red states rule
07-12-2012, 03:11 AM
Obama says we are heading in the right direction.
The Obama re-election team in the liberal media tells us Mitt would be much worse
and we need to be more focused on Mitt's Swiss bank account then the number of people out of work
Seems to me, we need to only pay attention to the sorry state of the Obama economy
So the headlines said jobs were up by about 80,000 last month and unemployment stayed at 8.2 percent. Not great, but not a disaster. At least things are not getting worse. Right?
That was how it looked to me at first glance. But I took a second glance — and quickly lost my appetite.
The headline unemployment numbers are the so-called U-3 government numbers, which count current jobs held, gained, and lost. Because of seasonal factors, they are subject to distortion that makes them more or less meaningless, as was the case in June.
A broader,more meaningful measure is U-6, which considers workers who have only recently stopped looking for work, as well as part-time workers who want full time work. U-6 unemployment is 14.9 percent and was up about 0.2 percent in June.
Until 1994, the U.S. government also kept track of long discouraged workers. Then the method of collecting and calculating unemployment data was changed, and workers who said they would like to work but were so discouraged that they hadn't been looking for work for a long time were defined out of the calculation. But the consulting firm Shadow Government Statistics still does that calculation, and it's a shocker: 22.9 percent.
That's the share of Americans who say they would like to work but for one reason or another can't find work; are working only part-time but want to work full-time; or have become so discouraged that they have given up looking for work. That means the full-time workforce ought to be a quarter larger than it is.
Can you imagine what that would do to U.S. growth, tax collections, savings, investment, and long-term retirement prospects? The fact is that the U.S. economy is operating far below its potential. Estimates of how far vary, but a good guess is about 5 to 8 percent of gross domestic product, or close to $1 trillion.
A trillion dollars is real money, and it's money America isn't making. Why is the big question.
http://articles.philly.com/2012-07-11/news/32633451_1_unemployment-cheap-imports-work
The Obama re-election team in the liberal media tells us Mitt would be much worse
and we need to be more focused on Mitt's Swiss bank account then the number of people out of work
Seems to me, we need to only pay attention to the sorry state of the Obama economy
So the headlines said jobs were up by about 80,000 last month and unemployment stayed at 8.2 percent. Not great, but not a disaster. At least things are not getting worse. Right?
That was how it looked to me at first glance. But I took a second glance — and quickly lost my appetite.
The headline unemployment numbers are the so-called U-3 government numbers, which count current jobs held, gained, and lost. Because of seasonal factors, they are subject to distortion that makes them more or less meaningless, as was the case in June.
A broader,more meaningful measure is U-6, which considers workers who have only recently stopped looking for work, as well as part-time workers who want full time work. U-6 unemployment is 14.9 percent and was up about 0.2 percent in June.
Until 1994, the U.S. government also kept track of long discouraged workers. Then the method of collecting and calculating unemployment data was changed, and workers who said they would like to work but were so discouraged that they hadn't been looking for work for a long time were defined out of the calculation. But the consulting firm Shadow Government Statistics still does that calculation, and it's a shocker: 22.9 percent.
That's the share of Americans who say they would like to work but for one reason or another can't find work; are working only part-time but want to work full-time; or have become so discouraged that they have given up looking for work. That means the full-time workforce ought to be a quarter larger than it is.
Can you imagine what that would do to U.S. growth, tax collections, savings, investment, and long-term retirement prospects? The fact is that the U.S. economy is operating far below its potential. Estimates of how far vary, but a good guess is about 5 to 8 percent of gross domestic product, or close to $1 trillion.
A trillion dollars is real money, and it's money America isn't making. Why is the big question.
http://articles.philly.com/2012-07-11/news/32633451_1_unemployment-cheap-imports-work