Unemployment up but the media claims that is good news.

[gatorman_07732]

This is from a year ago, and you can't tell me there has been major pink slips handed out in that time.
So really that number I provided you is pretty accurate

http://money.cnn.com/2012/01/25/news...ment/index.htm

Employees: The number of federal employees grew by 123,000, or 6.2%, under President Obama, according to the White House's Office of Management and Budget.

Much of the hiring increases came in the departments of homeland security, justice, veterans and defense.

******Edited********

So I went to White House's Office of Management and Budget myself and found that there has also been growth in this last year as well. So you puffed out your chest in attempt to scold me with data that reflects god knows what. So that 140K number was right after all.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Historicals

[mdgator05]

Originally Posted by gatorman_07732

This is from a year ago, and you can't tell me there has been major pink slips handed out in that time.
So really that number I provided you is pretty accurate

http://money.cnn.com/2012/01/25/news...ment/index.htm



******Edited********

So I went to White House's Office of Management and Budget myself and found that there has also been growth in this last year as well. So you puffed out your chest in attempt to scold me with data that reflects god knows what. So that 140K number was right after all.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Historicals

Those stats exclude the US postal service. I don't see a particular reason to do that. I am using the BLS's seasonally adjusted stats demonstrating total federal employment, which includes the postal service.

So that number is only right if you want to engage in two somewhat dubious analytical decisions. First, you would have to ignore the last year in which there have been significant cuts in the number of federal employees.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf

Page 33: In the last year, the seasonally adjusted employment for the government has declined from 2,834,000 to 2,791,000 (notice the numbers are much bigger than the ones you have been using- that is due to the inclusion of the postal service).

Second, you would need to ignore the postal service. Is it your contention that the postal service should not count as federal employment?

[gatorman_07732]

md you are just flat out wrong on this, cnn concurs

[mdgator05]

Originally Posted by gatorman_07732

md you are just flat out wrong on this, cnn concurs

It is important to know what is being reported. You are using numbers that exclude the Postal Service. If you open the Excel file on the OMB website (Table 17.1) that you linked, the first line is "(excluding Postal Service, in thousands)."

Is it your contention that the correct way to measure federal employment is to exclude the postal service (and judicial and legislative branch employment)? Why or why not?

I am using the BLS statistics, found in the Monthly Employment Report, which was the subject of this thread. For their federal government employment variable, they include the Postal Service (although they do split the Postal Service out as well in a separate stat).

Your argument only holds up if you are arguing that the postal service should be excluded. I don't see why that should be done. If you could convince me of that, I would be willing to listen. If the best you have is a CNN article from a year ago with a stat that you don't fully understand, that is far more underwhelming.

[g8orbill]

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sh...#ixzz2Jehi6Wet

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/1690...ployment-ticks

actual unemployment is closer to 15%-too bad our media and your prez won't release the actual figures

no wonder your prez discontinued his jobs task force-they are a total failure

http://www.aei-ideas.org/2013/02/jan...-jobs-anymore/

[mdgator05]

Originally Posted by g8orbill

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sh...#ixzz2Jehi6Wet

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/1690...ployment-ticks

actual unemployment is closer to 15%-too bad our media and your prez won't release the actual figures

no wonder your prez discontinued his jobs task force-they are a total failure

http://www.aei-ideas.org/2013/02/jan...-jobs-anymore/

This is why you should try to understand primary sources rather than relying upon biased sources to tell you about the primary sources.

In the first link, the author starts with a false title. It says "8.5 million Americans left the labor force." This is false because it would only be true if there was no population change. Some people have left the labor force. Other people were likely never part of it (a 16 year old without a job counts as Civilian Noninstitutional Population). This number would be higher even if the participation rate increased somewhat (it has decreased due to a variety of factors), due to population growth.

The second link falls for the same issue. A similarly biased article in the other direction would just start with the headline "143,000 added to the labor force this month"

An unbiased analysis would say that in the last month, the US Civilian Noninstitutional Population increased by 313,000, of which 143,000 were added to the labor force and 169,000 were not in the labor force.

That is a much better place to start an analysis than either of the biased perspectives you gave or the sample biased perspective I gave.

[g8orbill]

md- you are going to make excuses for your prez no matter what we post-I happen to think that your prez is a pox on this Nation and I happen to believe that your prez and his ilk put out bogus numbers that his dumbmasses buy into-it makes you feel better about giving him a do over

[mdgator05]

Originally Posted by g8orbill

md- you are going to make excuses for your prez no matter what we post-I happen to think that your prez is a pox on this Nation and I happen to believe that your prez and his ilk put out bogus numbers that his dumbmasses buy into-it makes you feel better about giving him a do over

I am relying on the numbers. You have raised no salient points throwing any of those numbers into question. In fact, each of your articles are based on flawed reading of...the numbers released by the BLS. So if they are releasing "bogus numbers," why would you then rely upon them, as your articles did?

[g8orbill]

unless you are an expert-which I highly doubt-I will take my chances with the articles and what they report

[mdgator05]

Originally Posted by g8orbill

unless you are an expert-which I highly doubt-I will take my chances with the articles and what they report

You don't need to be an expert. The numbers are easily read. It doesn't require anything more than a basic knowledge of stats and the willingness to read. Yes I do have some graduate econ background, including some higher level labor econ, but it certainly doesn't require that to be able to figure out what the numbers are saying.

As I stated, the articles you linked falsely equated an additional person not in the labor force as an additional person dropping out of the labor force. By that same flawed logic, I could say that we added 143K people to the labor force (as there are currently 143K more people in the labor force than there were last month). However, a more accurate reading would be to say that we increased the total number of people by 313,000, of which 143,000 were in the labor force and 169,000 were not (there is a rounding issue resulting in a slight difference between 143K+169K and 313K).

It is all in the report. BLS also provides a glossary. Both are linked here:

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf
http://www.bls.gov/bls/glossary.htm

[gatordowneast]

It is comical to watch libbies on this board try to defend Obama's policies. They keep talking about "demand". Me thinks we would have a lot more demand from consumers and businesses if there were different and better leadership at the top. If a higher % of our citizens were employed, guess what...their demand would be higher. And as more people are buying, contributing, doesn't this help business demand?

If changing coaches can change a football program's fortunes including more wins, ticket sales, booster donations, merchandise sales, why would changing political leadership be any different?. If changing CEOs can change a corporation's fortunes including higher revenues, profits, growth, why would changing political leadership be any different? If changing teachers or principals can change an underperforming school's fortunes, why would changing political leadership be any different?

Answer? It is no different. The leader of the free world sets the tone and establishes the environment that causes optomism, caution or pessimism. The leader of the free world establishes the tone that lets business leaders know "he is for them" and considers them allies or "against them" and considers them enemies. How is Obama and his administration viewed by business leaders?

[DaveFla]

Liberal nuance, at its finest...


When he finds out he's wrong, his only retort is "you're too dumb to understand..." The tried and true liberal debate fall-back plan.

[gatorman_07732]

Originally Posted by DaveFla

Liberal nuance, at its finest...


When he finds out he's wrong, his only retort is "you're too dumb to understand..." The tried and true liberal debate fall-back plan.

No doubt about, and the proof is so overwhelming that he is wrong. It's right on the whitehouse site and yet he persists almost like beating his head against the wall. Imagine Obama shrank government more than any president

[surfn1080]

Originally Posted by mdgator05

You don't need to be an expert. The numbers are easily read. It doesn't require anything more than a basic knowledge of stats and the willingness to read. Yes I do have some graduate econ background, including some higher level labor econ, but it certainly doesn't require that to be able to figure out what the numbers are saying.

As I stated, the articles you linked falsely equated an additional person not in the labor force as an additional person dropping out of the labor force. By that same flawed logic, I could say that we added 143K people to the labor force (as there are currently 143K more people in the labor force than there were last month). However, a more accurate reading would be to say that we increased the total number of people by 313,000, of which 143,000 were in the labor force and 169,000 were not (there is a rounding issue resulting in a slight difference between 143K+169K and 313K).

It is all in the report. BLS also provides a glossary. Both are linked here:

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf
http://www.bls.gov/bls/glossary.htm

So your calling out an article with false numbers but yet your speculating the numbers here? Keep in mind they adjust for population growth!

[northgagator]

Now the Libs are down to parsing data the data to defend their failed position;

As I stated, the articles you linked falsely equated an additional person not in the labor force as an additional person dropping out of the labor force. By that same flawed logic, I could say that we added 143K people to the labor force (as there are currently 143K more people in the labor force than there were last month). However, a more accurate reading would be to say that we increased the total number of people by 313,000, of which 143,000 were in the labor force and 169,000 were not

No matter how you slice and dice you still have an increase o 313,000 that are not counted in the work force.

Part of the measurement of a successful economy is the generation of jobs to get people back into the work force and to get them into employed statistic.

Here is a good example of the slicing and dicing
Of the data. The Obama Admin is try to make a 150Knew jobs for January of 2013 like good news when it is not. A rate of 150K is a annual increase of 1.8 million jobs. At this rate it will take
almost 15 years to get us down to an unemployment rate of 5.5%.
It is time to face the facts. The Liberal agenda objective of wealth redistribution does not have a priority for the 5.5% employment rate.

Note this item is a year old but it is still revelent.

When we look at broad measures of jobs and population, then the beginning of 2012 was one of the worst months in US history, with a total of 2.3 million people losing jobs or leaving the workforce in a single month. Yet, the official unemployment rate showed a decline from 8.5% to 8.3% in January - and was such cheering news that it set off a stock rally.

How can there be such a stark contrast between the cheerful surface and an underlying reality that is getting worse?

The true unemployment picture is hidden by essentially splitting jobless Americans up and putting them inside one of three different "boxes": the official unemployment box, the full unemployment box, and the most obscure box, the workforce participation rate box

As we will explore herein, a detailed look at the government's own data base shows that about 9 million people without jobs have been removed from the labor force simply by the government defining them as not being in the labor force anymore. Indeed - effectively all of the decreases in unemployment rate percentages since 2009 have come not from new jobs, but through reducing the workforce participation rate so that millions of jobless people are removed from the labor force by definition.

When we pierce through this statistical smoke and mirrors and factor back in those 9 million jobless whom the government has defined out of existence, then the true unemployment rate is 19.9% and rising, and not 8.3% and falling
.....
Thirty million more people over the age of 16 and one million fewer people being fully employed is a shortfall of 20 million jobs, and this by itself creates Great Depression range unemployment levels. Fundamentally, this is not even remotely consistent with a reported unemployment rate in the 8% range.
The government is attempting "information management" (aka manipulating statistics in a manner specifically intended to deceive) when it comes to how the public perceives this situation. The method used is to split the catastrophe into three boxes: putting 13.5 million jobless people into the first box of official unemployment for press release purposes; segmenting another 11.8 million jobless into the second box that is hidden in the U-6 footnotes, and making another 7.2 million jobless disappear completely by using the third box of changing the workforce participation rates (outside of U-6 since 2000).

Those three boxes add up to 32.5 million jobless, and the 12.5 million jobless over and above the 20 million missing jobs is in the ballpark for what would be "normal" (5.2%) full unemployment for a population of 242 million people aged 16 and above.

Everything adds up, and the big picture of those 20 million missing jobs reconciles with current improving official unemployment statistics when we dive deep into the heart of the workforce participation deception, and discover that the worst of the damage is among those younger than 55. That is the opposite of the cover story for the decline in labor force participation rates to date. But intuitively, this is a good fit with the big picture of 30 million more people in the working age civilian population, and 1 million fewer jobs.
And when we pierce through the statistical manipulations - that is exactly what is happening. Employment has been devastated among the young. Which is precisely why there has been such a blatant manipulation of workforce participation statistics among the young in particular. With nothing in those statistical manipulations changing the bigger picture of twenty million missing jobs, and a total that continues to grow annually.

http://danielamerman.com/articles/2012/WorkC.html

[jimgata]

More people dropped out of the work force than found jobs last month and yet unemployment ticked up.
It must take the iq of an aardvark not to realize the media is in the back pocket of Obama. It's as though they have given up any semblance of journalistic ethics to support him.

[Dreamliner]

I was actually somewhat surprised that Brain Williams provided a sobering picture of the report. His reportage was laced with "buts."

[mdgator05]

Originally Posted by gatorman_07732

No doubt about, and the proof is so overwhelming that he is wrong. It's right on the whitehouse site and yet he persists almost like beating his head against the wall. Imagine Obama shrank government more than any president

Okay one more time, since this seems far too difficult (kind of like trying to describe a gun law with multiple links to you).

Your numbers don't include the postal service. Mine do. That is why the BLS numbers that I am using are different than the OMB numbers. They are actually higher. I will ask again since you seem either incapable or unwilling to answer, do you think the postal service should count as federal employment?

This isn't an ideological question, just a basic question of knowing what you are looking at when it is fully described to you. As I said before, the top line of the Excel file from OMB clearly states "excluding postal employees." I know you wish it didn't. But it does.

[mdgator05]

Originally Posted by DaveFla

Liberal nuance, at its finest...


When he finds out he's wrong, his only retort is "you're too dumb to understand..." The tried and true liberal debate fall-back plan.

I don't think he is too dumb to understand and I don't think you are too dumb to understand. I think if either of you actually tried, you would be able to do it.

So what is it that you don't understand? Or are you being a troll?

[mdgator05]

Originally Posted by northgagator

Now the Libs are down to parsing data the data to defend their failed position;



No matter how you slice and dice you still have an increase o 313,000 that are not counted in the work force.

Part of the measurement of a successful economy is the generation of jobs to get people back into the work force and to get them into employed statistic.

Here is a good example of the slicing and dicing
Of the data. The Obama Admin is try to make a 150Knew jobs for January of 2013 like good news when it is not. A rate of 150K is a annual increase of 1.8 million jobs. At this rate it will take
almost 15 years to get us down to an unemployment rate of 5.5%.
It is time to face the facts. The Liberal agenda objective of wealth redistribution does not have a priority for the 5.5% employment rate.

Note this item is a year old but it is still revelent.

http://danielamerman.com/articles/2012/WorkC.html

No doubt it is extra people not in the labor force as it is extra people in the labor force as well. No economy is ever going to see every new person join the labor force. However, the proportion is still too high, suggesting there are some number of people leaving the labor force.

The main issue right now in the labor force is competing in a global economy with a national labor market. Think about the equivalent within the US economy. To understand the issue, lets think of a hypothetical example.

Say we go back to major tariffs on everything from overseas (this is a hypothetical), such that everything has to be produced in the US. You are a US corporation trying to produce something with a high volume and a fairly low profit margin, which is not aided by having skilled workers. In this economy, you would be able to build your plant in a location with low cost of labor/low skill of labor and a low cost of living. Then somebody with the skill-set of a low skilled laborer would be able to move to that location to take that job. And thus we find equilibrium. So if I am a low-skilled worker who just happened to have been born in Manhattan or Silicon Valley, I can now move to say rural Mississippi and take that job.

With the economy we have now, this is not an option. So we have an international capital market with a national labor market. So if I need low cost labor, I am going to build my plant in a location with a lower cost of living and hire low-skilled labor there (say Bangladesh). However, the low-skilled labor in the US is stuck here due to cultural reasons (not knowing the language, being uncomfortable with the culture), economic reasons (don't have the money to follow the job to Bangladesh and the corporation has plenty of cheap alternatives there meaning they won't send you there), and legal reasons (immigration is controlled by governments). So the equivalent in a national economy is allowing the corporation to build the plant in Mississippi and then telling the low-skilled worker in Manhattan that he can't move there.

The unemployment at this point is almost entirely in unskilled and low-skilled labor. Look at the employment numbers from the perspective of education. We have a 12% unemployment rate with a 45% participation rate amongst those with no High School Diploma. We have an 8% unemployment rate with a 58.7% participation rate amongst those with only a High School Diploma. We have a 68.3% participation rate and a 7% unemployment rate for those with an Associate's Degree or some college. Finally, we have a 75.8% participation rate and a 3.7% unemployment rate for college educated workers.

So we have a huge unemployment and out of the labor force problem amongst those with no High School Diploma. Amongst those with a college degree, unemployment is basically at 0, since a certain percentage (around 4%) are between jobs at any given time in the healthiest of economies (people should be switching jobs at times to more efficiently allocate the labor force).

What is the correct solution for this structural issue? I am not sure. And I don't think anybody has come up with a great solution. We could return to national capital markets with huge tariffs. But that raises the price of everything, causing huge inflation. We could move to a fully international labor market (no immigration controls). But that still leaves the cultural and economic issues. At this point in time, it does appear like our elected leaders are content to deal with using transfer payments to maintain the current system. And that might be the best solution. If it enriches the majority of the country enough, it might be worth it to essentially buy off the part of the country it hurts. I am not sure of that or advocating that, but it is possible. But nobody has really come up with a better solution, in either party or ideological camp.