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U.S. Adds 146,000 Jobs; Jobless Rate Falls to 7.7%

Dpetty said:
The Clinton administration was over 12 years ago, what does that have to do with the price of eggs?
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Because it is like the repubs pondering doughy eyed, and pining for the Reagan times...It does nothing, but allows distraction, and dream time....Those times are DONE! Reagan isn't coming back, and although Clinton may rear its ugly head in 2016 with Hillary running, hopefully by then Progressives will so have destroyed, and made unrecognizable this country that she won't have a shot even with the popularity of her husband, and Obama's endorsement....

We need to stop looking at the shinny objects, and focus on whether or not the breaks work....
 
Dpetty said:
The Clinton administration was over 12 years ago, what does that have to do with the price of eggs?
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It established the baseline from which the Bush-43 administration then operated. Very, very ineffectively, one might add. The horribly depressed level of affairs that comprised the Bush-43 legacy became the baseline from which the Obama administration then operated. Far, far more effectively, one might add.
 
Cardinal Fang said:
It established the baseline from which the Bush-43 administration then operated. Very, very ineffectively, one might add. The horribly depressed level of affairs that comprised the Bush-43 legacy became the baseline from which the Obama administration then operated. Far, far more effectively, one might add.
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If by 'baseline' you mean the misguided approach of demo's to offer cuts later for tax hikes now, then not only do I totally agree, but I would say that was before Bush 43. You'd have to go back to Reagan to see that as an operational baseline.

The problem is, that history shows that this sort of approach by demo's has worked in the past, but the offer of cuts is a lie. They never come, but the tax hikes are immediate.
 
j-mac said:
If by 'baseline' you mean the misguided approach of demo's to offer cuts later for tax hikes now, then not only do I totally agree, but I would say that was before Bush 43. You'd have to go back to Reagan to see that as an operational baseline. The problem is, that history shows that this sort of approach by demo's has worked in the past, but the offer of cuts is a lie. They never come, but the tax hikes are immediate.
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Well, you've got the meaning of "baseline" completely balled up. It refers here to the relative advantages or handicaps that an administration began with. And you've then made matters worse by alluding to phony right-wing memes of failed Democratoc promises to vote for spending cuts after tax increases during Reagan's first term and Bush-41's only term. Neither of those claims has any factual basis.
 
Cardinal Fang said:
Well, you've got the meaning of "baseline" completely balled up. It refers here to the relative advantages or handicaps that an administration began with. And you've then made matters worse by alluding to phony right-wing memes of failed Democratoc promises to vote for spending cuts after tax increases during Reagan's first term and Bush-41's only term. Neither of those claims has any factual basis.
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Ok, then show us the cuts....
 
j-mac said:
Ok, then show us the cuts....
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LOL! The voice of cluelessness comes wafting in my libary window. The deal with respect to Reagan's 1982 tax increase (still the largest peacetime tax increase in US history) was with regard to spending cuts supposed to come along in 1983. And of those promised cuts, $100 billion was to come in the proverbial form of "debt savings" that Congress can't legislate. $50 billion was to come from a package of defense cuts that Democrats had negotiated with then Majority Leader Howard Baker, but Reagan refused to go along with the cuts and piled more spending increases onto DOD instead. $40 billion was supposed to come from "management savings" that Republicans were on the hook to identify but in fact never came up with. And $30 billion was to come from cuts in Medicare costs that Democrats did in fact identify and helped to pass.

The problem with Bush-41 was not coming up with spending cuts at all, since Bush's budget was already chock full of them. But with Gramm-Rudman breathing down his neck, he couldn't find enough cuts that he found acceptable to ward off seqestration, so the tax increase became a necessity. It didn't go far enough of course, so Clinton had to increase taxes again in 1993, but the idea that Democrats somehow tripped up HW on spending cuts is ahistorical nonsense.
 
j-mac said:
Let me break it down for you....

The thread is about the drop in unemployment. It has been determined that this number is reflecting some 350,000 that dropped out of the workforce, and that on a side conversation the theory of retirees making up that number either in part, or more was floated although no solid stats to back that up.

You also floated that theory so I think I asked a reasonable question....Now I think you are over reacting, which tells me I am on the right track.....So, can you answer the question I posed?
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This is just sad, mac. First, you translate something I said into something I didn't say. Strike one! Then, you did that a second time. Strike two!! Now, you think you're on the "right track" because you think I didn't answer the question you posed even though I actually did.

Strike three!!! You're out! :2wave:
 
Cardinal Fang said:
LOL! The voice of cluelessness comes wafting in my libary window. The deal with respect to Reagan's 1982 tax increase (still the largest peacetime tax increase in US history) was with regard to spending cuts supposed to come along in 1983. And of those promised cuts, $100 billion was to come in the proverbial form of "debt savings" that Congress can't legislate. $50 billion was to come from a package of defense cuts that Democrats had negotiated with then Majority Leader Howard Baker, but Reagan refused to go along with the cuts and piled more spending increases onto DOD instead. $40 billion was supposed to come from "management savings" that Republicans were on the hook to identify but in fact never came up with. And $30 billion was to come from cuts in Medicare costs that Democrats did in fact identify and helped to pass.

The problem with Bush-41 was not coming up with spending cuts at all, since Bush's budget was already chock full of them. But with Gramm-Rudman breathing down his neck, he couldn't find enough cuts that he found acceptable to ward off seqestration, so the tax increase became a necessity. It didn't go far enough of course, so Clinton had to increase taxes again in 1993, but the idea that Democrats somehow tripped up HW on spending cuts is ahistorical nonsense.
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That is a stunningly brazen bit of historical revision you have there....If this is what we are in for, then count me out.
 
Sheik Yerbuti said:
This is just sad, mac. First, you translate something I said into something I didn't say. Strike one! Then, you did that a second time. Strike two!! Now, you think you're on the "right track" because you think I didn't answer the question you posed even though I actually did.

Strike three!!! You're out! :2wave:
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What ever, you're wasting my time anyway.
 
Sheik Yerbuti said:
Oh, and by the way ... back then, they didn't include 16-24 year olds in the U3 unemployment rate. Had they, that 5.4% would have been higher.

Cardinal Fang said:
Yes, they did. A minimum age of 16 for inclusion in the labor force was introduced in 1967. Prior to that it had been 14. The data were concurrently adjusted back through 1947. The change was made to establish concurrence with state school attendance and work-permit laws.
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Not while Reagan was president, they didn't.

Until 1994, the U3 measured:

BLS introduces new range of alternative unemployment measures

U-3 (1993): Unemployed persons aged 25 and older, as a percent of the civilian labor force aged 25 and older (the unemployment rate for persons 25 years and older)

http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/1995/10/art3full.pdf​
 
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j-mac said:
What ever, you're wasting my time anyway.
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It wouldn't be such a waste of time if you would just understand what I write the first time.

I still can't figure out how you translated "But to that, I largely attribute retiring baby boomers," into, "so you want to say that they are all retirees." or "There are an additional 1.5 million people between ages 62 and 66 every single month," into, "I mean, if 1.5 million per month are leaving"

:shrug::shrug::shrug:

Address what I actually write and not what you think I write and we can cut right to the chase. :thumbs:
 
j-mac said:
That is a stunningly brazen bit of historical revision you have there....If this is what we are in for, then count me out.
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poweRob said:
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Oh I am not running from anything Rob....Just taking stock of the discourse being offered. If it is going to be some dishonest, revisionist drivel, and nothing can be accomplished by addressing it, then I am content to call it what it is and drop it....
 
j-mac said:
That is a stunningly brazen bit of historical revision you have there....If this is what we are in for, then count me out.
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I am sure I must have counted you out a long time ago, thiough I don't actually keep a list of these things. Accordingly and as here, I'll not be expecting to see your actual refutation of any of these "brazen bits" at any point over the remainder of the history of the universe.
 
Sheik Yerbuti said:
Not while Reagan was president, they didn't. Until 1994, the U3 measured: U-3 (1993): Unemployed persons aged 25 and older, as a percent of the civilian labor force aged 25 and older (the unemployment rate for persons 25 years and older).
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No, that was one of Julius Shiskin's back-of-an-envelope, trial balloon, alternative measures of labor underutilization that he had begun estimating from sparse and barely available data in the mid-1970's. His U-1 to U-7 notes and numbers were published intermittently as items under study (much as CPI-E currently is) and generally received positive response from the public. With some survey redesigns identified that would lead to better data, the prospect of making alternative measures official was studied for several years in the early 1990's. In the end, Shiskin's U-3 (the one you cite) and U-4 were rejected with U-3 instead becoming the headline rate. Shiskin's U-3 died because age was seen as a personal variable, not an economic one. With some considerable modifications, the other five indexes were retained, and the new official alternative measures first appeared in The Employment Situation in 1996. The data for the population aged 25 and over are of course produced and published. They are a regular part of each month's Table A-10. But they are not and have never been an official U-3.
 
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Cardinal Fang said:
No, that was one of Julius Shiskin's back-of-an-envelope, trial balloon, alternative measures of labor underutilization that he had begun estimating from sparse and barely available data in the mid-1970's. His U-1 to U-7 notes and numbers were published intermittently as items under study (much as CPI-E currently is) and generally received positive response from the public. With some survey redesigns identified that would lead to better data, the prospect of making alternative measures official was studied for several years in the early 1990's. In the end, Shiskin's U-3 (the one you cite) and U-4 were rejected with U-3 instead becoming the headline rate. Shiskin's U-3 died because age was seen as a personal variable, not an economic one. With some considerable modifications, the other five indexes were retained, and the new official alternative measures first appeared in The Employment Situation in 1996. The data for the population aged 25 and over are of course produced and published. They are a regular part of each month's Table A-10. But they are not and have never been an official U-3.
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That's very interesting. I didn't realize that. However, the document continues (See the appendix at the end of the document) ...

APPENDIX: Impact of the CPS redesign on the original indicators, U-1 through U-7

Effects on indicator U-3, the number of unemployed persons aged 25 and older, as a percent of the civilian labor force aged 25 and older (the unemployment rate for persons 25 and older).​
 
a351 said:
The main driver of that phenomena being the demand for higher education of some sort in high paying employment fields, rather than a sudden onset of slothfullness as some claim.
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Not true. College enrollment fell last year for the first time in 15 years.
 
Taylor said:
The offical figure is 268,000.
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Assuming this goes back to the number of jobs required to "keep up" with population growth, there is no official number, a fact that the right-wing makes ample use of in complaining that whatever the the increase in the number of jobs, it is not enough. There is general agreement that whatever the number is, it is falling and will continue to do so, but estimating its level requires a lot more math than what anyone has put up in this thread or is likely to.

As for the 268,000 number above, I would guess that you could find more people believing that the number is now below 100,000 than you could find to support that sort of notion.
 
Taylor said:
Not true. College enrollment fell last year for the first time in 15 years.
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The decline was one-sixth of 1%. Total enrollment remains at historically high levels due to the increasing returns that accrue to investment in education. The driver of difficuty in finding suitable employment has begun to dissipate.
 
Sheik Yerbuti said:
That's very interesting. I didn't realize that. However, the document continues (See the appendix at the end of the document) ...
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I'm familiar with the appendix to that document. I read it perhaps 15 years ago.

Sheik Yerbuti said:
Effects on indicator U-3, the number of unemployed persons aged 25 and older, as a percent of the civilian labor force aged 25 and older (the unemployment rate for persons 25 and older).
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It is still talking about refinements to the off-line measures. Shiskin had at first used "head of household" for this index, but they were getting gender bias wherein any male would be cited as the head of household even if a female was the principal bread-winner. So they scapped that idea and substituted the over-25 criterion, but in the end, they scrapped that as well. In any case, this was all long after Reagan. Unemployment numbers in the 1980's were based on a minimum age of 16.
 
Cardinal Fang said:
Assuming this goes back to the number of jobs required to "keep up" with population growth, there is no official number,
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Nope, never said anything about population growth.
 
Cardinal Fang said:
Total enrollment remains at historically high levels due to the increasing returns that accrue to investment in education. The driver of difficuty in finding suitable employment has begun to dissipate.
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They've been at this level since about 2009. There is a larger, more general decline in labor force participation among young adults that can't be explained by relatively small, upward recessionary swings in college enrollment.
 
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