Daily Reminder: Long Term Unemployment

While the total number of unemployed is close to what it was when Obama assumed office, long-term unemployment is a growing problem.

Data source: Bureau of Labor Statistics Jan 2009, Sep 2012

Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about politics, freedom, and hospital gowns. Check it out on Amazon.com.

Daily Reminder: Unemployment

Did the Democrats say something about a war on women?

Data source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment Situation Summary, September 2012, January 2009.

Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about politics, freedom, and hospital gowns. Check it out on Amazon.com.

Daily Reminder: Real Unemployment Rate

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, U6, often called the "real unemployment rate," includes "Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons," where "Persons marginally attached to the labor force are those who currently are neither working nor looking for work but indicate that they want and are available for a job and have looked for work sometime in the past 12 months. Discouraged workers, a subset of the marginally attached, have given a job-market related reason for not currently looking for work. Persons employed part time for economic reasons are those who want and are available for full-time work but have had to settle for a part-time schedule."

Data source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment Situation Summary, September 2012, January 2009.

Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about politics, freedom, and hospital gowns. Check it out on Amazon.com.

Daily Reminder: Unemployment

September unemployment report wasn't terrible, wasn't great.

Data source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about politics, freedom, and hospital gowns. Check it out on Amazon.com.

Daily Reminder

The number of Americans employed in non-farm jobs has increased (slightly) since Barack Obama took office, which sounds good, until you take population growth into account. The decline in % of population employed shows that we're actually losing ground.

Data source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment Situation Summary, August 2012, January 2009.

Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about politics, freedom, and hospital gowns. Check it out on Amazon.com.

Daily Reminder

More August unemployment data:

Data source: BLS.

Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about politics, freedom, and hospital gowns. Check it out on Amazon.com.

Jobs or Abortions? The Dilemma of the Independent Voter

There’s a subset of independent voters who reason as follows:

“I know that Obama has done a lousy job on the economy. As we saw in today’s monthly report from BLS, we’re not creating enough jobs to keep pace with population growth. Incomes have fallen and food stamp participation is at an all time high. Romney, with his business experience, could probably do better. But I’m worried that if he got into the Oval Office, he would outlaw abortion. I’m going to vote for Obama.”

These voters have my sympathy. I might hang out with conservatives, but I’m pro-choice myself. And jobs or abortions is a crappy choice to have to make. Maybe someday we’ll see a political re-alignment and a viable candidate who supports freedom in the boardroom and the bedroom. Sadly, that’s not reality in 2012. So we have to prioritize.

One thing to take into account is whether Romney can do anything about abortion. Roe v. Wade says a woman has a right to an abortion; that’s the Law of the Land. For that to change, Romney would have to nominate enough justices to the Supreme Court to overturn that ruling — and get the Senate to confirm them. Since the Democrats will either control the Senate next year, or have sufficient votes to mount a filibuster in a Republican-controlled Senate, this seems unlikely. Even if Romney got past the Senate and the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, all that would accomplish is turning the decision over to the state legislatures. Abortion would continue to be legal in most states.

Of course, I pointed all this out when independents raised the same concerns about George W. Bush — and I was proved correct. In eight years — six of them with a Republican Senate — Bush couldn’t pack the Supreme Court with anti-abortion zealots. Why do we think Romney can?

So the choice is between the reality of a stagnant economy — with 12.5 million officially unemployed, and millions more settling for part-time work or dropping out of the labor force entirely — and the possibility — IMHO remote — of overturning Roe v. Wade. The families of those 12.8 million unemployed are hurting. It seems unfair to hold them hostage to a chimera.

I know what some of you are thinking. “You’re a guy, Mike, you don’t understand how important abortion is to women.”

Perhaps. But aren’t employment – and the comfort, independence, and self-esteem that come with it – important as well?

Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about politics, freedom, and hospital gowns. Check it out on Amazon.com.

Daily Reminder

August unemployment data was released this morning:

Data source: BLS.

Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about politics, freedom, and hospital gowns. Check it out on Amazon.com.

Daily Reminder

I decided not to be so negative. So today I present a a stat about Mitt Romney's record, instead of Barack Obama's.

Data source: Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about politics, freedom, and hospital gowns. Check it out on Amazon.com.

Daily Reminder

The number of Americans employed in non-farm jobs has increased (slightly) since Barack Obama took office, which sounds good, until you take population growth into account. The decline in % of population employed shows that we're actually losing ground.

Data source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment Situation Summary, July 2012, January 2009.

Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about politics, freedom, and hospital gowns. Check it out on Amazon.com.

Libs Making S—t Up #3: Employment

Today’s installment of “Libs Making S—t Up” is employment data. There’s an effort underway to convince us that Obama’s sorry record in this area is in fact a good one.

With that object in mind, Deputy Campaign Manager Stephanie Cutter appeared on MSNBC yesterday. Up to now Ms. Cutter has been known mainly as the winner of the making-accusations-without-actually-making-them award for her suggestion that Mitt Romney is a felon. In yesterday’s interview, "Morning Joe" co-host Willie Geist asked how she would convince a hypothetical unemployed worker to vote for Obama:

“Well,” she replied, “I think that worker probably has a good understanding of what's happened over the past four years in terms of the president coming in and seeing 800,000 jobs lost on the day that the president was being sworn in, and seeing the president moving pretty quickly to stem the losses, to turn the economy around, and over the past, you know, 27 months we've created 4.5 million private sector jobs. That's more jobs than in the Bush recovery, in the Reagan recovery.”

Where to start?

First of all, she’s off by almost a million. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the growth in non-farm payrolls during the last 27 months was 3.6 million, not 4.5. Second, this number is dwarfed by the Reagan recovery, which added 8 million jobs in its first 27 months, from December 1982 to March 1985. The recovery continued until June 1990, for a total of 21 million jobs. Even the somewhat weak Bush recovery saw 4.8 million new jobs in the first 27 months.

It’s clear from the comparisons that the much-touted 27 months of job growth – an average of 130,000 per month – is anemic. Analysts generally claim that the economy needs to add 150,000 jobs per month to keep pace with population growth; we’re losing ground. Also, Ms. Cutter neglected to mention the 3.9 million jobs lost during the first 13 months of the Obama administration. Put it all together and you get a net loss of 300,000 jobs.

I wish I could apply this sort of cherry picking to my personal finances. If I calculated my net worth by counting all of my income but none of my expenses, I’d be a wealthy man.

Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about politics, freedom, and hospital gowns. Check it out on Amazon.com.

A Reminder

Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about politics, freedom, and hospital gowns. Check it out on Amazon.com.

Unified Field Theory of the Economy?

Interesting to see these four charts together:

As you can see, there really was a time, corresponding roughly to the Reagan, Bush 41, and Clinton administrations, when the government exercised some restraint in printing money, regulating, and spending. This coincided with an unemployment rate considerably lower than we have today.

I’ll leave it to you to determine what conclusions, if any, may be drawn.

Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about politics, freedom, and hospital gowns. Check it out on Amazon.com.

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Technical stuff:
All data are three-year moving averages.
New regulations are actual pages published in the Federal Register (total pages minus blank and skip pages). Source: FederalRegister.gov
Money supply data is seasonally adjusted M2. Source: Federal Reserve
Spending data sources: Federal outlays from the Office of Management and Budget; GDP is current dollar from the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
Unemployment data source: Bureau of Labor Statistics.