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You are exactly right. I'm not jumping for joy and I don't think things are wonderful for most working Americans, but I can not understand those folks who are claiming the economy is terrible or the "real" unemployment rate is 30%. Things have significantly improved since January of 2009.
They have indeed... but, there will likely be a new recession coming with origins in China. We need to hope China somehow reverses the direction they are heading. Otherwise, it will affect the entire World.
I think the main concern (my concern for sure) is that all the banter about "Added 5 million jobs!" tends to be a popular smoke and mirrors tactic for whichever party is in power.
A.) If you added 5 million jobs but lost 10 million, then politicians and their loyal media outlets will report the 5 million gain without mention of the 10 million lost.
B.) Even if 2.65 million is a net gain, how is that doing compared to population gain? It's not at all unreasonable to assume that the USA added a net of 3 million people to the job force, and if that is the case then the 2.65 million fails to keep pace with population growth.
This is why, properly broken out into ages and demographics, I think Labor Force Participation Rate is a better number to look at. Gains in LFPR for the 16-55 years old age demographic means a higher percentage of the American workforce is actually working. A decrease means less of the American workforce is actually working. It's harder to play games with LFPR.
Whenever somebody says, "We added XXX million jobs over the last X years/months", I tend to keep my grain of salt handy. Dishonesty usually turns up in the numbers when you hear that.
Well with boomers retiring and young people needing to stay in school longer than ever, you are going to have to accept that the LFPR is going to decrease. Only during years of stellar job growth, like in 2014, can we hope that it stays at the same level. This year job growth was solid too and it still decreased a little.
Half my co-workers will retire within five years. Nothing economic is going to change their minds.
They have indeed... but, there will likely be a new recession coming with origins in China. We need to hope China somehow reverses the direction they are heading. Otherwise, it will affect the entire World.
China has a tiny, marginal effect on the American economy. I can think of one single person in my vast social networks who has an investment interest in China. And he is an immigrant from China. And it is only a small apartment in Shanghai.
70% of Anericas economy is driven by domestic forces. International effects only have marginal effects on our economy. That is why our economy wasn't even effected by Europes second bust in 2011-2012. If Western Europe going into recession doesn't hurt America, China sure as heck isn't either.
Well with boomers retiring and young people needing to stay in school longer than ever, you are going to have to accept that the LFPR is going to decrease. Only during years of stellar job growth, like in 2014, can we hope that it stays at the same level. This year job growth was solid too and it still decreased a little.
Half my co-workers will retire within five years. Nothing economic is going to change their minds.
Yes but the LFPR is broken down by demographics. The one age demographic that there is no excuse for is 24-55 year olds. This group is your non-college aged, pre-retirement folks. The group that is your prime workforce ages. Here's how things are going for them:
January 1999, their LFPR peaks at 84.6%.
January of 2007, so pre-recession, they were at 83.4% LFPR.
Today, they're at 80.9% LFPR.
Reality: Although the boomers are having an impact on the LFPR, they're being used as excuse to hide the reality and to discredit LFPR as meaningless. And yet the numbers that exclude retirees them are available and those numbers are not telling a story of recovery. They are not showing positive gains. They tell a tale of the LFPR for pre-retirement ages continuing to trend downward. It is my sincere hope that it has at least flatlined now -- but it's too early to tell.
If we actually gained anything then why is your 24-55 year old demographic continuing to lose on LFPR? That is not positive gains in jobs creation keeping pace with population growth. It's the opposite.
In the face of global fears, the U.S. economy is still gaining speed.
American employers added 292,000 jobs in December. Economists surveyed by CNNMoney predicted 211,000 jobs would be added.
For all of 2015, the economy added 2.65 million jobs, the second best year of jobs gains since 1999
The unemployment rate stayed at 5% for the third straight month. That's near what most economists consider "full employment." Unemployment is down by half from its peak of 10
Wages grew 2.5%
All these government figures are a lie. The largest percentage of job growth was in the Federal government. The unemployment figure does not count those who have given up looking for work. A report two days ago stated that unemployment has not been this high since 1977. There has been no "recovery."
I think the main concern (my concern for sure) is that all the banter about "Added 5 million jobs!" tends to be a popular smoke and mirrors tactic for whichever party is in power.
A.) If you added 5 million jobs but lost 10 million, then politicians and their loyal media outlets will report the 5 million gain without mention of the 10 million lost.
B.) Even if 2.65 million is a net gain, how is that doing compared to population gain? It's not at all unreasonable to assume that the USA added a net of 3 million people to the job force, and if that is the case then the 2.65 million fails to keep pace with population growth.
This is why, properly broken out into ages and demographics, I think Labor Force Participation Rate is a better number to look at. Gains in LFPR for the 16-55 years old age demographic means a higher percentage of the American workforce is actually working. A decrease means less of the American workforce is actually working. It's harder to play games with LFPR.
Whenever somebody says, "We added XXX million jobs over the last X years/months", I tend to keep my grain of salt handy. Dishonesty usually turns up in the numbers when you hear that.
B) The labor force grew by 1.7 million in 2015. So 2.6 exceeds the growth of the labor force.
The problem with the LFPR in terms of judging the health of employment is that it includes people who are not looking for work and don't want a job.
All these government figures are a lie. The largest percentage of job growth was in the Federal government. The unemployment figure does not count those who have given up looking for work. A report two days ago stated that unemployment has not been this high since 1977. There has been no "recovery."
The number of people employed has never been as high as it is now. The absolute numbers of people employed and unemployed over time will grow. During recessions the number of people employed may decrease and in the recovery the number of people unemployed may decrease, but over long term both the numbers will increase if we have a growing population.
All these government figures are a lie. The largest percentage of job growth was in the Federal government. The unemployment figure does not count those who have given up looking for work. A report two days ago stated that unemployment has not been this high since 1977. There has been no "recovery."
B) The labor force grew by 1.7 million in 2015. So 2.6 exceeds the growth of the labor force.
Could you provide a source for that? Also, I doubt that the 2.6 million is a net gain. It almost never is.
Quote:
The problem with the LFPR in terms of judging the health of employment is that it includes people who are not looking for work and don't want a job.
The problem with ignoring ANYONE is that you can't easily tell the difference. There's lots of variables.
For instance, how many human beings actually want to work? I've often joked that my dream job is to get paid millions of dollars to do nothing. It's the American dream, right? Truth is, tons of people don't actually want to work. If they could get by doing nothing, many if not most Americans would be happy to do so.
There are tons of housewives and single mothers who would be happy to work -- for personal pride's sake -- but for one reason or another, they can't. There's also a growing number of parasites who defraud social programs in order to continue doing nothing, despite being perfectly capable of working. And there is a rapidly growing segment of your over 60 crowd who keeps on working well into their 70's. And then there are the unemployed folks who continue living with their parents into their 40's, but actually should be working.
There is no magic statistic that can capture all possible variables. What LFPR provides is a raw stat that simply ignores the variables and reports how much of the workforce is actually working. Breakdown by age, gender and race are available. You can eliminate things like the baby-boomers retiring from the equation to see what's really happening. It is expected that a the number opting out of the workforce who are working aged will remain fairly constant, especially for the 24-55 age range. Properly studied, the LFPR is a lot more honest stat than most of the ones favored by lying politicians.
10 yrs ago they would have been called Mcjobs by the D's
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