Unemployment

I sell to various manufacturing sectors. Maybe 50% industrial (paint, ink and adhesives make up about half of this), food (my largest sector), and pharma (maybe 10%). The balance is all over the board.

The unemployment numbers don't give us a realistic feel for how many folks want to be working and aren't. If you move around in business, you'd know that.

I'm amazed at DrMilled ability to invent new statistics to measure the economy when the traditional ones no longer make his case. Ever consider a job at the NYPost, Doc?

Pull your head out of the sand PJ.

Workforce participation rate remains at 63% a 30+ year low. On the one hand obama and company say we need the food stamps and unemployment because of the weak economy and then on the other hand say how great things are when it comes to unemployment

Our President, President Obama, never says that "things are great" when it comes to unemployment. NEVER.

For instance, in this year's State of the Union address just two weeks ago, the President chose to highlight a mother's letter to him about how she was "the face of the unemployment crisis". Yes, a CRISIS!



The reason you guys are so unhinged is because what you believe bears no relationship to reality. It must be a lovely luxury to not have one's thoughts constrained by what's true.

There's no need to invent new statistics. The US economy adding 113,000 jobs on the heels of 74,000 December jobs is nothing to tout. It's weak, well below forecasts and not keeping up with population growth. The December number was the weakest in 3 years and it's a definite net negative. Of course there were weather issues in December and you can't judge the economy based on two months of data.

You can prove that unemployment rates can even go down while the economy sheds jobs yourself by using current numbers in the Atlanta Feds Job Calculator. Just set it for one month and it will show the number of jobs the economy needs to create to maintain the current rate given today's labor participation and population growth. https://www.frbatlanta.org/chcs/calculator/

The unemployment rate decreasing based on such tepid job numbers is clear indication that the decline occurred mostly because people stopped looking for work. WHY they stopped looking for work is the real question..Was it early retirement or Discouraged Workers?

We get the reverse effect sometimes too...when the economy adds a lot of jobs in a month and more workers try to reenter the workforce, the unemployment rate can increase....even though you added a lot of jobs.


1. More jobs does not mean less unemployment. The economy still needs to add about 120K jobs a month to keep up with population growth.

I completely agree with what what alanleroy wrote.

I would add that, by refusing to extend unemployment benefits, we've removed another incentive from people to seek work. UI benefits are only given to those actively seeking work. By refusing to extend UI benefits, a lot of people have stopped looking and are no longer counted as unemployed.

What makes it even more frustrating is that UI benefits are exceptionally good at stimulating the economy. Unemployed people spend those dollars. Stupid.

Sorry if expressing agreement in something written by someone I've tangled a lot with in this forum kills this thread, but he got it right.

Note also that the Labor Participation Rate peaked in about 2000 and has been on a downward slope ever since.

obama has made numerous speeches touting his job growth. He even campaigned on it. forky regularly posts jobs charts. The implication is that with obama the economy is going good; except when he wants to push entitlement programs

Here's a clue:



Note the event around 2000, the peak in the Labor Participation Rate: older worker participation rose more slowly than younger worker participation fell.