October Jobs Report: 214K jobs created, 5.8% unemployment

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-11-07/214-000-more-jobs-are-great-dot-but-where-are-the-raises

214,000 net gain, but hourly earnings up only 3 cents/hour, so over the past 12 months average wages have risen only 2% (just barely ahead of inflation ~1.7%). Labor force participation remains unchanged at 62.8%.

- So far in 2014: 2.285 million jobs created (assuming 200K/month for Nov. and Dec., we're on track to add over 2.7 million jobs this year, which would be the best since 1999).

 - For comparison, 2013 saw 2.229 million, and 2012 2.236 million.

 - Since 2010, 10.591 million jobs have been added. When subtracting the 8.663 million jobs lost during the Great Recession, we're 1.928 million in the clear.

 - This brings the net gain for Obama's Presidency since January 2009 to 5.504 million.

[Landslide Lyndon]

[King]

wrong. 100,000,000 people are really unemployed LOOK AT THE TRUTH

[Illuminati Blood Drinker]

Watch the inbred monkeys running this country attribute everything to the GOP majority.

[AggregateDemand]

You can fix this problem in 5 minutes with the EITC. Min wage is the poisoned chalice we drank in 2007, just before the recession.

[Landslide Lyndon]

Min wage is the poisoned chalice we drank in 2007, just before the recession.

Well, you drink something funny before you post in this forum. That's for sure.

[King]

Ah yes, the Great Recession was caused by our increase of the minimum wage to 5.85 an hour. Poison chalice indeed.

Thankfully most of those minimum wagers who caused the crash have been prosecuted and sent to jail.

[Paul Kemp]

The Obama Recovery lives on.

[AggregateDemand]

Ah yes, the Great Recession was caused by our increase of the minimum wage to 5.85 an hour. Poison chalice indeed.

Thankfully most of those minimum wagers who caused the crash have been prosecuted and sent to jail.

Argumentum ad absurdum is not a rebuttal. Furthermore, the 2007 amendments raised minimum wage to $7.25/hr, phased-in from 2007 to 2009.

To understand the point, read about sticky wages and price rigidity. Then read about binding price floors so you can understand the compounding problem caused by clumsy min wage increases on the edge of recession.

[King]

I understand your point, but I fundamentally disagree with it. It's not universally accepted by economists and you're just going to have to live with the fact that something you believe is an opinion and nothing more.

[Negusa Nagast 🚀]

Thank you President Obama for the great bounty of jobs you have bestowed upon us!

Ah yes, the Great Recession was caused by our increase of the minimum wage to 5.85 an hour. Poison chalice indeed.

Thankfully most of those minimum wagers who caused the crash have been prosecuted and sent to jail.

Argumentum ad absurdum is not a rebuttal. Furthermore, the 2007 amendments raised minimum wage to $7.25/hr, phased-in from 2007 to 2009.

To understand the point, read about sticky wages and price rigidity. Then read about binding price floors so you can understand the compounding problem caused by clumsy min wage increases on the edge of recession.

Do you even know what derivatives are? Financial leverage ratios? Financial contagion? Rational thinking (regurgitating SHADOWSTATS!!! or some drivel does not count in this department)?

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Looking at the election results, it's obvious that Obama turned that booming economy he inheirited in January 2009 into a terrible economy.

[Ban my account ffs!]

Looking at the election results, it's obvious that Obama turned that booming economy he inheirited in January 2009 into a terrible economy.

After he caused Katrina, of course.

[Deus Naturae]

Truly a fantastic recovery.

[Beet]

Truly a fantastic recovery.

Some of that is obviously structural issues. For example, the long movement of women into the labor forced during the 1970s and 1980s has ground to a halt, as we remain the only country in the world without family leave laws.

The population over age 65 and no longer at working age is growing, which will depress the employment/population ratio.

The rate of young people attending college and graduate school has increased tremendously. They are not counted as working even though they technically are by investing in their educations.

And the activities of high schoolers are changing as more after-school and extracurricular activities, as well as greater entertainment options online and social media means a shift away from old favorites such as summer jobs (as well as teen sex, and early drivers' licences).

Currently the employment/population ratio is higher than it was in the 1960s. Does that mean we had a terribly economy in the 1960s? The problem with using the employment/population measure, philosophically, is that it penalizes for people who choose not to work, for whatever reason. Yet there is nothing inherently better about working than not working. Choosing leisure is a perfectly valid choice, if you can afford it. What really matters is people who cannot afford not to work, and would otherwise work, but are frustrated in their desire to find work (or at least to find full time work).

And it's true that there are still millions of workers who in that category as well. But there is a measure for that as well: U-6. The U-6 chart is here. It doesn't look as good as U-3 but it does show we are headed in the right direction and have been for some time.

[AggregateDemand]

I understand your point, but I fundamentally disagree with it. It's not universally accepted by economists and you're just going to have to live with the fact that something you believe is an opinion and nothing more.

I understand you disagree, but I'm not sure why.

If you have a headache, you can take Bayer Aspirin, Tylenol or Advil. Doctor tells you that aspirin causes ulcers. You disregard the findings, and demand twice as much aspirin. What's the point? We have more advanced medicines and better socioeconomic policy in the modern era. Why do we need some lazy new deal policy from an era with a pre-WWII mindset? What do we get for our nostalgia.

Disagreement with the general economics for binding price floors are either circumstantial or theoretical. There is no reason to play guessing games with a faulty policy that follows no constitutional imperative. Corporations are not to blame for low equilibrium wage for unskilled labor, and min wage doesn't alleviate the problem.

[AggregateDemand]

Some of that is obviously structural issues. For example, the long movement of women into the labor forced during the 1970s and 1980s has ground to a halt, as we remain the only country in the world without family leave laws.

People aren't even getting married anymore, and family leave laws (i.e. maternity leave) isn't going to fix this problem.

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?id=LREM25MAUSM156S

[Landslide Lyndon]

People aren't even getting married anymore,

That's because TEH GAYS are ruining the institution of marriage.

[Beet]

Some of that is obviously structural issues. For example, the long movement of women into the labor forced during the 1970s and 1980s has ground to a halt, as we remain the only country in the world without family leave laws.

People aren't even getting married anymore, and family leave laws (i.e. maternity leave) isn't going to fix this problem.

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?id=LREM25MAUSM156S

That just reinforces my point that the rising employment rate overall during the 1970s and 1980s was an exception due to women joining the workplace, not the norm.

Btw, the employment rate for males is actually slightly higher now (84%) than when Obama took office (83%).

[Deus Naturae]

Some of that is obviously structural issues. For example, the long movement of women into the labor forced during the 1970s and 1980s has ground to a halt, as we remain the only country in the world without family leave laws.

The population over age 65 and no longer at working age is growing, which will depress the employment/population ratio.

The rate of young people attending college and graduate school has increased tremendously. They are not counted as working even though they technically are by investing in their educations.

And the activities of high schoolers are changing as more after-school and extracurricular activities, as well as greater entertainment options online and social media means a shift away from old favorites such as summer jobs (as well as teen sex, and early drivers' licences).

Currently the employment/population ratio is higher than it was in the 1960s. Does that mean we had a terribly economy in the 1960s? The problem with using the employment/population measure, philosophically, is that it penalizes for people who choose not to work, for whatever reason. Yet there is nothing inherently better about working than not working. Choosing leisure is a perfectly valid choice, if you can afford it. What really matters is people who cannot afford not to work, and would otherwise work, but are frustrated in their desire to find work (or at least to find full time work).

And it's true that there are still millions of workers who in that category as well. But there is a measure for that as well: U-6. The U-6 chart is here. It doesn't look as good as U-3 but it does show we are headed in the right direction and have been for some time.

Did all of these trends begin after the financial crisis? I'm not saying this means the economy is in terrible shape, but it does show that the employment situation hasn't come anywhere to "recovering" from the crisis-era drop-off. Not that that's an easy feat but it puts to bed the boasts of red avis that Obama has been successful at bringing about "recovery."

Also, since the the LFP rate for the 65+ demographic has actually increased since the crisis (one of the few age demographics for which this is true). So, old people dropping out of the labor force has nothing to do with the fact that employment is nowhere near to pre-crisis levels.

[Beet]

LFP has increased among 65+ has increased from about 21% to 24% or thereabouts. That doesn't change the fact that as people reach age 65 their LFP plummets, so as more people reach age 65, it will depress the employment/population ratio. The population bulge of those reaching 65 started around 2011, since that is 65 years after the beginning of the baby boom (1947).

I'm just saying the employment/population ratio statistic is misleading about the state of the economy because there's a lot of irrelevant noise in there (and that from a philosophical standpoint it also doesn't hold up because using the statistic in that way assumes that the choice to work is always superior to the choice not to work) and we have better, more precise indicators - such as U-3 and U-6. The trends that are causing the employment/population ratio to be in secular decline clearly didn't start in 2008, but that's irrelevant to my argument, IMO.

[Lief 🗽]

Mitt Romney would have an approval rating of 70%+ if he were president right now with these numbers.

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

Mitt Romney would have an approval rating of 70%+ if he were president right now with these numbers.

Oh come on, you don't actually believe that. The liberal persecution complex is as annoying as the conservative persecution complex during the Bush era.

[Replicator]

Watch the inbred monkeys running this country attribute everything to the GOP majority.

No credit for you or your kind (liberals). Look at November of 2004 when it was 5.4%. We're almost doing as well as we were during the Bush years. Obama will screw it up though just like every time he speaks, the private sector gets scared and lays people off. Jobs will soon start to go overseas at an even higher rate to avoid Obama's fascist, socialist agenda. Yes the Republican majority is helping consumer confidence and hiring. It's only a matter of time though before our majority takes away the welfare money your party is so dependent on.

[Flake]