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Unemployment still at 10%. [pause] Yipe.

By: Moe Lane (Diary)  |  January 8th, 2010 at 09:32 AM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

I was hoping for a drop down into single digits, even if it was a high one.  But hope is not a plan, as the current ruling party seems determined to prove.  Short version: we lost 85K jobs last month – they were expecting a gain – and the number is only holding still because a lot of people gave up looking for work.  If you count that number, we’re at 17.3% and that’s up from 17.2% in November.  The report then goes into a lot of detail to avoid coming out and saying that the economy’s currently in neutral, we’re on a slight downward slope, and the administration’s turned on the windshield wipers and called it setting the parking brake.

And, oh, yes: they’ve straightened the wheels, because the previous drivers all braced them against the curb.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

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  • malbis

    If you go back to the old way of computing it–pre 1994–the real unemployment rate is over 20%!

    I’ve got a diary up about it with a chart showing the differences. Even the U6 rate doesn’t include “discouraged workers” no longer looking for a job who lost their job over 12 months ago–and that is a huge number of people.

    The “real” unemployment rate, for a variety of reasons, would have to go up to about 33-34% to equal the misery of the nearly 25% unemployment rate at the depths of the First Great Depression, but with Obama, Pelosi and Reid in charge I’m afraid we may get there.

    From the 1940 feature film Ghost Breakers, starring the late, great, Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard:

    Scientist: “It?s worse than horrible, because a Zombie has no will of his own. You see them some times, walking around blindly with dead eyes, following orders, not knowing what they do, not caring.”

    Bob Hope: “You mean, like Democrats?”

  • Vladimir
  • AngryMatt

    We all know the stimulus package was a huge bust and a massive waste of money. But, I say this to our party leadership: let’s not be like the Dems were years ago and “root” for a bad economy. Let’s properly rip the left for burning $800 billion and accomplishing nothing and then offer some real ideas and real leadership to get us back on track.

    It has gotten to the point where the people are sick of everyone, every freaking politician. Republican, Democrat, they don’t care. They just want to see someone with a common sense and serious approach to governance. Our party’s official apparatus ripping the Dems further makes little sense because people are already very turned off to the message from anyone in Washington.

    The GOP heads would be wise to take lessons from McDonnell and Christie and be very serious from here on out. The flowery rhetoric is getting Obama nowhere and the populace is outraged over continual dithering over a horrible healthcare bill. GOP leadership should call on the president to pivot NOW, to leave healthcare for later (knowing full well it means death to that bill, which is a nice plus) and offer serious plans for turning the economy around that isn’t just “hey let’s cut taxes.”

    Be specific. Offer up the idea of a payroll tax holiday for consumers and business alike. Get concrete plans out there of cutting gov’t workforce and bureaucracy but leaving the “safety net” intact, for now, to get spending under control and strengthen the dollar. Just saying “hey, where are the jobs Obama?” is not going to cut it. The people want serious leadership and serious governance to deal with a very serious issue that is clearly not getting better on its own. Let’s give it to them… if we have someone that can!

  • http://dezignworx-ae.com tsquare

    The recession is over. Obama said so.

    But don’t worry, he has top people working on this right now. Before the end of the day the President will be able to announce that this IS all George Bush’s fault.

  • izoneguy

    I heard that the average paycheck lost between $2 – $4 dollars per week. Small change until you realize there are what – 80-100 Million paychecks per week? So the feds are getting about a One Trillion dollar per month interest free loan?

    Just wait until the feds start holding back IRS refunds – like California did…. *hit – meet fan.

  • DefendUSA

    As one who gave up looking.

  • dwander

    I agree, we can’t be wishing for things to get worse. We need our leaders to come up with reasonable solutions and then implement.

    Hold people accountable whether right or wrong. Of course that requires some judgment…

  • bk

    Non-farm employment “edged” down by 85,000 jobs. So if you’re one of the 85K people who got laid off, don’t complain about it since it was such a slight drop. I wonder if it were in the other direction they’d say it “jumped” by 85K jobs.

    It also seems scary that there were huge drops in construction and manufacturing employment. How many billions if not trillions spent last year were SUPPOSED to drive up these job numbers? I don’t think with 10% plus employment that people are going to want to hear Obama saying “it would have been even worse if not for my magic touch”.

  • acat

    Those green shoots? Withered.

    No businesses, especially small ones, are going to add jobs until they have a pretty good idea of what kind of business landscape they’re going to be operating in.

    Right now, there’s too much uncertainty, too many unknowns, most of them driven by the Dems in Congress. (what do health care costs look like in 2010? what about costs for raw materials under cap&trade? will the unions come knocking under card-check? …)

    Until the Dems are fitted with a barbed wire choke collar, don’t look for things to get better.

    Mew

  • PoliPundita

    I’m no conspiracy theorist, but I can’t understand how anyone with even a smidgen of economic education–or anyone who lived through Carter and Reagan, for that matter–could possibly still believe in Keynesian theory. Are they so wed to their utopian vision that they are blind to reality? I hate to think that this is their way of achieving that vision–keep ‘em barefoot and unemployed and they’ll beg for the gummint to protect ‘em.

  • smitty

    Dear leader said that he had fixed this just last month when the rate dropped. Granted I still don’t have a job (in my SEVENTH month of looking) but hey he won so he’s smarter right?

  • nateleyswhore

    Obama and the Dems are not inspiring CONFIDENCE, which is a huge unmeasurable to a strong economy. They are essentially telling us that the American Way sucks, when most people know no other way. There is a real disconnect because their way of thinking required years of seclusion on ivy-clad campuses that may as well be Mars to most regular people. To say that Obama is out of touch is a massive understatement. Hell, he never had a real job. He lives in a theoretical world, as do most of his appointees. Their “revolution” is part audacity, part ignorance, and will ultimately not work, of course. The only real worry is how much damage can they do before the voters take the teeth out of the Dem congress in November.

  • Third Street

    There are a whole, whole, whole, whole lot of people amongst today’s electorate who weren’t alive or weren’t old enough to remember the extraordinary economic pain and geopolitical humiliation inflicted by the Carter years, or the revelation that the Reagan presidency was in Peanut Boy’s aftermath. That’s why Obama commanded such an extraordinary volume and percentage of the youth vote: it’s easy to disregard reality when one does not know history and has never known hard times.

  • acat

    (n/t)

  • acat

    Kids aren’t learning how to think critically, how to analyze trends, and they’re certainly not learning the truth about Dems in the white house during bad economic times. (depression, recession, call it what you like – when times are bad you don’t want a Dem in charge…)

    Mew

  • MSU_Charles

    As an academic and financial economist, I can tell you that these policies are the result of academic arrogance. The prevailing theory on the left side of economics is that the reason the 1st “New Deal” didn’t work was that it wasn’t large enough monetarily speaking. However, that theory is now shot to hell since the roughly 3 trillion they have spent in the last year and a half has not worked either. So now they are forced to either admit they were wrong or keep promoting failed Keynesian theory. Academics are the worst professionals about admitting when they are wrong, so they are going to go down with the theoretical ship.

    Just my opinion.

  • Ausonius

    to me and my fellow teenaged debaters!

    I recall pointing out how the response from Dems, when their economic give-aways did not work, and things became worse, and bad unintended consequences were seen as a result of their policies, was always that more of their give-away policies were needed!!!

    Nothing has changed.

    And yes, Social Studies/History teaching is in general fairly awful, and because it is dominated by Leftists, propagandizing American youth is par for the course. If it is a high-school course, and the teacher is not an overt Leftist, too often a coach is in charge, who has no to little competence or interest in bringing his students to a critical awakening.

  • Charles Cianfrocca

    the next Republican president will *lower* taxes on business, which has never failed to create jobs, rather than raise them, which has never failed to kill them.

    Nobody will be able to argue with the results (but the Dems and the press still will, of course…)

  • Charles Cianfrocca

    My check today is 4 bucks less than last week. What happened?

  • acat

    Really hoping the dead-tree mostly-scumsucking-media falls over dead soon…

    Mew

  • aesthete

    “The stimulus wasn’t big enough” for Obama’s stimulus, so I guess self-delusion isn’t a completely lost art among liberals (as if it ever was).

  • Repair_Man_Jack

    Krugman truly is the master of the unfalsifiability fallacy.

  • http://impudent.blognation.us/blog kyle8

    between the bad real estate debt still on the books, the soon to come runaway inflation, and the end of the Bush tax cuts our economy will continue to tank. There is no wish fulfillment involved. It will happen.

    And we can offer a viable alternative only if we use sound judgement. Simply cutting taxes won’t make much difference this time. The debt is entirely too large, we must actually cut the government as well as taxes. There won’t be any easy decisions anymore.

  • Ausonius

    Larry: I use my elephant repellent every day.
    Harry: What? I don’t see any elephants around here!
    Larry: See how well it works?!

    In the Dems’ case they claim they’re using elephant attractant, and the only reason the elephants have not yet appeared is that they have not used enough of it.

    So the only reason we still have 10% unemployment after spending nearly a trillion dollars to employ them is that somehow a trillion just was not enough!

  • seandparnell

    Irrelevant. The only important number is how many jobs were saved or created by the stimulus in December.

    And before anyone freaks out – that’s a JOKE.

  • PoliPundita

    …right to the polls. With any luck, we’ll kick out every Dem and RINO we can.

  • nessa

    The current GOP is symbolized by an elephant, i guess the Mammoth fits me fine. A bit more primitive, more aggressive, never domesticated. The image of a mammoth frozen in a block of thawing ice fits the current conservative re-awakening as well. Now let me see if i can figure out how to draw a red white and blue mammoth on the computer…

  • PoliPundita

    but Obama and most of his cronies are old enough to remember the abject failure that was the Carter administration. And yet they’re determined to institute policies that they watched fail.

    I tend to agree with MSU_Charles, that much of it arises from academic arrogance, which is blind to, and so protected from, reality and its consequences: If it didn’t work, it’s only because we didn’t try hard enough (or long enough or spend enough). A good deal of this administration is composed of academics and policy wonks for whom the real world is barely more than a thought experiment.

    (BTW, don’t take that as disdain for intelligence or education, merely the recognition that neither should be mistaken for wisdom.)

  • edniceville

    You have something there. The woolly mammoth is the ideal choice for the “new” republican party. It is large enough be noticed even though it is the ‘elephant in the room’, has a huge woolly sweater on to deal with the dem’s energy policies, and massive tusks and a bad attitude, just perfect some kicking some donkey butt!

  • walter

    and their ilk… especially on the democrat side. Matt, I suspect that since the democrats DO have a majority in both houses, they have NO intention of asking the republicans for ANY input on ANY issue, WHAT SO EVER! OR listening to their ideas – it’s happened that way for a year, do you think it will change any time soon?

    Democrats:
    They are the party of hate.
    They are the party of the selfish,
    They are the party of racism.
    They are the party of euthinasia.
    They are the party of divorce,
    They are the party of abortion.
    They are the party of divide and conquer.
    They are the party of inner city decay. . . . .

    Shall I continue?

  • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

    It’s a complete waste of time for us to offer up plans which have zero chance of passage, and give the Democrats something to nitpick in the press.

    The people elected Democrats. It is up to them to govern, not to us.

    We can campaign later. Now is too soon.

  • phenne

    Okay, AngryMatt.

    (1.) Repeal all unconstitutional busybody legislation the elected representatives have managed to foist upon the populace at the behest of ‘special interests’. Yes, AngryMatt, your favorite ‘porkulus’ programs (those already on the books, and the stuff they want to pass soon) that are near and dear to your heart, will be on the list.
    (2.) Give the people back a MINIMUM of 1/2 of the taxes they PAID at the Federal level, and let them do with it as they wish. Extend that, AngryMatt, as far into the future as you like (and then add another eon, as it would not probably be far enough into the future for me!). And, yes, that means “you no pay in, you no get back.” Does that compute?
    (3.) Review every public assistance recipient for need, and their ability to contribute to the society at large. If they are destitute, without employment even though they “tried to find work” — move them to where the employer needs the labor. I cannot tell you where that place is, but it certainly IS NOT where they live now …. :-)
    (4.) Elect defenders of “the United States Constitution” — in the original draft. Yes, that means we start the review process with the 11th Amendment, and weed out the stuff that we’ve learned from and is not necessary any more. To wit, the body of the citizenry does not believe in “3/5ths Humans.” Don’t be an idiot. Also, in general specifics (I made that to confuse you), “All Men Are Created Equal” includes both sexes (genders) and all skin-tones. See, I just KNEW you wanted to go there …..

    How’s that?