Today the latest figures of unemployment were released, and folks things are continuing to not look good.
Payrolls across the economy has dropped this month...again! Officially, the unemployment rate now stands at 6.1%. Consensus was the rate would be within 5.6-5.8%, north of the previous month's 5.5%. What we got was far above that.
The nitty gritty part is that we lost another 84,000 jobs for August. I say another, because the previous month the US economy jettisoned 51,000 jobs in July and 100,000 jobs in June. From manufacturing to the services sector, saw major losses. I don't have the exact figure before my, but CNN is right now saying that for the year we have lost 600,000 jobs! That, my friend is the Bush-McCain/Palin economy for you!
Looking at the chart above, one can see that we reached a "bottom" in unemployment last September. But, progressing month after month, we've been seeing gains of about 5-10%. At the rate this is going, one could expect Unemployment to be at around 7-8% by this time next year. Pretty scary, but as you can see at the chart below we've been in this area before.
( Data courtesy of Economy.com's Free Lunch site)
President Bill Clinton inherited the first Bush presidency's high unemployment. In 1992, the then-official unemployment rate was at almost 8%! But, as you can see, the nature of unemployment between the Clinton 90s and Bush Jr.'s time are almost mirror images. Under Clinton, that 8% figure was the the peak of unemployment. For the rest of the decade, unemployment looked like a very steep ski slope. Yet, under 'W', we got an upwardly trending roller-coaster looking chart!
Amazingly enough, we've been at this number under Bush's first illegally-gotten term. Things were looking good, but the growth in the economy was also corresponding to the last phase of the housing boom. The rest, my friends is history. Conservatives are claiming that the current rate ain't that bad, that we had this before. Not that bad, eh?
The last chart is from one of my favorite sites, Shadow Government Statistics. Here you see three graphs, the blue one is the unemployment rate as was originally configured. The gray is the rate reconfigured by the Clinton Administration. The last is the official one. One would think that the new configurations would reflect some structural change in the economy, but instead, by their own admission, the motives were simply political. The government has always tried to make these numbers looks good, and we as citizens lose out. We have a right to know what the hell is really going on in the economy. You politicians may want to make things look good, but you can't hide reality to the average person!
If we look at Shadow Stat's charts, we could see the same trends we saw in the other multi-year chart. The 1990s saw drops in unemployment, while this decade say an upward trend. The government shows unemployment at above 6%, yet looking at the Clinton-era formula, unemployment would have shown unemployment north of 10%. And under the older version, we would be showing a figure close to 15%!
The US economy, despite what the "Kudlowites" will tell you, our economy isn't a supply-side one but demand-driven. As workers see more and more folks losing their jobs, they begin to hold back first on things they really don't need, then cutbacks on stuff they do. You'll say to yourself "I don't really need that DVD," then as things get worse you may say "well, instead of getting milk and eggs and bread today, I'll just get eggs and milk, then next time bread." Well ok, maybe not like that, but I think you get the idea. Now the folks who sell you those goods will be affected by the decrease in sales and thus the cycle continues.
Folks are losing benefits left and right, and costs of living are increasing. Oh sure, the price at the pump may have dropped, but food is still high. Plus the cost of rent and insurance premiums are reaching beyond people's ability to pay.
So sure, while you hear Sarah Palin or John McCain remind you that she was ran a town smaller than most universities and that he was a prisoner of war. But we need to remind them that it's our experiences with our pocket book that we care about now.
Comments
Never Fear! It's Election Season!
And the politicians will save us! I know because I heard them say so.
Underdog!
There is nothing to fear, a youtubed Underdog is here! Which is the better underdog?
Hey, I thought we are going to get a Palin boy to challenge Obama girl and they are going to duke it out on youtube and have a dance off to see who wins. Just like American idol...it will be oh....so cool.
Anybody notice that the foreclosure crisis and any solutions for the middle class are either non-existent or as Cindy McCain claimed...Americans just want government to get out of their way when people are losing their jobs, homeless and sick?
Right o! I can see a sea of people screaming holy bloody murder while in desperation...Get out of our Face you bad government! I don't want no stinkin' help! It's all your fault! Where are my bootstraps? Rotted? Oops! Still by God government if you help me I swear I'll shoot ya!.
That speech was such bullshit
Forgive me, but I watched that speech yesterday night, and he said nothing new. If there were ever any proof that a McCain Administration would be a third Bush term, that speech did it. Retraining?!? Retraining?!? Are you kidding me?!? Tell that to a 50 year old engineer who had to plow into his retirement to make the mortgage payment and pay insurance premiums! What's he supposed to do? Training will take years, unless it's a low-skilled job that most likely will be sent overseas. Seriously, what is the average time it takes to retrain folks? Going back to that 50 year old, say you want to give him an IT degree, well that could take 2-4 years, depending on the type of IT degree. Do you really think a company will hire a 53 year old at some higher price compensatory for his overall experience and higher insurance costs, or that young turk out of college?
that's a corporate lobbyist "talking point"
Retraining. But I have very bad news. Obama is pretty much saying the same thing. They are trying to claim the same bullshit, that Americans are just not trained and educated enough.
As far as I'm concerned if people want to blast both candidates and both parties for presenting this incredible bullshit generated by corporate lobbyists instead of giving the American people real policy change, analyzed by economists and experts that is going to work, which they repeatedly try to recommend and have given tons of testimony on the hill on....then, we can on this site blast both of them to holy hell and back for it.
I'm so sick of the Democrats being Republican lite and McCain man, he is so bought and paid for by these people. I mean come on, the queen of offshore outsourcing, Fiorina as an economic adviser?? Nuf said!
Retraining additional
This is now an obvious blog topic for later but it used to be corporations paid for training. Corporations in tech fields even paid for education. In China and in India, US corporations are paying for education and also training.
So, what we have here is a work of fiction and on top of it, dumping off onto the individual job skills which were primarily corporations responsibility and at least partnership with the government for access to higher education.
Nary a mention of the incredible rejection rates to get into college, although it's obvious they have dumped onto the individual the costs of higher education.