patrick.net

zzyzzx says

knewbetter says

In the last 3 months we’ve fired 2 techs and hired two techs. The two techs we fired were making more than $20/hr. The two new hired techs are making less than $15/hr. This isn’t the kind of thing that gets reported.

No, but when they report that tax reciepts are down it shows up there (and probably no place else).

When is this little tidbit going to start showing up in the budget talks? I'd love to see hit before March-April, right about when this recovery is exposed as a joke, and another round of stimulus is debated. Just as Bush's deficits were invariably under-estimated the trillion dollar deficit will soon be a 2 trillion dollar deficit.

Today the White House announces that they will count all pay raises provided with stimulus money as "new jobs" created.
In all fairness then the unemployment numbers should subtract all pay cuts from the
job numbers since millions of people are seeing pay and hours reduced equivalent to several hundred thousand lost jobs.

I guess we should figure that those big Wall Street bonuses count as lots of "new jobs" since the amount of money involved is gigantic and it is all coming from "stimulus money" provided by the White House.
That and a new tax health insurance is just what America needs.
Thanks for supporting the "middle class" Mr. President.

Statistics don't lie ... statisticians do. This reminds me of the Great Depression and the manner in which the Government propagandized the people back then. The stock market of today certainly has parallels to the infamous Sucker's Rally of 1930. After the Crash of 1929, it rallied to recover almost all of the losses of 1929. After it crashed again, it took until 1954 to recover to its 1930 level. Well into 1933, the Depression was still being referred to as a recession and that the economy was "turning around." The New York Times published many bogus accounts such as "Cleveland is optimistic .... Chicago is back to work... etc." ... all pure fiction. ALL administrations use the most optimistic statistics to prove their policies are working, i.e. vote us back in. Whenever I hear anything promulgated by the government, I always reach for the salt shaker.

As I expected today's unemployment applications report shows an increase of 36,000
and not the decrease everyone was predicting.
Also a whopping 656,000 more people are now getting extended federal benefits, not exactly a sign of an improving economy. And these numbers are based on the current distorted system that
grossly understates the real unemployment rate.
When is the government going to get real admit they have no idea how to stop
the loss of jobs?

Today California reported another 39,000 jobs lost. More proof of the "economic recovery".
I wonder where people are getting the money to buy houses at all let alone at the still inflated prices I see all over the place.

This is the dems tradtional way to "improve" the US, pay people not to work and raise taxes on the few that are working!?! Brilliant! Another sign of 2012 LOL!!!

Tonight we get the big speech with more cliams that millions of jobs have been "saved".
Unfortunately saving jobs does not help the millions of people who don't have any jobs in the
first place.
More job tax credits won't help either because taxes are not a big problem for small businesses who don't have enough customers.
If 700 billion had simply been loaned to small businesses we would have a lot more jobs than the stupid stimulus package " saved or created".

Hmm! If small businesses were so important than what was the TARP money going to big bank for? Shouldn't that be loaned to small businesses?

Yesterday we heard how "successful" the stimulus package was by taking a year to supposedly "save or create" 2 million jobs. Nobody mentioned the fact that another 300,000 people have started collecting federal extended unemployment benefits in just the past week.
I got an email from the democratic party with a graph showing how the job losses have decreased
since their wonderful stimulus plan was passed, but it fails to show how many more millions
have been excluded from the workforce numbers because they have given up looking for work altogether. Even if job losses stop altogether none of the millions who have lost jobs in the past year are be rehired so how can that be called a "recovery"?

For thousands of year leaders have known that idle hands breed sedition and unrest and chaos. They don't care if you are digging holes and filling them in on government money, as long as you aren't out rousing the rabble. It's not even a question in my mind if stimulus money was effective or efficient use of money, that is not the core intent.

America's workers are experiencing the perfect storm: millions of jobs have been outsourced that will never return, technology has increased production capacity overseas that has turned previously "unskilled" workers " into skilled, we've been invaded by millions of hardworking illegals from Mexico that are willing to work here for less money, trade policies continue to punish America's workers, the government's enormous debt transfers the leverage to our trading "partners" which will only increase as our dependence on their buying our debt continues to increase, etc. In short, we're in a long decline that will continue because our political leaders do not have the will (and possibly the means) to do what is right. On a personal note: everywhere I go I hear people saying radical things about our government. There is an incredible amount of discontent out there and it's coming from both the right and the left.

The last two posts go very well together and are right-on in my opinion.

I fully agree with the last three posts. : )

I don't really blame our leaders though. I blame the people who put them into power. There's some fantasy floating around that if we water the tree of liberty again we'll end up with another awesome set of Founding Fathers / Framers.

Dubious proposition at best.

On a personal note: everywhere I go I hear people saying radical things about our government. There is an incredible amount of discontent out there and it’s coming from both the right and the left.

If you're intimating some kind of epochal change in the weather, I really wouldn't bet on it.

The problem is that most people have rarely taken the time to learn to properly aim their disgust; instead, they end up spraying the room with their enmity and fears, which only undermines their *radical* positions. Don't get me wrong - the public should be a lot more pissed off than they are, but it would be really great if more people could elucidate what was at the core of their discontent. Instead, all I see is a lot of hardcore stereotypes parroting this or that demagogue's party line.

^ I read that Beck was going off on Teddy Roosevelt's progressivism now. LOL. The way I see things going, I think I'm going to need to put a major body of water between me and the smoking hole that is going to be the US of A later this decade.

炸薯条、好不好?

What America needs less than anything is a brain drain. Or a Brian drain for that matter.

Stay put. We need thinkers.

Today's report shows U3 still at 9.7 percent but U6 up to 16.8 percent.
Every time one of these monthly reports comes out we are told it is a sign of an improving economy and that big time hiring is just around the corner, but the number of people leaving the labor force and not being counted at all just gets bigger. Even with the exclusion of millions of discouraged workers the numbers are still abysmal.
I am also still waitng for someone to explain how a weekly average of about 450,000 first time applications for unemployment can translate into only 36,000 monthly job losses.
If only 36,000 lost their jobs why would 1.8 million people file for unemployment every month???

thunderlips .... I agree with your post. The other big thing that bothers me about this economy is the fact that it is so consumer driven. 70% in fact. And most purchases are made by increasing consumer debt, which is already crippling. Most of these purchases support a retail infrastructure that produces low paying, mundane jobs. Gone are the days when most Americans bought American made goods and paid cash for their purchases. Now, we have an economy dependent upon more consumer purchases, "paid" via credit and buying foreign made products. This is just one part of the huge economic mess we find ourselves in.

I've never really dug into the numbers here, so I'm going to make some mistakes. But I'm betting it's doom and gloom. They made this same comment back in the 1950s when we started carrying debt. They said the world was going to implode and what not.

A few things I've found:
43% of americans spend more than they earn. So that leaves 57% that aren't. 43% need to cut back, 57% don't. So of that 70% of consumer spending, 57% is safe, while 43% needs to cut back. How much? That isn't really clear. But overall the number isn't going to be drastic to make things level for everyone. Getting out of debt might take awhile for those 43%, but on the flip side they're still going to be spending much of their income, while smaller chunk will be used to pay back their debts. This will reduce some consumer spending, but only in 43% of people.

Average credit card debt is around $8000 per household. I'm guessing that average that has debt is much higher. And this number doesn't really quote who keeps that debt month after month either. If you take a snap shot of the debt, without removing all the debt that gets paids monthly, what does this number look like? I probably spend 8K every month on CC debt, but then I pay it off every month as well. Does that mean I'm contributing 5K to this number? I've seen this number float around out there quite a bit.

If it's $8000 @ 20% interest, then this is a large number, but HOW much was actually spent on consumer goods to make it $8000? Probably not $8000. If that debt has been there for years, these people might have only spent $2000-$3000 to obtain that much debt. Interest + minimum monthly payments would push that number up constantly for those people, even if they're only living outside their budget by a very small amount.

To correct this problem, they do need to pay back $8000 + cut their spending to do this, but to get this on track again, they don't need to cut much from their spending to balance everything

I'm betting that most of our consumer spending is still protected. That most of the doom and gloom here, isn't really that bad. While it's bad for the families with this much debt, the number of families spending more than they make isn't that bad.

http://www.indexcreditcards.com/creditcarddebt/

While everybody is spinng the "hold" at 9.7 percent as proof that recovery is on the way
I notice California unemployment went up to 12.5 percent.
Since California has the bulk of the option arm problem along with big commercial real estate
problems I don't see how 12.5 percent unemployment can be made to look like evidence that
real estate will not nose dive further.
Underemployment in California has got to be over 25 percent so I don't see how anyone
can sell a house at the still ridiculously high prices with so many buyers out of the picture.
I recently talked with a heavy equipment operator who was hired for a "stimulus" project. He only got four days of work but will be counted as "employed" in the official numbers. What a joke.

I don’t see how 12.5 percent unemployment can be made to look like evidence that
real estate will not nose dive further.

Add in the $500M budget gap for SF county.

10,000 jobs, 1% of the city population right there.

Another fact to consider re: unemployment numbers .... what about the fact that there are so many people "working" for the government, i.e. local, state, fed? Most are totally unproductive. I view most of these people as being on a political patronage welfare system. And what is the biggest employer in the USA? Answer: government. Years ago, I was employed by a politician in local government. I observed waste that boggled the mind; literally hundreds of people with nothing to do other than to collect a pay check. During my short stay, I was a supervisor and proposed huge cuts in my department (naively attempting to save taxpayers’ money) … my proposal was never even answered. What would the unemployment figures be if all governments (local, state, fed) cut the waste out of their systems?

I would definitely not believe gov't #'s. Unemployment is 17%+ right now

RayAmerica says

What would the unemployment figures be if all governments (local, state, fed) cut the waste out of their systems?

Total government spending is $6.5T. Let's say 10% is waste, LOL and each job is $100K.

That's 6.5 million more jobs.

Which doesn't make any sense to me since the BLS says there are 22.5M government jobs right now.

Hmm, that's around $300K of spending per position. That's normal for industry so I guess it's not completely out of whack.

FWIW, BLS says there were 111.6M private jobs Jan 2001, Jan 2010 that was 107M. Peak Oil & Peak Employment!

The California State unemployment numbers show that Los Angeles County now has an official unemployment rate of 13.2 percent, which means the underemployment rate is getting close to 30 percent yet prices remain extremely high in most of the Los Angeles area.
Just across the border in San Bernardino County or Riverside County there are plenty of houses for about one-fifth the price of Pasadena, Glendale, Burbank.
I say by a big house in a high class neighborhood in Riverside and hire an unemployed friend as a chauffeur to drive to your job in Los Angeles with all the hundreds of thousands of dollars that you save. The traffic is a lot lighter than it used to be since almost nobody has a job in Riverside these days so you have all those nice big freeways to yourself.
I saw a hilltop mansion in Riverside for the price of a two bedroom condo in Pasadena so it makes
no sense to try and stay around here.

More proof that "recovery" is under way.
Riverside and San Bernardino Counties have now hit record high official unemplyment numbers of 15.1 percent.
If the "recession" is over why do these numbers keep going up?
Home prices out there should drop once again.

pinnacle says

Riverside and San Bernardino Counties have now hit record high official unemplyment numbers of 15.1 percent.
If the “recession” is over why do these numbers keep going up?

It's only a matter of time before Obamanomics really kicks into gear. When it does, I expect unemployment figures to get far worse. Fasten your seat belt, this is going to be a long and scary ride.

i too, would love to know, what the difference is between Bushonomics and Obamanomics,,,,,,,,,,because from way up here, doesn't look like much has changed.

be it a D or R congress, the enabler(fed) seems to be equally as happy to print print print, while the congress just spends spends spends.

wake me up when we have a leader that understands the economy, and isn't a monetary expansionist on steroids. i understand the need for inflation to match expansion, BUT still trying to wrap my head around how i benefit from or why i need a federal gov't to continually back me into the corner, and devalue my labor.

In the 2012 election, i will vote for whichever candidate who is promising to install competitive domestic currency, something not so time decay sensitive as the pitiful and evil USD

DIE DOLLAR DIE

pinnacle says

So last week we were told that only 11,000 jobs had been lost in all of November.
Now this week we have an increase of 17,000 applications for unemployment in a single week.
Total applications are still close to 500,000 per week but only 2750 jobs are being lost per week?
Those numbers make no sense at all.
Last month ADP said that 169,000 jobs had been lost not 11,000.
ADP does payroll for 600,000 businesses and has real data to work with.
The BLS just does a “survey” without having actual payroll records and only surveys about 150,000
businesses, far less than the number in the ADP database.
I would think anyone who values factual data would put miore faith in the ADP numbers than in the
BLS numbers.

Exactly, ADP, Ceridian and a few others are the only true sources on all forms of compensation/new hires/terminations. They are both accurate and very timely. Their two data bases combined could easily give you real snapshots to the real employment numbers.

The Fed says today that unemployment has "stabilized" even though the number of people
out of work is at an all time high and most of them are not even being counted.
If things are so good why won't they raise the interest rates?
Everything they do is a contradiction.
Besides the millions of layoffs of civil service workers have not even begun yet and that
will send unemployment numbers much higher in the next year.
Today's local newspaper was filled with stories about thousands of teacher and Los Angeles city layoffs for the first time in decades so it doesn't sound like employment is "stabilizing" to me.
Most of the coming laid-off workers will be "homeowners" who will no longer be able to pay their mortgages so there goes the "stabilizing" housing market.

With 40 states near bankruptcy I don't see how lay-offs can be avoided for much longer.
Stability would have to involve some mechanism to avoid these imminent bankruptcies but I have heard of no federal plan to step in and fund all of these states.
Los Angeles is planning to cut about 14,000 city jobs. If that's just "leverage" I will
be very interested in seeing where they get the money to prevent those lay-offs.
Los Angeles County Courts are planning to lay-off hundreds of people, something they have never done before.
Local schools, including high priced areas like San Marino and South Pasadena, are planning about 500 lay-offs. Again I don't see these threats being just a "ploy" for negotiating with teachers unions in view of the serious unemployment situation we already have. This kind of thing incurs the rath of taxpaying parents who recently have been hit with extra school "parcel taxes" so I have to believe they are serious about these lay-off notices.
Besides the actual lay-offs there are already thousands of workers who have had up to 15 percent of their hours cut, so technically they are still "employed" but for a lot less than they were previously making with no idea when or if their pay will ever be restored.
I myself have had a pay reduction since last June.
Does "stability" prevent further reductions in pay for those who still have jobs?
Even if "national" unemployment is stabilized California seems to be far from reaching bottom on unemployment.

Meanwhile today the big headline is 4200 fewer new unemployment filings last week.
But no mention of the 360,000 people who moved onto federal extended unemployment benefits
in the same week.
The Los Angeles Court system is laying off 370 people on April 1 and closing many of the courtrooms for an indefinite period. This has never happened before.
I heard today that Los Angeles City has started it's first round of lay-offs. People have actually been shown the door.
The states are looking for something like 160 billion in federal aid. I don't see how they are going to get
anywhere near that much money with all the fear in congress of increasing deficits in an election year.
I also read the official California Employment projection for 2010-2011 and they are expecting to have to borrow 28 billion dollars just to pay unemployment claims. They must be expecting big layoffs in the near future. A lot more than 5000 jobs lost.
I guess "stability" means being billions in the hole forever.

Well today we get another "unexpected" jump in unemployment claims but all the news stories say everything is picking up, as they have for the past year.
Another 250,000 or so have moved on to extended unemployment.
No mention that there are now 40 million people on foodstamps, up about 20 million in past couple of years.
I keep reading stories about how tens of billions in pensions are going to be disappearing in
the next few months and wonder what that will do to consumer spending.
No amount of hiring will cover these gigantic pension obligations and when a million retirees
are forced back into the workforce that ought cause a noticable increase in unemployment.

More good news. California's state unemployment numbers came out today showing an
"unexpected" increase to 12.6 percent.
The stock market is diving today also.
Obviously total recovery is just around the corner.

Market is down due to goldman sachs, and GE.

Most companies are turning a profit, look at google, 37% increase. JPmorgan. Intel. Amd.

GE appears to have made less, but still doing well. Real estate dragged GE down as well, and it's financial divisions. Not a huge surprise there. Revenue is down 5%. While that is a lot, it's not a doomsday scenario.

Most companies have pared back enough employees to continue making profits, which should slowly turn things around for everyone.

About 100,000 long term unemployed in California will be running out of unemployment
benefits this weekend. They will not be eligible for the extension that Obama just signed.
This number will keep going up and these people have no chance getting a job in the forseeable future
with a huge hole in their employment record.
I don't think the stock market matters at all since it is subject to so much manipulation.
What matters is millions of people who have not had a days work in two years and are
now on food stamps and running out of unemployment money.
These millions will not be able to do any significant spending for months or years even if they do get a job because they will have to save every penny just to get back to where they were years ago.

@pinnacle

SF ace says the economy is slowly turning positive.

You then turn around and point at unemployed. While we need people to be employed, there are still 90% of the population employed, and things are slowly turning around. Like the stock market. We aren't seeing things getting exponentially worse, they aren't crashing down. They're either turning around or slowing down. Many companies are reporting profits now, many large companies.

This points to a recovering economy, we aren't saying it's going to be rosy for everyone and super fast. We're saying it's starting to head in the right direction.

No tatputu, a 100% increase in delinquent home mortgages is not "things are looking up"... No longer losing jobs is not looking up, it is merely not getting any worse....

azrob00 says

No tatputu, a 100% increase in delinquent home mortgages is not “things are looking up”… No longer losing jobs is not looking up, it is merely not getting any worse

True--every economic report isn't positive, they rarely are. You have to look at all the reports and try to judge what they are telling you. And right now, most people think they are indicating an economy in recovery.