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 Bureau of Labor Statistics monthly jobs report was issued today:

THE EMPLOYMENT SITUATION — JUNE 2014

Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 288,000 in June, and the unemployment rate declined to 6.1 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Job gains were widespread, led by employment growth in professional and business

services, retail trade, food services and drinking places, and health care….

From Jared Bernstein:

Jobs Report, First Impressions: A Strong June for the Job Market

July 3rd, 2014 at 9:16 am

Payrolls were up 288,000 and the unemployment rate ticked down to a near six-year low of 6.1% last month, according to today’s employment report from the BLS (a rare Thursday edition due to the holiday weekend).  It’s an unquestionably strong report, with industries across the economy posting job gains.  Adding to the positive news, job growth estimates for the prior two reports were revised up by 29,000, implying an underlying average growth pace of 272,000 for payrolls in the second quarter of the year.

Unlike some prior months when the jobless rate came down, June’s unemployment rate fell for the “right reasons:” not more people leaving the labor force, but more people getting jobs….

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

We’re not holding our breath.

Previously:

Rep. Vicky Hartzler (r): “Seriously? You expect me to actually read the footnotes in the report?” (February 4, 2014)

Rep. Vicky Hartzler (r): doubling down (February 5, 2014)

The recently enacted federal budget that everybody is regarding with relief but no hosannas failed to extend federal jobless benefits. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, about 5 million people currently  receivng these benfits stand to lose them if they are not extended. In Missouri, where one in every six people already struggle with hunger, 84,500 individuals will lose this vital support.

National unemployment currently hovers at around 7%. Lots of jobs were lost in the Bush recession; lots of them will never come back. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, for every job opening there are three unemployed individuals. And these are the official numbers; if you count the people who aren’t actively looking for jobs, the number is much higher, by some estimates for every job opening there more than six jobless.

If you listen to Republican politicians, however, you will come away with the impression that doing away with unemployment benefits is the road to full employment.  According to far too many in this party of rabid extremists, it is the meager unemployment benefits on offer, acting as a “disincentive” to the unemployed, that are responsible for our high unemployment figures. This line of reasoning was expressed most pungently by those whom Greg Sargent dubbed the “Let Them Eat Want Ads Caucus” when the issue of extending benefits first came up in 2010, but it remains a favorite in the ongoing Republican War on the Poor, surfacing most recently in Rand Paul’s self-righteous declaration that unemployment benefits are doing a great disservice to those who can’t find work since it permits them to wait around until benefits expire before taking honest work, perhaps unfitting them to ever work again.

However, much like the claim of the parent who wants his misbehaving child to believe that punishment will “hurt me more than you,” it just isn’t so – as recent studies on work incentives make clear (see, for example, here, here and here). I’m not saying that you won’t be able to pull up an example of some poor sod whose expectations are so low that bare bones unemployment checks can compete with any paycheck he or she could hope to earn; I’m simply saying that analysis of research results shows that even in countries with generous benefits, such individuals are the exceptions and not the rule. Even many economists who buy into the disincentive theory are aware that the argument does not apply to today’s labor market. As the conservative National Review‘s Reihan Salam writes:

If you have something like five job seekers for every job listing, like we do today, you don’t need to worry about this very much. Let’s say that half of unemployed workers are eligible for UI, and half of those prefer to draw UI rather than return to work. You’re still left with several interested job seekers for every job listing, and so UI benefits should not have a big effect on unemployment rates.

The GOP disincentives doctrine, though, isn’t just wrong; it’s far more sinister. The absence of economic safety net features such as unemployment benefits combined with high levels of competition for jobs leaves those workers who are lucky enough to get a job powerless. They are unable to exert any influence over the conditions of their employment.There’s a reason that people flock to factories in third world countries where pay is barely sufficient to maintain life and working conditions are often lethal; it’s because they don’t have any choice. So is it any surprise that the very politicians who are also busy doing all that they can to weaken unions – the main mechanism for worker’s rights – also want to make sure that when it comes to a choice between the sweat shop or the boneyard, folks have no alternatives?

The conservative response to this concern is the old beggars can’t be choosers gambit; should people expect to have a choice if they’re living off the public dime? The answer, in short, is yes. We’re all the public and it’s our dime as much as anyone else’s. We don’t want to be like China or Indonesia, or, God forbid, Pakistan; we want jobs, yes, but good, well-paying jobs and a rational allocation of our human capital.

Nor do we need to worry if some of the unemployed hold out awhile, waiting for more suitable jobs. We, and the economy as a whole, are better off when people have the flexibility to secure jobs that use their skills appropriately. As the Editorial Board of the Los Angeles Times notes, when enough people “give up their skills, training and experience to take a job flipping burgers or operating a cash register just because those are the only ones available” it will “waste a lot of investment in human capital.”

On the one hand, we can go all in for the cheap and easy Republican jobs plan which depends on desperate people, ripe for exploitation by a monied elite – and which requires, paradoxically, keeping unemployment high. On the other, we can make the effort to sustain our citizens in such a way that prosperity is shared and we all benefit from economic growth. It’s a little harder, but I believe that it’s what leaders like John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan envisioned when they spoke about the “shining city on a hill.” As the Political Animal‘s Kathlees Geier puts it:

… it is well within the power of one of the richest societies the world has ever known to ensure that each one of its citizens has access to the resources she needs to live a decent life. And no, wingnuts, doing so will not undermine the moral character of poor people – though it might cast a harsh spotlight on your own.

(Cross posted to Daily Kos with a slight change in the 2nd sentence.)

It’s now a part of commonplace wisdom that globalization and economic slumps in the U.S. have created a buyers’ market when it comes to labor, and that the folks selling their only asset, their time and effort, are at a new disadvantage that is eroding the hard-won successes the labor movement enjoyed in first half of the 20th century. Jobs now regularly move to areas of the world where impoverished and often politically powerless folks cannot afford to make demands – and the power of our own citizens to demand equitable treatment is correspondingly diminished.

We have a national version of the same game going on today, where corporations pit cities, states and regions against each other in bidding wars. The prize is jobs – which may or may not materialize, and which are often yanked away a few years later when a new round of bidding is engendered. The losers are usually the taxpayers who subsidize the enticements that are offered and labor, which is either cajoled or forced to play the part of sacrificial lamb.

This situation is now being played out in Missouri which is desperately trying to lure a new Boeing factory that would most likely bring with it a boatload of jobs. Governor Jay Nixon, who somehow had the internal wherewithal to hold fast against stupid tax cuts earlier this year, is nevertheless in a tizzy to let Boeing walk all over any progressive aspirations he may have fostered – and he is aided and abetted by a legislature where almost all except for a few on the left and right are willing to abandon principle. And we can’t really blame them – the playing board has been tilted to such an extent that this is now the way the game has to be played; until we can change the rules, the Boeings of the world can and will run roughshod over taxpayers and workers.

The Boeing demands, though, are extreme even in this era of compulsive corporate welfare. Notable in the Boeing wish list is the demand that the locale they chose provide the site and facilities at “no cost, or very low cost” and pick up the tab for “infrastructure improvements.” As Matthew Iglesias observes:

That’s a little nutty. If your strategy for attracting the construction of an airplane factory to your town includes footing the entire bill for an airplane factory, then you might as well just launch an airplane manufacturing company. You can read the whole list here. They are ideally looking for a highly skilled yet low-wage workforce at a location with a dedicated railroad spur and a seaport. Plus low taxes!

This situation suggests the following to me:

1. A corporate buyer’s market is not good for the large majority of Americans.

2. Rightwing efforts to enact right-to-work laws, to lower or eliminate corporate taxes, weaken regulations, etc. are intended to create just such a market.

3. This is a problem that progressives have to approach systematically at the federal level. Ameliorating this market situation has to be a major progressive goal that needs to be dealt with in a strategic fashion.

4. Meanwhile, we have to hold the line in the fight against the highly organized network of corporate influence peddlers such as ALEC and its Missouri affiliate, the Show-Me-Institute – and accept the fact that until we have dealt with the issues above, we will loose as often as we win.

5. “Opportunities” like that offered by Boeing will continue to present themselves and we will continue to weaken our social and labor infrastructure until we have dealt with the larger issues.

Years ago I was part of the administration in a non-profit on the West Coast. Our salaries were higher than elsewhere because the cost of living in the San Francisco Bay Area where we were located was also higher. Frequently, staff from one of the East Coast Ivy League schools would apply for jobs in our organization with no intention of accepting. The goal was to get a job offer which they could then take back to their own organization as fuel in salary negotiations, a surefire ploy since their school had an articulated policy of bidding to keep high-performing employees. To say that this left a bad taste in our mouth was an understatement – we were out the time and expense of interviewing candidates in name only. Since we were capable of learning from experience, we soon stopped selecting individuals from this school for interviews. The issue of corporate extortion of the Boeing variety is far more complex, but what this past experience suggests to me is that there are solutions to such problems, although they may be far from perfect. We can learn from experience, and we can develop  strategies for coping.

It is unlikely that Boeing will actually locate in Missouri – we do have some remnants of a labor movement, some few of our legislators realize that they’re playing a chumps’ game, and, most significantly, we don’t have the seaport that figures on Boings list of secondary preferences. Nevertheless, Missouri’s political class needs to learn from this experience and come up with a real job-creation strategy for Missouri that doesn’t involve allowing thuggish corporations to work over Missourians.

*Last sentence edited post-publication. Point no. 2 also edited for clairity.  

The Keystone Pipeline would cross the central United States carrying environmentally “dirty” tar sands oil to refineries on the Gulf. Environmentalists oppose it on numerous grounds. Those who support it it usually do so on the grounds that it would create jobs in the U.S. and would lessen our energy dependence on the Middle East. Both claims have been convincingly disputed. The jobs claim, however, has been a constant talking point among Missouri’s Republican delegation to Washington D.C.:

I wrote last week that Rep. Ann Wagner (R-4) was getting all worked up that the president had had the gall to call Republicans out on the topic of the economy while delaying approval of the Keystone XL pipeline.

Right now, President Obama can approve the Keystone XL pipeline and create tens of thousands of good-paying jobs while ushering in a new era of energy independence.

GOP Senator Roy Blunt also thinks Keystone XL is a great idea according to a press release on his Website:

Blunt cosponsored bipartisan legislation – which was introduced by U.S. Senator John Hoeven (N.D.) and is cosponsored by 44 Senators – to authorize the construction and operation of the Keystone XL Pipeline. The Keystone XL Pipeline would create an estimated 20,000 jobs.

Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-3) claims that if the President endorses the pipeline, “the end result will be the creation of 20,000 jobs and the reduction of our dependence on foreign oil.”

Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-4) also likes that 20,000 number, claiming on her Website, that “TransCanada, the builder of the pipeline, plans to spend  $7 billion in the U.S. and create 20,000 jobs.”

Ever the team player, Rep. Billy Long (R-7) goes along with the idea that it’s all about jobs, claiming that “the Keystone pipeline is a privately funded jobs project.” Imagine! I bet TransCanada thinks it’s significantly more that a “jobs project” when it comes to their bottom line.

On the other hand we have President Obama who recently indicated the criteria he would use to judge whether or not to okay the pipeline project. In his statement, he discounted the jobs argument that has become an article of faith among his Republican detractors, who were moved to near hysterical levels of invective when he delayed his decision on the pipeline last year. Instead, the President observed that:

“Republicans have said that this would be a big jobs generator,” Obama told the Times. “There is no evidence that that’s true. The most realistic estimates are this might create maybe 2,000 jobs during the construction of the pipeline, which might take a year or two, and then after that we’re talking about somewhere between 50 and 100 jobs in an economy of 150 million working people.”

On one side: right-wing, free-market ideologues, many of whom are in hock to the energy industries that fund their campaign with big donations. On the other side: a famously cautious, centrist politician with nothing to gain from Big Oil who has taken the time to review all the arguments – and who has no ideologically implanted hostility to environmentalism baked into his genetic makeup.

The real indication that something is amiss with the GOP job estimates, however, is a fact that our pols ought to be aware of. The company that wants to build the pipeline, TransCanada itself, has been backing off the earlier estimates of large numbers of jobs:

In January of 2010, Trans-Canada CEO Russell Girling claimed that the project would produce 13,000 construction jobs.  In April of 2011 the number grew to 20,000, which the Canadian Ambassador reiterated in August 2011.  In January 2012 the number was revised back down to 13,000 and this past April the company revised that number even lower, to 9,000 construction jobs.

Nine thousand jobs are still more than the estimates prepared by the State Department and those offered in another study done by Cornell University, but it’s getting closer and closer to the ball park in which opponents of the pipeline have been playing. This fact alone suggests that our Republicans should be worried that they’re promising lots more than TransCanada can deliver.

ADDENDA:  TransCanada is sending mixed messages, apparently backtracking again to the 20,000 jobs figure – at least for public consumption – and claiming disingenuously that “there is no reason for us to overinflate our numbers, we have to answer to our board, we have to answer to our shareholders.”  The 9,000 number comes as noted above from the TransCanada CEO, Russell Girling in April of this year; the reiteration of the 20,000 number comes from a company “spokesperson,” one James Miller apropos the “political” situation that he posits as the rationale behind the President’s comments. Draw your own conclusions.  

Two days ago via Twitter:

Rep. Vicky Hartzler ‏@RepHartzler

#Sequestration would not only put Americans out of their #jobs, but it threatens our #NationalSecurity: [….] 10:48 AM – 13 Feb 13

Apparently, this is now the only authorized form of corporate welfare in the republican economic policy pantheon.

From 2011:

Stutzman and Job Creators Caucus Propose Jobs & Growth Agenda

Washington, D.C. – Congressman Marlin Stutzman (IN-03) and three freshman members of the Job Creators Caucus today participated in the unveiling of the House Republican’s Plan for America’s Job Creators with Speaker Boehner, Leader Cantor and the entire GOP Leadership team.

“Government doesn’t create jobs,” stated Stutzman “Americans create jobs.  I appreciate the philosophy that our leadership has shown here, that we need to get government out of the way.”

[….]

Links to remarks from Speaker Boehner, and caucus members Rep. Ribble, Rep. Rigell, and Rep. Hartzler.

The Congressional Job Creators Caucus is made up entirely of freshman small business owners, and focuses on practical, legislative solutions that promote growth, expand our economy and create jobs. Current members of the caucus include: Rick Berg (R-SD), Diane Black (R-TN), Rick Crawford (R-AR), Robert Dold (R-IL), Stephen Fincher (R-TN), Bill Flores (R-TX), Bob Gibbs (R-OH), Richard Hanna (R-NY), Vicky Hartzler (R-MO), Mike Kelly (R-PA), Billy Long (R-MO), Reid Ribble (R-WI), Scott Rigell (R-VA), Bobby Schilling (R-IL), Steve Southerland (R-FL), and Marlin Stutzman (R-IN).

[….]

[emphasis added]

But, but, government doesn’t create jobs, right? Wait a minute, if government spending doesn’t create jobs, how would government spending cuts lose jobs? Just asking.

Before the last election:

Rep. Vicky Hartzler (r) and Rep. Joe Wilson (r) in Warrensburg on defense sequestration (September 18, 2012)

[…]

Representative Vicky Hartzler (r) (left) and Representative Joe Wilson (r) (right).

[….]

Rep. Vicky Hartzler ‏@RepHartzler

#sequestration slated to raise unemployment by another percent. #MO would lose over 33k jobs. 4:45 PM – 18 Sep 12

Who knew that the defense budget was a stimulus plan for local economies?

[….]

Ah, yes, consistent cognitive dissonance.

Outlaw Economics 2.0 lecture by William K. Black at the Jobs Now – Community Teach-In at UMKC.

Video by Jerry Schmidt

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.

During the Democratic convention President Obama noted that one of the ways that we need to invest in our future – while creating jobs in the process – would be to address our aging infrastructure. I think that he even mentioned bridges which ought to be a big deal for Missourians since we have hundreds of bridges that are disasters waiting to happen.

I invite you to take a look at this interactive map at SaveOurBridges.com. The little tags that spring up when you run the cursor over the map represent bridges that are both “structurally deficient” and “fracture critical.” To give you an idea of what this means, the I-35W Bridge in Minneapolis that collapsed a few years ago, killing 13 and injuring 145 people, had been determined to be structurally deficient and fracture critical. When you look at the map, you will notice that Missouri is almost obscured by the number of symbols indicating bridges in a similar state. There are so many deficient bridges that you have to keep zooming in closer and closer in order to make out specific problem bridges.  

Most of these decaying bridges carry fewer than 24,000 cars a day, but the traffic on two bridges in the St. Louis area and one in Kansas City average between 25,000 and 75,000 cars daily. I don’t know about you, but this sort of statistic makes me very nervous. According to Forbes

The sad state of America’s bridges is likely to make an already challenging fiscal future still more so.  It will cost an estimated $70.9 billion to address the current backlog of deficient bridges, according to FHWA’s 2009 statistics.  This estimate may prove wildly conservative.

While the size of this investment may seem massive, the political consequences of delay seems likely to be so substantial that one would suspect the Uncle Sam to pony up whatever funds were necessary.  Surprisingly, this does not appear to be happening at anywhere near the scale needed to avoid more catastrophes like the one that took place in Minnesota.

Unlike William Pentland, the Forbes contributor whom I quote above, I am not surprised at all by government inaction. Certainly since the cooperation adverse Tea Party Republicans who elbowed their way into the congress in 2010 have been banging the deficit-über-alles, our-way-or-the-highway drum, it seems as unlikely that we will address our infrastructure problems as it is that we will effectively deal with our employment problems – even though renewing and maintaining our aging bridges would go a long way toward meeting both needs.  

This is not to say that we won’t get some new bridges, although we may have to wait until there are a few more horrendous events like the Minneapolis bridge collapse. However, given the GOP reluctance to commit to using government to build and maintain infrastructure, it may be private investors who take up the slack – which will probably be just fine with the original crony capitalists. Get ready to say hello to toll bridges since politicians, both Democrats and Republicans, seem to lack either the clout or, often, the intestinal fortitude to take on the anti-tax, deficit cutting claque in order do the right thing. So it looks like we will end up paying over and over for the right to get from one place to another. Time Magazine‘s Barbara Kiviat summarizes some of the arguments against turning our national infrastructure over to private interests:

… Tolls often skyrocket under private owners, though with the blessing of elected officials, who avoid the political costs of raising tolls or taxes themselves. That’s how privatized roads deliver double-digit returns for investors and often lead to upgrades like electronic tolling. But there are other devils lurking in the details, like noncompete clauses that may prevent transportation agencies from building new roads, or the inability to use roads for economic development by, say, adding a new exit to attract businesses. Some officials get queasy about locking themselves into long leases; Colorado officials already regret offering a 99-year lease for the Northwest Parkway. …

It is likely that, no matter what, we will see a few more private-public partnerships to build new bridges in the future. We don’t need to totally surrender our national infrastructure to the big-money boys, however; there is another way.  The President’s jobs bill, The American Jobs Act (pdf), allocates $27 billion for transportation infrastructure programs, including bridge and highway repair.

We’d get new jobs and new bridges. What’s not to like? All we’ve got to do is say no to Romney/Ryan and vote the rest of the GOP bums out. And guess what? If we’re finally able to get the level of public infrastructure spending that we need to boost the economy, we’ll speed up the recovery overall, increase tax revenues and we will finally be in a real position to deal with deficit reduction in a sane, reality-cognizant fashion.