Unemployment numbers released by the gov't today state the following:
1. The overall unemployment rate is 10.2%.
2. The teen unemployment rate is 27.6%.
3. The industrial Blue Collar labor unemployment rate is 14.5%.
4. The overall Blue Collar labor unemployment rate is 14.5%.
5. The White Collar unemployment rate is 4.7% (the only decrease).

The unemployment rate is projected to reach 10.5% by the 1st 1/2 of 2010.

Source

Thoughts?

White collar jobs seem pretty secure. Also, why even include teens?

yeah this is now worse than the 1980s reccession.

Teen unemployment shows that most of the adult unemployed are stealing jobs generally held by teens...

WOA

We've only known that for like...
3 months!

I'm a teen and I must wonder this myself.

Teens that don't have money drop out of school. Also young people, even with college, aren't really trained to be full-time workers in the workforce, so it's rather important that the economy keeps hiring them, since they are basically under-developed assets that need serious investment. NOT investing in them reduces your productivity later on.


Also, these jobs numbers are still disturbing and we should begin considering a second stimulus. Doesn't seem politically feasible, but goddam it would be nice. Krugman ran some interesting numbers and his blog, and if the Q3 rate of growth persisted, it would take a DECADE for unemployment get back down to 5%.

Have any numbers to back up that claim?

And considering a second stimulus is just nonsensical in my mind when I look at the current unemployment numbers, makes me think the first one is working so well.

I'll have to get back to you on school drop-out rates.


The first stimulus IS yielding results. Large chunks of the economic growth last quarter have at least indirect attributions to the spending of stimulus spending and its likely that GDP growth would've been quite a bit lower over the past 2 quarters without it. The stimulus just isn't large enough to jumpstart an economy of this size with this persistent of a gap. We were looking at industrial output that fell at a rate that hasn't been seen since the Great Depression, after all.

that statement doesn't really work as an argument, to be honest. For one thing, it's been demonstrated in several places that the previous stimulus did have an effect, although the level of that effect is certainly debatable. For another, the fact that one measure hasn't cured something isn't an argument that subsequent measures wouldn't do anything. A patient being severely anemic after the first blood transfusion isn't an argument not to give him a second one.

There are arguments against a second stimulus. I just don't think the current unemployment level is one of them.

Beyond that, we have no clue what the unemployment would be like without a stimulus.

The article also states that there has been a recent spike in "Temporary hires" which employers often do before making decisions on permanent hirings.

The spike in Temporary hires was apparently larger than it's been in several years.

Hopefully this will mean a rise in payrolls next year.

that's quite an optimistic reading, Asriel. Temporary hires can also be used as a cost-cutting measure for employers, getting rid of permanent staff with benefits and pension plans and replacing them with cheaper entry-level temps who don't get anything but base wages.

Thats the U-3 unemployment rate. The U-6 unemployment rate, last reported, is 17%.

I trust our economic experts in charge.

http://www.cdobs.com/wp-content/uploads/20...timvsunemp1.jpg

Without the stimulus it would've been about 8.8%

Last thing we need is more porkulus spending.

Get government OUT of the market.

Let the market stop fearing 18% of the economy being seized for healthcare and the massive slowdowns cap & tax will cause.

Let it fly and be free.

Maybe we'll get back to those ugly levels projected to have occurred without the stimulus. We can only hope.

Because the Obama and the stimulus had complete influence over the Economy in the months of March and April when everyone knew that the stimulus would not kick in immediately. What those numbers suggest is that the baseline scenario was far worse than originally was optimistically predicted by the Obama admin. (and criticized by many economists, too, like Krugman). I only shudder to think about an economic scenario without the stimulus filling in some of the output gap, or worse, Boehner's 'government spending freeze'.



What say yee about the Obama admin. using TARP monies for stimulus (and that small business lending program), and a 21st century addition of a WPA (a public option, if you will, in stimulus)?

That unemployment is higher than the original estimates doesn't mean that the stimulus increased unemployment. By far, the more probable explanation is that the recession was worse than anticipated and business were more willing to cut workers. Which is how businesses keep on posting these profits, they are slashing costs left and right, including lots of workers.

Getting government OUT of the market would be very, very bad. In times of macroeconomic adjustments like this, what is needed is a sizable increase in confidence leading to a big increase in demand, or a fall in the price level until the point that supply reaches demand at the economy-level again. The first was very, very unlikely to happen. At the end of last year, credit markets were completely frozen over and equities were plummeting all over the place. And that, even after the bailout and all the other programs, has had a HUGE impact on the real economy: unemployment is close to doubling from last year, and capital spending fell off a cliff in the first quarter of this year. Businesses cut costs aggressively and refused to spend money on new hires or new production.

It was really, really bad. It still IS bad: I've read that basically a third of residential mortgages are underwater and half of commercial real estate is underwater. That's frightening. I have very little doubt in my mind that had the government done nothing at all that the financial system would've collapsed entirely and we would be in full-out depression.




Also, the stimulus was inefficient, but even pork can work. Take 100,000 guys and pay them to dig ditches and then fill them. It's a waste of resources, but they'd be wasted anyways. However, regardless of how stupid the ditch-digging business is, it creates workers with money for other companies to sell goods to. And those companies can hire people, who in turn can go out and buy other goods and etc etc, until you have a recovery that can sustain itself and then you pull those 100,000 guys off of ditch-digging duty and put them back to work. Pure waste of resources nominally, but through the magic of multipliers and unemployed resources, it gets the economy back on track.



But, basically, if try to let the market fly and be free, it's going to plummet into the ground. Really hard.

It is pretty optimistic, but face it, I'm an optimistic person. I realize this.

However, even if it's only to save money, they are still hiring, which shows that they have the money to even create more jobs (even if they are temporary and without any benefits), instead of having to still cut more jobs and not hiring any more people.

I'm not going to say it's close to being over, I'm not going to say that *bam* it's suddenly going to get better, but it's getting there slowly and I'm optimistic about that last bit there about temporary hirings and what will happen in the next few quarters.

Just wait until inflation catches up . . .

With...unemployment?

Do you know how inflation happens?

Do you know that we experienced deflation last year?

You know that it also takes time for newly released cash to hit the markets?

And that the fed printed, what, 2-5 trillion dollars last year?

Inflation doesn't hit until the slack gets taken out of the economy. This is a demand-side recession, for the most part, so there is still a lot of slack.


But...well...we've screwed up on that front before

Yeah, the fed, that group filled with economists who don't know what they're doing.

Oh dear, I fear you may have unleashed the genie in the bottle rant once Loki finds this thread.

I do wonder how the next generation will view Bernanke / Greenspan. In '05, it was Greenspan > Volcker, i wonder if Bernanke will look the best after all is over?

I don't think most of the generation even knows who Volcker is. Greenspan and Bernanke, though, seem to be part of the common lingo with the rise of the tech bubble.

Unfortunately, Bernanke is getting a TON of flack, along with Paulson and Geithner, from the various populists that believe we've been too soft on Wall Street. Which we have, but meh.

Yeah, that generation did lead to long term problems, but they didn't lead to text book responses. Inflation is something that's been written about as long as Macroeconomics has existed. The problems we have came when we were faced with a bunch of things we'd never dealt with before--the next loan-trading system, for one.

I do think history will look favorably on Bernanke though, and note his vigilant role early on in responding to the crisis, and some clever techniques with some open market operations in aiding our economy.

Which is one of the things that makes it so hard to judge the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of policies.

Although, according to the Obama Administration, if we hadn't passed the first stimulus, the unemployment rate would be around 8.5% right now.

that's not really a great talking point, to be honest.

If you think a journey you've never taken before will take half an hour by the back roads, so you take the Interstate instead, and it ends up taking 35 minutes, it's not really fair to say that taking the Interstate added 5 minutes to your journey. It just means that your initial estimate of how long the journey would take was wrong.

Is that directed at me? I'm not using it as a talking point, just saying that there is an estimate out there (that is, of course, inconvenient for the estimators).

But yes, yours is one way to look it. The other is that you took the wrong route. There is obviously no way to know for sure how long the trip down the back road would have taken. But if you estimate the back roads at 40 minutes, your route at 30 minutes and in fact your trip takes 45 minutes, then you have to, at least, entertain the possibility that the other route would have been better.

That is to say, that your possibilities are that your estimates were wrong as to everything and your route was still faster (just slower than anticipated). Or that you were wrong as to your estimate of either individual route, which might throw off the balance as to which route is faster.

But the idea that the stimulus actually INCREASED unemployment is one that is very unlikely. Correlation=/=causation after all

I think that's the ultimate destination of the argument. Obama was wrong. Very wrong.

But most of us were already saying that back when the stimulus plan was hitting the floors of Congress. So this isn't any particularly surprising news.

And yet he did the right thing anyway.

that's the thing: he was wrong, but he was wrong in the sense that he underestimated the problem, not gave the wrong solution.

Are people seriously forgetting Bush's stimulus pack? There has been a first and a second stimulus. All these stimulus packages are doing is putting us further into debt faster and faster. We have blown a grand total of over $2 trillion in stimulus for hardly any economic growth. What makes us think that a third is going to do any better than the last two? Here's a suggestion: FIND A NEW PLAN. If blowing money didn't work the first two times, then I am seriously going to doubt blowing another even $10 trillion will help.

Because the first one probably did a bit to increase consumption spending, even though it was very poorly designed. The second was much better designed, was quite larger, and did quite a bit more. For example, durable goods spending increase 22% last quarter at an annualized rate, and that's probably mostly due to the Cash for Clunkers program.

The stimulus is working, it just isn't large enough. And stimulus is about the only thing that WILL work because banks are refusing to lend, interest rates can't fall any lower, and we've already tried quantitative easing with not much effect.



What is YOUR plan?

The first one increased consumer spending by a fraction and increase inflation a bit (most people saving the money for later or using it to pay bills); the second one--well, we aren't seeing gains at all. In fact, we keep seeing unemployment rising, even after Obama promised that it wouldn't go higher than 10%. But who the hell cares about consumer spending if unemployment is that high? You know why spending is up? Unemployment benefits were extended. That's not a sign of the bill working, it's a sign that people living off the government have a little extra to spend.



No, it's a complete waste. Why not just give the super market chains the entire stimulus and let people eat free for a year? That would have been the best use of the money, imo.



Less government. Yes, less government would do quite a bit. Remove or lower small business taxes; reduce the amount of time, paper work, and taxes for starting a small business; give incentives to all businesses who are hiring; give out small business loans with little interest; stop overregulation and bailouts by letting the businesses that are going to fail go into bankruptcy like every other damn small business does; etc. There is a lot more the government could have done to help the economy than just throwing a few trillion dollars randomly at it and expecting everything to be better. (Actually, my ideas above would have been a much better alternative, considering it wouldn't have increased inflation.)

That's the worst idea I've heard since Ron Paul suggested replacing income tax with "freedom"

And the government borrowing $2 trillion putting our debt at over $12 trillion, then blowing it on the economy randomly thus causing massive inflation and possibly ruining America's already horrendous credit (which is highly important) is better how?

Edit: If I may say, borrowing and spending more than we have is what got us here in the first place. I just don't see how even larger borrowing and even larger spending money which we don't have is going to help the situation.

Edit2: Actually, let me rephrase my first question. Why is my plan the worst idea you have ever heard? Blowing $2 trillion dollars doesn't sound like the best plan I have ever heard.

because they didn't do it "randomly". I don't know where you get the idea that the money being spent was being spent in a random fashion. I'm not totally sure even what you mean by "randomly" in this context.



keynesian economics. This is one of the times when it is helpful to run a deficit. You are quite right that at other points of the economic cycle we should have been balancing our books a lot better (the Bush tax cuts, for example, were a hideous waste of money in a boom time when we could have been paying off the debt). However, at the moment, when the welfare aspect of government is most necessary, attempting to tighten our belts would make things worse.

Randomly. In this case it could mean on random items.



So lowering taxes for small businesses wouldn't stimulate the economy anymore? We could have borrowed the $2+ trillion and then used that to pay for everyone's taxes for two years. Would that not have stimulated the economy? I am sorry, I don't see how lowering taxes for small businesses--the people who give the vast majority of people their jobs--would do harm for anyone but the government.

I seem to remember some chart from the CBO that showed "multipliers", with the expected effect on GDP per dollar spent in certain ways. It found that tax cuts had some of the lowest returns.

here it is:


edit: looking else where, there are a couple more:
one time payments to retirees: 1.2 -- 0.2
extension of first-time homebuyer credit: 1.0 -- 0.2
tax provisions for business primarily affecting cash flow: 0.4 -- 0

repeating the word "random" doesn't mean you understand what it means.

Unless they were rolling dice to choose how much money went where, this was not a random process.



I didn't say it would do harm. In fact this answer seems to be directed at something I didn't say at all. I don't see how you can translate me saying that belt tightening in a recession is a bad thing to me saying that tax breaks are a bad thing.

Tax breaks do stimulate the economy. They just don't stimulate it nearly as much as public works.

God you are dense. Random meaning random !@#$ that I don't know of. It could be equated to "a bunch of !@#$ that I could careless about". Use your imagination and stop nitpicking.



Blowing $2 trillion we just. don't. have. is much riskier than tax breaks. Get this through your head (and your meaning generally speaking): Unless America becomes self-dependent, we absolutely need what credit we have. We were already $10 trillion in debt making only bare minimum payments on that debt when Obama came into office. Just like the average American, the government can, and will, run out of credit. When they day happens--mark my words--America will fail. America's failure won't be heard across the world, however. Everyone is making preparations for America's failure even as we speak. How come everyone else can see that America is heading down the wrong path, but we can't?

Massive tax breaks and bigger incentives for small business--and I mean larger than $100/year--would do great to stimulate our economy and it wouldn't be as risky as, say, blowing trillions that we simply just do not have at all.

yes, I'm the dense one, rather than the person ascribing considered processes he doesn't understand to randomness.

If you think for one moment that the stimulus money was assigned anywhere without thought, consideration, and debate, you were asleep in the first few months of this year. The exact course of the stimulus money was not just a matter for considerable debate, amendments upon the floor of both hand, and a thousand page document, but also is a matter of public record. Go to http://www.recovery.gov and you can see exactly where the money went in the country and to what causes. If you think this is random, you don't understand the word.



so if "massive tax breaks" (and by "massive" I'm presuming you mean a sum less "massive" than 2 trillion dollars) are the answer...

why hasn't it worked?

two hundred and eighty eight billion dollars of the stimulus money was in the form of tax breaks to businesses.

Yes, you are dense. So dense that you are arguing over something I never stated. Please, quote me where I said that any part of the stimulus was used without thought, consideration and debate. (Though the stimulus package was passed, you know, a few days after it was written, with much of the congresspeople not actually having read the bill. But I won't go there.) But keep arguing a blank argument, I am sure someone is enjoying it.



Because the tax breaks given were tiny. Maybe a grand total of $100 per person. Big whoop. Let's do an experiment for the next stimulus: let's let everyone not pay any taxes at all for the next year and let the government just borrow the money to pay for government programs instead. Let's see if that works. (And if it does, it will be a lot cheaper than these massive stimulus packages we keep passing.)

Unless you're using a special definition of "random" that you haven't told anyone about, randomness implies a lack of thought, consideration, and debate. But I suppose I'm an idiot because you don't know what words mean.



Estimated federal tax receipts for fiscal year 2009 are $2.7 trillion. Please explain to me how this is a lot cheaper than a $787 billion stimulus package.

No. Randomness does not imply "without thought". Even chaos does not imply "without thought". Let's consider the joker, for example: how much did he have to plan to cause chaos? Planning requires thought, therefore chaos requires thought.



It wasn't just a $787 billion stimulus..

but he wasn't random.

If we're really reduced to discussing this in terms of Batman, The Joker is not random at all. He has a purpose and an objective. Harvey Dent is random, because he decides to kill or to let live on the flip of a coin.

It's a !@#$@#$ expression. Get. That. Through. Your. Damn. Head. People have different ways of expressing things. For example, when I call something gay, it's because around where I am from, that's what we say. I am not trying to offend gays, it's just an expression. Christ, you nitpick at everything when you can't win an argument, don't you?