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Jobless Rate in US Falls to 5.9% in September, Payrolls Jump

latest_numbers_LNS11300000_2000_2014_all_period_M09_data.gif
Yes, thanks for illustrating my point. There has been no steady decline since 2000. In fact, there was no decline at all for much of that decade.
 

And look at the line...it was dropping slowly until about 2009...and then it starts to plummet.

Now what event happened in early 2009...hmmmmm?

This is NOT just people retiring. This is clearly people giving up looking for work as well.

Plus, of those that did retire, how many did so strictly because they could not find work?


Btw, I am neither dem or rep.
 
Sorry, I don't know nearly as much about economics as you do, you are going to have to explain to me what that chart has to do with increases in income exceeding increases in employment and that resulting in driving inflation.

I don't see anything about income or employment or inflation on that graph.

You asked when income exceeded productivity. GDP is the aggregate income of the U.S., where as potential GDP is the productive capacity of the U.S. economy. When GDP > PGDP, output (or income) exceeds productivity.

Of course, we could refer to the Phillips curve:

U.S._Phillips_Curve_2000_to_2013.png
 
So?

You aren't aware that baby boomers are now retiring? The youngest baby boomers started retiring in 2009 with reduced ss benefits, and started retiring in mass with full benefits in 2011 or 2012. What's surprising is that the lfpr stopped declining almost a year ago - I expect this leveling off of the lfpr is a temporary thing.

This decline in the lfpr was projected decades ago. We even changed our ss tax rates in the early 1980s to accomidate for it. It should have surprised no one.

It's not an Obama issue, or even an economic one, it's an age demographic thing.
It's not an age demographic thing, as has been illustrated and proven numerous times on this forum.
 
Easy! This Administration has a long record of data manipulation.
No it doesn't

The heads are still counted, they just shift them into a different category.
No they don't. They aggregate the survey response. The standards are the same as always and respondents are categorized by what they say.

Here's a good article (Don't worry, it has pretty pictures and graphs for those of you that don't like to read and only get your news from sound bites.)


How The Government Manipulates Unemployment Statistics
Yeah, I'm familiar with that one. He seems to think that the unemployed aren't directly measured, but an arbitrary labor force participation is applied and they're calculated that way. He seems to think the government changes the labor force participation rate and that changes the unemployment rate. That's just bizarre.

Every month a survey is conducted base on a single reference week.The categories we're interested in are...
Population: Everyone in the U.S. age 16 and older who is not in the military, prison, or an institution.

Employed: Worked at least one hour for pay or 15+ hours unpaid on a family business or farm. Those who have a job but were absent due to temporary injury/illness, vacation, weather, or a strike are still classified as employed.

Unemployed: Wants a job, could have started work during the reference week, actively looked for work in the 4 weeks ending with the reference week. Those on temporary layoff do not have to have looked.

Labor Force: Employed plus Unemployed.

Labor Force Participation: Labor Force divided by population.

Not in the labor force: everyone in the population neither employed nor unemployed.

So the BLS doesn't and can't "shift" people. They just tally up the answers.


... the government is effectively saying that because the job situation has been so bad for many millions of unemployed people in their 40s, 30s, 20s and teens, they can no longer be considered to be potential participants in the work force at all. Because there is no hope for them - they no longer need to be counted.
No, they're not counted if they're not looking. There are no assumptions.


The whole idea of a "constant participation rate" is ridiculous. You're no longer counting actual unemployed, you're using some bizarre hypothetical number.
 
Just 24 hours ago the DOW dropped 130 points before it corrected itself. Parts of Europe are in deflation, growth worries continue in China, and Islamic extremists have added a new layer of instability to the Middle East. I don't see any huge increase in private domestic investment. Most buying are companies buying back their own stock. a neat trick to top corporate executives whose compensation is tied to the performance of the company’s stock, but it does little to help a nation struggling from the aftermath of the crash in 2008. Nope, I'm more inclined to believe when the spigot was shut off on unemployment benefits people started taking any job they could find. Funny how that works.

Greetings, Vesper. :2wave:

Plus, on October 1, the Dow dropped 238.19! Not a good streak in process! :eek: And my granddaughter and her fiance just bought a house here! It was a good deal, but.... well, you know what I mean. *worrying about the future*
 
Yes it is, expect the usual suspects to try to minimize the good news...

well, you have to take into account that had Romney won, this thread would be the exact opposite.
 
So?

You aren't aware that baby boomers are now retiring? The youngest baby boomers started retiring in 2009 with reduced ss benefits, and started retiring in mass with full benefits in 2011 or 2012. What's surprising is that the lfpr stopped declining almost a year ago - I expect this leveling off of the lfpr is a temporary thing.

This decline in the lfpr was projected decades ago. We even changed our ss tax rates in the early 1980s to accomidate for it. It should have surprised no one.

It's not an Obama issue, or even an economic one, it's an age demographic thing.

The youngest baby boomers aren't even 60 yet. The oldest Baby Boomers are just now reaching 65. Given the significant loss in asset values for many baby boomers, (home prices, etc.) they are putting off retirement because they don't have the potential retirement income they were hoping for.

Perhaps you need to revisit your conclusions.
 
well, you have to take into account that had Romney won, this thread would be the exact opposite.

If Romney had won we would be in another recession like Europe is. That is what they do. We would also be talking about ending SS and Medicare, that is also what they do.
 
Duh! They always cook the books just before an election.

BLS does not "cook the books." Its data is independent of the White House or Congress. Moreover, the basis of the labor force participation data you provide is also very same BLS that reports the headline unemployment figure.
 
Some people on the right will always find something to complain about when Obama's name comes up.

I can't wait to hear what they have to say after they lose again in 2016.

The clock is ticking.

It was out of white guilt? :unsure13:
 
The youngest baby boomers aren't even 60 yet. The oldest Baby Boomers are just now reaching 65. Given the significant loss in asset values for many baby boomers, (home prices, etc.) they are putting off retirement because they don't have the potential retirement income they were hoping for.

Perhaps you need to revisit your conclusions.

Perhaps you need better exposure to the data:

Since the final quarter of 2007, the labor force participation rate has fallen from 65.9 percent to 62.8 percent in the second quarter of 2014, a decline of 3.1 percentage points. In this report, the Council of Economic Advisers estimates that this 3.1 percentage point decline can be attributed to three main sources:

About half of the decline (1.6 percentage point) is due to the aging of the population.

Because older individuals participate in the labor force at lower rates than younger workers, the aging of the population exerts downward pressure on the overall labor force participation rate. While older workers today are participating in the labor force at higher rates than older workers of previous generations, there is still a very large drop-off in participation when workers enter their early 60s.

About a sixth of the decline in the overall participation rate (0.5 percentage point) is a cyclical decline in line with historical patterns in previous recessions.

While the unemployment rate has come down from a peak of 10.0 percent in October 2009 to 6.1 percent in June 2014, it has remained elevated for the last several years. Historically, elevation in the unemployment rate is associated with a decline in labor force participation, as potential workers may decide to defer looking for a job until the economy improves. A portion of the most recent decline in the participation rate reflects this historical pattern, which this report refers to as the “cyclical” effect.

About a third of the decline (1.0 percentage point) arises from other factors, which may include trends that pre-date the Great Recession and consequences of the unique severity of the Great Recession.

In particular the two elements of this “residual” not explained by the standard factors are:

The fact that participation rates conditional on age were declining for many groups in the run-up to 2008, including for prime-age men from the 1950s and for prime-age women from the late 1990s, may also have contributed to the decline in participation. This would have been expected to result in a decline in the participation rate above and beyond the pure aging effect even in the absence of a recession. Note, these effects were partly offset by other pre-existing trends, like a rise in the participation rate for older workers.

The severity of the Great Recession, which has resulted in an unusual pattern of a very large share of long-term unemployed relative to total unemployment, may have lowered the participation rate more than would have been expected through normal channels. In fact, we find that a declining participation rate is historically correlated with the elevation of long-term unemployment, suggesting that both issues have a common cause or cause each other.

Why make posts about topics you clearly don't understand?
 
And look at the line...it was dropping slowly until about 2009...and then it starts to plummet.

Now what event happened in early 2009...hmmmmm?

This is NOT just people retiring. This is clearly people giving up looking for work as well.

Plus, of those that did retire, how many did so strictly because they could not find work?


Btw, I am neither dem or rep.

Well, let's look at the percent of the population that does not want a job (left Y-axis) versus the labor force participation rate (right Y-axis)

fredgraph.png
 
When was the last time bad unemployment news came out before an election?

Books cooked.

2008. The financial crisis played a key role in shaping the outcome of that election.
 
If Romney had won we would be in another recession like Europe is. That is what they do. We would also be talking about ending SS and Medicare, that is also what they do.

Only if you believe they believe their own nonsense! Cutting government spending and ending a plethora of programs would be political suicide at this juncture. Had Romney been elected president, i believe we would have had an even larger deficit.
 
As per usual, the media look at the headline numbers and do not (for the most part) do their homework and look under the surface.

This is actually a fair report at BEST (I personally think it was a bad but not terrible report)...and typical of the Obama/Fed recovery (the Mercedes/McDonald's recovery)

(All these numbers are from the household survey)

Of the 232,000 more people employed in September,

- a whopping 230,000 are over 55!


- 45,000 were teenagers (16-19)

How did the rest do? Lousy.

- 20-24 years old went DOWN 72,000

- the all important 25-54 went DOWN 10,000

So all of the newly employed are either teenagers or over 55. The 20-54 age range had 82,000 less people employed.

Plus (or minus in this case), the average hourly wage dropped by a penny.

Table A-9. Selected employment indicators

Employment Situation Summary Table B. Establishment data, seasonally adjusted

So, basically, the less of the prime money making Americans are working and more of the lower wage, McDonald's/Walmart-type positions opened up.

Once again, the Mercedes/McDonald's recovery is in full swing (where the rich get richer and the middle class give up there solid jobs to work at McDonald's).

I'm just glad to see that you are as concerned with income disparity as I am.

Obama ran on the income disparity issue as part of his platformed, he has performed terribly on this issue - to the point of near total failure.

I'm also glad to see that you are more concerned with the employment situation of people who actually need jobs to support themselves and their families with, rather than being concerned about folks near or of retirement age and teenagers who just want a few bucks for some new wheels.
 
I'm a Baby Boomer, so why embarrass yourself with such a claim?

Your statement was clearly incorrect. More than half of the participation rate decline can be attributable to age. Why not try and learn something for a change instead of spouting off baseless drive-by talking points?
 
...The participation rate fell at least as much or more than the unemployment rate...

No it didn't.

And have you ever thought to consider who those are who aren't participating in our workforce?

People like...

1) My 99 year old granny
2) My 21 year old college student son
3) The retired people who live across the street and are living on their lifetime savings
4) My son's friend from college who served in the military and received the first Congressional Medal of Honor issued this year (he jumped on a granade to protect others and lost an eye and and ear and had tramatic injury to most all of his body)
5) Paris Hilton
6) The lady down the street from me who decided to leave her job to home school her two kids
7) Mit Romney
8) Bill Gates

Seriously, look around you, think about people who you know but who don't work. Are these people welfare slackers?
 
It's pretty good no matter how you look at it.
Demographically, of course, 'participation' will probably erode/lag until 2030.

U.S. Job Growth Rebounds in September
Jobless Rate Falls to 5.9%; Suggests Labor Market Improving Faster Than Previously Thought
U.S. Job Growth Rebounds in September - WSJ
By JOSHUA MITCHELL/BEN LEUBSDORF
Oct. 3, 2014 - 8:32 a.m. ET

NA-CC967_ECONOM_G_20141003101824.jpg


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...

Now what event happened in early 2009...hmmmmm?...

Two events.

The Great Bush Recession peaked

The first baby boomers started drawing social security.
 
It's not an age demographic thing, as has been illustrated and proven numerous times on this forum.

I've never seen that proven or illustrated.

So are you suggesting that we don't have the highest percentage of retired citizens that we have ever had?
 
Well, let's look at the percent of the population that does not want a job (left Y-axis) versus the labor force participation rate (right Y-axis)

fredgraph.png

How many times do I have to say it...post a link or do not waste my time. I am not rooting around the Fed website looking for your stat.
I try to never post a stat without a link to go with it.

And, as surely you should know, your chart means NOTHING without the definitions and parameters of what each line means and who is and who is not included.
 
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If Romney had won we would be in another recession like Europe is. That is what they do. We would also be talking about ending SS and Medicare, that is also what they do.

had Romney won :

the economy would most likely be the same. the president has not had much effect on it due to congress blocking everything he attempts to do. a Romney presidency would find a receptive house, with the senate blocking everything he tries to do in revenge for what the house has done. so nothing would be getting done, just like now.

we'd be moving backwards on social issues, and the pot states would probably be getting seriously raided.

we'd still be mired down in Syria, but we would have gone in earlier so that Romney could establish his credentials as a capable wartime president.

more of the frothing hackery here would be coming from the liberal side, with hacks blaming Romney for everything down to the leaky faucet in their bathrooms.

and this thread would be the exact opposite of what it is right now.
 
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