Category Archives: Labor

Updated: Those Invisible Jobs

Economy, Federal Reserve Bank, Labor, Political Economy, Propaganda

The excerpt is from my new WorlNetDaily.com column, “Those Invisible Jobs”:

“Let’s suppose a business employed ten workers in June. Along came Barack Obama and huffed and puffed and blew six jobs away. Four employees now run a pared-down operation. The next round of retrenchments will invariably entail fewer than six people. The president, or any other wolf in sheep’s clothing, may declare that our proprietor has shed fewer jobs in the month of July. But he may not frame a mathematical inevitability as a sign of economic recovery.

Fewer jobs lost probably means that there are fewer jobs to lose.

Nevertheless, this is exactly how the president spun the static employment market—and, to be fair, this is the way all presidents, aided by statisticians at the Bureau of Labor, finesse unemployment. …

The fig leaf of a “jobless recovery” is yet another unbeatable bit of political fraud.

A jobless economic recovery is the equivalent of a housewarming for the homeless. …

READ THE COMPLETE column, “Those Invisible Jobs,” on WND.COM. And on Taki’s Magazine, every weekend.

Update (August 28): Today, on Chuck Wilder’s nationally syndicated CRN show, “Talkback,” we briefly discussed “Those Invisible Jobs.” I immediately tackled, without being asked to, a possible argument against the case I make in the column’s first paragraph:

Let’s suppose a business employed 10 workers in June. Along came Barack Obama and huffed and puffed and blew six jobs away. Four employees now run a pared-down operation. The next round of retrenchments will invariably entail fewer than six people. The president, or any other wolf in sheep’s clothing, may declare that our proprietor has shed fewer jobs in the month of July. But he may not frame a mathematical inevitability as a sign of economic recovery.

Fewer jobs lost probably means that there are fewer jobs to lose.

The employment market is not static; it’s dynamic. Jobs are destroyed and created all the time. Efficiencies and productivity also reduce and improve the labor force. However, it’s safe to say that if ever the labor market was static, it’s now. And for a good reason. As a snapshot in time, the logical example I give above holds. Because—again, for good reasons—there are fewer jobs to be had, the number of jobs lost will also diminish. But this is because of 1) a relatively static job market. 2) A private economy, “penetrated and enervated by a tentacular bureaucracy.”

For ideologues out there slowly learning, on BAB, to meld reason, reality and ideology, don’t be rigid Postrelians (from Virginia Postrel’s dynamism folly).

Unemployment Worse Than They’re Letting On

Economy, IMMIGRATION, Labor, Propaganda

The Center for Immigration Studies: “While the current high rate of official unemployment is well known, it only includes those who have looked for work in the last four weeks. There is a broader measure of employment, referred to by the Bureau of Labor Statistics as U-6, which includes the unemployed and people who would like to work, but who have not looked for a job recently, as well as those involuntarily working part-time. This report examines the U-6 measure and finds that things are much worse than the official unemployment numbers imply. The situation is particularly bad for minorities, the young, and less-educated Americans. These are the workers who face the most competition from immigrants—legal and illegal. (All figures in this report are seasonally unadjusted and are from June 2009.)

Among the findings: * As of June 2009, the overall unemployment rate for native-born Americans is 9.7 percent, but the broader U-6 measure shows it as 16.3 percent. There are 12.7 million unemployed natives, but using the U-6 measure it is 21.7 million. … ”

I reported this earlier this month.

Unemployment Worse Than They're Letting On

IMMIGRATION, Labor, Propaganda

The Center for Immigration Studies: “While the current high rate of official unemployment is well known, it only includes those who have looked for work in the last four weeks. There is a broader measure of employment, referred to by the Bureau of Labor Statistics as U-6, which includes the unemployed and people who would like to work, but who have not looked for a job recently, as well as those involuntarily working part-time. This report examines the U-6 measure and finds that things are much worse than the official unemployment numbers imply. The situation is particularly bad for minorities, the young, and less-educated Americans. These are the workers who face the most competition from immigrants—legal and illegal. (All figures in this report are seasonally unadjusted and are from June 2009.)

Among the findings: * As of June 2009, the overall unemployment rate for native-born Americans is 9.7 percent, but the broader U-6 measure shows it as 16.3 percent. There are 12.7 million unemployed natives, but using the U-6 measure it is 21.7 million. … ”

I reported this earlier this month.

Happy Days Are Here Again … La, La, La

Business, Debt, Economy, Labor

The economic experts who’ve got a lot riding on the recovery ass, now measure recovery by the slowing rate of job losses. Employers laid off fewer workers in July—247,000 as opposed to 443,000 in June. “The jobless rate dipped for the first time in 15 months to 9.4 percent in July, from 9.5 percent the previous month, and workers’ hours and pay edged upward,” reports the AP.

But, “the main reason the unemployment rate declined last month was not an inspiring one.” What that ass with ears Obama doesn’t divulge is this:

Hundreds of thousands of people, some discouraged by their failed job searches, left the labor force. The labor force includes only those who are either employed or are looking for work.

If laid-off workers who have given up looking for new jobs or have settled for part-time work are included the unemployment rate would have been 16.3 percent in July. All told, 14.5 million were out of work in July.

Job-seekers are finding it harder to get work because there are so few openings. A record 4.97 million people had been unemployed six months or longer in July. And the average length of unemployment grew to 25.1 weeks, also a record.

Recovery cannot commence until the government stops cold turkey the reckless, unconstitutional, immoral measures that are worsening the economy.

What are those? No great mystery there; they are the exact actions that would worsen your personal finances were you to indulge as the government does: Digging yourself deeper into to debt by spending yourself into oblivion. Bailing out debtors, restructuring their mortgages, reducing their payments, forestalling foreclosures, making borrowing artificially even cheaper when it should be expensive, penalizing banks for trying to lend conservatively, creating more and more government-sector jobs, which are supported by taxpayers, are a drain on the economy and create no economic value whatsoever—all the stuff the Obama Administration is championing as a matter of policy, all the while printing money non-stop.

There’s one good sign that Americans have parted company from the government in cultivating more frugal habits: “consumers paid down credit cards and reduced other debt in June for the fifth straight month.”