Tell me again why we’re not doing something about this?

The unemployment rate rose from 9.8 to 10.2 percent in October, and nonfarm payroll employment continued to decline (-190,000), the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The largest job losses over the month were in construction, manufacturing, and retail trade.

Household Survey Data

In October, the number of unemployed persons increased by 558,000 to 15.7 million. The unemployment rate rose by 0.4 percentage point to 10.2 percent, the highest rate since April 1983. Since the start of the recession in December 2007, the number of unemployed persons has risen by 8.2 million, and the unemployment rate has grown by 5.3 percentage points. (See table A-1.)

Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men (10.7 percent) and whites (9.5 percent) rose in October. The jobless rates for adult women (8.1 percent), teenagers (27.6 percent), blacks (15.7 percent), andHispanics (13.1 percent) were little changed over the month. The unemployment rate for Asians was 7.5 percent, not seasonally adjusted. (See tables A-1, A-2, and A-3.)

Aside from the fact that if this administration does do something about this, they’ll have to explain why what they did back in the beginning of the year didn’t actually work. They probably don’t want to discuss the problem that Democratic legislators are more interested in passing cap-and-tax and health care rationing for their pet fringe groups than they are in fixing the economy. They definitely don’t want to talk about how a lot of this is due to moral cowardice on the part of the current ruling party…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

Unsurprising - at least, unsurprising to me - yet not good:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The unemployment rate rose to 9.8 percent in September as employers cut more jobs than expected, evidence that the longest recession since the 1930s is still inflicting widespread pain.

And here’s the really cheery news:

If laid-off workers who have settled for part-time work or have given up looking for new jobs are included, the unemployment rate rose to 17 percent, the highest on records dating from 1994.

See the raw numbers here. I’m starting to notice the little details of higher unemployment, mostly in retail situations. It can be summed up as “customer service is generally better, when you can track somebody down to give you some.” Couple that with the indicators of a sour economy (if you do your own food shopping, you’ve noticed the problems with the produce aisle in your local supermarket; if you don’t, go ask somebody who does) and I’m not quite as cheery this morning as I could be.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

With everyone focused on the health care debate, Democrats are hoping we’ll all forget about another of their many boondoggles thus far in the Obama Presidency; Cap and Trade (lovingly known as H.R. 2454 - “American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009″). This bill, like the Health Care bill(s) being bandied about just now on the Left, promises to deepen the deficit, increase taxes, eliminate jobs, and cost the taxpayers billions upon billions of dollars. Cap and Trade passed the House in late June by a slim margin (219-212), and (via Ed Morrissey over at Hot Air) is slated to be taken up in the Senate in September. The good news here is that passage is not YET a foregone conclusion.

As Erick pointed out a little while back, this bill is in trouble…in large part because the Democrats can’t seem to agree even amongst themselves. It’s also in trouble because, on the merits, it’s just a bad piece of legislation and people are starting to figure out why:

The hit to GDP is the real threat in this bill. The whole point of cap and trade is to hike the price of electricity and gas so that Americans will use less. These higher prices will show up not just in electricity bills or at the gas station but in every manufactured good, from food to cars. Consumers will cut back on spending, which in turn will cut back on production, which results in fewer jobs created or higher unemployment. Some companies will instead move their operations overseas, with the same result.

What is it about Democrats that make them choose to rule us by punishing us where it hurts us most in order to make us do what they think is “good for us”? We’re already 9 TRILLION dollars in the hole with 10 percent of us sitting this fiasco out, what MORE do they want from us?

Groups (similar to the Tea Parties and the “mobs”) are starting to form hoping they, too, can have their voices heard. Rallies are starting to be held across the country trying to get the message out about all the things wrong with this bill and its longer-term impact on America. As expected, however, counter-protesters (our fuzzy little friends, the global warming alarmists) are catching on that their brainchild might be in trouble, and are starting to fight back.

One can’t help but wonder how long it will take for someone ELSE to take abeating for exercising their free speech rights.

Read More →

That’s House Minority Leader John Boehner’s response to CoS Rahm Emanuel’s rather… well, sad… statement that the White House has turned the economy around:

Read More →

Hi, Billy Mays here, coming to you from beyond the grave for Jobs That Matter.

Near double-digit unemployment got you down? Out of work since that  temp job as a census-taking clown?

Don’t despair, you can work for *ObamaCare!

We need change like never before — on the economy, climate change and WAIT — there’s more!

Read More →

Anyone who remembers, say, his campaign pronouncement that a Kansas tornado had left “ten thousand dead” and “an entire town destroyed” (the 2007 storm actually killed twelve people) knows that President Barack Obama (D-IL) hasn’t been one to worry about playing fast and loose with a few facts or numbers.

However, his dogged refusal to deviate from his standard talking point of “150,000 jobs created or saved” by the $787,000,000,000.00 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (also known as the “stimulus package,” or, my personal favorite, “Porkulus”) is beginning to lend itself to more than a little head-scratching by observers.

A Claim Unchanged by Time

Mr. Obama and his administration have been making the claim for several weeks now. On May 27, “White House economic advisers” announced the “stimulus” had “created or saved 150,000 jobs” since its inception 100 days before — an average increase (or savings) of about 1,500 jobs a day. Twelve days later, on June 8, Vice President Joe Biden (D-DE) made the same proclamation on a conference call with reporters: the stimulus had “saved or created 150,000 [jobs]” to date.

Theoretically, there should have been about 18,000 more jobs than that, given the twelve day interval between the May 27 announcement and the June 8 call, but never mind that. Just for good measure, despite the fact economists and simple observers who had the virtue of being awake alike were throwing up their hands in disbelief that a presidential administration would actually make such a claim about something as obviously incalculable as a “saved” job, Biden added the assertion that there had been “no ‘reasonable’ challenges to the estimates.”

Last Wednesday, July 8 — a full 30 days after the Biden conference call, and 42 after the initial 100 day claim of “150,000 jobs created or saved,” Mr. Obama’s deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget announced the “stimulus” had — you guessed it! — “created or saved 150,000 jobs since its inception in February.”

Read More →

I’ve written before about the glowing coverage Barack Obama receives despite the consistently terrible economic news. Today provides yet another example:

Fewer than expected file for unemployment

The number of Americans filing initial unemployment claims fell sharply last week, while those filing ongoing claims rose to another all-time high, according to government data released Thursday.

There were 565,000 initial jobless claims filed in the week ended July 4, down 52,000 from a revised 617,000 the previous week, the Labor Department said.

It was the lowest number since January and was below the consensus estimate of 603,000 from economists surveyed by Briefing.com.

Once again, Barack Obama gets a favorable headline: rather than stressing the all-time high in ongoing claims, it emphasizes a surprising fall in new claims. Eventually they reveal one reason that new claims have fallen:

Initial claims typically spike in July as automakers idle certain manufacturing plants, and the Labor Department adjusts its data for such seasonal factors.

However, many plant closures occurred early this year, said Mark Vitner, an economist at Wacovia Economics Group.

On a non-seasonally adjusted basis, initial claims were 577,506.

“The improvement in first week of July was exaggerated by the timing of plant closures,” Vitner said. “This is something we’re going to be dealing with throughout the month.”

Thank goodness America’s auto companies have been failing! Without that, new unemployment claims would have been much worse!

Despite all the happy talk that there are signs that the economy is improving, or at least bottoming out, there is little hope that the unemployment rate will improve anytime soon.

Job losses accelerated last month to 467,000, “an unexpectedly large amount.”

The unemployment rate rose to 9.5%, the highest level since August 1983.

According to the Associated Press, unemployment is actually much worse:

If laid-off workers who have given up looking for new jobs or have settled for part-time work are included, the unemployment rate would have been 16.5 percent in June, the highest on records dating to 1994.

Even before the June unemployment numbers were announced, the Los Angeles Times reported many of the jobs are gone forever.

Also, instead of shrinking operations, companies have shut down whole business units or made sweeping structural changes: General Motors Corp. and Chrysler, for example, closed hundreds of dealerships. Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp. cut tens of thousands of positions.

It didn’t have to be like this. Obama’s $787-billion so-stimulus plan should have been more about creating jobs, rather than a vehicle to fund “every liberal, entitlement cause under the sun.”

As James Pethokoukis wrote, Obama’s stimulus boondoggle was a ruse. Some two-thirds of the Obama stimulus is not intended to be spent until after 2009. Obviously, immediate “stimulus” was not the primary intent of Obama’s stimulus. If it had been, the plan would have been front-loaded. The main goal of the Obama stimulus was to make a down payment on Obama’s health care, energy and education agenda.

Maybe now that even Obama admits unemployment will break 10 percent, the Obama stimulus ruse will be seen for the great deception it was.

From Gallup:

The sharp decline in Gallup’s Index of Investor Optimism in June — particularly the plunge in expectations for the economy — suggests that investors may be losing some of their hopes for an immediate improvement in the U.S. economy later this year. This is consistent with the leveling off of consumers’ mood over the past few weeks and the drop in the consumer sentiment index on Tuesday.

Gallup’s job-market and consumer spending measures suggest that the reality on Main Street has not improved substantially over the past couple of months. Perhaps the average investor and the American consumer see the fragile nature of the current U.S. economy more clearly than do those on Wall Street.

As Nouriel Roubini says:

Job report suggests that green shoots are yellow weeds turning into brown manure. Jobs & hours & wage losses are pushing down labor income

How do you like the ’stimulus’ so far?

George Bush would have killed for coverage like this. Considering the surprising strength of the economy in the wake of the September 11 attacks, he’d be posing for Mount Rushmore if the press had treated him the way they are treating Obama:

Job market shows some improvement

…Automatic Data Processing, a payroll-processing firm, said private-sector employers cut 473,000 jobs in June, a 2.5% improvement from the revised 485,000 drop in May.

The June job cut total was more than expected. Economists surveyed by Briefing.com had forecast a loss of 394,000 jobs last month.

However, the May tally was revised lower. ADP originally reported a loss of 532,000 private-sector jobs in May…

Read More →

Remember how having a bunch of brilliant grown-ups in the White House was going to restore our tattered relations with key allies? And how the ’stimulus’ bill would create millions of jobs here in the United States?

Instead, the bill has sparked a trade war with Canada - one that will get worse if it is not addressed. And while the Obama team can offer only guesses as to how many ’stimulus jobs’ fit on the head of a pin, we can already point to 600 Pennsylvania steelworkers who are losing their jobs as a direct result of the bill:

Canadian and American business leaders joined forces Thursday to warn of the growing threat to prosperity in both countries due to the so-called Buy American provisions in President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus package.

“You can see billions of dollars that are in jeopardy, and tied to those billions of dollars are jobs,” Myron Brilliant, senior vice-president of international affairs for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, told a news conference in Washington.

Read More →

With the federal deficit spiraling out of control, with unemployment approaching 10 percent, and with confidence in the Obama economic plan waning, it might be useful to go back and look at what team Obama promised if the porkulus passed:

Read More →

It was, nonetheless, an alarming thought to wake up to:  even if you accept the concept that the ’stimulus’ bill that Congress saddled on us is creating jobs -

And that’s subject to debate:

…we’re shifting any jobs generated away from useful ones, like manufacturing, and towards useless ones, like government.

Have a nice morning!

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

The House Republicans have put together some data your local mainstream media outlet probably will shy away from discussing.

Today, Barack Obama told the public, “In these last few months, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has saved or created nearly 100 — 150,000 jobs”?

But that’s just not true. 16,000 jobs have been lost every single day since Barry’s stimulus plan was passed.

At some point the media cannot ignore Barack Obama and the Democrats killing the American private sector economy while claiming to “save or create” American jobs.

And note to the Democrats: creating government paper pushers is not the same as creating or saving private sector jobs. That is the Democrat rebuttal — they created government jobs.

Only the Democrats think more bureaucrats will save America.

The White House is promising solid economic growth by the end of this year:

White House Sees 3.5% Growth by Year-End, Exceeding Forecasts

May 11 (Bloomberg) — The Obama administration projected that the U.S. economy will expand at a 3.5 percent annual rate by year-end, a rebound that would be almost twice as strong as private forecasters expect.

[snip]

As early as the end of this year, GDP may rise at a 3.5 percent annual rate, the same pace projected for all of next year, helped by a $787 billion stimulus package, the administration said in the report today. That’s more optimistic than the 1.8 percent fourth-quarter growth estimate in the monthly Blue Chip Economic Indicators survey released May 10.

Of course, this White House promised ‘only’ a $1.2 trillion dollar deficit this year; it’s now going to be $1.8 trillion, and probably rising. And it calculated an 8.1% unemployment rate for 2009 (last month’s was 8.9%, thanks largely to government seasonal work*). And then there’s this (via here):

Read More →