Romoney right about declining job numbers??? Or is context important???

Is US employment trending downward?

Does this chart (from the Federal Reserve Bank in St. Louis) look downward trending to YOU?

It does to republicans.

Remember Obama came into office with the economy in the tank, the banking system and the auto industry about to collapse, and unemployment already skyrocketing* after eight years of Bush Admin. mismanagement that had taken the country from a $230 billion dollar surplus when Clinton left office to a $1.3 trillion dollar deficit when Bush left office. It takes a while to turn the economy around and recover after a train wreck like Bush left behind but quite obviously progress is being made on recovery. If the corrupt republican greed freaks and plutocratic power trippers get back into control, expect to see this chart in the coming years look even worse than it looks here in 2009. The ride will be a lot rougher than the Bush years. If Romoney and Lyin' Ryan win, expect to see more wars in the Mideast, huge gas price hikes, more tax cuts for the super rich and the corporations, higher taxes for the middle class and even the poor, more profitable (for them) destruction of the economy and exporting of jobs, a ban on legal abortion and suppression of the availability of contraception supplies and information, more assaults on everyone's freedoms and rights, more packing the judiciary with far right wing ideologues which means more twisting of the laws to favor the top 1% at the expense of the rest of us. Give Obama a chance and the recovery seen here will continue and grow stronger. Let's give him a majority in the House and a 60 plus majority in the Senate while we're at it and the things we need to happen to grow our economy and compete in the global market can get done without all of the organized Republican obstructionism that we've all seen for the last four years. The right wing has repeatedly shown a willingness to see the country go down the tubes rather than let Obama accomplish anything. In spite of that, he's accomplished quite a lot.

* "unemployment already skyrocketing" - FactCheck.org reports this:
Repeated Job Loss Claim
Romney’s claim that Obama “stood watch over the greatest job loss in modern American history” is also wrong, as we’ve noted before. The truth is more jobs were lost under Bush than Obama, and most of the jobs lost since he took office have now been regained. Since we wrote about this last year, the BLS has revised its statistics slightly for improved accuracy, as it does every year. The latest data show that “total nonfarm employment” (the standard measure of jobs) declined by nearly 8.8 million between its most recent peak in January 2008 and when the job slump bottomed out more than two years later, in February 2010. Of those lost jobs, nearly 4.5 million disappeared while Bush was president, and just over 4.3 million vanished during Obama’s first 13 months in office. And since the job totals hit bottom there have been slow and steady gains, totaling nearly 3.6 million jobs. The total for March (released April 6) stood just 740,000 short of where it was in January 2009 when Obama was inaugurated.

livefree said:

Is US employment trending downward?

Does this chart (from the Federal Reserve Bank in St. Louis) look downward trending to YOU?

It does to republicans.

Remember Obama came into office with the economy in the tank, the banking system and the auto industry about to collapse, and unemployment already skyrocketing* after eight years of Bush Admin. mismanagement that had taken the country from a $230 billion dollar surplus when Clinton left office to a $1.3 trillion dollar deficit when Bush left office. It takes a while to turn the economy around and recover after a train wreck like Bush left behind but quite obviously progress is being made on recovery. If the corrupt republican greed freaks and plutocratic power trippers get back into control, expect to see this chart in the coming years look even worse than it looks here in 2009. The ride will be a lot rougher than the Bush years. If Romoney and Lyin' Ryan win, expect to see more wars in the Mideast, huge gas price hikes, more tax cuts for the super rich and the corporations, higher taxes for the middle class and even the poor, more profitable (for them) destruction of the economy and exporting of jobs, a ban on legal abortion and suppression of the availability of contraception supplies and information, more assaults on everyone's freedoms and rights, more packing the judiciary with far right wing ideologues which means more twisting of the laws to favor the top 1% at the expense of the rest of us. Give Obama a chance and the recovery seen here will continue and grow stronger. Let's give him a majority in the House and a 60 plus majority in the Senate while we're at it and the things we need to happen to grow our economy and compete in the global market can get done without all of the organized Republican obstructionism that we've all seen for the last four years. The right wing has repeatedly shown a willingness to see the country go down the tubes rather than let Obama accomplish anything. In spite of that, he's accomplished quite a lot.

* "unemployment already skyrocketing" - FactCheck.org reports this:
Repeated Job Loss Claim
Romney’s claim that Obama “stood watch over the greatest job loss in modern American history” is also wrong, as we’ve noted before. The truth is more jobs were lost under Bush than Obama, and most of the jobs lost since he took office have now been regained. Since we wrote about this last year, the BLS has revised its statistics slightly for improved accuracy, as it does every year. The latest data show that “total nonfarm employment” (the standard measure of jobs) declined by nearly 8.8 million between its most recent peak in January 2008 and when the job slump bottomed out more than two years later, in February 2010. Of those lost jobs, nearly 4.5 million disappeared while Bush was president, and just over 4.3 million vanished during Obama’s first 13 months in office. And since the job totals hit bottom there have been slow and steady gains, totaling nearly 3.6 million jobs. The total for March (released April 6) stood just 740,000 short of where it was in January 2009 when Obama was inaugurated.

Click to expand...

Conservatives have a clue?......lol right?

So, the cons are afraid to touch this one. Not too surprising since Romoney's lies about declining job numbers are made all too obvious by that graph.

livefree said:

So, the cons are afraid to touch this one. Not too surprising since Romoney's lies about declining job numbers are made all too obvious by that graph.

Click to expand...

tl dr...........

Please point out with specificity these 'lies about declining job numbers'.

As to your $230b ‘Bush Admin. Mismanagement’ I’m sure you read the article you linked…right? You do understand the difference between the budget and actual spending numbers and ‘there was not a surplus because the gross national debt increased by $18 billion in the same year’(from your link)…so what surplus?

OH, yeah…that’s right ‘The answer is due to trust fund accounting requirements, as is required by law.’…(again from your link)

So to paraphrase your link, the surplus was a budget but since they used Social Security and Medicare surpluses to calculate the ‘surplus’ there was no actual reduction in the DEBT…

As to your $1.3b deficit ‘when Bush left office’ I’m sure you are aware that this budget would be for the FY2008-’09 please remind me who SIGNED that budget…

With regards to your UE claim perhaps this is the portion of the debate you are referring to:

Romney-
We have fewer people working today than we had when the president took office. If the -- the unemployment rate was 7.8 percent when he took office, it's 7.8 percent now. But if you calculated that unemployment rate, taking back the people who dropped out of the workforce, it would be 10.7 percent.

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And the chart:


Bureau of Labor Statistics Data

Dang...look at that...sure looks like the trend is more folks dropping out of the workforce.

Dickieboy said:

With regards to your UE claim perhaps this is the portion of the debate you are referring to:


And the chart:

View attachment 67136244
Bureau of Labor Statistics Data

Dang...look at that...sure looks like the trend is more folks dropping out of the workforce.

Click to expand...

did the bls suddenly change their measurement algorithms, or have they consistently reported unemployment numbers that deduct people falling out of the workforce? If they have, then saying that the unemployment would be if... is a bogus argument. that is not the way it has been measured or is measured.

But nice try at attempting to create a new way of measuring unemployment. Not wrong, just disengenuous because it compares apples to donuts.

The OP chart does not include people who dropped out of trying find work NOR allows for population increases.

Romney was telling the truth. The one misrepresenting about employment is Obama, and I think everyone knows it.

Jonsa said:

did the bls suddenly change their measurement algorithms, or have they consistently reported unemployment numbers that deduct people falling out of the workforce? If they have, then saying that the unemployment would be if... is a bogus argument. that is not the way it has been measured or is measured.

But nice try at attempting to create a new way of measuring unemployment. Not wrong, just disengenuous because it compares apples to donuts.

Click to expand...

Sorry but the graph was not a 'new way of measuring unemployment' but rather a graph of those dropping out of the workforce...as to the measurement algorithm change...no, they do it the same way...it is you who are conflating the information provided (apples to donuts). It is unfortunate your partisanship(?) blinds you from seeing through the fog but as you are not a citizen debating you on national issues is not worth MY time...carry on

Dickieboy said:

Sorry but the graph was not a 'new way of measuring unemployment' but rather a graph of those dropping out of the workforce...as to the measurement algorithm change...no, they do it the same way...it is you who are conflating the information provided (apples to donuts). It is unfortunate your partisanship(?) blinds you from seeing through the fog but as you are not a citizen debating you on national issues is not worth MY time...carry on

Click to expand...

Sorry, but I was referring to the romney quote above the chart. I am well aware of the decline in workforce, My point was that every unemployment report removes those leaving the workforce and has for quite some time. I was not referencing your chart at all. It was not the point I was making.

the apples to donuts is the attempt to actually redefine the unemployment number.

Now if you want to discuss the disturbing number of people (2+ million that have left the workforce over the past 4 years) that is another thing.
there can be no denying that the jobs created in the past four years exceeds the number lost. Given the standardized measurement of unemployment the rate is below 8%//

to evaluate the number of people dropping out of the workforce, I agree it's not good. I beleive that 2009 can be attributed to the recession and the fact that obama's policies had not time to take effect, so it is reasonable to say that Obama's policies are responsible for approx. 1.4 million dropping out of the workforce.

While that is bad, the increases in the OP chart is pretty encouraging. Not amazingly fabulous, but slow and steady.

I have a vested interest in the outcome of american elections. If you wish to run away on the basis I am not voting, then that's okay, I realize that some cannot actually debate the issues and would rather dismiss the opponent.

Jonsa said:

Sorry, but I was referring to the romney quote above the chart. I am well aware of the decline in workforce, My point was that every unemployment report removes those leaving the workforce and has for quite some time. I was not referencing your chart at all. It was not the point I was making.

the apples to donuts is the attempt to actually redefine the unemployment number.

Now if you want to discuss the disturbing number of people (2+ million that have left the workforce over the past 4 years) that is another thing.
there can be no denying that the jobs created in the past four years exceeds the number lost. Given the standardized measurement of unemployment the rate is below 8%//

to evaluate the number of people dropping out of the workforce, I agree it's not good. I beleive that 2009 can be attributed to the recession and the fact that obama's policies had not time to take effect, so it is reasonable to say that Obama's policies are responsible for approx. 1.4 million dropping out of the workforce.

While that is bad, the increases in the OP chart is pretty encouraging. Not amazingly fabulous, but slow and steady.

Click to expand...

I also agree that the unemployment numbers are not very accurate but those inaccuracies didn't start in just the last few years. But to me, it does seem that the economic growth would or should coincide with the unemployment rate to some extent and it doesn't. Maybe I am just not very "educated" on the subject. But I have wondered how one could be looking better while the other one looks much worse.

melons said:

I also agree that the unemployment numbers are not very accurate but those inaccuracies didn't start in just the last few years. But to me, it does seem that the economic growth would or should coincide with the unemployment rate to some extent and it doesn't. Maybe I am just not very "educated" on the subject. But I have wondered how one could be looking better while the other one looks much worse.

Click to expand...

I am agnostic on the method of measurement. I personally think that the measurement criteria creates its own distortions, but since the current measuring stick is being used, then that is the result that should be used in comparison and reference of job creation/economic performance.

OTOH, declines in the workforce should have a higher profile than it currently does, and yet the measurement criteria appears to be somewhat arbitrary and comes with its own distortions.