U.S. unemployment falls to 7.5% in April [W: 348, 360]

winston53660 · May 5, 2013

StillBallin75 said:
Moderator's Warning:

The topic is US unemployment, not each other. Next poster who fails to debate the topic and instead continues to talk about another poster will get the banhammer.

opps my bad

Conservative · May 5, 2013

Slyfox696 said:
Ahh, so it took Reagan nearly two years to do what it only took Obama half a year to do.

Obama > Reagan.

LOL, again you have no concept of history or when recessions began or ended nor the results of any President using verifiable data. Suggest you go to BLS.gov and check the unemployment and employment numbers for Reagan and Obama, check the labor force.

This is my last post to you as well as I am tired of liberals reporting my posts when they cannot refute the challenges from verifiable sites. the only way a liberal wins is to get me booted and what does that really accomplish?

Slyfox696 · May 5, 2013

Conservative said:
LOL, again you have no concept of history

I just used your information. You said it took Reagan nearly two years to end the recession he inherited and it only took Obama half a year.

Suggest you go to BLS.gov

I've already provided multiple instances of information from that source. I don't believe you gave credit to any of it. I don't see the point in constantly posting the same accurate information over and over again if it's just going to be ignored.

check the labor force.

You can repeat this all you want, but the drop in the labor force has already been explained in this thread (I think it was this thread, at least).

This is my last post to you as well

Okay.

as I am tired of liberals reporting my posts when they cannot refute the challenges from verifiable sites.

Your challenges have been met at every turn. You have not asked a single question of me that I have not answered, and in many cases, used statistics to defeat. Just because you don't agree with the answers, you cannot claim they were not answered.

pbrauer · May 5, 2013

Conservative said:
I am going to take a break from this forum as we have a few here that cannot take being challenged and report my posts to moderators. Enjoy talking to yourselves.

Relax, the moderator was speaking about me.

EDIT: I apologize to you and the forum.

Conservative · May 5, 2013

pbrauer said:
Relax, the moderator was speaking about me.

No, I got the infraction points

Sheik Yerbuti · May 5, 2013

Conservative said:
LOL, so you really want to compare Reagan's numbers to Obama's? Better do some research and stop making a fool of yourself. Only a true Obama supporter would make the claim that taking the unemployment rate down to 7.3 is worse than taking the U-6 rate to 13.9. You are unbelievable.

The recession Reagan inherited went until November 1982 and the recession that Obama inherited ended in June 2009.

Well, no, actually you are the one who wants to compare today's U6 rate with Reagan's U3 rate.

But either way, Obama lowered the unemployment rate more than Reagan, after 51 months in office. In fact, he lowered it more than EVERY Republican president according to BLS numbers:

Clinton	-2.2	-30%
Johnson	-1.9	-33%
Kennedy**	-1.2	-14%
Obama	-0.3	-4%
Reagan	-0.2	-3%
Carter***	0.0	0%
Bush	+1.0	+24%
Eisenhower	+1.0	+34%
Nixon	+1.6	+47%
GHW Bush***	+1.9	+35%
Ford*	+2.0	+36%

* = in office 29 months

** = in office 34 months

*** = in office 48 months

Bureau of Labor Statistics Data

pbrauer · May 5, 2013

Conservative said:
No, I got the infraction points

So what, I've gotten infraction points as well, it doesn't mean another poster reported you.

Conservative · May 5, 2013

pbrauer said:
So what, I've gotten infraction points as well, it doesn't mean another poster reported you.

Uh, yes it does as I have been told.

pinqy · May 5, 2013

Conservative said:
Really? where do you think discouraged workers come from?

Note: I am NOT claiming the following examples are representative or the most common, BUT they are examples of people who would be classified as discouraged.
High school student looks for a first summer job, can't find one after a couple of weeks, gives up because he doesn't think he'll find one.

Housewife wants part time job, job but can't find one with suitable hours.

Retiree wants post-retirement job, stops looking when all jobs want someone younger.

Person fired who looks but gives up because they think they'll face discrimination.

Person quits, looks for new job and gives up because they think they don't have the right skills.

Etc, etc

StillBallin75 · May 5, 2013

Moderator's Warning:

The name of the site is Debate Politics, not Debate Moderation. Any issues you have with moderation should be addressed through PM. Once again please stay on topic.

Sheik Yerbuti · May 5, 2013

pinqy said:
Note: I am NOT claiming the following examples are representative or the most common, BUT they are examples of people who would be classified as discouraged.
High school student looks for a first summer job, can't find one after a couple of weeks, gives up because he doesn't think he'll find one.

Housewife wants part time job, job but can't find one with suitable hours.

Retiree wants post-retirement job, non-stop looking when all jobs want someone younger.

Person fired who looks but gives up because they think they'll face discrimination.

Person quits, looks for new job and gives up because they think they don't have the right skills.

Etc, etc

Even when talking about discouraged workers, the reason it's as high as it is, is because of George Bush. Aside from him passing on the worst recession to Obama since the Great Depression, Bush increased the number of monthly workers discouraged by 433,000. Obama increased it 101,000 beyond that. But without Bush increasing it by 433,000, it would be nowhere near as high as it is today.

Conservative · May 5, 2013

pinqy said:
Note: I am NOT claiming the following examples are representative or the most common, BUT they are examples of people who would be classified as discouraged.
High school student looks for a first summer job, can't find one after a couple of weeks, gives up because he doesn't think he'll find one.

Housewife wants part time job, job but can't find one with suitable hours.

Retiree wants post-retirement job, stops looking when all jobs want someone younger.

Person fired who looks but gives up because they think they'll face discrimination.

Person quits, looks for new job and gives up because they think they don't have the right skills.

Etc, etc

Per my previous comments here is part of the definition of discouraged workers

a discouraged worker is a person of legal employment age who is not actively seeking employment or who does not find employment after long-term unemployment.

Do you understand what happens when an unemployed person runs out of unemployment insurance and then cannot find a job?

pinqy · May 5, 2013

Sheik Yerbuti said:
Even when talking about discouraged workers, the reason it's as high as it is, is because of George Bush. Aside from him passing on the worst recession to Obama since the Great Depression, Bush increased the number of monthly workers discouraged by 433,000. Obama increased it 101,000 beyond that. But without Bush increasing it by 433,000, it would be nowhere near as high as it is today.

Except that there's a time limit. Marginally Attached, including Discouraged, means looked for work in the 12 months, by not the last 4 weeks.

Conservative · May 5, 2013

Here is an additional definition of discouraged workers and a little history. My point stands regarding Reagan and this confirms it. Discouraged workers weren't broken out of the unemployment numbers until 1994

In the United States, a discouraged worker is defined as a person not in the labor force who wants and is available for a job and who has looked for work sometime in the past 12 months (or since the end of his or her last job if a job was held within the past 12 months), but who is not currently looking because of real or perceived poor employment prospects.[2][3][4]

The Bureau of Labor Statistics does not count discouraged workers as unemployed but rather refers to them as only "marginally attached to the labor force".[5][6][7] This means that the officially measured unemployment captures so-called "frictional unemployment" and not much else.[8] This has led some economists to believe that the actual unemployment rate in the United States is higher than what is officially reported while others suggest that discouraged workers voluntarily choose not to work.[9] Nonetheless, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has published the discouraged worker rate in alternative measures of labor underutilization under U-4 since 1994 when the most recent redesign of the CPS was implemented.[10][11]

The United States Department of Labor first began tracking discouraged workers in 1967 and found 500,000 at the time

Sheik Yerbuti · May 5, 2013

Conservative said:
Per my previous comments here is part of the definition of discouraged workers

a discouraged worker is a person of legal employment age who is not actively seeking employment or who does not find employment after long-term unemployment.

Click to expand...

Do you understand what happens when an unemployed person runs out of unemployment insurance and then cannot find a job?

That may be the definition according to wikipedia -- but that is not the definition according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics ...

Discouraged workers

Discouraged workers are a subset of persons marginally attached to the labor force. The marginally attached are those persons not in the labor force who want and are available for work, and who have looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months, but were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. Among the marginally attached, discouraged workers were not currently looking for work specifically because they believed no jobs were available for them or there were none for which they would qualify. See also: Not in the labor force and Alternative measures of labor underutilization.

pinqy · May 5, 2013

Conservative said:
Per my previous comments here is part of the definition of discouraged workers

Do you understand what happens when an unemployed person runs out of unemployment insurance and then cannot find a job?

I didn't say no discouraged had run out of benefits, I was refuting your claim that all of them had.

pinqy · May 5, 2013

Conservative said:
Here is an additional definition of discouraged workers and a little history. My point stands regarding Reagan and this confirms it. Discouraged workers weren't broken out of the unemployment numbers until 1994

Could you highlight the part that says discouraged were classified as Unemployed? I don't see it. And you forgot to cite your source and give a link.

Fenton · May 5, 2013

Sheik Yerbuti said:
[COLOR="#0000F
F"]Obama has 101,000 more discouraged workers than when he started. Bush had 433,000 more than when he started. Yay, Bush!! :lamo

Jan/2001: 301,000
Jan/2009: 734,000
Apr/2013: 835,000[/COLOR]

Bureau of Labor Statistics Data

Bush had 9,500,000 more jobs than Obama, and 7 trillion dollars of less debt.

Bush had 20 million less people on food stamps, he didn't preside over increasing poverty rates that rival the Great Depression, he had half as many people on disabillity.

Bush didn't lie about a terrorist attack that killed 4 Americans and call it a "protest" because it was politically expedient.

Bush didn't use grieving mothers and 20 dead Children just to build a wedge issue for the midterm elections knowing his legislation was going to be stalled in the House.

Bush didn't ship thousands of guns straight into the hands of the drug cartels so he use the risd in gun violence in Mexico to push gun legislation.

Bush fought for reforms on Fannie and Freddie when they were buying up trash loans with a corrupt Democrat CEO and ripping the American tax payer off. Obama is trying to repeat that policy by shoving in another corrupt racist Democrat to losen their new stricter standards for buying loans.

pbrauer · May 5, 2013

Fenton said:
Bush had 9,500,000 more jobs than Obama, and 7 trillion dollars of less debt.

Bush had 20 million less people on food stamps, he didn't preside over increasing poverty rates that rival the Great Depression, he had half as many people on disabillity.

Bush didn't lie about a terrorist attack that killed 4 Americans and call it a "protest" because it was politically expedient.

Bush didn't use grieving mothers and 20 dead Children just to build a wedge issue for the midterm elections knowing his legislation was going to be stalled in the House.

Bush didn't ship thousands of guns straight into the hands of the drug cartels so he use the risd in gun violence in Mexico to push gun legislation.

Bush fought for reforms on Fannie and Freddie when they were buying up trash loans with a corrupt Democrat CEO and ripping the American tax payer off. Obama is trying to repeat that policy by shoving in another corrupt racist Democrat to losen their new stricter standards for buying loans.

Obama didn't exaggerate the threat Iraq was and put use in a war which cost 4500+ of our troops lives and thousands of life altering injuries.

Obama did oversee the greatest recession since the Great Depression.

Conservative · May 5, 2013

pbrauer said:
Obama didn't exaggerate the threat Iraq was and put use in a war which cost 4500+ of our troops lives and thousands of life altering injuries.

Obama did oversee the greatest recession since the Great Depression.

You can claim Bush exaggerated but that would be a lie especially with all the documentation to the contrary from Democrats long before Bush took office as well as French, German, and British intelligence

Obama didn't inherit the worst recession since the Great Depression, Reagan did but Obama did oversee the worst recovery since the Great Depression and we are living that misery today.

pbrauer · May 5, 2013

Conservative said:
You can claim Bush exaggerated but that would be a lie especially with all the documentation to the contrary from Democrats long before Bush took office as well as French, German, and British intelligence

Obama didn't inherit the worst recession since the Great Depression, Reagan did but Obama did oversee the worst recovery since the Great Depression and we are living that misery today.

Did the Reagan recession involve corrupt securities which were rated AAA circulated throughout the financial industry? because of this credit markets frozen?

Sheik Yerbuti · May 6, 2013

Fenton said:
Bush had 9,500,000 more jobs than Obama ...

Who knows where your numbers come from??

Jan/2009: 142,153,000
Apr/2013: 143,579,000

BLS: Employed

Fenton said:
... and 7 trillion dollars of less debt. Bush had 20 million less people on food stamps, he didn't preside over increasing poverty rates that rival the Great Depression, he had half as many people on disabillity.

Mostly attributable to Bush's Great Recession.

Fenton said:
Bush didn't lie about a terrorist attack that killed 4 Americans and call it a "protest" because it was politically expedient.

No, he just lied about a terrorist attack which killed 3,000.

Fenton said:
Bush didn't use grieving mothers and 20 dead Children just to build a wedge issue for the midterm elections knowing his legislation was going to be stalled in the House.

Riiight, he just sent men and women to die in Iraq to hunt for WMD that weren't there so he could get re-elected.

Fenton said:
Bush didn't ship thousands of guns straight into the hands of the drug cartels so he use the risd in gun violence in Mexico to push gun legislation.

Riiight, sure he didn't ...

Bush Blamed for ‘Fast and Furious’

Fenton said:
Bush fought for reforms on Fannie and Freddie when they were buying up trash loans with a corrupt Democrat CEO and ripping the American tax payer off. Obama is trying to repeat that policy by shoving in another corrupt racist Democrat to losen their new stricter standards for buying loans.

True, Bush did want reforms on the GSEs ... after he dumped billions in loans on them. Unfortunately, the Republican-led Senate wouldn't pass reform.

Donc · May 6, 2013

Conservative said:
You can claim Bush exaggerated but that would be a lie especially with all the documentation to the contrary from Democrats long before Bush took office as well as French, German, and British intelligence

Obama didn't inherit the worst recession since the Great Depression, Reagan did but Obama did oversee the worst recovery since the Great Depression and we are living that misery today.

Hhmm. you say that a recession that ran from July 1981 to November 1982 where GDP shrank 1.9 %.I believe it was almost 4% in 2008 alone, wasn’t it?

Then you have the 5.3 percentage-point climb in unemployment under BO’s watch as compared to the grippers 3.6 points. Long-term unemployment is another story.

During the great bush recession the average time of someone being unemployed reached 26.9 months is much worse than the gippers piddling five weeks, which hovered at around 3.7 million poor souls.

About the only thing that the gippers recession had that exceeded the great bush recession that77y BO inherited was that unemployment crested at 10.8 percent at the end of the gipper recession, then for only the last two months of the gippers watch.:2wave:

j-mac · May 6, 2013

Boo Radley said:
Don't worry, if a republican was in office, they would be singing the praises of these numbers. And we'd all be just shocked. Shocked I tells ya!

Don't be so sure Joe. Crappy economy, is crappy economy. I can't be positive that I wouldn't defend a republican more than I do this liar n chief, but in the overall analysis I'd like to think that the conclusion would be the same. But, that's just it, I don't believe that a republican like Romney would be putting in place policies that are actively pushed by this President that are tamping down productivity.

But, you never know, for instance, if you remember, I was against TARP from Bush. In any case, I know that your usual meme during Obama is to say that no President has any effect on economic activity, if that is truly the case with you, or others, then you must in kind drop the meme that Obama inherited a mess from Bush.

pinqy · May 6, 2013

Conservative said:
Wrong, the official rate during Reagan included discouraged workers, that was changed in 1994 by the Democrat controlled Congress. That is why you cannot find discouraged workers anywhere in BLS during the Reagan term

Employment Situation July 1985You'll note that Discouraged is listed as a subset of "Not in the Labor Force," you'll note that the data was only collected quarterly, and you'll note that the definition is a little different in that there was no time limit and it included some that would now be considered Marginally Attached and not discouraged.

And of course the definiton is stated as:

People are classified as unemployed, regardless of their eligibility for unemployment benefits or public assistance, if they meet all of the following criteria: They had no employment during the survey week: they were available for work at that time; and they made specific efforts to find employment sometime during the prior 4 weeks. Also included among the unemployed are persons not looking for work because they were laid off and waiting to be recalled and those expecting to report to a job within 30 days.

Since it has the work search requirement, discouraged are excluded.

Before 1967, the definition was a little different Employment and Earnings, July 1966 states

Unemployed Persons comprise all persons who did not work at all during the survey week and were looking for work, regardless of whether or not they were eligible for unemployment insurance. Also included as unemployed are those who did not work at all and (a) were waiting to be called back to a job from which they had been laid off; or (b) were waiting to report to a new wage or salary job within 30 days (and were not in school during the survey week); or (c) would have been looking for work except that they were temporarily ill or believed no work was available in their line of work or in the community. Persons in this latter category will usually be residents of a community in which there are only a few dominant industries which were shut down during the survey week. Not included in this category are persons who say they were not looking for work because they were too old, too young, or handicapped in any way.

So (c) is similar to what we now call Discouraged, but note that discrimination was not included as it is now, and the qualification of "usually residents of a community etc" meant that the defintion was not uniformly applied.

U.S. unemployment falls to 7.5% in April [W: 348, 360]

Salty Specialist