Conservative Musings

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Showing posts with label unemployment. Show all posts

Thursday, May 7, 2020

Just 5% More And We Tie Great Depression Unemployment Numbers. This Is Scary!

Tags: Coronavirus | jobless | claims | employment | virus

3.17 Million More Americans File for Jobless Benefits as Total Tops 33 Million

Thursday, 07 May 2020 08:33 AM

Millions more Americans sought unemployment benefits last week, suggesting layoffs broadened from consumer-facing industries to other segments of the economy and could remain elevated even as many parts of the country start to reopen.

The deepening economic crisis triggered by nationwide lockdowns to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus was underscored by other data on Thursday showing worker productivity dropped at its fastest pace in more than four years in the first quarter amid the largest drop in hours since 2009.

The reports support many economists' belief that the economic slump could persist for a while. The economy shrank in the first quarter at the steepest pace since the Great Recession of 2007-2009. Data on Wednesday showed private payrolls fell by a record 20.2 million in April, which set up the overall labor market for historic job losses.

Initial jobless claims for state unemployment benefits totaled a seasonally adjusted 3.169 million for the week ended May 2. Data for the prior week was revised to show 7,000 more applications received than previously reported, taking the tally for that period to 3.846 million. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 3.0 million claims for the latest week.

It was the fifth straight weekly decrease in applications since the record 6.867 million in the week ended March 28. Still, the latest numbers lifted to about 33.5 million the number of people who have filed claims for unemployment benefits since March 21, roughly 22.1% of the working-age population.

"The pace of new claims for unemployment is slowing, but remains at levels unimaginable just a few months ago," said Joel Naroff, chief economist at Naroff Economics in Holland, Pennsylvania. "Even with the economy slowly starting to reopen, the number of unemployed should continue to rise sharply as governments, as well as businesses that have tried but not succeeded at holding the line, are now laying off workers."

In another report on Thursday, the Labor Department said nonfarm productivity, which measures hourly output per worker, decreased at a 2.5% annualized rate in the first quarter. That was the largest decline since the fourth quarter of 2015 and followed a 1.2% pace of increase in the fourth quarter.

Hours worked tumbled at a 3.8% rate last quarter, the sharpest decline since the third quarter of 2009. Hours worked increased at a 1.2% rate in the fourth quarter.

U.S. stock indexes opened higher as investors focused on a surprise rise in Chinese exports and a surge in oil prices. The dollar was little changed against a basket of currencies. U.S. Treasury prices were trading higher.

EMPLOYMENT REPORT AWAITED

Thursday's weekly claims data will have no impact on the Labor Department's comprehensive employment report for April, which is scheduled to be released on Friday, as it falls outside the period during which the government surveyed establishments and households for its monthly report.

According to a Reuters survey of economists, nonfarm payrolls are forecast to have plunged by a historic 22 million in April, which would blow away the record dive of 800,000 seen during the 2007-2009 recession. Employment dropped by 701,000 jobs in March, ending a record streak of gains dating to September 2010.

The unemployment rate is seen jumping to 16% in April, which would shatter the post-World War Two record of 10.8% touched in November 1982. The jobless rate in March shot up 0.9 percentage point to 4.4%, the largest monthly change since January 1975.

April could, however, mark the trough in job losses as more small businesses access their portion of an almost $3 trillion fiscal package, which made provisions for them to get loans that could be partially forgiven if they were used for employee salaries. At least 30 states are partially reopening, which could see some of the unemployed going back to work.

The claims report also showed the number of people receiving benefits after an initial week of aid surged 4.636 million to a record 22.647 million in the week ended April 25.

The so-called continuing claims data is reported with a one-week lag and will be closely watched in the coming months to get a better sense of the depth of the labor market downturn.

Read Newsmax: Another 3.17 Million Filed for U.S. Jobless Benefits Last Week | Newsmax.com
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Tuesday, July 17, 2018

The More She Talks, The More She Proves She Is An Uninformed, Lightweight!

WATCH: Ocasio-Cortez Says Low Unemployment Is 'Part Of The Problem,' Makes False Claims

ByRYAN SAAVEDRA

July 16, 2018

Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said in a recent interview that the low U.S. unemployment rate is "a part of the problem" that she is looking to solve, then proceeded to make multiple false claims.

Ocasio-Cortez joined Margaret Hoover on PBS's "Firing Line" where she attacked Israel, calling them the occupiers of Palestine, before admitting that she had no idea what she was talking about despite having a degree in economics and international relations.

During the interview, Ocasio-Cortez also made troubling remarks about the U.S. economy after Hoover noted that the economy under the Trump administration is strong with an unemployment rate hovering around 4%.

"Well, I think, the numbers that you just talked about is part of the problem," Ocasio-Cortez replied. "Because we look at these figures and we say 'unemployment is low, everything is fine, right?'"

"Well, unemployment is low because everyone has two jobs," Ocasio-Cortez falsely stated. "Unemployment is low because people are working 60, 70, 80 hours a week and can barely feed their kids."

Ocasio-Cortez continued by saying, "Capitalism has not always existed in the world and will not always exist in the world," before falsely stating that America was not pro-capitalist at its inception.

Economic numbers released for June 2018 show that the number of people "who are currently working part-time jobs because their hours were cut back at work or because they couldn't find a full-time job has dropped by over one million since June 2016."

Also, the number of people on food stamps has fallen to an eight-year low as the Trump administration has cracked down on fraud and strengthened the economy.

WATCH:

Wednesday, June 6, 2018

The Downside (??) Of A Good Economy?

Friday, May 4, 2018

Yup Trump Has Done Nothing Except Lower Unemployment

Breaking: Unemployment Rate Falls to Lowest Since 2000

By Randy DeSoto
May 4, 2018 at 10:05am

The unemployment rate has fallen below 4 percent for the first time in 18 years.

The Department of Labor reported on Friday the unemployment rate is currently 3.9 percent, a figure last seen at the end of the Bill Clinton presidency in 2000.

Payrolls rose by 164,000 jobs in April, while average hourly earnings increased 0.1 percent from the previous month. Wages are up 2.6 percent from the same month last year, according to Bloomberg.

The unemployment rate for African-Americans also hit a new all-time low of 6.6 percent.

Meanwhile the rate for women dropped to 3.5 percent. For Hispanics, it held steady at 4.8 percent, tying a record low.

“Professional and business services created the most new jobs, with 54,000, while manufacturing and health care added 24,000 apiece,” CNBC reported.

“Mining saw 8,000 new jobs, bringing to 86,000 the total unemployment growth since October 2016 for a sector that President Donald Trump promised to target when he campaigned,” the news outlet added.

Do you think Trump should receive credit for the low unemployment rate?

The total number of unemployed people in the country edged down to 6.3 million.

The labor participation rate remained nearly unchanged at 62.8 percent, down 0.1 percent from the previous month.

Meanwhile, consumer confidence increased in April, staying near a 17-year-high hit earlier this year.

Additionally, small business owner confidence remained near an all-time high of 61 on the index during the month, down just slightly from the 62 rating achieved during the first quarter of this year.

Prior to leaving the White House and traveling to Texas, Trump touted the unemployment rate dropping below 4 percent.

“I thought the jobs report was very good. The big thing for me was cracking four, that hasn’t been done in a long time,” Trump said, according to Breitbart. “The stock market is doing, I guess it’s up 35 percent since the election.”

The unemployment rate was 4.8 percent in January 2017, when Trump became president.

Over 2 million new jobs have been created since he took office.

The Federal Reserve reported in February that the country is at or beyond full employment, given that approximately 4 percent of the workforce is always in transition.

What do you think?

Wednesday, January 31, 2018

Trump's Accomplishments In One Year!

President Donald Trump’s State of the Union Address, Jan 30, 2018. What’s not to like?

http://israel-commentary.org

By Jerome S. Kaufman

Astute Fox News Senior Analyst Brit Hume best summed up the Democrat response to the speech. “I don’t think the American people are going to like the attitude and body language of the Democrat leaders in the audience. “They all looked as if their dog had just died.” Bret Baier and Martha McCallum, the Fox team alongside for the speech coverage, cracked up.

What then was the Democrat problem? Simple. President Trump was just too good. He presented his unbelievable list of one year’s accomplishments. He put forward the American flag and his primary concern for the well-being of the United States of America First — not selfish, power seeking single minded partisan politics.

What was his one year list of accomplishments? In part they included:

2.4 million new jobs!
Rising wages in all segments of the economy,
Nation-wide unemployment at a 45 year low,
African American unemployment at the lowest level ever,
Hispanic unemployment also at the lowest level ever,
Small businesses gained 8 trillion in value.
The Stock Market gains are off the charts at all time highs,
Your retirement holdings, your 401K savings are greater than ever,

The Congress, thanks to the ceaseless nudging of President, passed a bill authorizing the biggest tax cuts and reforms in our history:

The Standard Deduction for individuals has been doubled

The first $45,000 of income is tax-free

The credit for each child supported has doubled

The tax bill for a family of four with an income of $75,000 has been halved

Take home pay has increased for everyone

The awful Individual Mandate of Obama Care forcing everyone to buy health insurance, whether they wanted to or not, has been eliminated.

Three million Americans have already received tax reductions

The taxes on businesses has been lowered from 35% one of the highest in the world to 21% making us once again competitive in world markets and virtually guaranteeing greater production, greater employment and higher wages.

Small businesses can now deduct from their taxes 20% of business income.

The big corporations are flocking back to this country from abroad, bringing back American dollars and creating new American jobs.

Apple is investing 3.5 billion more dollars in new operations and 20,000 new workers are to be hired

Exxon Mobile is bringing back 50 billion dollars to invest in US projects

Fiat Chrysler is investing one billion in a Warren, MI truck factory shifting work back from Mexico.

Toyota Motor Corp and Mazda Motor Corp announced they would build a new $1.6 billion joint venture auto plant.

US War Veterans, for the first time have other options for health care. They are no longer held hostage to the oft-proven inefficient operations of Veteran Hospitals

President Trump, with Senate approval, has appointed a top rated Supreme Court Judge, Neil Gorsuch, who is known for his faith and belief in the Constitution of the United States — not the whims of transient political popularity and correctness.

President Trump has appointed a record number of circuit court justices that are also sworn to uphold the Constitution of the US and actually believe and respect that oath.

President Trump became the first US president in the State of Israel’s 70 year old re-birth to recognize Jerusalem as the capitol of Israel. The audience’s response registered thunderous support and heart warming.

In the latest Fox News Poll, President Trump’s approval rating had risen to 45% and there is no question, after this home run of a speech, it will rise considerably more – as it should.

So, no wonder the Democrats sat upon their hands with wry, unhappy faces and left early.

Jerome S. Kaufman, Editor/Publisher
Israel Commentary

Thursday, July 13, 2017

Is The Government Continually Lying To Us?

The government’s official lies

Posted on July 12, 2017 by Paul Craig Roberts

The false reality constructed for Americans parallels perfectly the false reality constructed by Big Brother in George Orwells’ dystopian novel 1984.

Consider the constant morphing of “the Muslim threat” from al-Qaeda to the Taliban, to al-Nusra, to ISIS to ISIL, to Daesh with a jump to Russia. All of a sudden 16 years of Middle East wars against “terrorists” and “dictators” have become a matter of standing up to Russia, the country most threatened by Muslim terrorism, and the country most capable of wiping the United States and its vassal empire off of the face of the earth.

Domestically, Americans are assured that, thanks to the Federal Reserve’s policy of quantitative easing, that is, flooding the financial markets with newly printed money that has driven up the prices of stocks and bonds, America has enjoyed an economic recovery since June of 2009, which must be one of the longest recoveries in history despite the absence of growth in median real family incomes, despite the growth in real retail sales, despite the falling labor force participation rate, despite the lack of high value-added, high productivity, high wage jobs.

The “recovery” is more than a mystery. It is a miracle. It exists only on fake news paper.

According to CNN, an unreliable source for sure, Jennifer Tescher, president and CEO of the Center for Financial Services Innovation, reports that about half of Americans report that their living expenses are equal to or exceed their incomes. Among those aged 18 to 25 burdened by student loans, 54 percent say their debts are equal to or exceed their incomes. This means that half of the U.S. population has ZERO discretionary income. So what is driving the recovery?

Nothing. For half or more of the U.S. population there is no discretionary income there with which to drive the economy.

The older part of the population has no discretionary income either. For a decade there has been essentially zero interest on the savings of the elderly, and if you believe John Williams of shadowstats.com, which I do, the real interest rates have been zero and even negative as inflation is measured in a way designed to prevent Social Security cost of living adjustments.

In other words, the American economy has been living on the shrinkage of the savings and living standards of its population.

Last Friday’s employment report is just another lie from the government. The report says that the unemployment rate is 4.4 percent and that June employment increased by 222,000 jobs. A rosy picture. But as I have just demonstrated, there are no fundamentals to support it. It is just another U.S. government lie like Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, Assad’s use of chemical weapons against his own people, Russian invasion of Ukraine, and so forth and so on.

The rosy unemployment picture is totally contrived. The unemployment rate is 4.4 percent because discouraged workers who have not searched for a job in the past four weeks are not counted as unemployed.

The BLS has a second measure of unemployment, known as U6, which is seldom reported by the presstitute financial media. According to this official measure the US unemployment rate is about double the reported rate.

Why? the U6 rate counts discouraged workers who have been discouraged for less than one year.

John Williams counts the long term discouraged workers (discouraged for more than one year) who formerly (before “reforms”) were counted officially. When the long term discouraged are counted, the U.S. unemployment rate is in the 22-23 percent range. This is borne out by the clear fact that the labor force participation rate has been falling throughout the alleged “recovery.” Normally, labor force participation rates rise during economic recoveries.

It is very easy for the government to report a low jobless rate when the government studiously avoids counting the unemployed.

It is an extraordinary thing that although the U.S. government itself reports that if even a small part of discouraged workers are counted as unemployed the unemployment rate is 8.6 percent, the presstitute financial media, a collection of professional liars, still reports, in the face of the government’s admission, that the unemployment rate as 4.4 percent.

Now, let’s do what I have done month after month year after year. Let’s look at the jobs that the BLS alleges are being created. Remember, most of these alleged jobs are the product of the birth/death model that adds by assumption alone about 100,000 jobs per month. In other words, these jobs come out of a model, not from reality.

Where are these reported jobs? They are where they always are in lowly paid domestic services. Health care and social assistance, about half of which is “ambulatory health care services,” provided 59,000 jobs. Leisure and hospitality provided 36,000 jobs of which 29,300 consist of waitresses and bartenders. Local government rose by 35,000. Manufacturing, once the backbone of the U.S. economy, provided a measly 1,000 jobs.

As I have emphasized for a decade or two, the U.S. is devolving into a third world workforce where the only employment available is in lowly paid domestic service jobs that cannot be offshored and that do not pay enough to provide an independent existence. This is why 50 percent of 25-year-olds live at home with their parents and why there are more Americans aged 24-34 living with parents than living independently.

This is not the economic profile of a “superpower” that the idiot neoconservatives claim the U.S. to be. The American economy that offshoring corporations and financialization have created is incapable of supporting the enormous U.S. debt burden. It is only a matter of time and circumstance.

I doubt that the United States can continue in the ranks of a first world economy. Americans have sat there sucking their thumbs while their “leaders” destroyed them.