Where is the US economy headed?

Look it up on the web. You can then tell us what you find about "full employment."

I think the article is both correct and woefully incorrect. Yes, many boomers are choosing to just retire early rather than continue beating their heads against the futile effort to find a job that pays enough to support their families.

However, I think these predictions are incorrect in subtracting permanently retired boomers from the rolls of "missing unemployed" who will return to the job market once the economy improves enough for the effort to be productive.

Why? Because many folks used up all their retirement savings, lost all the equity in their homes, and have gone for many years without replacing failing vehicles and appliances they purchased early in their working years. Baby boomers will need to return to the workforce to rebuild their savings and replace vehicles and appliances with those that will last them for most of the rest of their lives. They'll still have to settle for those lower-paying jobs, but at least there will be more available to compete for and make the effort less futile.

If it was a normal economic cycle, retired boomers would stay retired once the economy improves. There isn't much choice for them this time around. They have to go back to work if they hope to drag themselves out of debt and set themselves up for any kind of a postponed retirement.

I agree; the boomers are between a rock and a hard place, because their savings rates continued to decrease over the past three decades when their savings rates should have been increasing. However, we also know that the middle class pay and benefits have been depressed for those same three decades while the wealth of the companies inured to the CEO's and officers. We also know that interest rates on savings accounts have been depressed, and many lost asset value from the Great Recession - in both their homes and 401k's.

It became almost impossible to find a replacement job if you lost your job in your 40's and/or 50's when you're supposed to be at the peak of your earning potential.

The fact that food banks and shelters are being used by more middle class people tells the story about how difficult it has become to survive.

Just heard on the telly that unemployment jumped by 8,000.

source

What I want to know, what was the fault when jobs first started to drastically vanish with the Bush administration? Under Obama, the jobs situation and economy has slowly picked up, but under Bush they did nothing but go downhill. Where was all the talk of blame the administration when Bush was in office?

That's because they'll hang onto anything they think they can blame on Obama even when there is evidence to the contrary - like Obama adding jobs.

Why voters can't see the lies and innuendos of the GOP is an amazing mystery of our times. They are stupid!

All the GOP talks about are social issues, and legislate laws to take away women's rights. I just wonder where their brains are that still vote republican.

You will neither learn nor rebut will you ci.

There is no taking away of women right's involved in the social issue argument. The GOP will claim that it is trying to restore women's rights taken away by those plying them with spaying facilities to seek their own convenience and/or make money. Unless you can rebut that argument you should shut up about women's rights because your women's rights look to be rights that suit your purposes.

There are no such things as women's rights in a complex, industrial civilisation. There is a settlement. An agreed line is drawn. Nothing absolute.

Saying that every GOPer is stupid is so stupid that it is hard to credit anyone repeatedly saying it with any intelligence whatsoever.

I've already made the "re-but," but you'll never understand any issue. When choice is taken away by state legislators, that's an intrusion into a person's life and freedom.

As I've said before, you cannot legislate morals. It's impossible.

Men try to take away a woman's right to an abortion; women will still get abortions another way which can become dangerous to the woman.

The "right to lifers" are hypocrites of the worst kind; what have they done to help the children of the world who are without food, shelter, and health care?

They value life, only when they can intrude into a women's private life. A complete stranger, like the woman in Vietnam who gets an abortion at will.

If they want to save lives, why aren't they doing anything to save lives in the country with the most abortions?

More good news about the job market, which added 227,000 jobs in February. The unemployment rate remained unchanged at 8.3% because previously-discouraged workers have started looking again. So there's real improvement here. I used to say that the unemployment rate made the job market look less bad than it was because of discouraged workers. Now I have to be consequent and say that the unemployment rate understates the improvement in the job market because of discouraged workers. This employment-situation report truly is good news for American workers.

You need to decide whether a foetus is a human being before you can say a woman's private life should not be intruded upon.

A fetus can become a human. A zygote is still not human; it doesn't have the capacity to think or feel.

It was a good month, Thomas. Even John Boehner reluctantly conceded that.
U3 remained unchanged (I was wrong about it dropping) despite 227K net jobs. The addition of discouraged workers coming back into the job hunting pool kept U3 at 8.3%.
Some of the wider measures of unemployment have shown improvement over a year ago: U4 is at 8.9% vs 9.6 while U5 comes in at 9.8% vs 10.6% and U6 is 14.9% down from 15.9%.
Let us know if you need a refresher on what is included in U4 through U6.
I was amused to read that Rep D Hunter (R-CA) has introduced legislation that would REQUIRE the BLS to broaden the definition of unemployment to include stats beyond U3. He does not seem to realize that U4, U5 and U6 already exist.

How do you know that?

It's a cell with no brain development or organism to feel sensation.

This is your last stupid question I'll be answering. Look it up for yourself in the future, because I'm ignoring all future questions you ask.

I looked back to AU's thread starting post, which was about the trade deficit, and promptly did a search for news thereof. I came across a NY Times article published just today stating that at the beginning of the year the deficit has widened to $52.6 billion, a four year high.

Concern about the trade deficit has been eclipsed by concern about the national debt, what with its figures in the trillions, but the TD affects the economy, and specifically the unemployment rates more directly than the ND.

Some of the facts that the article quotes are:

Imports rose 2.1 percent to a record $233.4 billion. Exports were up a smaller 1.4 percent to $180.8 billion. Exports to Europe fell 7.5 percent.

Oil imports went up 3.3 percent.


U.S. Trade Deficit Surges to a Three-Year High

U.S. Dept. of Commerce report

That's nothing but a cheap sophistry to keep your circularities intact.

Fernand Braudel said that 30 or 40% of economic activity consists of direct exchanges of services (ahem!), moonlighting, homeworking and odd jobbing and this whole range of activity lies outside official accounting procedures.

He distinguishes between "material civilisation" (the shadowy zone) and "economic civilisation". The former being difficult to see because of lack of documentation and complexity. But the shadow zone is basic economic activity which goes on everywhere and the volume of which is "truly fantastic".

It is the "informal other half of economic activity, the world of self sufficiency and barter of goods and services within a very small radius".

The historian, the economic expert, looks only in one direction, presumably for simplicity's sake, the easy way of being an expert, and it is the direction of the economic civilisation to which his eyes so readily turn. There he sees the formal hierarchies which manipulate markets and engage in "circuits and calculations that the ordinary people know nothing of". (see Pareto's circulating elites.)

Without this Shadow Zone the structures of the Economic Civilisation are not possible. It is only the records of the EC that show up in documents.

Ignoring the Shadow Zone, the non-working mother, the unpaid carer, the informal sexual trade, the trade in drugs, is not really discussing "the economy" at all. It is taking a grossly simplified view of life and hence it is attracted to published statistics for ease of understanding.

Almost every thread I go on betrays a determination to avoid complexity, subtlety, nuance and informality. Keep it simple eh? Let the official statistics tell you what to think.

The Dow smashed through 13,ooo today, up 218 points (1.7%) to close at 13,178. The broader indices were up by about 1.8% with the Nasdaq hitting an 11 year high.
Part of the enthusiasm seems to be do to the Fed indicating after a meeting that interest rates will remain low.
Retail sales rose by 1.1% in February. Part of that is attributable to rising gasoline prices but there also were increases in sales of autos and clothing.

I recently saw an article noting that auto and light truck sales were up, and the increases included some fairly fuel inefficient vehicles. Makes you wonder, you know?

If there are so many new jobs, cand if the economy is improving like the dems claim, where is all of the tax revenue?
I would think that if the economy added that many jobs, there would be an increase is tax revenues to the govt.

Why hasnt there been?