Dec 11 2009

Spending Christmas Unemployed

The November unemployment rate made a modest (and statistically insignificant) turn for the better with the claim that America only lost 11,000 jobs in November. That claim seems wildly suspect. It seems implausible that we went from losing 190,000 jobs in October to only 11,000 jobs lost in November

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 newly unemployed to net only 11,000 jobs lost.

In October the nation lost 190,000 jobs, which means November’s stunning 11,000 jobs lost represents a 90+% reduction in job losses, all the while first time unemployment claims dropped only 10%. What happened in November? What magical economic spurt caused such a drastic turn around? And why did it not effect other key numbers?

For example, November saw one of the highest jump in Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) rolls since the Great Recession began. A mind boggling 556,689 Americans slid onto this last vestige of government support for the chronically unemployed. Since the liberal’s faux stimulus bill passed, the EUC rolls have expanded 185% and now supports 4,178,780 long term unemployed Americans!

Here is the data as of November 21st, which is only reported in the weekly DoL reports.

Look at that huge leap in November. Over half million Americans have run through the normal unemployment benefit and are now hanging on to the last rung of the federal assistance. It is clear that is the the second largest jump in EUC all year (March 21st saw around 700,000 rush to the EUC), and would seem to indicate the jobs may not be starting to come back.

There is some reason the Democrats are not touting the November numbers, but instead are planning more useless government spending (even though around 90% of the first stimulus bills’ job creating money is yet unspent!). Instead of even pretending things are turning around they are running in a panic to appear to be doing something useful.

Sad thing is, this crowd in DC is so incompetent that they only look useful when they are doing anything at all.

7 responses so far

7 Responses to “Spending Christmas Unemployed”

  1. Mark says:

    Nice catch. I was surprised that the November numbers were as positive as they were, and went to look for answers. ADP (the largest payroll firm in the US) announced that employment in the “goods producing sector” fell by 88,000. They would be in an excellent position to see that, it would indicate for the overall unemployment rate to drop by only 11,000 there must have been massive hiring in some sector. According to the Bureau of Labor release, that appears to have been in the government sector and the medical field. If the numbers are not wholly fictitious I am going to make a stab at the jobs being part time and temporary (in the case of government hires) to make the unemployment number published for national consumption look better than it actually is. The amount and depth of deception in this administration is stunning.

  2. dhunter says:

    Well here’s some good employment news it seems the bureaucrats are gettin rich at least, a liberals wet dream kill off capitalism and replace it with government!

    :http://hotair.com/archives/2009/12/11/the-rich-bureaucrats-keep-getting-richer/

  3. KauaiBoy says:

    Not sure if there is such a thing as a “temporary” government job as once it is in the budget it is there forever; but I do know part time government work as that involves getting full time pay and benefits for only “working” part of the day—–like paying the farmers to not plant, paying the unemployed to not go to the unemployment office.

    Lesson 1 for bobo—-government can not create a sustainable economy–much like cannibalism in a society has to have limits, you can not tax an efficient economy into existence but you can tax one away.

  4. […] home, and work in a soup kitchen, or watch a church teach people how to write job resumes in hopes that you will step off the necks of businesses. Go out and stand before the doors of a local grocery store for a little while, or a local K-mart, […]

  5. Redteam says:

    The numbers have to be fraudulent. There is no other explanation. I had just read your post about that huge jump in EUC and it foreboding terrible news on unemployment when the numbers came out showing 10% unemployment.
    Well, the ‘adjustment’ has not been revealed yet.
    look at that line, maybe they’re trying for a ‘hockey stick’ in EUC.

    i’m really not cynical, just realistic….

  6. Terrye says:

    It is Christmas, there is always hiring at the holidays.

  7. […] from the year’s worth of data, where job losses averaged over 100,000 a month. 11,000 (the supposed jobs lost in November) is only 10% of the long term trend, which would be round off error in any estimate in my […]