Barack Obama: The jobs president that Republicans were looking for?

originally posted by: peck420

......
1) The aging of baby boomers. A lower percentage of older Americans choose to work than those who are middle-aged. And so as baby boomers approach retirement age, it lowers the labor force participation rate.

2) A decline in working women. The labor force participation rate for men has been declining since the 1950s. But for a couple decades, a rapid rise in working women more than offset that dip. Women’s labor force participation exploded from nearly 34 percent in 1950 to its peak of 60 percent in 1999. But since then, women’s participation rate has been “displaying a pattern of slow decline.”

3) More young people are going to college. As BLS noted, “Because students are less likely to participate in the labor force, increases in school attendance at the secondary and college levels and, especially, increases in school attendance during the summer, significantly reduce the labor force participation rate of youths.”
.....

Peck420: Whomever wrote this is a joke.

Uhh...that was the BLS...OK, let's see you source to rebut...

Straight from BLS:

So...the BLS is a joke as a source and instead you offer the...BLS as the most credible source?

I gotta take a break before I get a headache.

a reply to: Aazadan

That makes a lot more sense. In no way does it translate into "good news", however.

originally posted by: HighDesertPatriot
a reply to: Indigo5

Oh yeah, I am going to have to call bullsh*t on this. Look around your town and tell me if this is true. Federal reserve as the source? Come on now, don't be naive.

I have to agree with you it's gov propaganda and the treasury really? I just heard some startling statistics about the percentage of Americans below poverty line. I'm so disgusted with this.

a reply to: Aazadan

Thanks to
The Aca fewer companies are hiring full time. Yes people now have to
Get two jobs and usually lower paying ones with no benefits. This is also partly due to the fact that govt spending keeps increasing at an incredibly unsustainable level so those who are working are having to
Pay higher taxes and the fed is just printing money we don't have which further drives up inflation. It's a no win situation. What our gov is doing to the American people is horrific and unsustainable no matter what the treasury is trying to assert or the OP for that matter.

originally posted by: ThirdEyeofHorus
a reply to: Aazadan

Thanks to
The Aca fewer companies are hiring full time. Yes people now have to
Get two jobs and usually lower paying ones with no benefits. This is also partly due to the fact that govt spending keeps increasing at an incredibly unsustainable level so those who are working are having to
Pay higher taxes and the fed is just printing money we don't have which further drives up inflation. It's a no win situation. What our gov is doing to the American people is horrific and unsustainable no matter what the treasury is trying to assert or the OP for that matter.

Tax rates are pretty much irrelevant to standard of living. The nations with the highest standard of living in the world like Norway and Luxembourg pay the highest taxes. If anything high tax rates actually correlate with higher standards of living, though that requires a well run government that's actually funneling the tax money back into social services.

In the US we sort of have a backdoor version of this except we concentrate all of the money on specific sectors. For example our defense industry employs several million people either directly or by proxy and that all exists solely due to government spending. If we were to cut back on that to sane levels we would probably put 5 million people out of work. So rather than provide social services to everyone and minimum standards of living to all, we're providing very nice standards of living to just a few.

Remember this, every dollar collected in taxes goes back to American citizens in the form of wages. The money doesn't cease to exist.

Note that I'm in favor of companies not hiring full time due to the ACA. It requires some other economic changes that have yet to be made, but I think the 29 hour maximum is the best part of that legislation. We have too much labor on the market and that drives down wages. Cutting back on the number of hours that people can work (without incurring significant overtime expenses) restricts the supply of labor and ultimately drives wages up. We have yet to see that happen though because we're still shedding good jobs. We're cutting jobs that pay $80,000 a year, replacing them with 2 29 hour/week jobs that each pay $18,000 per year, and calling it an increase of 1 job while the reality is someone went from working 40 hours/week at one job making $80,000 to working 58 hours/week between two jobs making $36,000.

Our economy is still transitioning to a no skill service sector economy and that's a problem that's beyond the scope of job numbers or labor supply.

a reply to: Indigo5

The people here who hate Obama can, and won't, ever admit that he's ever done anything good, for anyone. 'Blind Hatred' is the condition, I think. Shows just how foolish their FOX'NEWS' beliefs are. Instead of recognizing the good effects Obama's admin has had on the country, (especially after Bush/Chaney, and the rest of those war criminals, tried to drive the entire world off a cliff), the haters will question the data, and say the don't believe it because they know somebody who's still out of work. If that unemployed person exhibits the same level of intelligence as the Obama haters, it's no wonder they're not working... Go on haters, hate away. That's what they do, instead of coming up with way to cooperate. Who cares? Their numbers are steadily dwindling away. I can't wait to hear how they don't believe Hilary won the 2016 election.

a reply to: [post=20012555]KonigKaos[/post

WOW...you're really stuck on the whole "global warming" term I see and must be a huge fan of the "Here's a snowball...how can there be global warming" argument. That's using your noodle.

a reply to: VVV88

nice "copy and paste" job. Do you even understand what you posted? or do you often just spew published material as your own without citing a source?

let me help you with that:

The seasonally-adjusted SGS Alternate Unemployment Rate reflects current unemployment reporting methodology adjusted for SGS-estimated long-term discouraged workers, who were defined out of official existence in 1994. That estimate is added to the BLS estimate of U-6 unemployment, which includes short-term discouraged workers.

The U-3 unemployment rate is the monthly headline number. The U-6 unemployment rate is the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) broadest unemployment measure, including short-term discouraged and other marginally-attached workers as well as those forced to work part-time because they cannot find full-time employment.

[url=http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts]

a reply to: HighDesertPatriot

Oh yeah, I am going to have to call bullsh*t on this.

Yeah, well your bullsh*t call is bullsh*t. Those are the numbers, like it or lump it.

AND, imagine what would have been accomplished if Congress had passed even ONE of the jobs bills the President asked for - or even an actual jobs bill that he hadn't asked for. Any jobs bill. Anything even remotely associated with creating actual jobs.

Heck, imagine what those numbers would have looked like if they had invested the cost of the SEVEN Benghasi and the FIVE IRS inquiries in, say, something useful like highway repair or railway maintenance jobs.

a reply to: NihilistSanta

Have any information on worker pay stats to go with these new jobs? How many are part time? How many are in the service sector? How many are Government jobs? How much value is added to the economy than was there before 2008 from these jobs? More is not always better.

The chart clearly distinguishes between Public Sector (Government) and Private Sector.

It does not answer your other questions, however the fact that it does directly answer one of your questions demonstrates that you made no attempt to understand what it was telling you, and you blindly threw questions in order to establish a biased viewpoint. No one chart can address every question. Why not learn how to do your own research and find the information you think refutes the tale that these graphs do tell?

These graphs DO compare apples to apples, the definition of what they mean by a job is the same in both graphs. If you want to argue that the value of a job in 2015 is less than the value of a job in 2007 (I assume that is your point), then show us the data that leads you came to that conclusion.

I don't think that you can show that data, and that your opinion is formed not by any such data, but by your own personal bias against Obama and the 'liberal agenda' to actually improve the American economy. Whatever the case, having a job in 2015 is definitely more valuable that not having a job in 2007. Anyway, isn't that one of the cornerstones of Conservative ideology for the past 50 years - reduce and eliminate welfare and "these people" will have to get a job even if it is exploitative, soul destroying, worthless, and not actually livable?

I dislike doing other peoples research, but I just happen to have a few links handy.

Job Losses and Gains under Bush and Obama
Notice that Obama got Congress to pass a jobs stimulus bill when Democrats controlled Congress. Since the Republicans have controlled Congress they have not passed ONE jobs bill - not one. So while we have regained the 10 million jobs that Bush trashed, we haven't kept pace with the population growth demand for jobs.

Initial Unemployment Claims

Job Creators
The pattern since WWII is clear. Democratic Administrations create jobs - Republican Administrations destroy jobs. THERE ARE NO EXCEPTIONS!

According to conservative economist Peter Morici the number one policy required to fight a recession is a stimulus, which is, of course, absolute abomination to Republicans and why they have refused to pass any jobs creation legislation what-so-ever, even to support jobs for the veterans of the wars they joyously started.

(quote from the above link...)

So this (a stimulus) is the most important jobs creation tool in a severe recession and all Democrats voted for it, while no House Republicans did and only three Republican Senators did. This is the primary reason Republicans are bad at job creation. They either don’t understand that when the government buys goods and services, people are hired to provide these, or they would rather leave them unemployed than have the government help out.

This view, that the government should not create jobs, has been a constant Republican view for at least the last 85 years, and that explains why they have consistently had “bad luck” creating jobs.

Hyper-Inflation? NOT!
Republicans have claimed that the Fed is causing inflation for the last five years, and that it must stop trying to reduce unemployment. But inflation is the lowest its been since the 1950's and its getting lower.

How's that hypocrisy tasting? Should we reduce unemployment or not? Are you going to bash Obama for not creating enough jobs or for creating too many jobs? WTF are you even talking about?

a reply to: peskyhumans

You might argue I just live in an especially impoverished area in the states. I disagree - from what I have seen this is the new normal.

You are correct, this is the new normal. People don't work for the same company for 35 or 40 years anymore. It just doesn't happen.

Often big companies don't even have any 'regular' employees, not even middle management. They have contracts with employment companies that supply contractors. The contracts can be killed anytime with no penalties on the contracting party, but plenty of penalties on the contractor. The contracting parties don't have obligations for vacation, or sick leave, or training, or unemployment, or health insurance or any kind of benefits what-so-ever - that's all the contractors responsibility. The "contractors" are in turn subcontracting the work out to individual sole-trader contractors or small contractor groups who, according to the law, are too small to have to be bothered by any of those benefits.

And who exactly decided this was a desirable state of affairs and made this possible? Do you think it the Democrats and the Labor Unions and all those other pesky liberals? Sure it was, and by the way, do you wanna buy a bridge?

Think about it.

Here's Alan Simpson, conservative former 20 year Senator (Republican of course) from one of the most conservative States in the country (Wyoming) on the topic:



Ah, yes. The good ol' days when America actually had a two party system where both parties actually had brains and an intellectual heart.

a reply to: peck420

If you don't want to work, I doubt you care about unemployment rates, labour force, labour force participation rates, or how those refelct the health of the economy. So, no, in this regard, it has no bearing.

What a crock.

Just because I am retired doesn't mean I don't participate in the economy. I most certainly do care about all those measures and what they mean for me, my family, and my neighbors.

What FlatFish was referring to was that he should not be counted in the 'workforce, able to work' category. Doing so skews the meaningfulness of the statistics.

a reply to: rnaa

Congress cannot magically create jobs with a "jobs bill".

originally posted by: rnaa
Hyper-Inflation? NOT!
Republicans have claimed that the Fed is causing inflation for the last five years, and that it must stop trying to reduce unemployment. But inflation is the lowest its been since the 1950's and its getting lower.

How's that hypocrisy tasting? Should we reduce unemployment or not? Are you going to bash Obama for not creating enough jobs or for creating too many jobs? WTF are you even talking about?

This isn't a very good argument. Inflation is quite high, the problem is that inflation statistics are an imaginary number and they have been since 1980. When Reagan got in power he changed the way the Consumer Price Index (CPI) is calculated, from the CPI is how we get inflation numbers. Prior to 1980 is tracked the change in the cost of goods from year to year while post 1980 it tracks the change in spending from year to year. Let me give you a simple example

Year 1: I buy 3 sandwiches for $2 each.
Year 2: I buy 2 sandwiches for $3 each, and make do with less food because they're more expensive.

Under the old system of tracking CPI you would look at the change in cost of $2 to $3 and say that inflation on that particular good was 50%. Under CPI since Reagan however it sees that in both years $6 were spent so inflation is 0%. Throw in the completely secret formulas used to make a hypothetical basket of goods to track spending from year to year and CPI and by extension Inflation are complete voodoo likely not based on any actual facts.

Where this creates problems is a lot of things are based on the inflation rate, most notably loans and wage increases. So we've had 35 years where wage increases have been based on one number while the true increase in the cost of goods has been in another number. This has thrown off the value of wages by a few percent every year, and compounded for 30 years prices are completely out of whack.

In short, it's not Obama specifically that's causing inflation and we're not in hyperinflation but we never fixed the inflation from the Carter years, we just stopped counting it.

a reply to: HighDesertPatriot

Congress cannot magically create jobs with a "jobs bill".

You are right. There is no magic about it. Just straightforward economic policy.

Economic policy that encourages job growth in America instead of job shifting to China, Indonesia, India, Thailand, and The Phillipines. Economics policy that encourages refitting existing plant and infrastructure, building new plant and infrastructure, and improving economic opportunity for the future instead of shutting down aging facilities leaving behind a sea of desolation, letting infrastructure degrade to the point of being unusable, and setting up the country for a future of vassalage.