Unemployment Falls to Lowest Level Since 2008.

Hey, why not. And the working mother-to-be who leaves work to start a family, fully intending to return one day when the wee one(s) are big enough to handle daycare. They don't want to work at the present time. They don't consider themselves available for work. They certainly aren't looking for work. But what the heck...it's Obama. Count 'em as unemployed!!! Any screwball notion at all as long as it makes the numbers look worse.

 

That pretty much accounts for ahout two-thirds of the posts in this place. Not even a fossil of a cogent thought. Just knee-jerk stupid.

 

LOL! Get to know more baby boomers.

 

Actually says the teacher to the student

http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm#unemployed

Who is not in the labor force?

Labor force measures are based on the civilian noninstitutional population 16 years old and over. Excluded are persons under 16 years of age, all persons confined to institutions such as nursing homes and prisons, and persons on active duty in the Armed Forces. As mentioned previously, the labor force is made up of the employed and the unemployed. The remainder—those who have no job and are not looking for one—are counted as "not in the labor force." Many who are not in the labor force are going to school or are retired. Family responsibilities keep others out of the labor force.

A series of questions is asked each month of persons not in the labor force to obtain information about their desire for work, the reasons why they had not looked for work in the last 4 weeks, their prior job search, and their availability for work. These questions include:

Do you currently want a job, either full or part time?
What is the main reason you were not looking for work during the LAST 4 WEEKS?
Did you look for work at any time during the last 12 months?
LAST WEEK, could you have started a job if one had been offered?

These questions form the basis for estimating the number of persons who are not in the labor force but who are considered to be "marginally attached to the labor force." These are persons without jobs who are not currently looking for work (and therefore are not counted as unemployed), but who nevertheless have demonstrated some degree of labor force attachment. Specifically, to be counted as "marginally attached to the labor force," individuals must indicate that they currently want a job, have looked for work in the last 12 months (or since they last worked if they worked within the last 12 months), and are available for work. "Discouraged workers" are a subset of the marginally attached. Discouraged workers report they are not currently looking for work for one of four reasons:

They believe no job is available to them in their line of work or area.
They had previously been unable to find work.
They lack the necessary schooling, training, skills, or experience.
Employers think they are too young or too old, or they face some other type of discrimination.

Additional questions about persons not in the labor force are asked during each household's last month of its 4-month tenure in the sample rotation pattern. These questions are designed to collect information about why these people left their previous jobs, when they last worked at a job or business, and whether they intend to look for work in the near future.

 

We have over 23,000,000 less people employed than when Barack Obama took office.

 

That pretty much accounts for the intellectual shallowness of your post.

 

http://money.cnn.com/2012/01/03/news/economy/ism_manufacturing/

The hate America crowd can downplay all they like. I choose to believe in America.

 

Now if we can just get a President who does.

 

One way to base the economy is to check out the pawn shops. When you see a lot of good high quality stuff. You know the economy is bad.


When they have only crap quality stuff, the economy is good.

 

A music buddy of mine has almost stopped playing out, crowds are down and bars don't want to pay enough, and concentrate on his pawn shop business which is primarily buying used gold and silver items. He's making a killing doing that.

 

Well, I'm certainly not on the Right, but my first response is to wonder if all the facts are being considered. You may or may not be aware that depending on how you interpret or what factors you take into account, you could truthfully claim unemployment to be anywhere from about 2% to 20%. And then later change the parameters and make an opposite claim depending on how it fits your political agenda.

For example, does the figure include people who have stopped looking for jobs, or does it NOT include people who have stopped looking for jobs? ? Or people who WERE fulltime but now only parttime, not by their own choice? Does it include adults only, etc. And is this figure being compared to a figure which included people who have stopped looking for jobs, etc.?

You DO know that, right? Because if you get all your news from either leftwing or rightwing sources exclusively, there may be a LOT that you're not being told...

 

It only took Reagan 2 years to turn around the MASSIVE DISASTER that was the Carter Administration.

Problem is that Obama is doing the EXACT OPPOSITE of what Reagan would have done.

That's OK, we'll have a Conservative in Office again to fix things and undo W's and O's "Big Government Solutions" mistakes.

 

Obama believes in America, I think. It's just that he doesn't believe in the America which existed as America was becoming a great country, I don't think.

 

I heard some economist this morning saying they expect the unemployment number to go up as people who had dropped out of the work force are starting to look again and therefore they will be counted again. So the lower number we have seen recently didn't really reflect the true unemployment number.

370,000+ new claims this long after the recession ended, when we should be in a recovery is just horrible. And at the rate it seems to be trickling down it will be horrible for a while to come.

 

And Obama didn't have double digit inflation to deal with and double digint interest rates to deal with.

 

What massive disaster? The economy was growing at a 7+% real rate as Reagan took office.

 

370k isn't that horrible. Initial unemployment claims averaged about 400k per week while Reagan was president.

This was horrible:



January 2009

Job loss: Worst in 34 years
Employers slashed 598,000 more jobs in January [2009] as unemployment rate climbed to 7.6%.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Employers slashed another 598,000 jobs off of U.S. payrolls in January, taking the unemployment rate up to 7.6%, according to the latest government reading on the nation's battered labor market.

The latest job loss is the worst since December 1974, and brings job losses to 1.8 million in just the last three months, or half of the 3.6 million jobs that have been lost since the beginning of 2008.

http://money.cnn.com/2009/02/06/news/economy/jobs_january/index.htm

[
598,000 Jobs Shed In Brutal January[/B]
Unemployment Hits 7.6% as Downturn Picks Up Steam

The need for progress on those fronts seemed more important than ever yesterday, as the Labor Department announced that conditions worsened more than expected last month. The nation's employers shed 598,000 jobs, the most since 1974, driving the unemployment rate to 7.6 percent from 7.2 percent. If the jobless rate keeps rising at the pace it has for the past two months, it will hit double digits in summer and reach its highest rate since the Great Depression by the fall.[/I]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/06/AR2009020601156.html


Continued Unemployment Claims at Record High
In the week ending Jan. 24, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 588,000, an increase of 3,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 585,000.

http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2009/01/continued-unemployment-claims-at-record.html

 

Three years after a recession? Unemployment closer to 9 than 8. 3 years of 400,000+ and all we see is a trickle downward. Your trying to mitigate it with one month figures.

One word HORRIBLE and there ain't no way to sugarcoat it and ain't no sign it's going to get much better.

As I noted economist expect the unemployment number to creep up now as people come back trying to find work.

 

Cherry picking again I see. Reagan came in on a bad economy being driven by inflation and then hit with high interest rates to curb. Obama didn't have to deal with those major economic problems.

1979q1 0.7
1979q2 0.4
1979q3 2.9
1979q4 1.1
1980q1 1.3
1980q2 (7.9)
1980q3 0.7)
1980q4 7.6
1981q1 8.6
1981q2 (3.2)
1981q3 4.9
1981q4 (4.9)

 

My addition in red. Thanks for proving my point. The economy was growing at a 7%+ real rate of growth when Reagan took office. Hardly a massive disaster in any reasonable meaning of the word.

 

LOl... more cows live in the red area than people!

 

Well just by looking at my state Wisconsin, other than Milwaukee County, you may be right! LOL

 

I was going to attempt to demonstrate that while fewer people are claiming unemployment, more are claiming welfare... but the ASPE under health and human services stopped publishing statistics when Obama came into office.

http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/indicators-rtc/index.shtml
http://aspe.hhs.gov/_/topic/subtopic.cfm?subtopic=481

 

Kindly CORRECT the title of your erroneous and misleading thread. New unemployment claims fell to some level.

Unemployment was 4.9% in Apr 2008 and we are nowhere near that. Be happy that NEW claims are lower, but keep it honest.

 

370k isn't horrible. Initial unemployment claims averaged about 400k per week while Reagan was president. Initial unemployment claims for the week ending 12/31/83, at this same point in Reagan's presidency, were 372,000. And that was a smaller population.

But then I'm sure you are not a total hypocrite and would say Reagan was HORRIBLE as a president too, right?