When will Unemployment break below 7.5%?

[opebo]

Obama won't cure unemployment. Possible solutions? Lower income tax, outsource and eliminate more government jobs (ironic to leftists maybe, however the "stimulus package" of Dear Leader Obama will increase America's debt, worsening its economy), open immigration, etc.

I was about to attempt to respond to this when I realized it would be fruitless.  They have a 'faith' about 'economics'.  It would be like 'arguing' with jmfcst about religion.

[phk]

Bump in lieu of events.

[Sbane]

I voted 2012 and I'm sticking to it. But it will probably be late 2012, perhaps even early 2013. As for Obama, if he can get it down to about 8.5% by summer 2012 I think he will be reelected narrowly.

[phk]

It really depends.

It could be awhile, especially if productivity growth remains high in the early part of the recovery (like it did in the early 2000s recession) causing a lag in job creation, where productivity growth remained high and job creation didn't meaningfully occur till output growth exceeded productivity growth (which wasn't till sometime in Q1 2004).

I have seen this in various parts of San Diego, such as fast food restaurants and grocery stores using automated multiple automated cash registers supervised by one person, instead of multiple lanes.

This might hold true as people are generally risk-averse and would probably have a greater peace of mind with investing in technology first and labor later.

I still stand by what I said, and I really underestimated the 9.5% figure.

[Sam Spade]

The internals of the last few unemployment reports (including today's) strongly suggest that no turnaround in employment is in the cards for a considerable length of time into the future.

In fact, I would observe that the continued upward trend shows no sign of reversal or slowing of increase.  Statistical adjustments and a bit of game-playing in the numbers are making it look better than it is, of course.  Problem is, we're starting to reach the point in the year (worst month for employment game-playing is always end of year, usually February) where the statisticians are going to have to start making strongly negative changes to the numbers as their assumptions are not borne out by actual data.