Unemployment News Just Keeps Getting Worse

[San Antonio]

Corporate profits are up 22% over the last year helped primarily by increased worker productivity, shifting jobs from the US to the Third World to save expenses and a decent Christmas season. Trouble is unemployment is still way above what it was when this President took office. Last week, the US posted a fabulous job growth of 1,000 in December 2003. Not quite the 150,000 jobs per month that Treasury Secretary Snow promised we would have when the Bush Tax Cuts filtered into the economy but.... hey, what do I know?

I know a few things:
there are 8.4 million officially unemployed
there are 1.5 million unoffiically unemployed (because they gave up looking and are not counted in offiical figures)
there are 4.8 million part-time workers who want to work full-time but cannot because the jobs are not there.

Now, these are Dept of Labor stats, right from your ever lovin' Uncle Sam. I keep hearing Dubya promising a job for every person that wants to work and I keep seeing almost 15 million people out of work. Maybe, if we want to get a job we should go where the jobs are: Mexico, China and India!

[Ivo]

Yeah, maybe by 2007 the old 'it was Clinton's fault' will finally get old.

With no new economic frontier on the horizon, once the jobs do come back most of us will be saying, 'Can I help you sir?'.

[San Antonio]

And, "Do you want to Supersize that meal today?"

[DNCAttackDog]

According to everyone's good friend ljromanoff (do a search of posts on this profile), the number of jobs is actually increasing.

:laughter:

[Missouri Mule]

Compare these numbers to Europe's sometime.

Economics 101: As productivity increases, employment will often fall as the existing employees will work harder; hence greater productivity. As the workload becomes too great, employers will in due course be obligated of necessity to hire additional employees.

Look at the latest trendlines for "new unemployment claims." Going down, not up.

[DNCAttackDog]

Originally posted by Missouri Mule
Economics 101: As productivity increases, employment will often fall as the existing employees will work harder; hence greater productivity. As the workload becomes too great, employers will in due course be obligated of necessity to hire additional employees.

You just flunked Econ 101. When the employers get to hire employees from India, China, and Mexico and still label their products as non-imports (and sell them at US prices), the model no longer applies.

[Missouri Mule]

No I didn't. Your model would still have buggy whip makers working at full force. And the blacksmith's union would be raising the devil because their business had a downturn.

You may not like, and a lot do not. But we are in a global economy and we will adapt or we will decline. We can't live in the past. The past is gone and it can't be resurrected.

[BlueLieu]

The Department of Labor provides two different sets of labor market statistics: the Establishment Survey and the Household Survey. The Establishment Survey polls 400,000 companies on how many employees they have. The Household Survey questions 60,000 households each month on whether they have jobs and whether someone is looking for one.

The “jobless recovery” picture is painted using the Household Survey for calculating the unemployment rate but using the Establishment Survey for the number of jobs created.

Over the last year, the Household Survey shows that almost two million new jobs have been created, while the Establishment Survey indicated a job loss of 62,000 jobs. Over the entire Bush administration, the Household Survey found that about 2.4 million new jobs have been created. By contrast, the Establishment Survey shows a net addition of only 522,000.

There are a number of technical reasons that the two surveys can yield different numbers. For example, people with more than one job will be counted multiple times in the establishment survey. On the other hand, the self-employed are only counted by the household survey.

Using the Establishment/Household Survey, Democratics charge that over two million jobs have been lost under the Bush administration from January 2001 to January 2003.

Current unemployment 5.7 percent
1970s avg (6.4 percent)
1980s avg (7.3 percent)
1990s avg (5.8 percent)

Per capita GDP in
1980 = $21,500
2002= $36,000 = 59% increase.

[ljromanoff]

Originally posted by BlueLieu
Over the entire Bush administration, the Household Survey found that about 2.4 million new jobs have been created.

This bears repeating considering how thoroughly in denial DNCAttackPoodle is about it.

[San Antonio]

Originally posted by BlueLieu
Over the last year, the Household Survey shows that almost two million new jobs have been created, while the Establishment Survey indicated a job loss of 62,000 jobs. Over the entire Bush administration, the Household Survey found that about 2.4 million new jobs have been created. By contrast, the Establishment Survey shows a net addition of only 522,000.


Using the Establishment/Household Survey, Democratics charge that over two million jobs have been lost under the Bush administration from January 2001 to January 2003.

But how many jobs have been lost compared to the ones created? That difference is the telling figure and I don't see it here. Given Bush political history, if we are in the black, it's not by very much. The millions of jobs created in the last administration that were intended to be the Bridge to The 21st century are still around but that bridge has been rebuilt to India, Mexico and China. They sure are not being created here.

[pickitupsnake]

Everyone is harping, "Jobs are moving to China and India." This is true. Both countries have endowments of extremely large labor pools. But most of the jobs are actually coming from other Southeast Asian countries.
After studying Economic Development, there are a few trends most Americans who don't have economics degrees do not understand. Cheap manufacturing during hte 90's moved to Southeast Asia, Malaysia, Singapore, Honk Kong, ect. Now that those areas have stepped up the capital in their forms of production they are now producing more complex goods. The less complex goods, textiles, waffers, ect are going to China and India where wages are lower and there are larger MPKs.
MPK is the marginal productivity of capital. In India and China there is so much available labor, but no capital, that investing capital can result in high returns. But the problem is that investing capital into such poor countries too fast is not productive, 1997 Asian Crisis.
But the jobs aren't moving from America to China or India. Those jobs are the types of jobs America hasn't had for a long time. We are designing and producing the capital goods that are being used in those countries but we don't have the available labor. Which of course we do have but our labor won't work for peanuts.
So. Yes we are in a Global economy and it is inefficient for Americans to do the work that is being moved to China. But there are plenty of opportunities for Americans in other areas.
The heyday of labor and manufacturing in the US is over. We USE cheap labor from other countries to make our products. Deal with it. Americans need to use their minds and educational advantages to continue to lead the Global economy and stop harping over losing crappy manufacturing jobs that they shouldn't have in the first place.