjb, am I correct to point out that the official numbers obtained by the government are also based upon a telephone survey? If I am correct in that, what would make the government any more correct than Gallup or any other pollster? I think their sampling might include more households, but that is not the only factor that can affect polls.

Consider the fact also that an administration may have a vested interest in obtaining good numbers, so it is perhaps a little like having the fox in the henhouse type of survey it seems to me. At least, it seems the method of obtaining the unemployment rate creates a situation that is inherently subject to the temptation for abuse. Now I also recall Obama's attempt to place the Census Bureau under his management, which is highly suspicious in regard to this type of data, such as what was his motivation for that? Probably many things, of which this would have been just one.

I understand also that the survey has been changed from time to time, and count me as one that is inherently suspicious of those people that conduct and change the groundrules of the survey. It causes a question to come up in my mind, why wouldn't a professional pollster such as Gallup or Rasmussen be just as accurate or perhaps more accurate?

I put "official" in quotes for a reason, Okie. It, like other polls, is based on a sample.
We have talked about polls before on various threads. I fully appreciate that they may have flaws. What I object to is people flitting around from one poll to another. It seems to me that the important thing is to choose one pony to ride that uses the same methodology from month to month to month. What was Gallup's or Rasmussen's estimate of unemployment over, say, the last year, month by month?
I believe that the BLS is independent. I am not aware of your allegation that the Obama administration has sought to put the BLS under President Obama's control. Perhaps I was asleep when that happened.

That was a mistake on my part, rjb. When I was putting together my last post, I read something that made me think that the BLS was part of the Census Bureau or getting their data from them, but a followup of that did not confirm that. In fact, I guess the BLS is part of the U.S. Department of Labor, whereas the Census Bureau is part of the Department of Commerce, so my mistake on that.

In regard to Obama's attempt to gain more control over the Census Bureau, that could not have any positive motives in my opinion, and I suspect the primary reasons were to have more control over how the populations were counted that dictate the redistricting of congressional seats. Again, this is only my suspicion, I am not making an accusation.

Regarding the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Department of Labor, they are part of the administration or executive branch like the Department of Commerce, are they not, and they report to the president? So they are already as much under the direction of Obama as the Census Bureau would have been perhaps if the Census Bureau had been removed from reporting through the Department of Commerce? Again, I am not making an accusation that Obama is or would cook the labor statistics by influencing the operations in the Labor Department, but what I am saying is that we need to keep a sharp eye on situations like this to make sure things are kept honest. My basic philosophy is that government by nature is just not all that trustworthy, and I also do not trust Obama very far, and therefore it is my opinion that we need to be aware of situations that create the temptations and possibilities for corruption with data.

By the way, I am not the only one with suspicions, as evidenced by the post on the Free Republic, shown below: And after all, the stakes are high with the elections occurring in early November, so perhaps this is the last BLS report to occur before the elections?

http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2603185/posts?page=7
"PRINCETON, NJ -- Unemployment, as measured by Gallup without seasonal adjustment, increased to 10.1% in September -- up sharply from 9.3% in August and 8.9% in July. Much of this increase came during the second half of the month -- the unemployment rate was 9.4% in mid-September -- and therefore is unlikely to be picked up in the government's unemployment report on Friday."

I have a question.
Since you are claiming that EVERY repub leader lies, can we assume that you believe that no dem leader ever lies?

So you are comparing 14 years to 43 years?

even you know better than that.

I am a bit surprised that the new employment numbers released today haven't elicited any comments here. The data today will be the last before the elections.

Do you have the number. I haven't seen it.

http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/801-economy/123333-economy-loses-95000-jobs-unemployment-rate-steady-at-96-percent

Thanks. I think John predicted 9.7%, so no surprise

BLS numbers:
U-3 (the official unemployment rate) remains at 9.6%
U-6 (those unemployed or underemployed - which is a number I tend to follow) is up .1% to 17.1%, I think.
The private sector actually gained jobs in September - although not nearly enough to absorb new workers. Fewer then 100K.
The public sector shed something like 180K jobs. Many of those were the remnants of Census worker temps, but about half were state and local government employees.
(I am doing this from memory. I can put up the actual numbers if asked).

I am sure that there will be those who will regard these numbers as being very bad. I am curious whether the same people would argue that the size of government is too large. Eliminating 180K government jobs is good. Isn't it?

So the monthly employment numbers are God awful, showing clearly that our recession fighting tools expensive as they were did not work, and the dow goes UP? What this shows this the the financial markets are no longer connected the the best interests of the people, nor to the health of the economy. This is very bad long term. It is a progression of the thesis that I read about 20 years ago about how the numbers used to measure the economy had become disconnected from the well being of the citizen. The next step is that the powers push for better numbers, but they are blind to what these efforts do to the people because they dont know what they think they know.....they see better numbers and they assume that this means people will be better of, but if this is true it is only true by chance.

Finally we get to where we are now, where the economy is broken, because it is no longer able to do what is is supposed to do, facilitate the best interests of the people. We dont know what is wrong so we cant fix it, but except for the people running the economy who have been brainwashed by self deception into believing their numbers we can now all plainly see that the economy is broken.

We have no faith in the economy because no faith is deserved. This recession is not going to get fixed until the economy is fixed, which given that the Great Recession did not do the job will require a depression as the wake up and smell the coffee signal.

No idea how to embed this:

http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=usunemployment&met=unemployment_rate&tdim=true&dl=en&hl=en&q=unemployment+rate

What amazes me is that people forget (ignore?) that the election was in November 2008, and Obama didn't come into office until almost Feb. 2009.

The graph at the link provided shows that Bush was in office when unemployment went from 5.4% to 8.5% (Jan 2008 - Jan 2009). Given what was going on during the last year of Bush, it's actually pretty amazing that unemployment is only up by 1.1% since Obama took office.

What is more amazing is the simple fact that conservatives blame the 9.5% unemployment rate - all on Obama. There's no cure for stupid.

Nor for condescension...

TRIPLE LOL

Thank you, Hawk. Thank you.

Cycloptichorn

Imagine a country run by ci.

No don't. You might disturb your sleeping patterns.