Reacting to Friday’s employment numbers, Mitt Romney focused on the increasing unemployment rate.
“Today’s increase in the unemployment rate is a hammer blow to struggling middle-class families,” said Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, in a statement. “President Obama doesn’t have a plan and believes that the private sector is ‘doing fine.’ Obviously, that is not the case.”
Obama emphasized the better than expected jobs report..
Obama noted, however, that the economy had created 4.5 million new jobs in 29 months and 1.1 million so far this year.
We’ve discussed ad nauseum on this blog the manner in which the federal government calculates the unemployment rate. Essentially, the Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn’t include those people who have given up looking for a job, those whose unemployment compensation has expired and such.
It’s important to look at what the numbers mean. Below is a table based the number of people in the employment pool. In the second column we see the number per unemployed at a 8.2% rate. In the third column we see the number unemployed at 8.3%. To have an increase in unemployment and new jobs you have to have an increase in the number of persons in the job pool, providing you’re not counting those who lose one job and find another within one month. As you can see, we have 110 more people unemployed currently at 8.3% than at 8.2% in our hypothetical population, and we have an increase in jobs.
| Population | 8.20% Unemployment |
8.30% Unemployment |
Total Employed |
| 100,000 | 8,200 | 8,300 | 91,800 |
| 110,000 | 9,020 | 9,130 | 100,980 |
Obviously, most of us find such trending unacceptable. Obama, while pointing out the jobs increase, wisely played the changes soberly. However, he nor his administration continue to fail to show any sign of being capable of leading us out of this economic downturn.
ADDED: Indeed, it seems part of Obama’s current plan includes temporarily hiding and manipulating the numbers more than improving the situation.
An administration that doesn’t want layoff notices required by law going out days before the November election is telling defense contractors they don’t have to send them for the cuts required by sequestration.
As the heads of major defense contractors Lockheed Martin, EADS North America, Pratt & Whitney and Williams-Pyro testified recently before the House Armed Services Committee, they are bound by law to give employees 60 days’ notice if their jobs are going to be terminated as a result of sequestration cuts scheduled for Jan. 2.
……
To avoid the electoral consequences of these cuts, the Department of Labor (DOL) is informing defense contractors that since sequestration hasn’t actually happened yet, and some in Congress are trying to find ways around it, it might be nice if they didn’t obey federal law and send out the pink slips just this once.
Otherwise, outraged voters might give President Obama a pink slip a few days later.
The DOL has issued guidelines that acknowledge it is “currently known that sequestration may occur, it is also known that efforts are being made to avoid sequestration.” So, Labor argues, the “WARN Act notice to employees of Federal contractors, including in the defense industry, is not required 60 days in advance of January 2, 2013, and would be inappropriate, given the lack of certainty about how the budget cuts will be implemented and the possibility that the sequester will be avoided before January.”
What is “inappropriate” is the Department of Labor playing election year political games to save the boss’ political skin.
Feel free to check my math. I make no claim to have this 100% correct and would like to know if I don’t.
Numbers look ok. I think the broader point is that we are generating jobs just fast enough to keep up with population growth, not decrease unemployment. I think that is an almost universally agreed upon point.
As to the IBD article, it doesnt make much sense. I have no idea if the specifics are true (this was the paper that did not know Hawking was a Brit), but if notices went out on Nov. 2nd, they would not effect UE rates until after the election, Nov. 6th.
Steve
Let’s see:
– defense contractors sell their product to US Dept of Defense, and
– With sequestration, DoD budget gets cut (along with a number of other federal budgets) so defense contractors lay off employees, and
– With the sequestration, federal spending goes down thus leading to a lower deficit, and
– Republicans will rejoice because federal spending is being cut, and
– Democrats will rejoice because DoD is being cut, and
– The deficit goes away and everyone is happy, except
– The laid off employees, the contractors, the communities where the contractors have their factories and offices, and everyone else since the laid off employees no longer spend as much leading to deepening recession and greater deficit.
I think I understand it. I am certain that a number of folks will correct me and point out how the Republicans (or the Democrats if they favor that party) will make it all OK if they are elected in November.
PS, Wait a sec, Steve, are you telling me that Steven Hawking is not a US national? (LOL)
For our good Steve and any others:
Because I have already had to explain to Steve previously how averages* work, I’ll be happy to explain the IBD article as well.
First, Steve has no idea if the specifics are true because he has no interest in knowing, although he does have an interest, in the face of that constructive ignorance, in casting doubt on the IBD article by suggesting it might be like the IBD editorial referencing Hawking and the NHS. Specifically, here’s how anyone with more curiosity than a shoe knows instantly whether the specifics of the IBD article are true: a one second Google of “Labor Dept. 60-Day Notice WARN act” brings us this in the top returns:
While it is true that charts of the unemployment rate would not change until after November 6, the politics of the WARN Act notices going out is this: the single issue that President Obama is most vulnerable on is the economy, and those notices would effectively be free advertising against President Obama on employment. Taking Lockheed Martin alone, the new reports would trumpet “Lockheed Martin to Layoff 10,000″, and not only are each of those 10,000 voters, but also all of the adult friends and family of each of those 10,000 are voters as well. But they would not go out to just Lockheed Martin employees alone.
WARN Notices go out = immediate, widespread last minute excruciatingly personal (not abstract UE chart) bad news about the economy literally days before the election, even worse than the historic “October Surprise”: aggravated rippling mutterings of “anything is better than this”.
WARN Notices don’t go out = no immediate, widespread, last minute excruciatingly personal (not abstract UE chart) bad news about the economy literally days before the election, even worse than the historic “October Surprise”: less aggravated rippling mutterings of “anything is better than this”.
That is how political campaign managers and the rest of voting America make sense of the IBD article.
And so now for any others in our good Steve’s mental shoes as well: specifics verified and consequences explained.
H. M. Stuart
Alexandria
* In all fairness, our good Steve could very well have understood how averages work in that instance and only been feigning his ignorance in order to make the assertion he chose to make in the face of the data.
Dear HM,
Your explanation is clear and helpful. However, I find that you seem to be morphing into a more congenial form of JMK in your need to sort of insult those who you are enlightening. It is not really necessary to suggest that someone else is dumb in order to be erudite ( “Steve has no idea if the specifics are true because he has no interest in knowing, although he does have an interest, in the face of that constructive ignorance…”). We really get enough of that from the troglodytes sitting (occasionally) in Congress without addressing each other in that manner.
All that said, the manipulation of potential sequestration by our politicians is execrable by both parties. They are dealing with careers and livelihoods here yet they are perfectly happy to go home to campaign and tell their potential voters lies and half truths about what they are doing in order to wangle votes. Maybe we should be reassured that this has been the case for over 200 years but I do not find myself reassured very much. Our world today is too dangerous for these guys and gals to be running our part of it.
It is not really necessary to suggest that someone else is dumb [emphasis HMS] in order to be erudite ( “Steve has no idea if the specifics are true because he has no interest in knowing, although he does have an interest, in the face of that constructive ignorance…”). We really get enough of that from the troglodytes sitting (occasionally) in Congress without addressing each other in that manner.
My good Edward,
Please explain how my description of Steve’s deliberate behavior in a) deliberately avoiding easily verifying the specifics of the story; b) using that deliberate ignore-ance (ignorance means not knowing, Edward) to insinuate that the claims were untrue by c) then suggesting they were of a piece with the Hawking editorial in any remote way suggests Steve is dumb.
Absent such an explanation, good Edward, please then explain and justify your charging me with doing so.
If upon reflection you wish to reformulate and charge me differently, by all means feel free to do so.
H. M. Stuart
Alexandria
I really am not interested in getting into a debate on this. I am simply pointing out that it is possible to make valid points without adding subjective assessments of others’ intelligence, integrity, or truthfulness. If however, individuals believe it strengthens their points to cast aspersions about their fellow discussants, I guess we will need to read between the lines and concentrate on the data not the commentary about the data. I have had to take this tack with our fellow member, JMK who seems to live in a world of his own in so far as words and their meanings are concerned.
I really am not interested in getting into a debate on this.
My good Edward,
Were I in your argumentative shoes, I can certainly understand your reticence after the fact of your unilaterally opening such a debate with me. Nevertheless, I did not ask you to debate; I asked you to substantiate what you unilaterally elected to claim I did, specifically, that I suggested Steve was dumb.
If I did suggest Steve was dumb, demonstrate how. If I didn’t, please have the personal honesty and the intellectual integrity to retract your false statement.
If you are incapable of either, your self-appointed authority to lecture anyone about how to argue about anything becomes dismissible on its face as nothing more than hypocritical, banal sanctimony.
H. M. Stuart
Alexandria
Dear HM,
Your comment, “In all fairness, our good Steve could very well have understood how averages work in that instance and only been feigning his ignorance in order to make the assertion he chose to make in the face of the data.” struck me as being along that line. However, as I said before, your points were well made and clear but were interspersed with periodic unneeded commentary. I guess the point is not worth further commentary.
My good Edward,
You may be unaware that our good Steve has for four and a half years now asserted himself to be the purely data-driven, natural authority on all things numerical.
In the face of clear data, he makes a claim impossible for one who understands averages. He did not say he made a mistake, therefore, which did he do? Not understand averages, or understand averages but make a false claim hoping those who didn’t understand averages and those too passive, pacificistic, or too imtimidated by him would, by their acquiescence, let him slip a false claim by.
I have no problem calling bullshit on a lying, deceptive, manipulator when I encounter one. I don’t feel that is something I need to be “above”; I feel that is precisely what I need to be engaged in if my intellectual values are to be worth anything.
H. M. Stuart
Alexandria
“First, Steve has no idea if the specifics are true because he has no interest in knowing”
True. Tis a non-story. Not sure if the GOP will let the cuts happen.
Steve
My good Steve,
But you have already destroyed any credibility you might have had declaring it to be a non-story because of the interest you have already demonstrated you have in it as a story, first declaring it made no sense, though without bothering to validate the specifics, although the political sense of it is effortlessly demonstrable to millions and millions of people, while simultaneously attempting to insinuate that anything sourced from IBD was automatically suspect, all actions, not of any sort of rational authority honestly interested in any sort of truth, much less rational sense, but rather of nothing more than a preemptive ideological-psychological manipulator.
The saddest thing about the consistent pathological dishonesty of your claims, claims knowingly made under the otherwise to be admired aegis of being a physician, to boot, is its consistent and childlike transparency: you are like the child caught raiding the cookie jar who, when caught and asked by his mother standing over him, “Stevie, are you eating cookies before dinner?!”, stares straight into her face and replies, speech garbled with half-consumed cookie mash, chubby cheeks and mouth smeared with chocolate, “Mmmmpphh…NO!, not me. I haven’t been anywhere NEAR the cookie jar! Honest!”.
To have become so ingrained that you cannot not engage in it, counter-intuitive as it may be I can only assume this type of manipulative behavior has provided some consistent benefit to you over the years.
H. M. Stuart
Alexandria
At least you admit your complete bias. One thing is perfectly clear, Obama and is perfectly willing and happy to use the power of the federal government mislead the American people try to ensure his re-election.
” while simultaneously attempting to insinuate that anything sourced from IBD was automatically suspect”
It is.
Steve