Previously:

Bureau of Labor Statistics – June jobs report (July 3, 2014)

[….]

Representative Vicky Hartzler (r) has yet to take to Twitter to highlight the positive news:

We’re not holding our breath.

[….]

Heh. We’ll, Representative Hartzler (r) finally did comment yesterday via Twitter:

Rep. Vicky Hartzler ‏@RepHartzler

June jobs report sadly showed 49 out of the past 50 months more people DROPPED OUT of job search than found a job. 12% unemployment really. 6:46 AM – 9 Jul 2014

That’s a reference to U-6, a U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics “alternative measure of labor utilization” which includes “Total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of all civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers”. U-3, which is the “official unemployment rate”, is currently 6.1%.

Representative Hartzler’s (r) tweet prompted a response:

hungryprof ‏@hungryprof

@RepHartzler The U-6 rate was 17% in 2009, it’s 12% now. 6:58 AM – 9 Jul 2014

Uh, we already knew that. Representative Hartzler (r) probably does, too. The spin manufactured through the republican party hierarchy probably doesn’t allow for acknowledging facts like that.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics provides easy access to historical data sets. The following graph shows the U-6 rate from January 2001 (when George W. Bush took office as President) through June of 2014. The red line indicates January 2009, when Barack Obama took office as President.

U-6 from January 2001 to present. Historical data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

One might note that the long term trend of U-6 during the Obama Administration is down. One might also note that there was an uptick during the first term of the George W. Bush administration and then a catastrophic rise at the end of the second term as the economy collapsed. The spin manufactured through the republican party hierarchy probably doesn’t allow for acknowledging facts like that.

Representative Hartzler (r) continued, via Twitter:

Rep. Vicky Hartzler ‏@RepHartzler

7 bad numbers in the June #JobsReport [….] 2:31 PM – 9 Jul 2014

This also prompted a reply (from someone else):

Cody Welton ‏@acoupstick 16h

.@RepHartzler Forbes has a bit of a different take: http://www.forbes.com/sites/sa… … 2:54 PM – 9 Jul 2014

Sigh. Regurgitating republican spin isn’t as easy as it used to be.

You’ve just got to love social media.

The latest unemployment numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

U-3 Total unemployed, as a percent of the civilian labor force (official unemployment rate)

Seasonally adjusted

Sept. 2012 –  7.8%

Sept. 2011 – 9.0

Not seasonally adjusted

Sept. 2012 –  7.6%

Sept. 2011 – 8.8

[emphasis added]

republicans has a sad.

We’re anxiously awaiting a Tweet from Vicky Hartzler (r), like this one from August 2012:

Vicky Hartzler ‏@VickyHartzler

Yesterday’s unemployment rate came out–8.3% making it now 41 months above 8%. Time to put a job creator in the White House! 9:34 AM – 4 Aug 12

There’s already a job creator in the White House.

Update:

From the White House.

Again, via Twitter (today):

Rep. Vicky Hartzler @RepHartzler

Gallop: Unemployment rose to 9% mid-February. Food stamp use is at all time high. True unemployment rate may be over 15%. 9:26 AM – 22 Feb 12

“….True unemployment rate may be over 15%.”

The unemployment statistic which has been consistently utilized by everyone and is reported in the media as the unemployment rate is the U-3. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has “[a]lternative measures of labor underutilization”, one, the U-6, which includes the “[t]otal unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force”. The U-6 is always a higher number.

The seasonally adjusted U-6 was 16.4% in September 2011 and 15.1% in January 2012.

It’s interesting that Representative Vicky Hartzler (r) is just discovering (or is it spinning?) these standards.

As for Gallup?:

Everyone Is Freaking Out Over A New Survey That Shows Unemployment Surging Again

Joe Weisenthal | Feb. 21, 2012, 3:46 PM

….Has the economy really deteriorated just like that?

Nah, don’t worry.

As The Bonddad Blog pointed out last week, this Gallup data isn’t seasonally adjusted (in fact it says that in the chart right up there).

Since it’s not seasonally adjusted, you have to look at it year over year, and guess what.

And guess what, a year ago Gallup was at 10% and BLS was at 9.0%. So with Gallup now being at 9%, you could surmise that BLS will stand at 8.0%, another solid drop….

[emphasis added]

We’ll find out when the BLS releases the next monthly report.

Meanwhile, Representative Hartzler (r) is either an idiot, or thinks everyone else is, or both.

DailyKos‘ Joan McCarter reports that when asked about the prospects for the President’s jobs bill, Illinois Senator Dick Durban allowed that there aren’t enough Democratic Senators who can be relied on to pass the bill:

There are some senators who are up for election who say I’m never gonna vote for a tax increase while I’m up for election, even on the wealthiest people. So, we’re not gonna have 100% Democratic senators. That’s why it needs to be bi-partisan and I hope we can find some Republicans who will join us to make it happen.

McCarter notes that Durban does not name names, so she supplies some of the most obvious:

We pretty much know who he’s talking about here: Mary Landrieu, Ben Nelson, and Claire McCaskill. Maybe Bill Nelson, maybe even Jon Tester, as well.

Get that? Is our Claire McCaskill really one of the votes standing in the way of policies that we elected her to support? Given the content of her recent email, touting an op-ed she wrote for the  Kansas City Star, I’d say it’s hard to tell just where she plans on coming down; it seems to be a little of this and a little of that, amounting to not too much of anything.  

I include the introductory content of her email – minus the op-ed she also includes – below the fold. (The op-ed can be found here.)  You will notice, if you read both, that she’s carefully trying to work both sides of the street, shoveling on the GOP’s favored anti-government, anti-regulation, anti-tax rhetoric, while mentioning some of the jobs bill provisions and other initiatives that liberals can be expected to approve.

McCasill’s quick to endorse ideas meant to appeal to the center-right, like the President’s proposed tax cuts “that have traditionally won bipartisan support,” while she’s down on “big promises” to fix the economy and “unreasonable or untimely regulation” that might “overburden” business. She carefully tries to distance herself from anything that smacks of liberal, progressive or, to put it mildly, comprehensive governmental approaches to fixing our problems:

During this debate, Missourians have heard from politicians on the extreme ends of the spectrum – some shouting that the government can’t do anything and folks should be left on their own, and others shouting that government is the solution and that we can spend our way into a full-blown recovery.

The solutions she explicitly endorses are okay, mostly, if underwhelming. Lots are typical McCaskill, which is to say lots of itty-bitty pecking-at-the-details types of legislation, which, while undeniably useful, are apt to have correspondingly small effects, at least when taken individually in the way she seems to be promoting. She mentions such efforts as consolidating job training programs, combating tariff evasion, etc. She indicates that she will support transportation infrastructure spending, although she does not indicate the extent of her support of the relevant proposals in the President’s jobs bill, nor does she mention support for education infrastructure spending or other important provisions that the President has proposed. In short, McCasikill has produced a genuinely artful exercise in trying not to piss anyone off too terribly much. And we all know the problem with this type of approach, right?

McCarter gets it right when she observes, apropos the supposed obstructionism of these Democratic-lite senators:

How about instead of protecting these senators, leadership leans on them a little harder to get on board with what is probably the key push to save all their hides, including President Obama’s, in 2012: jobs. A little bit of populism, a little bit of taxing the rich, in Nebraska, in Missouri, in Montana, even in Florida, isn’t going to hurt any senator seeking reelection. Not in those states. Of course, there’s always the possibility that some of these senators are more concerned with their big money supporters than the voters.

I personally wouldn’t accuse McCaskill of anything more venal that worrying about the much vaunted outstate conservatism. I will, however, hold her accountable for enabling a destructive GOP narrative when she doesn’t really have to do so. As to what she’s going to do about the jobs bill when push comes to shove, who knows? And aren’t we entitled to know? We pay her salary after all. Same goes for asking whom she expects to please with efforts of this sort. Or, put another way, just whom is she trying to fool?

September 29, 2011

Dear XXXXXXXX,

I spent the month of August criss-crossing Missouri to hear directly from Missouri businesses and workers.  They all told me the same thing, that they want to see Washington stop playing politics and get to work on commonsense measures that can get bipartisan agreement.  They don’t want any more big promises.  They want to see those hard-working Missourians struggling in this economy get back on their feet and back to work without losing their homes or ability to feed their family in the process.  They want an economy that is not overburdened by unreasonable or untimely regulation. They want Washington to listen and to focus on helping in ways that actually work.  

Based on what I learned in August, I have introduced bills to crack down on unfair trade practices, and ensure that contracts reserved for small business actually go to small business, and I am working on legislation to consolidate job training programs so that less money gets wasted on administration and more money gets to the businesses and workers who use it.  I am fighting to win a long term extension of transportation funding so we can fix our nation’s crumbling roads and bridges and put thousands of Americans to work in construction.  And I am prepared to work on provisions in the President’s jobs proposal, like tax relief for middle income earners and tax incentives for businesses hiring new employees, that have traditionally won bipartisan support.

With this in mind, and knowing of your interest in the state of our economy, I have included the op-ed I recently published in the Kansas City Star about my trip, which you can read below.

Sincerely,

Claire McCaskill

United States Senator

Find McCaskill’s op-ed here

I was struck by an article in today’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch, describing the imminent closure of a campground for people displaced by the Joplin tornadoes earlier this year. Among the few remaining inhabitants of the camp are some who claim to have come to Joplin in hopes of finding work when the rebuilding starts. That’s what 9%+ national unemployment numbers get you – people so desperate they hope to turn disaster into a job.

Economist Jared Bernstein helps put our current situation into perspective with this chart from the Bureau of Labor Standards, which shows the components that make up the unemployment picture during the period from 2007-2011:

We’re not losing jobs, but we are failing to create new jobs, condemning millions to literally years of unemployment  The truly pathetic aspect of this situation, however, is the performance of the politicians we send to Jefferson City and Washington to watch out for our interests. There are some brave Democrats in Jefferson City, but too many of our state and federal legislators are refusing to deal with our urgent jobs crisis, preferring instead to quibble about spending cuts and to fight over which parts of an already decimated budget carcass they get to pick over.

The GOP response is worse than useless. On one end of the spectrum we have Roy Blunt’s obsequious concern for his corporate benefactors, or “job creators,” to use the GOP designation for the very wealthy, in spite of the absolute failure of these putative job machines to produce more than a minimal up-tick in employment when, as during the Bush years, their needs were tended so assiduously. On the other hand, we have the outright contempt for the unemployed evinced by GOP State Senator Jim Lembke who filibustered to prevent the use of federal funds to extend unemployment benefits, asserting that beneficiaries of the benefits were “stealing from their neighbors.”

But the totally unsurprising GOP fecklessness doesn’t mean that our Missouri Democrats are doing much better. Whether it’s Senator McCaskill dithering about what she really meant when she was talking about not extending unemployment benefits, or Governor Nixon, who, in the words of a Post-Dispatch editorial last May, was “too worried about making a campaign misstep or flying around the state announcing government handouts with dubious job-creation ability to provide the leadership that was needed,” the impression they create is one of timidity and weakness.

It isn’t as if there aren’t Democrats who know just what to do. Take, for instance, Illinois Rep. Jan Schakowsky, whose “Emergency Jobs to Restore the American Dream Act,” would put more than 2 million people to work, with particular emphasis on the long-term unemployed, the 99ers, whose joblessness has exceeded the 99 weeks of unemployment insurance our mostly millionaire congress-people are willing to grant them. But that’s not all – remember we also need to address revenue and debt issues – the act would be:

… financed by separate legislation introduced by Schakowsky called the “Fairness in Taxation Act,” which would raise taxes for Americans who earn more than $1 million and $1 billion. It would also eliminate subsidies for big oil companies while closing loopholes for corporations that send American jobs overseas.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, we’ve got Roy Blunt responding to a negative jobs report that reflected mostly federal jobs lost due to GOP inflicted spending cuts with the following bit of predigested GOP pablum:

Missourians are looking for jobs, but today’s latest unemployment report indicates yet again that there just aren’t enough jobs out there for people who are looking to get back to work. Washington Democrats are ignoring their pleas to cut taxes, quit spending so much, and help the private sector create real, permanent jobs.

Or there’s McCaskill, claiming that we can’t do much to create jobs, but maybe, just maybe we can fiddle around a little and:

… look at patent reform, we can look at trade agreements as long as they’re fair and don’t hurt American middle-class workers even more than they’ve already been hurt. We can look at regulations — what regulations are absolutely necessary and what regulations are getting in the way of businesses.

And while our Missourians are busy percolating this type of hot air, everybody agrees that the excellent, commonsense proposals put forward by Representative Schakowsky, proposals that would actually address our endemic joblessness, are DOA, victim to ideological warfare, greed, and cowardice.

Is our problem that, like the Japanese emperor,  Gov. Nixon has been sleeping with the Sun Goddess?  Is that the reason that new college grads are facing a job seeker’s stone wall and that former shift supervisors are working part time at Home Depot and Hardee’s in an attempt to make the mortgage payments?

Or is it something more insidious, like, say, a thirty year trend of rising military spending, rising CEO pay, rising Wall Street bonuses, rising gap between the wealthiest and the rest of us, rising productivity, rising poverty rates among children, rising dropout rates?

An AP article points toward the latter explanation. Seems that a barely-worth-mentioning 1% of economic growth after the Great Recession has gone to wages and salaries. 88% of growth went to corporate profits. The proportion is 88 to one? It didn’t always used to be like that. The last three recessions illustrate the pattern of change. 1991-92 is an anomaly (that I’d like somebody to explain), but the trend is clear: corporations are getting richer and they ain’t concerned about the rest of us.

Percent of economic growth that went to:

Wages and Salaries                                           Corporate Profits

1981-82                                        

25%                                                            28%

1991-92        

50%                                                           none

2001    

15%                                                            53%

2008-11

1%                                                             88%

The trends above are national, but they are abetted at the state level by the course that the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) tells Republican state legislators to steer. And boy howdy, do they steer it ALEC’s way in Missouri: cut funds for schools, for example, and then complain about lazy teachers with tenure who do an ineffective job–all this in hopes of eventually privatizing school systems that the wealthy would run. And the excuse given for cutting school funding is that the state is broke.  

Of course it is. We haven’t changed the state’s top tax rate since the thirties. It’s $9,000. Which means that some poor sucker earning $8,999 is paying the same rate of tax to the state as the CEO of Express Scripts. Democratic leadership in this state moans about how broke the state is. Why not howl, instead, about a solution voters would love. By a margin of two to one, U.S. voters, in poll after poll, support raising taxes on incomes over 250 thou a year. Even 43% of Republicans approve the idea. Democrats should be baying at the moon. They need to find a way to present a united front and smack Missouri voters upside the head with the notion that if they were in the majority in the state house, they would work to see taxes raised on the wealthiest.

Let Claire run the Medicare ads; that’s a federal issue. But our state legislators have a winner on the tax issue if they would grab it.

Because in the end, those hateful trends I mentioned won’t change without lots more progressives in office, both at the federal and state level. Getting Gov. Nixon to kick the Sun Goddess out of bed isn’t going to cut it.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics issued its March 2011 national employment numbers report this morning:

Table A-15. Alternative measures of labor underutilization

U-3 Total unemployed, as a percent of the civilian labor force (official unemployment rate)

Seasonally adjusted

Mar. 2010 – 9.7%

Nov. 2010 – 9.8%

Dec. 2010 – 9.4%

Jan. 2011 – 9.0%

Feb. 2011 – 8.9%

Mar. 2011 – 8.8%

U-6 Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force

Seasonally adjusted

Mar. 2010 – 16.8%

Nov. 2010 – 17.0%

Dec. 2010 – 16.7%

Jan. 2011 – 16.1%

Feb. 2011 – 15.9%

Mar. 2011 – 15.7%

[emphasis added]

8.8% is a lot better, given dubya’s legacy, but it’s still too high.

A release from the White House:

The Employment Situation in March

Posted by Austan Goolsbee on April 01, 2011 at 09:43 AM EDT

Today’s employment report shows that private sector payrolls increased by 230,000 in March, marking 13 consecutive months of private employment growth. Private sector employers added 1.8 million jobs over that period, including more than half a million jobs in the last three months. The unemployment rate fell for the fourth straight month to 8.8 percent. The full percentage point drop in the unemployment rate over the past four months is the largest such decline since 1984, and, importantly, it has been driven primarily by increased employment, rather than people leaving the labor force.

As long as millions of people are looking for jobs, there is still considerable work to do to replace the jobs lost in the downturn. Nonetheless, the steep decline in the jobless rate and the solid employment growth in recent months are encouraging. The last two months of private job gains have been the strongest in five years. We are seeing signs that the initiatives put in place by this Administration – such as the payroll tax cut and business incentives for investment – are creating the conditions for sustained growth and job creation.   We will continue to work with Congress to find ways to reduce spending, so that we can live within our means and focus on the investments that are most likely to help grow our economy and create jobs – investments in education, infrastructure, and clean energy.

In addition to the increases last month, the estimates of private sector job growth for January (now +94,000) and February (now +240,000) were revised up significantly. Overall payroll employment rose by 216,000 in March. Payroll employment grew in almost every sector. Solid employment increases occurred in professional and business services (+78,000), education and health services (+45,000), leisure and hospitality (+37,000), wholesale and retail trade (+31,800), and manufacturing (+17,000). Local government experienced a decline of 15,000, and has shed jobs in 16 of the past 17 months.

The overall trajectory of the economy has improved dramatically over the past two years, but there will surely be bumps in the road ahead.  The monthly employment and unemployment numbers are volatile and employment estimates are subject to substantial revision.  Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report.

Austan Goolsbee is Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers

Who could have predicted? From a February 11, 2009 White House conference call with bloggers:

“…and frankly, it’s not rocket science…” (February 12, 2009)

Jared Bernstein: ….Uh, but the, the kind of quantitative metrics you suggested I also think are important. Um, the unemployment rate, uh, is expected in the absence of, uh, this, uh, uh, package to get up into something close to double digits, uh, um, by, uh, um, the, uh, probably, uh, late, uh, uh, later, uh, sometime a, I, I would guess, uh, around, um, late this year, uh, next year in the absence of, of our package. Um, I think, uh, the package should help to reduce the unemployment rate by about a couple of points. So, instead of being nine, nine and half, ten, ten and a half per cent, uh, the unemployment rate, uh, uh, um, may go, uh, oh a point, a point and a half higher than it is right now. It’s about seven and a half, so we could be looking at eight and a half, you know, maybe, maybe that neighborhood instead of, uh, maybe seven and a half by the end of, uh, two thousand and ten kind of back down to where we are now. Uh, if, uh, if the program is, is, successful. Now, uh, you have to be very careful when you give these quantitative metrics because, uh, they’re kind of, uh, uh, if things go as planned and obviously, uh, there’s lots that could happen between now and then. And no economist can, can, can know the future. That’s one of the reasons why our forecasts have large, um, guess, uh, confidence intervals, but large margins of error around them,

And so, uh, I think we should look for unemployment that, that is lower than it would be otherwise. Uh, um, we think we’re gon…to, as I said, create or save, uh, three, four million jobs. We’ll be tracking that closely….

[emphasis added]

What happened? The deficit scolds cut back on the stimulus. Because Wall Street doesn’t give a damn about unemployment?

From 2009:

Now what, Claire? (October 2, 2009)

Remember this, from February?:

Just saw Krugman’s comments on reduction in recov act. Question for him. Would no stimulus act be better than one thats 800 B instead of 900

Paul Krugman:

…What happened was a, a lack of conviction, a lack of, you know, if you’re gonna do something like this you’re gonna have a stimulus program you gotta go and do it…This is the kind of situation where you’re trying to build a bridge across an economic chasm. If you build half a bridge it doesn’t work. You have to do the real thing…

[….]

And to think, if millionaires hadn’t retained their Bush era tax windfall before the 2010 election because Democrats in Congress and the Administration always blink we’d probably have lower unemployment and a lower deficit to boot.

Now what?