[ROCKMAN]

Maybe I missed it but did anyone point out the distinction between the "unemployment rate" (as defined by the govt) and the US EMPLOYMENT RATE. Those are two very different metrics with very different implications about the state of the economy. And as pointed out a lot of folks going to work for salaries below the inflation rate adjusted level is not an indication of a vibrant economy.

And no: job loss in the oil patch is such a small % of the workforce it won't even be a blip. But the total salary loss will be a more significant metric compared to the average US salary.

[KaiserJeep]

Once again, the great mass of Americans display their utter cluelessness about matters of simple arithmetic.

I just reached retirement age, and I am on the trailing edge of the Baby Boom, the greatest surge in US births ever recorded, followed by steady advances in medicine that keeps more people alive longer - for seven decades.

If we went back to the post-WW2 period, and applied the simple criteria used then for measuring those out of work, the figure is 19.7%, not 4.9%. The "reductions" in unemployment rates all throughout the 21st Century have all come about due to redefinitions of the statistic. This is aimed at hiding the fact that not only is real unemployment increasing, but the rate of increase is also increasing.

With the slightly more advanced techniques of algebra, you can approximate the rate of increase and then anticipate that the really steep part of the exponential unemployment curve begins in 16-20 years. By 2035-2040 actual employment nears zero, taxation reaches more than 100% of the average income, and people in the USA are starving - just as South and Central Americans starve today.

Other factors that are hidden by the official unemployment stats include the approximately 30 million non-citizens in this country that are employed in a thriving underground economy - where adults work for entry-level wages that teenagers used to use to buy gas and junk food, while learning to work. Today we have 20-somethings at home who still have not learned to work, and probably never will. Meanwhile the undocumented adult worker supports a family of six on a single entry level wage.

These are a few of many symptoms of Peak Oil, and we are proceeding with the "slow crash" scenario best defined I believe by James Howard Kunstler in his 2005 work The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-first Century.

Those of you with a scientific leaning should consider the following premise: Peak Oil happened already, and the statistical shenanigans being played with that statistic are concealing this fact. Demand destruction for liquid fuels due to an almost universally soft world economy is prolonging our misery for an extra couple of decades.

Those of you without any feel for math should simply memorize the following mantra: Figures Lie, and Liars Figure.

I admit, I thought this would happen in 4-6 decades, not 1-2 decades. But the wild card in the deck was the surging increase in personal vehicles in China and India, as they aspire to an American lifestyle. But when you consider that the faster the crash, the more infrastructure remains viable, it's not actually a bad thing. So face up to the facts: we are post-peak, and sliding down the cliff towards the dropoff.

There are people here who claim to have been anticipating the Oil Peak since about 1982. Well folks, it happened, and you were right all along.

[Outcast_Searcher]

Once again, the great mass of Americans display their utter cluelessness about matters of simple arithmetic.

If we went back to the post-WW2 period, and applied the simple criteria used then for measuring those out of work, the figure is 19.7%, not 4.9%. The "reductions" in unemployment rates all throughout the 21st Century have all come about due to redefinitions of the statistic. This is aimed at hiding the fact that not only is real unemployment increasing, but the rate of increase is also increasing.

With the slightly more advanced techniques of algebra, you can approximate the rate of increase and then anticipate that the really steep part of the exponential unemployment curve begins in 16-20 years. By 2035-2040 actual employment nears zero, taxation reaches more than 100% of the average income, and people in the USA are starving - just as South and Central Americans starve today.

If you want the numerate to believe you, how about showing us your arithmetic or algabraic assumptions. Since it's math, please be specific.

Or, if you'd prefer, how about some links to show where you get your 19.7% vs. 4.9% figure for unemployment.

If we don't know what your assumptions are, your methodology is, or what statistics you are using (except for the general implication that trends are "bad"), it's you lecturing in general terms instead of a discussion about mathematical "facts" or data.

[ennui2]

While he's at it, have him offer his math for how the heat-losses inside the gears of windmills significantly contribute to global warming.

[KaiserJeep]

There are not enough bytes on this web server or hours in my now-retired life to educate the two of you about what is wrong with the government statistics on just about anything.

Furthermore, I admit to a personal failing: Many times in thread arguments at PO.com, I have pointed to "official" government figures (including BLS statistics when discussing the state of the economy) and implied that they are authoritative. But they are far from accurate. To begin your understanding of the "true" unemployment rate, try these three:

http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts
(Hint: Williams is very high at 23%, search on "debunking shadowstats" to understand why and how much. But then try to explain why 800,000 have lost jobs since Obama took office, and the stats don't show it. Then notice that approximately 7 out of 8 new "jobs" counted by the BLS are part-time or contract jobs.)

http://www.forbes.com/sites/dandimicco/2015/02/13/jobs-the-real-unemployment-rate-please-anyone/#39918f00423d (This guy DiMicco runs the Gallop Poll for employment, and argues for the "real" figure of 12.7% unemployment.)(His boss and the CEO of Gallop, Jim Clifton, has also written extensively on this topic.)

http://money.cnn.com/2016/02/06/news/economy/obama-us-jobs/ (CNN is a tireless promoter of Democratic causes - but even they choke on the "official" unemployment statistic.)

Depending upon your exact definition of the statistic, the "real" figure is somewhere in the range of 12-23% - I personally like 19.7%, since that particular measure uses the methodology of 1947.

The outlier figure comes from "The Donald" who claims 40%. But I believe he is "firing for effect upon the enemy position".

http://fortune.com/2015/09/14/donald-trump-unemployment-rate-jobs/

Once we have reached agreement on the base data, I will firmly grasp the rings in your noses and lead you through the basics of high school Algebra. But attempting the analysis before agreeing on the dataset is useless.

[GHung]

It may seem too simplistic, but as Rock and others have alluded to, the labor force participation rate is declining rather dramatically. It doesn't matter much if it's due to demographics or not.

Labor force participation rate:

Whether retiring or not, tax receipts from those not employed are likely to drop, and total tax revenue from individuals is likely to decline, or at least go flat, while costs and outlays don't; may even increase.



Again, while this may be too simplistic, with the overall economy clearly stagnating despite what we're being told. Either way, we see a rather alarming increase in debt.

US public debt:


Not sure where the cornucopians among us think this is headed, but it seems clear this can't continue as more people, as a percentage of the population, leave the work force, pay fewer taxes and go on the government dole in some way. Of course, people like Pete Peterson and Lawrence Kotlikoff have been warning about this for years; the coming perfect storm of demographics, declining work force participation, declining or flat tax receipts, and increasing entitlements, all in an overall environment of limits to growth.

[Sixstrings]

This is anecdotal but despite the IT bubble, all of the unsolicited recruiter spam I get is for contract work. It's high pay, and some of it is long-term (a year, let's say) contract, but still contract. I feel pretty lucky to be regular salaried full-time.

Trump has pointed out before that we're now graduating far more IT workers than there are IT jobs (I don't know if that's true or not, but that's what he said, or it's in his immigration position paper).

And then the real problem compounding that is that companies are IMPORTING h1b visa IT workers from India. Clinton, Marco Rubio, both DNC and RNC establishments have it set up so that h1b immigrants can be brought in and paid LESS than Americans. This is outright undercutting all these grads in the US, and current American IT workers.

So there ya go. That's what the establishment is for, Ennui. That's why it's important to care about those walmart workers, and fast food, and those people a rung down the ladder from you -- because the establishment may come for your job too, after they're done with those lower rungs.

Did you ever hear about the Disney story?

Disney World laid off 400 IT workers, bringing in 400 h1b visa immigrants from India, to pay them less than the American IT workers were making.

To add insult to injury, the American IT workers *were forced to train their replacements* and if they refused, they wouldn't get their severence. This is now the courts in Florida. The IT workers probably won't prevail, but they're trying to make a RICO case that Disney did some fraud and lied on the h1b visa applications.

I'm not saying it's clear yet whether DJT really is as strong on protecting American jobs as he says, I'd like to hear some more of it to be sure, but this overall issue of h1b cheap labor imports could affect someone like you, one day. At least Trump speaks out about it.



P.S. Seriously -- whatever candidate says it -- that h1b visa law ought to be REPEALLED, that's not RIGHT that it's set up so they are paid LESS. Economy is tough enough as it is, Americans don't need to be completely undercut by a government program designed to bring in foreign workers and pay them less. How much money does Google and Facebook and all them need, for goodness sake? The problem about it is that it's not just about bringing in extra labor, but outright CHEAPER labor.

IT workers are gonna have to start forming some unions or figure something out, find somebody to vote for that's against the way the h1b visas are set up. Guys like Marco Rubio want MORE of this, because they're in the pocket of Facebook and Silicon Valley contributions to their campaigns.

And then, establishment Democrats are in Silicon Valley's pocket too -- and also, Democrats just want more immigrants for the votes.

The h1b visa stuff wouldn't be so bad per se, if it weren't set up so that immigrants are paid less. That's the over the line part, just my opinion. If it were a level playing field at least, then that would be a bit different and even head on competition.

The whole issue is about (a) there was already so much offshoring to India and elsewhere, that's bad enough, but then (b) they set up the h1b stuff so that they can do reverse offshoring and import the cheaper labor.

All to for a darn nickel or two in extra profit for the corporation, and the workers in America just get the pink slip. And have to train their replacements.

edit: Just to note, Bernie Sanders shares Trump's view on the H1B visas, and has aligned in the Senate with the Republican senator that wrote Trump's immigration policy paper. Sanders' position is to end the part where the imported workers are paid less, so it's at least a level playing field for American workers.

Meet Bernie Sanders, H-1B skeptic

Sanders is skeptical of the H-1B program, and has lambasted tech companies for hiring visa holders at the same time they're cutting other staffers. He's especially critical of the visa's use by providers of IT services that are headquartered overseas.

"Last year, the top 10 employers of H-1B guest workers were all offshore outsourcing companies," Sanders said in a Senate speech in 2013. "These firms are responsible for shipping large numbers of American information technology jobs to India and other countries."

The points raised by Sanders echo those made by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), who chairs the Senate's Immigration subcommittee. In fact, Sanders was one of 10 senators who signed a recent letter by Sessions and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) to several federal departments seeking an investigation into H-1B use.
http://www.computerworld.com/article/2916827/it-outsourcing/bernie-sanders-h-1b-skeptic.html

[Plantagenet]

Maybe I missed it but did anyone point out the distinction between the "unemployment rate" (as defined by the govt) and the US EMPLOYMENT RATE.

Of course those are different.

But the media (and the Obama administration) focus on the unemployment rate, and the official unemployment rate in the US has now fallen to the point that the US is now at full employment.

According to President Obama, this is a "mission accomplished" moment. All the job losses of the Great Recession have now been recovered and he deserves more credit for this great economic accomplishment.


Full employment?---Mission Accomplished!

[Sixstrings]

But the media (and the Obama administration) focus on the unemployment rate, and the official unemployment rate in the US has now fallen to the point that the US is now at full employment.

But.. it's like they've just written off the unemployed, and don't count them anymore. They got filed into a separate category, "no longer looking for work" and therefore not in the labor market, therefore not unemployed.

[onlooker]

That makes no sense to me how you can exclude the longer term chronic unemployed from the statistics. Oh and as is pointed out more and more are part time workers. So these statistics or lack thereof do not paint a rosy picture.

[KaiserJeep]

Correct, that was my earlier point, they have been cooking the unemployment stats for decades. Such cheating reached incredible levels just this last month when - with one in five US workers either out of work, discouraged from looking, retired on Social Security, or dropped out of unemployment because they ran out of benefits, the Obama government claimed "full employment".

The motive for such cheating is to convince functional idiots - whose votes are never-the-less worth exactly what yours or mine are worth - that the Democrats need to be kept in the White House and the Senate and the House, because they are doing such an excellent job with the economy.

Don't fool yourselves either - if the Republicans were in the White House, they would be pulling the same con.

[onlooker]

"Don't fool yourselves either - if the Republicans were in the White House, they would be pulling the same con." On that note, I think most on this site can agree, neither party is much more unsavory than the other one. Meaning both are unsavory.

[Plantagenet]

Even though the US is at full employment, job losses in the oil patch are hurting seven states----

Oklahoma, Alaska, Louisiana, Wyoming, West Virginia and North Dakota are losing jobs even as the rest of the US economy booms. In Texas the oil patch is losing lots of jobs, but the rest of the Texas economy is still steaming along OK. If enough oil workers lose jobs it will hurt the housing market and other parts of the economy in those seven states.

oil-industry-stain-economic-recovery-barack-obama

The good news is that the land men, lawyers, engineers and geologists who lose their jobs in the oil bust have a good chance of switching careers and quickly getting a job elsewhere in the economy thanks to the fact we are at full employmentin the US today.

[dohboi]

Starting in 1994, once you hadn’t looked for work for more than a year, you were officially removed from the workforce.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sens ... -mask-the/

The shift

occurred in 1994 under Clinton and was started by the Bush Sr. administration.

http://chipshirley.blogspot.com/2012/05 ... loyed.html

[Plantagenet]

Starting in 1994, once you hadn’t looked for work for more than a year, you were officially removed from the workforce.

The shift ...occurred in 1994 under Clinton ...

http://chipshirley.blogspot.com/2012/05 ... loyed.html

It really doesn't matter whether Obama changed it or Clinton changed it----what matters is that the current unemployment rate actually doesn't include millions of people who are unemployed.

Under normal circumstances with the low unemployment rates that prevailed in the 90s and 00s this wouldn't be a big problem, but its pretty clear that its become a glitch that results in millions and millions of unemployed people not being included in the unemployment rate today. If you were take the workforce participation numbers at face value you would think that the US work force shrunk by about 5% starting when Obama took office. Of course the workforce hans't shrunk at all....all that happened is the BLS is no longer counter these people.

Yes, Obama isn't responsible for changing the BLS system so it now undercounts the number of unemployed people. But Obama and his appointees ARE responsible for not fixing this glitch so the unemployment numbers better reflect the new economic realities in the USA---of course they are much too busy holding press conferences announcing the US is at full employment to have any time to fix the glitches in the current BLS reporting system.


According to the BLS 5% of the US workforce vanished from 2008 to 2010.....and for their next trick they'll pull a rabbit out of a hat!

[KaiserJeep]

Correct, Plant - except it is not a glitch, it's a plan - a plan to deal with people who must not become alarmed, lest the house of cards called the economy fall. You must hide the stats of millions of Baby Boomers reaching retirement age, but who haven't worked for years - and are now drawing down the Social Security "fund" faster than planned. Just another way of saying, more people on the dole - which is what SS largely became when so many were out of work, underemployed, or under-the-table employed for years before retiring.

So look at those who benefit when the US budget is in red ink, and get a clue about what this is about.

[Plantagenet]

You're right as usual, KJ.

NPR was just interviewing working class Trump and Bernie supporters in New Hampshire. One poor unemployed guy had a huge TRUMP sign on his land and said he was supporting Trump because he hoped Trump could get the economy going and create jobs for people like him.

The NPR reporter was scornful: "But unemployment is already so low----we're at full employment right now!" she lectured the unemployed man.

[dohboi]

Yes, Bush the First planned it, Clinton implemented it, then Bush the Second and O continued it.

Of those four, I suppose if you want to cherry pick one to be particularly blame worthy, I suppose that's your prerogative.

[Plantagenet]

Yes, Bush the First planned it, Clinton implemented it, then Bush the Second and O continued it.

Of those four, I suppose if you want to cherry pick one to be particularly blame worthy, I suppose that's your prerogative.

It would be nice if we could go back in time and convince Clinton not to change in BLS unemployment stats and please please please don't end Glass-Steagal, but that isn't possible.

The only possible way to get it fixed now is for either Obama now or Clinton after Jan. 2016 to reform the BLS counting system so the unemployment numbers more accurate reflect the number of people who are unemployed.

Its pretty ridiculous to have NPR reporters telling unemployed people in New Hampshire that we're at full employment---but the current BLS unemployment number distorts reality for people who don't dive into the numbers.

We might as well have Baghdad Bob doing our economic reporting under the current system.


Our lead story tonight is from the Obama administration---the US has achieved full employment. Anyone still saying they need a job will be harassed by the nearest NPR reporter..

[Plantagenet]

Trump is now disputing the Obama administration claim that unemployment is at 4.9% and the US is at full employment

I'm not a big Trump fan, but he does have a point----if the US is at full employment why are his campaign rallies and Bernie Sanders rallies full of people saying they need jobs?

why-trump-thinks-unemployment-42

The whole reason that the US is supposedly at full employment right now is that millions of people who have lost their jobs over the last 7 years aren't being counted as unemployed---instead they've been disappeared after a year of unemployment. Past administrations did this as well, but then the "discouraged" workers would be added back in to the workforce as the economy improved.

The weird thing now is that all the workers removed from the workforce since 2008 have never been added back in, even though the economy is supposedly so great now and we are supposedly at "full employment." You'd think a million or two of those discouraged workers would start showing up again in the BLS numbers----but no---they've been disappeared forever, apparently.


Since we're at full employment right now---then the jobs are already back, aren't they?