The Bureau of Labor Statistics has released its unemployment situation report for February 2011:
Nonfarm payroll employment increased by 192,000 in February, and the unemployment rate was little changed at 8.9 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Job gains occurred in manufacturing, construction, professional and business services, health care, and transportation and warehousing.
I expect that over the next several hours or days we’ll see some furious efforts to put lipstick on that pig. The labor force participation rate continues to be at a 25 year low cf. here.
We need to increase employment by at least 150,000 just to keep up with the natural increase. Between 7 and 8 million people have lost their jobs since the start of the Great Recession. At the present rate it would take nearly 200 months to bring those people back to work. That’s 16 years, folks.
I will gleefully accept a bet that we will have experienced another economic downturn (and, consequently, a decrease in hiring) between now and then.
I yield to no one on my criticicm of Obama and a dour view of economic prospects in the current environment. And I absolutely agree that the labor participation rate makes the stated unemployment rate an absurdity.
That said, at least we appear to have reached a point of stability, maybe even eaking out modest gains. Maybe this only reflects my prior pessimism that such a 8.9% figure gets a little tip of the hat from me.
Lastly, a couple weeks ago I was a guest of Harris Private Bank at a Blackhawks game. In attendance were a number of small business owner clients of the Private Bank. The conversations with them are exactly what I have posted here before: yes, they see stability, but in no way are they ready to open up the growth investment spigot – yes, in part due to the economy – but they all also cited Obama and his positions on taxation and regulation.
We are in slog along mode people.
The average number of months from peak to peak of a business cycle since WWII is 70. The median is 74.
The last peak was in December 2007. That means we’ve gone about 38 months since the last peak. By my reckoning we should expect another economic downturn in 3 to 5 years. Longer would be very lucky.
We should be seeing considerably more job growth at this stage of a recovery. The economy’s still on life support.
Felix Salmon has a good chart:
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/03/04/chart-of-the-day-us-earnings-edition/
“yes, they see stability, but in no way are they ready to open up the growth investment spigot”
But it’s Obama that keeps them from hiring. Keep those stories straight.
We are in slog along mode people.
What’s this “WE” you speak of? You sound like your biggest problem is where to dodge the most taxes. My problem is figuring out if I will ever have a job again and hoping that my wife doesn’t lose hers. Nothing personal, Drew, really there isn’t. But there is no WE. There’s US and THEM, and it’s really hard to cross that divide in the good way.
It’s all too easy to cross the divide in a negative way. I’ve done it, and so have several friends. So have a lot of other people I now know. And I find it increasingly difficult to speak to old friends now on the other side of the divide. They’ve got NO FUCKING IDEA what is going on, or how soul destroying it is. Try and explain it? They just stare back blankly, as though I were speaking some long forgotten language. And I dare say you also have no fucking idea what it’s like.
There is no more WE in America.
Icepick –
You’ve attempted to turn my usual; “we” dissertation back on the well off. But no cigar. Sorry.
“What’s this “WE†you speak of? You sound like your biggest problem is where to dodge the most taxes.”
Careful, icepick. “Dodge,” is perjorative. I pay my taxes under the law, period. And, I’d suggest that in the last decade I’ve paid, yearly, more in taxes than the vast majority here and at OTB pay in a lifetime. I’d also suggest to you that many folks with incomes far less than mine cheat, and don’t pay under the law. You’d do well to save your invective for them. But I digress…..
“My problem is figuring out if I will ever have a job again and hoping that my wife doesn’t lose hers. Nothing personal, Drew, really there isn’t. But there is no WE. There’s US and THEM”
Flat damned wrong, icepick. If you have comprehended anything I’ve written here for 2-3 years now its that I attempt to advocate policies that I think, and I empirically observe, will actually help the little guy – “US,” as you put it. Empowering government and attempting to rape the rich won’t help the non-rich, icepick. That’s just a fools errand. The rich have the power and means to turn that back on you. Government is a greater pct of GDP than ever before. Result???
Icepick, I wasn’t always rich. I was dirt poor once. And not one single government program got me where I am to day. Not one tax scheme. Just a robust economy and opportunity, which I took. I’ve advised you before – get creative and go out and do it. If you are as emotionally charged as I see on this board, and if you have the capabilities you claim, you will most assuredly make your way successfully. And I certainly wish you the best. And if in any way I could be of assitance I would. You’ve got some fire in the belly.
But the whining, WE vs THEM etc gives me pause. That would make you just another pathetic leftist ward of the State. Not so good. Doomed to failure.
“It’s all too easy to cross the divide in a negative way. I’ve done it, and so have several friends. So have a lot of other people I now know. And I find it increasingly difficult to speak to old friends now on the other side of the divide. They’ve got NO FUCKING IDEA what is going on, or how soul destroying it is. Try and explain it?
Icepick – one last time, then I’m tired. I do have a fucking idea. You ever worked the midnight shift in a steel mill in East Chicago Indiana??? You ever felt the January ice cold chill of Lake Michigan blowing so hard your front side it was cold as hell, and your back side was white hot from the heat of a ladle of steel at your feet? How about on a swealtering July day?? The smoke. Blowing your nose and its all black shit coming out?? The steel industry wasn’t exactly the most robust in the 80’s. I worried about my future, too, just like you. I got on my horse. I didn’t look to government.
Don’t give me your sob story. Dime a dozen. You tell me you have what it takes. Get off your ass and make it happen. Else I must conclude you, like some of the other “look to government” types here and at OTB are frauds, just looking for the easy way out.
If you think Obama, Pelosi, Read, Durbin, Krugman etc etc are going to pave the way for you, icepick, you’ll be posting the same stuff 10 years from now. I really, really hope that’s not the case.
You sound like a good guy, don’t let pessimism get in the way.
Careful, icepick. “Dodge,†is perjorative.
It’s descriptive. You are looking to move to a locale where you will pay less taxes. I have no doubt you (or your tax accountant/lawyer) look for every legal way to lower your taxes. You’re dodging them, and doing so lawfully. I don’t blame you, and I look for every legal advantage I can get as well. But it is still an effort to avoid paying taxes.
Note that I did not claim anything about whether or not you were paying your fair share. Frankly I find such discussions tiresome, unless it can be shown that the person in question is knowingly cheating. (See Turbo Timmay and Congressman Rangel.) The tax code is a nightmare right now, and the whole thing needs to be re-thought and re-done. Preferably in that order.
And, I’d suggest that in the last decade I’ve paid, yearly, more in taxes than the vast majority here and at OTB pay in a lifetime. I’d also suggest to you that many folks with incomes far less than mine cheat, and don’t pay under the law. You’d do well to save your invective for them. But I digress….
No, it is exactly the point. You, like many a rich man, claim that you are better than us poor folk because you make more money and pay more taxes. You expect the rest of us to KNOW OUR PLACE. That makes you an ass, an easy target, and Michael Reynolds with a Republican Party Voter Registration.
Empowering government and attempting to rape the rich won’t help the non-rich, icepick.
And exactly where have I advocated that? Drew, I am to the right of you. To me you just come off as another blowhard that wants Big Business (and especially its finance wing) to run the country for ITS OWN benefit. Citizens (such that any are left) be damned.
You just think that getting rid of various government subsidies of specific industries and companies will help other businesses get ahead. But what’s good for business ain’t necessarily good for citizens. And I am having trouble remembering any points when you have favored a restricition on business because it had bad effects on citizens. And don’t bother – I will assume you are against child labor and actually putting rat poison in the food. But do you believe in any restraints on business except for the most heinous instances? I can’t recall any such positions on your part. You ALWAYS come down in favor of business, assuming that it will automatically be good for the rest of us.
So spare me the “I’m for the little guy” speech. You are for business – amd that is the only concern you ever voice.
I was dirt poor once. And not one single government program got me where I am to day. Not one tax scheme. Just a robust economy and opportunity, which I took.
So you were poor. Were you poor, or were you just starting out? I’ve heard lots of people from well-off families talk about how tough they had it when they were poor, when what they mean is they were in grad-school scrounging by until they could get out and make it. NOT THE SAME THING.
And the government didn’t help you. Did you (or your parents) pay for all of your schooling, from K through college? You are aware that government has subsidized formal education at every level since WWII? Did you just go to private schools, and then go to universities that took no government money of any kind? I will ignore government investments in infrastructure and such. I will just assume you built your own log cabin by chopping down trees barehanded and always walked to work on virgin soil.
And for the robust economy – now there’s the real difference! There IS NO ROBUST ECONOMY ANY MORE. That is gone, and at least some the prior robust economy in the USA was historical coincidence. WE didn’t get our factories bombed flat in WWII. WE didn’t go Communist or Fascist. WE didn’t have large colonial empires draining resources from the mother country. We didn’t suffer as colonies. WE didn’t get our spirits shattered by a 30+ year long civil war that ruined a continent.
Instead, WE got the advantages of everyone else doing harm to themselves for decades (or more), and then spending decades getting out of that hole. The advantages from all that have ended.
So now the tailwind of the post-war years has become a headwind. And there IS NO MORE ROBUST ECONOMY. So don’t tell me about how tough you had it back in the day when we had a decent economy. The circumstances have changed. The fact that you can’t really understand that shows that you are on one side of the divide. The fact that I can’t ignore it shows that I’m on the other side. So there is no more WE.
I’ve advised you before – get creative and go out and do it.
Hysterically pathetic. What am I supposed to do? Write children’s books for a living? Go into PE? Riiiiiight….
If you are as emotionally charged as I see on this board, and if you have the capabilities you claim, you will most assuredly make your way successfully.
Drew, I’m charged, and I am capable. And it doesn’t matter. I can’t get a job. A job listing goes up and the HR department for that company will get 1000 resumes the first day. They may look at the first thirty to decide who to interview. When looking at that first 30 they are explicitly looking for reasons to NOT BOTHER INTERVIEWING SOMEONE. Number one these days is that the applicant is LTUE.
I could try for lesser positions than I had before. In fact I did. Right away, in fact. But when I did scrounge up interviews, I was told, “We won’t hire you for less than you were making because you will leave for a better paying job soon.” What’s bad about this is that every single unemployed professional I know has experienced the same thing, many times.
I tried to get around that by re-educating myself for a different career. I could give them the old “I’m switching careers so I expect to make less at first†line. By the time that was done there weren’t any entry level positions. Companies only want to hire experienced people. Not that I was likely to get interviewed anyway, because I’m LTUE.
The reality is this – I am not going to get any job, not even flipping burgers at McDonalds, until the U-3 rate* gets back down to 6.5% or less. Until then employers can safely ignore me and find someone else to do their work.
And Drew, I know you claim this is all my fault because I’ve got a bad attitude. Well, you are a fool if you think that’s it. I was at a “networking” event last week. It’s a monthly thing. Last week was on the smaller side, only about 40 people there. In that group were executives, entrepreneurs, engineers, financial analysts, financial planners, etc. All blasted by the economy. Except for the aeronautical engineer that just got laid off from NASA they were all LTUE. Are all of them just a bunch of sour radicals? Is that the case for everyone included in the U-6 stats? Is it REALLY just a matter of attitude? Or is it that we’re just fucked because the country has shed at least 8 million jobs, and they aren’t coming back? (It’s worse than the 8 million number suggests. More jobs have been lost, and replaced by temporary or other marginal work.)
The truth is that I am fucked, completely and royally. There’s a 50% chance that I will never work again. The chance of getting a job this year OF ANY KIND is close to zero. I’ve lost everything but my family, and I’m not getting any of it back short of hitting the lottery. And I am not alone. I don’t count many people as friends – I’m just not that sociable. (Yeah, shocking, I know.) The one’s I’ve got have been friends for years and years. And in that small group of friends there are four of us that have been completely steam-rolled by this economy. So it’s really a cluster fuck, and that’s only counting my good friends. Out of a dozen of us, four have been destroyed.
And here’s the point again – WE are not alone. WE are legion. Legions, really. And YOU are not US. The bitterness gets worse every day. The social contract that bound YOU to US is broken. But that works two ways. It’s now every hominid for hizself.
Let me give you an example from this great state of Florida that you are considering as your new, low tax paradise. Governor Scott is proposing cutting Florida’s Unemployment Compensation. We already have one of the worst benefits in the country, with a maximum payout of $275 a week. That’s the max, and it is roughly equivalent of getting a full time minimum wage job. Gov. Scott considers that to be far too generous, and an onerous burden on business. So he is going to cut eligibility from 26 weeks to 20 weeks AND make it harder for people to even claim the benefit initially.
Now, mind you, that Governor Scott as a business man reaped a fortune from a company that defrauded Medicare on a massive scale. So, only the rich should get government money, apparently, and not the poor. What is my obligation to that piece of shit, who only avoided prison because he was worth nine figures? What is my obligation to those who are so anti-government that they made him their standard bearer in Florida? They have rewarded a man who has stolen from the public coffers on a massive scale and told the poor they don’t even deserve the benefits they’ve been paying for when they did have jobs. I’ve got no obligation to them of any kind. And further, no one can support that kind of rapacious trash and claim that an anti-government sentiment of any kind. But that is the Republican Party for you, and that is about 52% of the voters in Florida. Or are you going to register Democrat when you get down here? LMAO
This is not radicalism on my part. This is just paying attention to the facts. There are two parties in this country now. Michael Reynolds’ party favors robbing the middle class and poor to reward assholes in government and select industries. The Republicans (presumably your party, Drew) favor robbing the middle class and the poor to reward select elected officials and favored businesses. I don’t see a whole lot of difference between the two of you. You just differ on who gets the spoils.
And THAT is what I mean by US and THEM. One doesn’t have to be a leftist of any kind to realize that the HAVEs and the HAVE NOTs don’t share a bond of any kind in this country anymore.
* And I mean what the U-3 rate ought to be, so add those 3% or so of people who had dropped out of the workforce back in.
And I certainly wish you the best. And if in any way I could be of assitance I would. You’ve got some fire in the belly.
Drew, spare me the sympathy. The truth is that you don’t give a shit about me. I don’t matter to you. You don’t know me, you don’t know my circumstances. You think I’m a leftist even though I’m (far) to the right of you, which shows that unless I annoy you you can’t even be bothered to pay attention to what I’m saying. I’m okay with that. I don’t really much care about you either. That doesn’t make you special, anymore than your not caring about me makes me special. I just can’t be bothered pretending to care about people I don’t know. I’m all out of pretending-to-give-a-shit. Just spare me the pretense in turn, as it only annoys at this point.
Settle down, now, icepick –
“You, like many a rich man, claim that you are better than us poor folk because you make more money and pay more taxes.”
No. No. No, and no. Not better. Just that its an empirical fact I pay more. Its the OTHER side always claiming we haven’t paid our fair share, or we are nihilists or some other idiotic notion for not wanting to keep getting drained.
“You expect the rest of us to KNOW OUR PLACE.”
No, you are imputing that. Not me. We have too many mind readers here and at OTB for that i/p.
“That makes you an ass, an easy target………………”
If you wish, but you are making claims on baseless assumptions.
“..an ass….Michael Reynolds………”
Well, now THAT’s certainly true……………..nyuk, nyuk, nyuk
“To me you just come off as another blowhard that wants Big Business (and especially its finance wing) to run the country for ITS OWN benefit.”
Then you actually haven’t read, or at least digested, anything I’ve written here for two years. I’ve done the Big Business thing. No interest. A few days ago sam claimed I was a MICRO-business guy. I’ve now got arrows coming from both directions! No, i/p, I’m squarely in the small business camp. From my vantage point, its our future. Big Business may provide a certain level of employment – sort of like accounts that absorb the overhead – but small business is where the growth is.
“Citizens (such that any are left) be damned.”
Relax. Have a beer. If I was near you I’d buy you the gd beer. That’s just your frustration coming through.
“And don’t bother – I will assume you are against child labor and actually putting rat poison in the food.”
Nah, nor slavery. Its good for business, you know…………… C’mon, i/p. I retract my last comment – do you post drunk??
“So spare me the “I’m for the little guy†speech. You are for business – amd that is the only concern you ever voice.”
Because that’s the primary source of future prosperity for the little guy. Unless you want to go on the dole and become one of our government’s national pets.
“Were you poor, or were you just starting out? I’ve heard lots of people from well-off families talk about how tough they had it when they were poor, when what they mean is they were in grad-school scrounging by until they could get out and make it. NOT THE SAME THING. And the government didn’t help you. Did you (or your parents) pay for all of your schooling, from K through college? ”
Actually, a huge difference. And sorry to dissappoint. Never took spring vacation. Never took Christmas break off during college. I had found myself an entrepreneurial little company in Indianapolis that made solvent reclamation equipment for the paint industry. (Stills, really.) And worked for them every day they would give me. And during summer break I was on the job the day I got home to the day I went back to school. I paid for 75-80% of undergrad engineering, 100% of grad engineering. My employer paid for the first two quarters of MBA, but as soon as I realized I was out of there, I paid for it all. Flat broke (in debt, actually) at age 29 when I graduated. Today – not so much.
“So don’t tell me about how tough you had it back in the day when we had a decent economy. The circumstances have changed. The fact that you can’t really understand that shows that you are on one side of the divide.”
A Tale of My Two Brothers: Both IT guys. Both in what I understand is the systems administration end of the business. They design and maintain the IT infrastructure for large institutions. Both were laid off about 5 years ago as their jobs were “outsourced” to India. One brother adopted the same attitude as yours. He’s still unemployed with few prospects as best I can tell. The other – who by his own account is not as talented as my other brother – had a totally different attitude towards the whole episode. (Much as I did many moons ago about prospects in the steel industry.) He now has a very big job with a major pharma company running a big piece of their IT. All attitude and energy.
Look, i/p, I’ve said all I can say. We went through this a few months ago and your attitude seems unchanged. You tell me you have a great attitude. I read what you write and its some of the most defeatist stuff I’ve ever seen. (And the rest of what you wrote is just a bunch of rubbish.) You seem to have a very narrow view of your opportunities, talents and expertise. If I could just get you to do just two things: 1) don’t define yourself narrowly, challenge those personal assumptions 2) deep six the “poor me.” Compared with immigrants coming into this country – many of whom will make very successful lives for themselves – you’ve got it made more than even you have even falsely attributed to my past and current circumstances.
I truley wish you the best, but fear the worst without a change in worldview. Good luck.
I retract my last comment – do you post drunk??
I rarely drink.
As for mind-reading, you do it yourself most of the time. In typical fashion you want all the privilieges to accrue to yourself.
You tell me you have a great attitude.
No, I tell you my attitude doesn’t matter. I can’t even get to the point where I get to speak to anyone.
You can discuss ‘spunk’ and positivity all you want. But here’s the truth – there aren’t enough jobs to go around. LOOK AT THE GODDAMNED BLS REPORTS is you don’t believe me. I am competing with a few tens of millions of people for a few goddamned jobs. Last November in Florida there were all of 200 or so new jobs created. That for about two million people un- or under-employed. The odds are against everyone looking for work now. And that is what you, stupid arrogant ass that you are, refuse to acknowledge. THERE AREN’T ENOUGH JOBS. Nothing else matters in this environment. That is the new reality that you do not understand.
In this environment, hiring managers are looking for reasons to exclude people from jobs, just to make their lives easier. It is a perfectly understandable situation. Dropping the LTUEs is easy, so they do that first.
The fact is that you do not understand what is actually happening, because you don’t have to deal with it. Great for you, not so for over 20,000,000 of the rest of us. Given that you can’t grasp these numbers I don’t know how the hell you have made a career using them. The number of available jobs is MUCH smaller than the number of people looking for jobs. Can you grasp that?