Friday, July 12, 2013

NILF-WJNs, Ratios: The ObozoDisaster Economy

Wherein the author demonstrates that the Obozo Economy --like the Obozo Foreign Policy and the Obozo Respect for Laws--is worse than awful.  As usual, socialist policy inflicts its worst damage on the lower and lower-middle classes, here forcing them into part-time work, if they can find work at all. 

...The “official” unemployment rate held steady at 7.6%. The economy created 195,000 jobs in June. The BLS revised payrolls for the last three months upwards and the labor participation rate (the percentage of the total population over the age of 16 in the labor force) improved slightly moving from 63.4% to 63.5%.
However, there were several very troubling indicators. The number of people who gave up looking for work because they believe no jobs were available increased by 206,000 from a year earlier to 1 million. The number of individuals who were working part time increased by 432,000, twice the number of jobs created. Full time jobs actually declined by 272,000....

Yah, that's grim, unless you eat part-time, or have a part-time mortgage.  Or maybe part-time electricity, hey!!  Part-time water and sewer, anyone?  How about part-time car payments?

...The BLS reports a number each month which it labels “Not in the Labor Force – Want a Job Now” that seems to confirm this study’s conclusion.

According to the BLS, in June there were 6,580,000 people out of work who “want a job now” but who BLS excluded from the ranks of the officially unemployed, including those who were too discouraged to look for a job in the past 30 days. Adding these people back into the labor force produces an unemployment rate of 11.3%, again well in excess of the “official” 7.6%....

The author and a colleague developed a "Growth Ratio."  During the Obozo Regime, that's not been healthy, either.

...The Growth Ratio is the year-over-year growth in the number of jobs (measured through the BLS’s household survey) divided by the year-over-year growth in the civilian non-institutional population (the number of people who could be in the labor force)....In June, the growth ratio clocked in at 1.15%, indicating that employment growth over the previous twelve months was slightly greater than population growth. The average for the recovery to date is a dismal 0.97%. In other words, the labor market has actually gotten slightly worse since the recovery began. Yet the early years of a recovery should be its most robust, especially where a recession was severe. Considering the loss in employment during the last recession, the growth ratio should be consistently hitting 1.5% or better, as it did following prior recoveries once the Growth Ratio went positive....

There is a conclusion:

In short, real unemployment is well above the “official” 7.6%. The official rate has only declined because of a very disturbing decline in the number of people the BLS considers in the labor force. In addition, as employers divide the number of available full time work hours among a larger group of part time workers, the official unemployment rate makes it appear as though our economy is growing and creating more jobs than it is. Dividing full time jobs into more numerous part time jobs is not an indication of economic growth. Yet, even with this false positive, job creation is barely exceeding population growth...

Another summary:  how about part-time "demand" growth?  Ever see that happen??

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