Comments for More on the Celebration Over December's Job Report at http://www.cepr.net , comment 1 to 13 out of 13 comments http://www.cepr.net Sun, 19 May 2013 11:32:53 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/more-on-the-celebration-over-decembers-job-report#comment-13951 I find it a truism that economists for the most part reflect ideology, or some job they have. One can be a bank economist who predicts investment conditions. Or a University of Chicago economist who sees monetary policy fairy tales. Right now the media keeps harping upon a fairy tale about the economy. We 'turn the corner mantra' is more about quashing questions about the way things are going than a serious concern with employment. At any rate the unemployment rate is about a national social failure that continues to sap the economy in the face of a government turn of direction that might do something real about massive unemployment. They are convinced I think that they can live with such high unemployment. Where I see this social failure leading to worse things to come. This world is not going to long tolerate U.S. folly. One way or the other independence will triumph over austerity politics. Failure will out change. - Doyle Saylor Sun, 08 Jan 2012 20:44:52 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/more-on-the-celebration-over-decembers-job-report#comment-13946 [b]skeptonomist[/b] wrote, [quote]If the BLS has overlooked not only the changing pattern in the raw Courier-Messenger data, but also a similar pattern in past overall numbers, they are truly incompetent...[/quote] I don't think that's quite fair. First, the courier data would be particularly sensitive to the boom in online retailing; many other numbers would not. Second, there might be good institutional reasons not to fiddle more with their seasonal adjustment model. - liberal Sun, 08 Jan 2012 04:29:04 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/more-on-the-celebration-over-decembers-job-report#comment-13942 "since we need 90,000-100,000 jobs a month just to keep pace with the growth of the population." Which is almost entirely due to immigration. That hurts. - Luke Lea Sat, 07 Jan 2012 16:50:07 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/more-on-the-celebration-over-decembers-job-report#comment-13938 Thanks Paul, I couldn't agree with you more. It's so clear to regular BTP readers that it was the Housing Bubble which is the underlying cause of so much, including high unemployment across the economy, that it is difficult to see how jobs from a pickup in the housing industry - and I work in construction - could lead the way. Sorry I didn't see the emphasis you placed on Keynes as the way forward. It's also difficult to type or read on a Blackberry - Union Member Sat, 07 Jan 2012 11:42:44 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/more-on-the-celebration-over-decembers-job-report#comment-13936 Just as in the 1930s, unemployment of millions of Americans for many years has devastated our country. The tragedy is that we could and should be back to full employment if Obama and the Republicans had not focused on cutting the federal deficit which is [i]exactly[/i] the wrong prescription for our economy. It is hard to believe that Obama is so ignorant of basic Keynesian principles, but that seems to be the case. As a result, everyone must suffer and those least able to bear the pain must suffer the most. We are paying a heavy price for all the Anti-Keynesian stupidity in the world. - Paul Sat, 07 Jan 2012 10:33:06 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/more-on-the-celebration-over-decembers-job-report#comment-13934 Paul, If what you say is true, that Housing construction leads the way in employment numbers, is that the case then because our policy makers have focused on and moblized the nation's energies toward so-called "Free Trade" in the last 30 years; and that, consequently, since housing can't be shipped overseas,and the jobs stay here where the houses are? And also, doesn't this commited policy preference/ choice consequently issue an invitation to people to migrate to the US to seek work, where they are trapped by the same policy makers as "illegal" and caught in an unstable environment where they have non of the protections of an unemployed citizen, aren't even counted in the figures, and draw hostility from resentful Americans who've been pitted against them in this unfair and contrived competition? But, to me,what these numbers actually reveal, especially in the way they are explained here by Dean, and that we (workers) so rarely if ever see it laid out like this, coupled with the fact that the unemployed are allowed to languish until they aren't even counted, means that policy makers and the media don't know, don't care, and don't think unemployment is a priority; and not just for the unemployed, but for the recovery of the economy overall. In New York here I believe we have 500,000 unemployed. How many cities in the US have that for a population? Is that a crisis? - Union Member Sat, 07 Jan 2012 08:11:29 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/more-on-the-celebration-over-decembers-job-report#comment-13933 the points made by baker are very good & valid. there is always a seasonal bump in december because of the christmas rush. it falls off in january, always. but here's what the real problem is, if you look back a decade or 2, the economy has always been led by manufacturing & construction. manufacturing cannot come back without a total restructuring of our economy, outsourcing has killed it. construction? nope, not a chance in hell. there is a glut in the housing market & as many as 12 million homes in some state of forelosure. information economy, nope, google, facebook, twitter & all the rest don't create jobs, they just make the innovator a billionaire. so americans have to listen to obama pretend again to be a progressive while he's in full campaign mode. he's always been a conservative,his cabinet full of wallstreet people. then you have the even worse alternative, the tea party republicans who just can't wait to destroy what's left of the middle class. look at romney's tax plan, $150,000 tax break for the top .01%, a tax hike for the poor & lower middle class. he calls himself a job creator. yeah & hitler was a pacifist. the rest of the conservative wannabees are even worse. nope, we have never had a true democracy, & we never will. we won't recover by 2028, the era of american prosperity we had from say 1946 to 1980 will never be replicated. myself, hell i don't worry, i'm cherokee & can hunt & fish all year round if things get too bad. - mel in oregon Sat, 07 Jan 2012 07:32:51 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/more-on-the-celebration-over-decembers-job-report#comment-13932 workers are becoming so desperate that they are working for free http://whataboutmarx.blogspot.com/2012/01/restoring-competitiveness-by-even.html - citigroupie Sat, 07 Jan 2012 07:23:44 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/more-on-the-celebration-over-decembers-job-report#comment-13930 After all prior recessions of the last 30 years, the housing industry led the recovery because it is the biggest component by far of consumer demand which constitutes 70% of demand in our economy. As all Keynesians understand, increasing aggregate demand is critical to economic growth. Since no prominent economists today advocate government stimulus of the housing market, economic growth remains in the doldrums. With housing prices still falling after 5 straight years of declines, and with the federal government tightening mortgage lending standards, there is obviously no end in sight for high unemployment. - Paul Sat, 07 Jan 2012 06:01:37 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/more-on-the-celebration-over-decembers-job-report#comment-13927 Data near the bottom of this post. http://gonzoecon.com/2012/01/december-unemployment-rate/ - Tony Lima Sat, 07 Jan 2012 05:26:46 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/more-on-the-celebration-over-decembers-job-report#comment-13926 According to Dean, the BLS has overlooked the seasonal pattern shown in his graph. If that is true, then the initial (not revised) seasonally corrected numbers for December 2010- January 2011 should mimic the pattern shown in his graph. Is that the case? If the BLS has overlooked not only the changing pattern in the raw Courier-Messenger data, but also a similar pattern in past overall numbers, they are truly incompetent, especially since they must be aware that there are very large changes around Christmas time in many sectors. - skeptonomist Sat, 07 Jan 2012 04:27:45 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/more-on-the-celebration-over-decembers-job-report#comment-13925 Unrelated to this post, but I'm interested in your take on today's NYT article by Eamon Fingleton about Japan's lost decade that according to the author was not really lost - it looks like there might be some useful insights that would apply to our situation. - Mark Jamison Sat, 07 Jan 2012 04:00:05 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/more-on-the-celebration-over-decembers-job-report#comment-13924 This is literally yesterday's news. Some journalists and politicians may have overhyped the data, but economists I ready yesterday mosty caught the weak spots in the data you point to. You even missed some conspicuous bad points, for example, the rise of 0.5 percent in unemployment among people w/o HS education. What do you think, are they too ill-educated to get those coveted courier jobs? Or maybe it has something to do with the fact that local governments cut education jobs by 9,400 in the month. And here's something you might blog on, it really needs a deeper look: What is the relationship between the rise in unemployment among blacks and the education numbers? Could it be that our education system does not serve blacks as well as whites? - Ed Dolan Sat, 07 Jan 2012 03:53:29 +0100