Revisiting the real employment stats from time to time -- and taking off from there
The news on Friday was presented on our news radio with a great juxtaposition: actual drop in jobs for December (minus-19,000, versus the plus-130,000 needed every month just to keep up with population growth in the workforce age group), followed by record profits for Exxon. That pretty much says it all about the top-heavy economic results when the Republicans control the law-making machinery (as they certainly did before January 2007, to a large extent since then, too).
Next came this: unemployment rate DOWN from 5.0 to 4.9 in the month, even with that 150,000 real job loss (130,000 needed plus 19,000 numerical loss). To be fair, those are different data sources which eventually match up reasonably well over time, but often do not from month to month, as should be expected. Nevertheless, it does point out some major statistical weirdness that calls into question the integrity of the data reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Has it been Rove Power-Pointed, too, in order to insure Republican dominance – the reported dog-and-pony shows like that supposedly given at Rove’s orders to politicize the Justice Department?
The relatively low official unemployment figures, generally somewhere in the 4’s (per cent) in recent years under Bush, have been inconsistent with a real loss of jobs since the end of the Clinton administration. If the employed-to-population ratio had stayed as high since then as it was January 2001 – probably the best indictor in good times of how many people will go to work if they can readily find a job -- there would be about 5 million more jobs than there actually are. These represent people who somehow were simply “disappeared” – who simply dropped out from the workforce or never joined it when they came of age. They also represent about another 3-4 % of the work force
Since keeping up with population growth is merely a kind of “stasis” that should be achievable by following a Hippocratic Oath in economic policy for a stable, reasonably healthy economy – “First, do no harm” – having a drop in employment level like that appears to represent a real, serious policy failure. Those are “job losses” in real terms, and a significant portion of them should have showed up in the official unemployment percentages. If it’s reported as 4.9% in December, and if the majority of that 3-4% continued to look for jobs actively, we would be looking at official unemployment numbers between 7% and 8%. Needless to say, that would look a lot worse than 4.9%. The press might even notice that and ask a few questions.
But the people didn’t keep looking. Instead, they magically, for George’s benefit, all just dropped out. It’s hard not to start connecting dots. The propaganda-savvy Republicans surely know that the American press is so incompetent with economics that the only number they can deal with is the official unemployment figure. We also know about the efforts to politicize the civil service Federal agencies. Hmmmm. It will be interesting to see if anyone pursues this, and if after January 2009 (if the Democrats win) we start seeing any horror stories about how the stats were manipulated under intense political pressure. Some have noted, too, that the relatively sunny unemployment numbers the Bush administration has reported is inconsistent with the dismal, stagnant wage levels since 2001, too. Low unemployment should create a supply-demand labor crunch, and pressure wages upwards.
In any case, Krugman has been emphasizing the employment-to-population in some of his recent New York Times columns. It certainly makes sense that it should be considered the most compelling measure of job-creation performance. In 7 years through December 2007, while the number of Americans who would work if jobs were available grew by over 13 million, George Bush’s economy only generated jobs for about 8.4 million of them. Without rounding, the real loss was 4.8 million jobs. George the Father was no prize performer either: the potential work force in his four years grew over 5.5 million, his economy generated less than 2.4 million jobs. The combined Bush Family performance? Children, avert your eyes: potential work force grew by 18.8 million over the combined 12 years, but they found jobs for only 10.8 million of them. That’s a combined loss of 8 million real jobs in the three Bush administrations – and we may not have even seen the worst of the last one yet!
In contrast, of course, is the 18.7 million new jobs from January 1993 until January 2001, while the growth of the potential work force grew by only 13.2. Wait a second: how does that make sense – Clinton creating more jobs than the potential work force growth? Because that “potential work force growth” means the growth due to population growth only, if the same percentage were willing to work if jobs were available. What it means is that over 5 million people in effect crawled out of the woodwork, people who had been discouraged or for whatever reason had not been looking for jobs at all, and grabbed jobs in a thriving economy.
I’m not sure how true Hillary’s great statement the other day is – that it could take another Clinton to clean up after the mess a Bush had created – but the first part of it is certainly accurate: Bill Clinton really did do yeoman work trying to clean up after the first Bush – creating many more jobs than George the First had lost -- and now there’s certainly another, even worse mess created by his miscreant son.
And what's John McCain going to do about it? I think it's more of the same: tax cuts and more tax cuts, maybe a little budget cutting on "entitlements" of the American people. In other words, straight-talk John will want us to "stay-the-course" when it comes to the economy. Where have we heard that before? Oh yeah, he wants us to stay in Iraq for up to a 100 years -- but i hear he's going to be very firm that the Iraqis need to be ready to govern themselves the way we want them to after that 100 years is up.
Next came this: unemployment rate DOWN from 5.0 to 4.9 in the month, even with that 150,000 real job loss (130,000 needed plus 19,000 numerical loss). To be fair, those are different data sources which eventually match up reasonably well over time, but often do not from month to month, as should be expected. Nevertheless, it does point out some major statistical weirdness that calls into question the integrity of the data reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Has it been Rove Power-Pointed, too, in order to insure Republican dominance – the reported dog-and-pony shows like that supposedly given at Rove’s orders to politicize the Justice Department?
The relatively low official unemployment figures, generally somewhere in the 4’s (per cent) in recent years under Bush, have been inconsistent with a real loss of jobs since the end of the Clinton administration. If the employed-to-population ratio had stayed as high since then as it was January 2001 – probably the best indictor in good times of how many people will go to work if they can readily find a job -- there would be about 5 million more jobs than there actually are. These represent people who somehow were simply “disappeared” – who simply dropped out from the workforce or never joined it when they came of age. They also represent about another 3-4 % of the work force
Since keeping up with population growth is merely a kind of “stasis” that should be achievable by following a Hippocratic Oath in economic policy for a stable, reasonably healthy economy – “First, do no harm” – having a drop in employment level like that appears to represent a real, serious policy failure. Those are “job losses” in real terms, and a significant portion of them should have showed up in the official unemployment percentages. If it’s reported as 4.9% in December, and if the majority of that 3-4% continued to look for jobs actively, we would be looking at official unemployment numbers between 7% and 8%. Needless to say, that would look a lot worse than 4.9%. The press might even notice that and ask a few questions.
But the people didn’t keep looking. Instead, they magically, for George’s benefit, all just dropped out. It’s hard not to start connecting dots. The propaganda-savvy Republicans surely know that the American press is so incompetent with economics that the only number they can deal with is the official unemployment figure. We also know about the efforts to politicize the civil service Federal agencies. Hmmmm. It will be interesting to see if anyone pursues this, and if after January 2009 (if the Democrats win) we start seeing any horror stories about how the stats were manipulated under intense political pressure. Some have noted, too, that the relatively sunny unemployment numbers the Bush administration has reported is inconsistent with the dismal, stagnant wage levels since 2001, too. Low unemployment should create a supply-demand labor crunch, and pressure wages upwards.
In any case, Krugman has been emphasizing the employment-to-population in some of his recent New York Times columns. It certainly makes sense that it should be considered the most compelling measure of job-creation performance. In 7 years through December 2007, while the number of Americans who would work if jobs were available grew by over 13 million, George Bush’s economy only generated jobs for about 8.4 million of them. Without rounding, the real loss was 4.8 million jobs. George the Father was no prize performer either: the potential work force in his four years grew over 5.5 million, his economy generated less than 2.4 million jobs. The combined Bush Family performance? Children, avert your eyes: potential work force grew by 18.8 million over the combined 12 years, but they found jobs for only 10.8 million of them. That’s a combined loss of 8 million real jobs in the three Bush administrations – and we may not have even seen the worst of the last one yet!
In contrast, of course, is the 18.7 million new jobs from January 1993 until January 2001, while the growth of the potential work force grew by only 13.2. Wait a second: how does that make sense – Clinton creating more jobs than the potential work force growth? Because that “potential work force growth” means the growth due to population growth only, if the same percentage were willing to work if jobs were available. What it means is that over 5 million people in effect crawled out of the woodwork, people who had been discouraged or for whatever reason had not been looking for jobs at all, and grabbed jobs in a thriving economy.
I’m not sure how true Hillary’s great statement the other day is – that it could take another Clinton to clean up after the mess a Bush had created – but the first part of it is certainly accurate: Bill Clinton really did do yeoman work trying to clean up after the first Bush – creating many more jobs than George the First had lost -- and now there’s certainly another, even worse mess created by his miscreant son.
And what's John McCain going to do about it? I think it's more of the same: tax cuts and more tax cuts, maybe a little budget cutting on "entitlements" of the American people. In other words, straight-talk John will want us to "stay-the-course" when it comes to the economy. Where have we heard that before? Oh yeah, he wants us to stay in Iraq for up to a 100 years -- but i hear he's going to be very firm that the Iraqis need to be ready to govern themselves the way we want them to after that 100 years is up.
posted by KISSWeb | 6:53 PM
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