Nov 19 2009
Economy Still Shedding Jobs
We have sadly not hit bottom on the jobs situation. This week’s jobs numbers might seem to have some green shoots to the casual (math challenged) liberal news media reporter. But the news is indeed really bad.
This week the first time jobless claims did not change – did not grow and did not shrink. Might seem like good news but the problem is it is still running at over 500,000 new claims each week (half million new people applying for unemployment benefits each week). This is were we were at last year during the initial phases of the recession. We may have stopped the drop, but it has only slowed, not turned around.
If you look at the number of people on unemployment benefits you get the full picture. If the number of unemployed was dropping each week by more than the first time applications coming in the US economy would have turned the corner. This is not the case. The traditional unemployment rolls fell by 39,000, not even 10% of the 505,000 first time applicants.
But it really is worse than that. There is another category called of unemployment called the Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) pool, which has been steadily growing since the liberals in DC passed their faux stimulus bill. This metric is only reported in the weekly reports, and I have tracked it back through 2009. Here is the graph as of this week:
The EUC is the last sanctuary for the chronically unemployed. The normal unemployment benefit rolls saw 39,000 people drop off, but many of those went onto EUC. In fact, so many it is hard to believe the normal rolls could only drop by 39,000 because this week the EUC rolls expanded by a whopping 101,838!
The week after the stimulus bill was passed – in a flurry of BS promises and rushing – the EUC rolls stood at 1,468,667. Since the disastrous stimulus bill passed the EUC rolls have climbed to an astounding 3,62,2091 – over 147%!
This is the true measure of Obama’s job creating. Each week we see half million people come in for their first unemployment claim. Each week somewhere around 39,000 leave the normal unemployment rolls – with a huge number moving onto the rolls of the EUC benefits. The liberal stimulus plan has added 2,153,424 people to the EUC – which are jobs LOST. That is the bottom line for Obamanomics.
Update: Now we hear Obama’s Jobs Summit will not be about creating jobs?
President Barack Obama says creating jobs isn’t the goal of a coming White House forum on jobs and economic growth.
The president told NBC News on Wednesday that the purpose of the Dec. 3 summit is to figure out how to encourage hiring by businesses still reluctant to do so.
The level of incompetence from this administration is just stunning.
I have noticed that those who are underemployed is left out. By underemployed, I am talking about those whom I know had been let go from well paying jobs and are now working at a substantially lower paying job.
Although I can see how this would be difficult, if not impossible to calculate, this has real impact on many people.
AJ,
I used to say:
“There are two kinds of Americans, those who remember Jimmy Carter and those who will find out.”
It is now clear that Obama is much worse than Jimmy Carter.
Obama is doing a much more thorough job of wrecking the economy.
See this OMB projection that shows unemployment remaining above 7 percent until 2012, and above 5 percent through at least 2019:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/assets/fy2010_msr/10msr.pdf
That projection looks like pure pollyannaland now, not unlike Obama’s “with and without stimulus” unemployment chart.
The problem for America in 2008 was that many Americans are incapable of learning from anyone’s experience but their own.
Jimmy Carter was, to most of the under 30 voters’s today, more ancient history than Roosevelt.
Among other things, the Carter years have been airbrushed from American history classes.
I admittedly am not an expert, but would think at this time of year there would be a spike in employment with all the retailers gearing up for Christmas and this should have begun a couple of weeks ago.
The fact that the unemployment number has not decreased adds to the bleak assesment as does the fact that in my area of the midwest the construction trades have not shut down due to the weather and the farmers are still bringing in the crops (Late this year), both occupations that would normally show layoffs at this time of year.
Wait until next month when these numbers show up and I would imagine the weekly numbers will start going back up.
AJ,
A major part of the problem with the Current Administration is Obama’s complete lack of experience in executive office. He doesn’t seem to understand the difference between campaigning and governing. This shows up in his rhetoric.
IMO the problem is that the Obama Admnistration hasn’t yet chosen between “Exploit Now & Stabilize Later” vs. “Stabilize Now & Exploit Later” when it comes to a crisis, any crisis.
The Obama Admnistration did this with the economy and the mortagage bubble/credit bust and they are now doing it with Afghanistan military strategy.
I.e., they’re dithering, and the dithering is showing.
In terms of his economic policies as implimented, Pres. Obama is doing precisely the opposite of Pres. Clinton, during the opening of a major econmic downturn.
There was a capital and small business expansion strike in the first six months of Clinton’s first term, which ended quickly because Clinton convinced them he was an economic moderate via his paying attention to the bond markets and kicking the Democratic base in the teeth by abandoning health care nationalization.
Obama is doing precisely the opposite. He has convinced big capital and small businesses that they are right to fear the future while Obama and Congressional Democratic majorities are in office, and to conserve their capital and energy because they will rob them of any return on their capital and personal labor investment.
Your unemployment figures simply document how Obama has put us on course for an economic disaster worse than Jimmy Carter’s.
AJ,
This post over on NRO pretty much cover’s Obama’s recent “Hurricane Katrina on unemployment” mistakes:
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NWZhMDk5NGI2YTc2N2E1ZTU0NGUzNWZlMzg0Y2RmZTQ=
Krauthammer’s Take [NRO Staff]
From last night’s Fox News All-Stars.
On the administration’s phony numbers for jobs saved by the stimulus:
The effect, ultimately — and the danger for any administration — is to be an object of ridicule.
Look, this whole discussion has had an Alice-in-Wonderland quality from the very beginning. You can’t measure saved jobs. Arguing over the precision or imprecision of the numbers, which are fictional at the beginning, is like arguing that there are twelve angels on the head of a pin and only ten …
And when you hear these reports, as we’re hearing now with the fictional congressional districts, the risk for the administration is that it becomes an object of ridicule. And once that happens, it’s hard to actually stop.
And the issue will become competence. There have been ideological objections against this administration — it’s left-wing, it’s radical, and all that. But now we’re starting a new kind of meme, that it is an administration that really can’t get things done.
And when you have the president announcing, as he did in his address to the Congress — Don’t worry about the tracking of the stimulus. It will be done by the vice president and nobody messes with Joe Biden …Well, it looks as if the folks in the 99th district of the Mariana Islands … are messing with Joe Biden.
Once the meme starts, it becomes the subject of late-night comedy. … When they speak seriously about this – 640,329 jobs saved, comical precision — and then it turns out a lot of these are fictional jobs in fictional districts, what happens is the administration, already satirized on “Saturday Night Live” as do-nothing, is now going to be seen as an administration that cannot even do nothing competently.
Obama is now preaching only to the Left wing Democratic faithful.
As for the rest, “They ain’t listenin’ to ya, laddie.”
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To misquote President Reagan slightly, “A recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose your job. And a recovery is when Barack Obama and his minions lose THEIR jobs.”
Time for a recovery.
The hold up on the economy returning to solvent is the healthcare bill. Small businesses will not hire until they know what they will be up against with healthcare penalties and premiums. And who can blame them. If they hire now and have to fire later they will be sued. If they hire now and don’t fire later they will go out of business. In other words Obama and the senate are responsible for the economy still being down. This is pretty bad that so much depends on a bill most of the country doesn’t want. The ones who do want it are either the recipients of free healthcare and other free stuff or ideologic liberals or people who don’t give a damn about politics but who have an opinion anyway.
Obama is holding up pretty much everything until the healthcare is passed or defeated. It all has the odor of a child holding his brath until he gets what he wants. He won’t make a decision about Afghanistan. He keeps making outrageous statements and rescinding them later.
Oh yeah, The Constitution is flawed. Two hundred and thirty four years of rules of diplomacy are trashed because he knows better. Our forefathers fought a revolution to ensure that Americans are equal to anybody in this world and don’t have to bow down to anyone. But there he is, Mr. Wonderful, salaaming to the Saudi king and the Emperor of Japan. I realize he was apologizing to the Emperor for Hiroshima and Nagisaki but why the Saudi king? Is he apologizing for the billions of dollars we gave him for his oil?
We have waited for years for the Iranian people to rise up and when they do, Obama is president and will do nothing to help them. Pretty bad since we all but guaranteed them help if they did rise up. Everything this guy does is diametricall the oppose of what our foreign policy has been since the year dot. He is turning the country and its laws and traditions topsy-turvey.
BURGESS: Glass-Steagall has come up this morning. If I recall, Glass- Steagall was repealed — that bill was signed by Bill Clinton… GEITHNER: You’re right about that. BURGESS: … not George Bush. GEITHNER: You’re absolutely… BURGESS: And I frankly don’t understand. If that’s such a good protection, this president’s been in office for 10 months. Where’s the signed legislation reinstating Glass-Steagall? What… GEITHNER: Actually, I would not support reinstating Glass-Steagall. And I don’t actually believe that the end of Glass-Steagall played a significant role in the cause of this crisis.
[…] only lost 11,000 jobs in November seems wildly suspect. Weekly first time jobless claims fell from about 500,000 a week to around 450,000 a week by the end of the month. That is quite a lot of weekly losses to only net […]