Thread: Obamanomics: Unemployment Falls Because Nobody’s Looking For Work

Obamanomics: Unemployment Falls Because Nobody’s Looking For Work

January 10, 2014 by Ben Bullard

According to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, the American economy added 74,000 jobs in December of 2013 – and yet the unemployment rate still managed to fall from 7 percent to 6 percent.

How can that be? Because nobody’s looking for work.
The civilian labor force in December shrank again, this time from 155.3 million to 154.9 million people. By percentage, that means the current 62.8 percent participation rate in today’s labor force is the lowest it’s been since 1978.

Meanwhile, there are now 91.8 million people not participating in the labor force – an all-time high that shows no sign of slowing down. About half a million people dropped out of the labor force in December alone, far outpacing the meager 74,000 added jobs.

The employment-to-unemployment ratio sits stagnantly at 58.6 percent to 41.4 percent. For all of 2013, the economy grew by an average of 182,000 jobs each month – more than double the December figure. And the matrix of 74,000 new December jobs can’t be envied for its quality. The retail sector was responsible for 55,000 of those jobs – 24,000 of which were in food and clothing stores.

In fact, if the labor force had held steady at its 2009 level of 162 million – before a “post-recession” decline that saw an additional 7 million people drop out – the actual unemployment rate would now stand at 10.8 percent. But the BLS doesn’t use workforce dropouts to tally unemployment, even though people who don’t have jobs and aren’t looking for work are, by definition, unemployed.

http://personalliberty.com/2014/01/1...king-for-work/

If your confused on how bad the U-3 and U-6 Unemployment is; America needs 450,000 jobs a MONTH for the nest 5 YEARS to get back to pre-recession levels

you need to READ THAT AGAIN

450,000 X 12 (months) X 5 (years)

that's 60 straight months to break EVEN; that does NOT count student graduating from high school that do not go on to college or those that Graduate from college in those same 60 months that add to the unemployment numbers

Unemployment Rate Drops as Workers Leave Labor Force

http://finance.townhall.com/video/un...force-n1776954

Who Needs Ayn Rand? America Has Already Gone John Galt

January 10th, 2014 - 11:08 am
Roger L Simon



Tell all your “Objectivist” friends and the libertarian gang at Reason magazine to break out the champagne. Americans may have skipped the movie of Atlas Shrugged, nor have many read any of Ayn Rand’s works, but they have taken the author’s advice anyway and gone John Galt, quitting the work force in record numbers. According toZero Hedge, the latest figures show the labor participation rate at 35 year low.

Realistically, it’s even more than 35 because that figure reflects an employment bump when larger numbers of women joined the work force in the seventies and eighties. (They’re gone now, with or without Gloria Steinem.)

Currently a record 91.8 million Americans are no longer looking for work. That’s almost one and a half times the entire population of France.

Although I admit to libertarian tendencies, I don’t think any of us can celebrate because of this. It’s an economic disaster that should be blowing even Chris Christie off the front pages.

In fact, it’s much worse than that. It’s a human emotional disaster. Freud may have been wrong about a number of things, but he was right about this. Two mainstays that get us through life, other than religion, which Freud didn’t cotton to, are “love and work.” I don’t know about love, but the work part of our lives has been brutally kicked out from under us in the Obama years.

The implications of this are actually terrifying. What are those nearly 92 million people doing with their time, other than sitting around depressed?. Many, of course, are on some version of welfare. Some are panhandling. We see the homeless on the streets of all our big cities.

Others are moving into a shadow economy, much of it illegal (drugs, prostitution), not paying taxes on whatever they earn. It’s truly a sad situation. No wonder so many states are moving toward legalizing grass. Everyone wants to zone out.

This is rapidly approaching a a pre-revolutionary condition, but not for a revolution many of us would want to undergo. To avoid it, a massive change must occur at the federal level. But Barack Obama, mired in a dead ideology, doesn’t seem prepared to do anything but prolong the situation with highly conventional liberal solutions that have failed for decades, maybe even centuries.

And yet there is so much he could do. The most obvious, many of us know, is to unshackle the energy industry. He should dismantle much of the bureaucracy as well. There’s a lot more, of course. But the point now is to realize that when you have nearly 92 million people deserting the labor force in a country of 317 million (many of who are children too young to work), you have a catastrophic problem on your hands.

And finally, let’s do away forever with the silly unemployment statistic (as in today’s 6.7% unemployed). It has no relevance to anything and is a form of disinformation. The labor participation rate is the true story.

Update: “The Obama jobs recovery in one handy chart” added atop post.

http://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2014/...inglepage=true

With all this the Chamber of Commerce wants more immigration.

Missing: The American Worker

Katie Pavlich | Jan 10, 2014



As Kevin detailed this morning, the economy added just 74,000 jobs last month and the official unemployment rate dropped to 6.7 percent. This drop is a direct result of Americans giving up the search for work. Since President Obama took office in 2009, nearly 10 million people have left the work force and millions more remain underemployed.

The Economic Policy Institute [EPI] has developed a series of charts to visually show how many workers are missing from the labor force and estimated in December 2013 that 5,990,000 workers were missing. When missing workers are calculated into unemployment numbers, the rate is 10.2 percent, nearly four percent higher than the official Labor Department rate.

"In today’s labor market, the unemployment rate drastically understates the weakness of job opportunities. This is due to the existence of a large pool of “missing workers”—potential workers who, because of weak job opportunities, are neither employed nor actively seeking a job. In other words, these are people who would be either working or looking for work if job opportunities were significantly stronger. Because jobless workers are only counted as unemployed if they are actively seeking work, these “missing workers” are not reflected in the unemployment rate," the EPI website states.

"This is comparable to losing the state of Maryland or Missouri in terms of productivity and GDP. We are missing between $250 and $300 billion in lost GDP because of these jobs losses, which is right around 1.5 to 2% of GDP growth. Same number that has been historically missing from Obama's stewardship of the economy," Townhall Finance Editor John Ransom says. "And things are getting worse. The missing workers in August of 2012 were 4.4 million. Now it's 5.9 million.

Only 1,374,000 jobs have been created since Dec 2012, while an additional 1,500,000 workers have left the workforce according to the EPI estimate."

President Obama is currently campaigning for "promise centers" around the country, vowing to reduce poverty and to create jobs.


http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepa...campaign=nl_pm

http://www.alipac.us/f19/obama-estab...-zones-295264/

Low Unemployment? More Like Decimated Workforce; Millionaires Aplenty In Congress; Jersey Voters Think Christie’s Hiding His Cards; Fight Back Against The NSA; Friday Funnies — Personal Liberty Digest™ P.M. Edition 1-10-2014

January 10, 2014 by Personal Liberty News Desk

Brush up on the day’s headlines with Personal Liberty’s P.M. Edition news links.

Obamanomics: Unemployment Falls Because Nobody’s Looking For Work

According to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, the American economy added 74,000 jobs in December of 2013 – and yet the unemployment rate still managed to fall from 7 percent to 6 percent. How can that be? Because nobody’s looking for work. 30-Year Low…


Surprise! Congress Loaded With More Millionaires Than Ever

More fat cats are roaming the halls of Congress. For the very first time, most Congressmen are millionaires. Surprisingly, Congressional representatives of the party that claims to understand the problems of the poor had a higher median net worth than Republicans. Read More…

Poll: More Than Half Of New Jersey Voters Believe Chris Christie Knew About Lane Closings

More than half of likely New Jersey voters say Governor Chris Christie should quit if he knew of his aide’s bridge plan, a poll released Friday indicated. Rasmussen Reports, in a telephone poll conducted after Christie’s lengthy news conference Thursday, found 54 percent of likely voters believe the Republican Governor was aware of the plan for political payback before it was carried out, and 56 percent said he should resign if that can be proved. Read More…

Feb. 11: The Day We Fight Back Against NSA Surveillance

Today, on the eve of the anniversary of Aaron Swartz’s death, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has a new challenge: ending mass surveillance by the NSA. The advocacy group is asking Internet users Nationwide to “bring your creativity, your networks, your art and your dedication; and join EFF in a month of action, culminating in an Internet-wide protest on Feb. 11.” Fight Back…

Friday Fun: A Roundup Of This Week’s Political Cartoons

Last weekend, “Frozen” chilled the latest “Paranormal” flick at the box office. Fitting, since a good portion of North America was in a deep freeze, thanks to the polar vortex. Just as things started to thaw out a bit, a scandal erupted in New Jersey that may freeze out Governor Chris Christie from the GOP Presidential contest in 2016. And would somebody please tell Dennis Rodman to chill? Good grief! Friday Funnies…

Filed Under: Liberty News, Staff Reports

http://personalliberty.com/2014/01/1...e-doublethink/