Typical Republican point of view. Blame the American for not keeping up with the skill set required. It’s funny how companies actually import foreigners, even pay their way through school, only to hire them as cheap labor for some pretty high-tech jobs, as they lay off already qualified American workers that have been loyal to their company for years. It really comes down to greed and it is very anti-American of Corporate America. This time your out of touch. Either tell the truth or keep your commentary to yourself. People who have lost their careers and replaced by foreigners do not want to hear this kind of rhetoric.
Neither the causes nor the amounts of unemployment are well reported. I think Mr. Williams of ShadowStats has a point about the “discouraged workers” who were summarily eliminated from the labor force in 1994 [by the Clinton administration -- oh, my!] and are no longer counted as unemployed.
In fairness, there are measurement questions. Sure, I’d take an executive job paying 20,000+ a month plus bonuses and perks if one came along, so Mr. Williams would count me as “discouraged”. On the other hand, I’m not actively looking for such a job, so maybe it is better that I’m not counted in the labor force at all.
***
Middle class unemployment isn’t caused by the many immigrants, legal or illegal. It is caused by the huge growth in the numbers of foreigners with comparable skills [degrees in Engineering, for example] who are willing to do the same work for lower overall costs. Just like the UAW, American middle class white collar workers have largely priced themselves out of the relevant labor market and their jobs are now going to equally competent Koreans, Chinese, Indians, Taiwanese, etc.
To stay ahead of the game in the labor market, you MUST continually and intentionally upgrade your skills. If you aren’t doing that, this year and every year, you’ll soon be sliding backward down the pay scale.
The rates are WAYYYYY off !!! What about those of us Self-Employed folks that cannot get unemployment benefits, but had to either close our businesses or work for nothing these days.
The rates in my opinion may be double what they are reporting.
Wow, truth from a reporter, how refreshing.
Sadly, no mention of the 2 million foreigners we imported last year, nor the plan to remove the caps and import more now and into the future.
Once you add those 2 million people (mainly entry level IT/science) to the job losses, you start to see that a wholesale eradication of the American non-government middle class is in full speed ahead mode.
This mess isn’t just from subprime loans. It is a direct result of 10 years of off shoring & importing, while free credit and housing hid the mess.
We are in deep trouble and it won’t be long before Americans are working under the table for the foreigners who get our jobs, then our homes.
The US gvmt has a vested interest in painting a more rosy picture of the economy. First of all, foreigners hold massive amounts of gvmt debt, and we want to keep it that way. If foreigners realize the true mess we’re in, they might get scared, dump their dollars, and then the US has a big problem. Second, the American public has it retirement savings invested in the stock and bond markets. If the markets crash, that will be a social drama of epic proportions. That’s why the Gvmt will do all it can to support asset prices, including manipulating unemployment and CPI statistics. Obviously, the most effective and cheapest way to make things look better then they are is by manipulating official statistics. The day of reckoning is inevitable, but no president wants it to happen on his watch…
the government has been lying to the people for 20 years. WE ARE NOT IN A RECESSION! WE ARE IN A DEPRESSION! NOBODY SEES THE PEOPLE WHO GOT KICKED IN THE BEHIND! WHY LIE? BECAUSE IT COVERS THINGS UP? BECAUSE IT FEELS BETTER? SOONER OR LATER FOLKS THERE IS GOING TO BE MORE HELL TO PAY BECAUSE OF THE GOVERNMENT BEING STUPID AND LYING. INSTEAD THE TRUTH SHOULD BE TOLD!THIS COUNTRY HAS BEEN RUN BY VICIOUS, DESPICABLE, MUTETENTS FOR THEIR OWN SELFISH GAINS. PEOPLE BETTER WAKEUP!AT THE RATE IT IS GOING WE ARE NOT GOING TO HAVE A COUNTRY!
Retail business is getting so bad that I think all of the millions of owners of Mom and Pop stores across this country ought to be consider as being unemployed. They are still running their businesses, but the vast majority of them are either only breaking even or possibly even losing money. It just doesn’t make sense to consider them as being gainfully employed at this point.
Have you considered there are lucrative alternatives
to working for the XYZ company?
What about the security of self employment?
Which do you prefer? paycheck or profit?
Why not start “on the side” while you’re working.
( Have you read Rich Dad Poor Dad? )
That’s how I got started. Today I’m 100% self
employed and growing… even in a “bad economy”.
It’s not magic, or luck, or the lottery. It’s simply
making a decision that you’re not going to take it
anymore, then taking charge and responsibility.
Just a rational thought…
To Texas George,
You are confusing the number of jobs lost in the year with the total number of people unemployed. Your .86% number is completely unrelated to what you are talking about.
You are, however, totally correct in that there is not a straight across comparison to 1945 as our population has tripled (and a higher % of that population works outside of the home.) This “biggest since 1945″ is a little misleading since most people don’t actually connect it with the growth in population.
But, it also does not connect with the fact that 1945 was well into the depression. It did take a little while for the crash to catch up to everything. As it will this time also.
As has been pointed out here, most of the job losses were in the last three months of this year. And next year’s numbers will probably eclipse this. Before it is over we will likely have a year that actually does compare with 1945.
Are you NUTS…If anyone believes anything what this government is telling all of us then you are… NUTS…How do you think this country got in this piss poor shape ? by telling the People the truth…Hell No… by not telling the truth and sleeping with the likes of Countrywide Mortgage, AIG, Fannie , Freddie , Indy Mac and the list goes on and on …As I said in the past send money to the PEOPLE !!! point of info if you out there don’t know this…the unemployment figure leading up to the great depression was only 24% and yes we are closing in on that number quickly…the government says 7.2% unemployment …what a joke…
Paul, there is no perfect system for reporting unemployment, inflation, productivity or even Gross Domestic
Product. Period. Everyone is guilty at some point of ommitting information when stating their case. The Government is relying on credit to keep everything moving. If nobody wanted to buy U.S. debt, what would happen? Obviously,not much of it would be positive.
Here is my view: After the last recession and prior to this recession not enough jobs were created. Too many jobs are being created,which don’t keep up with inflation. Because there are too many available workers for jobs, wages are trending down. Increasing values in Real Estate helped offset the income loss. Now that Housing prices are tanking, so
is the economy.
Instead of focusing on permanent job and income growth, or reducing our
costs/spending, we chose to perpetuate the Housing bubble. We in this case, means everyone: Consumers, Business and especially Government.
It is pure irony that we can come up with Trillions of dollars to save face in front of our creditors, but could not afford to invest in income creation or sustainable energy and health care.
It is also Ironic that at 14000 on the
Dow, more people appear to believe Government numbers and at 8500 on the Dow, more don’t.
Paul! I’ve loathed you over the last year because you simply painted a rosy picture on every issue, just like the Government does with the Unemployment numbers. But I have to now give you credit, you are doing what a journalist (IMO) should do… questioning everything and informing the public! Kudos! Keep up the good work! For the record, yes, the Government cooks the books worse than Madoff did! We can’t have people panicking and the market quickly going to the bottom (aka too much value) where buyers are crawling over themselves to step in on their own, no, it must be a slow painful tit for tat dance in the eyes of our elected officials. (Note the previous sarcasm) No matter what people say, they can not handle that scenario! It would simply be too much. Our officials know what is best for us!
Do these numbers include the 150,000 jobs that need to be created every month just to break even. Not hardly. For every month of job losses add another 150K to make up for the people that are entering (or at least trying to enter) the workforce. What this means that if the Government states a net job numbers gain of 50K, it is actually a loss of 100K. This stated, the numbers are much worse than we are being led to beleive.
The unemployment figures have never been accurate since they rely upon people who apply for unemployment. This does not include many people who, for various reasons, don’t qualify for unemployment payments, know this, and thus don’t bother to even apply. I have personally been in that situation several times during my career, most recently after my small business failed near the end of 2005. People who are terminated “for cause” are another group who are undercounted (and, frequently, businesses will look for any “cause” to lay somebody off without incurring a charge against their unemployment record, so these numbers go up whenever layoff rates go up). A third group of undercounted people is those workers (typically female homemakers) who have part time jobs and are laid off. Many of them lack sufficient employment credits to qualify for benefits, but they are still unemployed. For all these reasons I believe that the government’s figures have never been accurate.
I loved your article from this morning,
http://money.cnn.com/2009/01/09/markets/thebuzz/index.htm?postversion=2009010911
I will start off by saying I am currently employed with UPS and have had the same job for 8 years; my industry is safer than some others such as retail although things have started to go downhill in some areas and we haven’t been entirely immune to layoffs. Just for the record, I am happily employed, but that doesn’t mean everything is just honky-dory.
I was quite pleased and shocked this morning to find that someone has actually and finally questioned the government’s unemployment results. There needs to be much more publicity about this and the lack of transparency to the public. After Bernard Madoff, anything is possible! I have doubted the unemployment numbers for a very long time and believe the government deliberately lies about them. It is obvious that the monthly numbers are wrong–why do do you think they are revised UP every month? Gee, how ironic is that? I feel the government fudges the numbers because it wants people to THINK that the economy is better than it really is, so they will go out and waste their paycheck on foolish items they don’t need. “Market experts” talk about drawing comparisons against the 80s when most parts of the economy i.e. unemployment haven’t been this bad since WWII. As you stated, if you count “discouraged” workers, what is the ‘real’ unemployment number? Who says that just because some measures are comparable to the 80s that the current recession couldn’t be worse? And guess what? Obama’s and Congress’ proposed ‘middle-class tax cuts’ that will go into my paycheck each week to stimulate the economy?…I am going to save those just like I saved my stimulus check from 2008. More money into my pocket doesn’t mean more money into the economy…it means more money into my bank account! The government is too foolish to realize that when people lose jobs, everyone is going to sock away their money. Maybe they finally figured that out with last years stimulus checks…but I could have told you beforehand that I would save the money to pay bills and debt. I cut back this Christmas and I am perfectly fine with saving my money. These days, it’s about what you do have, not about being disappointed for what you don’t have. I’m not convinced we can bail ourselves out of this one. Every American needs to and should know the shen anigans the government is up to. Some people will discount me as being paranoid or cynical…but just like no one thought letting Lehman go under was a bad idea…don’t say I didn’t warn you. As anyone can see from the last six months, the average American is smarter and more educated at making decisions than those who are elected to Washington and Congress. I hope you will post my response–or at least important parts of it–on the the air. PS Thanks for getting back to me! I didn’t know that you’d really respond.
To all Polyannas:
What alarms me is not the 2008 total amount against other years and then arguing everything is not that bad. What fears me is the RATE of job loss. We lost %80 of the 2008 total jobs in just 3-4 months and it looks like that is continuing. Is there a statistic that measures the rate of job loss against other previous recessions? Like a unemployedometer
Accurate! Depends! Are the unemployeed that are still unemployed that are no longer collecting an unemployment check and no longer able to report that they are still unemployeed included in the 7.2% number?
There is an old saying “figures don’t lie but liars do figure” I think there is a more fundamental question in relative perspective what difference will the difference make. If you look back at 1945 the US population was around 132.5 million with unemployment of 2.8 million or 2.1%. For 2007 the last number on US population there were 301.6 million wiht current unemployment of 2.6 million that would be .86% of population. So why not put things into actual perspective. For anyone of the individuals unemployed it’s 100% and I’m sure a major concern. But don’t paint the picture of the sky falling when things aren’t as bad as 1945. We need to spend equal time on the positive things today versus only the bad things … I believe we are preaching a self fulling prophecy when we only look for the bad it eventually shows up. “Things are getting bad, so we start worrying about them, then stop spending, thinkgs slow down, companies start cutting, things get worse and so on until we reach the doom and gloom origianlly predicted” Try looking for the positive it is just as easy and believe me you will find it. At least you will get over the bad times sooner.
Here is the reason it is not nearly as bad as 1945. If the macro number of job losses is still less than 1945, has anyone from CNN thought to adjust that for workforce or population? If you do by chance; you will find that the 1945 job losses are approximately 2.5 times larger then this year relative to population. Thus; WAY WORSE.
Unfortunately the Government numbers can be incorrect. They count claims for unemployment benefits, that only lasts for 6 months normally. When Computer Sciences Corporation moved my job to India in December 2003 I was unable to secure a job until January 2004, thus I was not counted as unemployed for months. I went on so many interviews and always was told the same thing with different words. I was over qualified, I had too high an income in my prior job, I would depart for a better job and they would lose me as soon as the market changed.
I would like to answer your question, with a question, that being, Is/does ANYTHING the government publishes ever accurate? The simple answer is a resounding NO! Government published statistics are always distorted to achieve some agenda or to avert some form of panic. The citizenry of this nation are constantly kept in the dark about the true nature of the events that surround them. Is the real rate of unemployment 7.2%, of course it’s not. This number is calculated hogwash. This number EXCLUDES so many people from the counting that it can’t possibly be anywhere near accurate. Government statistics routinely exclude people who have stopped looking for work, those who are grossly underemployed or working only part time, etc.
The government publishes a rate of inflation. Is that ever accurate? Hardly. The gov’t published rate is always kept on the unrealistic LOW side so the government can keep payoutable benefits (i.e. SS benefits) which are adjusted for inflation, on the low side, otherwise the benefits to be paid out would force the government to raise taxes even more than they do year over year to keep paying out those benefits. Doesn’t this stink of “PONZI scheme”. Bernie Madoff should have been working for the government, then he would be applauded as a hero instead of the villian.
The United States of America is BANKRUPT. Plain and simple, no amount of dancing can change that fact. We are financially screwed for at least the next decade, if not longer.
The current unemployment numbers are political theater meant to hide the real state of the economy. Presidential administrations tweak them, almost at will, to support their policies. They have become the government’s equivalent of “pro-forma” earnings and should be viewed as such.
The only reason the “official” statistics are valuable is that you can use them to accurately estimate the real unemployment rate.
Let’s see the unemployment numbers are based on a random calling of phone numbers. Where do they get the phone numbers? From the AT&T phone book. Who is in this phone book? Only the 35 percent of us who have kept our land lines.
Plus if you are unemployed what is normally one of the first things to go when you can not pay the bill your phone.
Nixon started this mess by moving the unemployment from a door to door survey to a phone survey. That way you only ask people who have a job and a phone if they are working or not. Before that move someone put military personal as fully employed workers to get the numbers up. But tricky dicky moved it to a phone survey.
The government has the real numbers and like the real number of Russian ICBM’s pointed at us during the cold war it’s a number they think we will like.
A general rule of thumb is to multiply by a factor of 2 to get the real numbers. As the Greater Depression gets worse expect than mulitplier to get close to 3.
So at 7.2 percent means we have hit 14.2 percent unemployment.
After all we lost 4.33 weeks of 450,000 jobs in DEC and the government said only 550,000 were lost. That means we created 1.5 million jobs in DEC and I don’t think anyone believes that lie.
CPI, GDP, Unemployment, the whole lot of economic measuring sticks… they have been reduced to self-serving devices that, instead of telling us something, have become tools to constrain increases to inflation-tied spending. Hedonic adjustments and changes to the ways that these numbers are calculated have rendered them useless for comparison purposes.
I would agree that the official statistic is politically motivated.
Though, I have to admit that any such single number would be questionable. How do they count home-stay mom who maybe is ready to come back to work if job market looked better ? Or collage graduate who has not been able to find his first job yet? Or, how do they measure if you looking actively enough or if your salary expectation is reasonable (so they can count you as unemployed vs. simply not willing to work)? Any such assumptions built into statistics will leave room for manipulations one way or another. So, I would agree with the other reader that a few bold numbers would help. Say, how many people are working full time now, how many 20 hours or less, etc. Then you can see that through many years numbers were this and this many millions and now they 2-3 million less and we got a problem.
No, they are not accurate and I applaud John Williams for trying to compute a more “realistic number.” I also think that your characterization of JW’s #s to aliens or JFK multiple shooters is wrong Paul! At least JW is attempting-no one else out there is!
All during 2005 and 2006, the CNBC commentators were perplexed as to why the public thought the economy was worse than official #s. It’s because JW was closer than “offical reports”!!
I didn’t vote for McCain nor Obama (I didn’t like O’s campaign promises for universal healthcare & higher taxes), but I liked what I saw on CNBC 1/7/09 during Obama’s interview. PE-Obama says the advice he received from the other living Presidents was to be a “Straight shooter with the American people.”
The first step in “shooting straight” is official govt #s. We shall see if this is change I can believe in.
What about the people still looking for work but unemployment ran out so they are not counted either? How do they figure the underemployment rate? Do you call each one as ask how they are feeling? (sarcasm)
I don’t think the government’s unemployment figures are accurate. A story came out yesterday that reported from payrolls processor ADP estimated that nearly 700000 private-sector jobs lost in Dec.
How to fix it? They should just stop “tweaking” the numbers.
The “fake jobs”, I mean Birth/Death Model allows the BLS to drastically understate the true unemployment number as well.
Since June of this year, the Birth/Death model has created 521,000 new jobs.
December alone saw 72,000 new jobs created.
I keep waiting for the day there is a drummer in the background doing rimshots when the BLS publishes these numbers.
It took them 1 year to figure out America is in a recession all the while saying we were not. Why would this be different.
They say what they want.
I would have to concur with Donnie. We have dealt with the tendency for the government to issue misleading numbers previously in this very space as they relate to the CPI and there is no reason to think the employment data is any less subject to gaming – all justified of course by arcane academic treatments of the underlying data – because both sets of statistics (the CPI and the unemployment rate) are issued by the BLS (BUreau of Labor Statistics).
All this continuing nonsense only serves to undermine any confidence one might have in any of the statistics being issued in regard to the economy with the ultimate outcome being that reasonably intelligent people can only conculde that the situation is far more dire than we even know. MOreover, when the data is misleading – if not fraudulent – you can only conclude that the policy decisions now being considered will probably miss the mark.
Our only hope might be that the new administration concludes it is better to level with the people as opposed to mislead them. Give us the facts and we can all more intelligently accept what a big job we face righting the current economic situation.
Things always seem to have to build to a crisis in this country before the citizens wake up and make their voices heard. Let’s hope it is not too late!
This is a trick question, right Paul?
I read a main stream opinion piece yesterday that started out derisively calling Obama our “Cheerleader in Chief” and then went on to complain that he dared say we will run 1.2 T deficits, thus damaging the fragile confidence people might have in the markets.
Who wants real numbers?
Yes, plenty of people here complain that the numbers are not real (of course they are not), yet many others complain that this whole economic problem is just a problem with confidence and if people would just stop whining and worrying, (and go back to borrowing and spending beyond their means) everything would be ok again.
Well, duh, its a crisis of confidence – the entire thing is an elaborate confidence game.
Anyone who looks at how confidence games work knows there comes a time when confidence wont keep it afloat anymore.
That day has come for us.
I think Obama is dangerously wrong to think that running trillion $ plus deficits will be anything but desasterous. But I still admire and respect him for being willing to stand up and say it out loud.
This is real folks. And the only way out is to deal with reality. Time to stop massaging the numbers until they look good. Time for the people handing us those number to stop deciding for us what we need to hear. Just give us the real poop. Allow us to make our own informed decisions.
I would think the INS would be able to offer some additional information of how many illegal immigrants who have left the country for the obvious reason of unemployment…
They’re as accurate as they want them to be … suspect political activity.
What would be helpful is if they reported the raw data as a snapshot:
# of jobs lost
# of underemployed
# of discouraged workers
# of total workforce size
% for each of the above (should add up)
It would also be helpful to get a summary of the sectors that are hiring, laying off, or moving sideways. Put the verbage at the end.
Armed with this data and going forward, we really need to make sure that we produce more jobs onshore, employing Americans, using onshore materials. Cut back, way back on immigration and visas, and replace imports with US-made products. They’re siphoning way too much cash out of the economy, exporting unemployment from other countries to us.
If October’s number was off by 100K, November’s number off by 50K, why in the world should I believe December’s number is right???
On stimulus could be expensive issue, I think next admin could do lots of thing to cut the spending, e.g. military spending has been huge, if we cut it by 50% for 3 years we will save $1T.
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No, I believe it is far worst then they are actually posting. But I also believe that companies are taking advantage of the economy to downsize. It is easy to do just point a finger at the economy and say hey we are not making it. I believe some industries are just using as an excuss, I see that in my local area, if they were that bad off why are they expanding then? Also it is a good opportunity for company to cut compensation too, why not everybody else is taking advantage of greed. How come we pay tax’s and nobody is doing any roadwork? How come we pay for utility bill which includes maintance and nothing is getting fixed or replaced? Why does it take the federal government to dole local communities money so project can get going? If this is the case why are we paying local tax’s and not just federal? hey these are something we should all chew on? How about other industries that are downsizing, medical are we getting better? and the food industry do we not need to eat? again just a thought?