"It's Hard to Claim the Good News Is Really Bad"

[applegrove]

It's Hard to Claim the Good News Is Really Bad

by Floyd Norris at the NY Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/04/upshot/its-hard-to-claim-the-good-news-is-really-bad.html?rref=upshot

"SNIP........................


As the labor market has improved over the past couple of years, a litany of reasons has been offered to explain why the picture is really not so good:

The unemployment rate is falling because people are dropping out of the labor force. The job numbers are being inflated by suspect seasonal adjustments. The birth-death model, which the Labor Department uses to estimate jobs from newly created companies, is providing a boost that will turn out to not be there. The real problem is long-term unemployment.

The trouble for those who would be negative is that none of those things are true now.

The proportion of the unemployed who have been out of work for more than six months fell below one-third in June for the first time in five years. The seasonal adjustments and the birth-death model all worked to reduce the reported job gain, not increase it. The household survey found 407,000 more people had jobs, well above the 288,000 figure in the establishment survey.





.......................SNIP"

[Savannahmann]

1. Yeah I'll mention it to my neighbor

I'm sure he'll be glad to hear he's in the extreme minority now. I'm glad there's no problem.

[Silent3]

3. The unemployment rate could be 0.1%...

...and there'd still plenty of people's neighbors who weren't working.

Why not just say nothing but 100% employment will make you happy?

And if that's not what it takes to make you at least a little bit happier, even if short of utterly and completely satisfied, then why bother with saying things like you just said, as if "my neighbor is still out of work" = "not a damn thing of any importance has changed".

[Chan790]

4. Because the unemployment rate is largely meaningless...

when you're the still-unemployed person. Doesn't matter a lick if it's 4.3% or 14.3% if you're still the one without a job.

I support and believe in universal employment. A job for everybody that wants one.

[Silent3]

5. If your world revolves only around yourself...

...and you have a sadly limited perspective, then yes, I suppose being unemployed personally makes the general unemployment rate "largely meaningless".

If your perspective isn't so wrapped up entirely in your own problems, not so much.

[Chan790]

6. No, I generally hold that meaningless statistics are meaningless.

Unemployment rates are meaningless...job-availability is either sufficient or insufficient.

[Silent3]

7. While the numbers can be a little fuzzy and subject to interpretation...

...they are far from meaningless.

Do you think replacing those statistics, whatever their flaws, with a false dichotomy between the even-harder-to-define "sufficient" and "not sufficient" represents some sort of brave, bold, "I'm gonna cut through the bullshit!" improvement?

[Chan790]

9. In a word? Yes.

There's nothing hard-to-define in a dichotomy between "failing" and "a job which meets their basic universal human needs for everybody who wants one."

You either meet the benchmark of universal employment or you do not. There's nothing fuzzy or hard to define about it.

What is hard-to-define...impossible, in fact, is What is an acceptable unemployment rate? How many people are we allowed to permit to be excluded involuntarily from the workforce?

[Silent3]

10. Hey, I'd love universal employment too...

...but to call the unemployment rate meaningless for anything short of absolute, total, full universal employment is to speciously reject that importance of work for all of the people who do gain work and hope when the unemployment rate drops.

[merrily]

13. Chan writes about a job for everyone who wants one and you

call that a perspective wrapped up only in himself or herself?

[Silent3]

14. Yes, I do, when it's in the context of blowing off good news...

...because it's "only" a step in the right direction.

[merrily]

15. That does not convert a statement about everyone into a selfish statement.

Besides, one of my former partners used to say, "Figures lie and liars figure." That has been the case with every administration and the figures, employment figures in particular.

I'm okay. Always have been. But no one I know is doing as well as he or she did ten years ago. Working two jobs and still not making the nut they made with one job back then.

[Silent3]

17. Recognizing problems with abuse and misuse of statistics...

...and recognizing that plenty of people obviously have serious problems and the economy still sucks for many people is not lost simply by being willing to accept that maybe a statistics shows a little bit of good news and a hint of some positive change in the right direction.

[Savannahmann]

8. How many people are not in the labor force?

How about answering that question.

Better yet, explain to me why the unemployment number is going down, while the participation rate is also going down?

June 2013 the Labor Participation rate was 64%. Unemployment was 7.8%. Today, the participation rate is 62.8%, but somehow the unemployment rate is lower?

So what happened to the other 1.2%? Where did they go? And how did lower participation result in lower unemployment? Why can't my neighbor find a job? Why is my Brother in law losing his house and asking to move in with me? Why are less than a third of 16-19 year old's working? Are we saying that two thirds of the population mentioned above is going to college? If so, what is the fucking education problem?

While people are peddling propaganda, the problem is that it fucks up the situation for the rest of us. Why do we need a minimum wage hike? If employment is doing so well, and such a low number are unemployed, obviously the principles of supply and demand will require employers to raise wages in an effort to attract qualified applicants and draw them away from their current employers right? Then the current employer will have to offer more wages because they want have good qualified employees too. So with the awesome unemployment and recovery numbers, the minimum wage will be obsolete in another couple months right?

The problem is that it is nothing but massive propaganda. It has no relation to reality. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2683099/Were-like-scum-earth-Homeless-Silicon-Valleys-jungle-camp-tell-life-squalor-tents-caves-tree-huts-just-short-walk-dot-com-millionaire-mansions.html

I guess those people just deserve what they are enduring right? I mean, we obviously can't care about everyone. What do they expect? Full employment where millions of people actually have jobs? Or do they expect to be counted as unemployed just because they don't have jobs, or homes, or hope.

Those people who live in sewers probably are all drug addicts or insane or something right? http://www.opposingviews.com/i/money/jobs-and-careers/homeless-people-live-under-las-vegas-sewer-tunnels

How dare the truth jump in the way of propaganda? I mean, what are those homeless people trying to do? Screw up the cheering for President Obama? What is wrong with them?

But hey, at least it's not happening in the cities where people care. http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/24293-no-solution-to-record-number-of-homeless-families-in-san-francisco

Oh never mind.

Yay team. We got unemployment down. Now, if I can just get past this huge crowd of homeless and hopeless people I'll be there to give you a huge high five in celebration.

By the way. people not in the labor force went up four million people over the last year to surpass 92 million. I guess we could blame the Department of Labor for reporting those numbers. I mean, they're liable to screw up the celebration if anyone can find the truth. At least anyone who cares enough to open their eyes and see it. Go back to denouncing those who don't cheer the propaganda. The rest of us have real problems to deal with.

[Silent3]

18. All of what you posted is based on a false premise...

Last edited Tue Jul 8, 2014, 06:55 PM - Edit history (1)

...derived from ridiculously black-and-white thinking that I somehow said "Oh, this number went down! Everything is fixed, it's all sunshine and rainbows!"

And just so everyone else knows: Simply because I didn't respond to Savannahmann right away (because I did something crazy like going to bed shortly after I posted late last night, and then didn't see his response until the morning, when I was busy getting ready for work) I get this private message from him:

I gave you numbers, and I gave you examples

You gave me silence because it didn't fit your agenda. So why don't you admit that only 100% full throated support of democrats and damn the reality is what you want?

All of that concluded based on:

(1) How long my response took.
(2) That I objected to categorically dismissing all possibility of good news contained within a dropping reported unemployment rate.

Wow, gosh, I'm so impressed his see-right-through-me mojo there. Nothin' gets by Savannahmann!

[LisaLynne]

2. Well, that doesn't change the fact that ...

a DEMOCRATIC BLACK MAN is president, so there can be no good news.

[Rstrstx]

11. That's why we have Fox News

As long as there's a Democrat in the White House it's all bad news, all the time

[Warren DeMontague]

12. K&R

[merrily]

16. Judging by this thread, it's not that hard to claim that good news

is, at best, incomplete news.

I think there are some good signs, though. But, it's been a slow, weak "recovery" and also a top heavy one.

[LWolf]

19. I wonder

if the job numbers reflect the number of people who are working, but whose hours have been cut in order to hire more part-time employees. I wonder if the job numbers reflect only full time employment, or include part-time as well.

I'm wondering because of the local phenomenon that has several of our bigger employers cutting full-time employees to 28 hours per week and hiring more part-timers to fill those cut hours.

I'm wondering if it's really a "local" phenomenon, or if it's happening in other places, too.

And I'm wondering if it's really a labor market "improvement" if so many people can't get full time work and have to work 2 part time jobs to get a full 40.

I'm wondering if it's really an improvement if someone working 2 jobs is working more than that full 40, but not getting benefits OR time and a half, because the hours are split between 2 different employers.

Edited to add: The above scenario is my DIL's current situation, as well as most of her co-workers.

[mathematic]

20. I wonder why you haven't bothered to look up the readily available answers

1) Average hours, all workers, is unchanged over the year:
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t18.htm

2) Part time workers for economic reasons (which is the vast minority of part time workers) declined from 8194 to 7544:
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t08.htm

3) The headline unemployment number includes part-time, but part-time that wants full-time is reported in a broader measure that has declined from 14.2% to 12.1% over the year:
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm

4) Total multiple job holders is essentially unchanged over the year, 4.7%, with about a quarter of them working multiple part time:
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t16.htm

So there you have it! Overall hours are not getting cut, fewer people are working part time because they have to rather than because they want to, and no more people are working multiple jobs this year than last year. I imagine you're pleased to hear that your local observations are not the case nationally.

[LWolf]

22. Amazing that none of those trends

has reached my region.

I think I'll hold out for change I can believe in when I see it. Right here in my community and those communities in my region.

[Orsino]

21. Democrats repeatedly prove themselves significantly better...

...at propping up an untenable system.

Our economy still sucks. It's hard to claim that that bad news is somehow good for the people we seem determined to make invisible.