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http://money.cnn.com/2014/01/10/news/economy/december-jobs-report/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

Job growth slumped sharply in December, falling far short of expectations. The economy added only 74,000 jobs in December, according to the Department of Labor.

This was the weakest month for job growth since January 2011 and came as a huge surprise to economists, who were expecting an addition of 193,000 jobs.

For all of 2013, the economy added 2.2 million jobs -- on par with 2012's gains.

Meanwhile, the unemployment rate fell to 6.7% in December, but the drop came mainly from workers leaving the labor force.

Only 62.8% of the adult population is participating in the labor market -- meaning they either have a job or are looking for one. That matches the lowest level since 1978.

In the job market's 2007 heyday, unemployment was under 5%, but in the two years that followed, the recession wiped out 8.7 million jobs. To this day, not all those jobs have returned.

 
   
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This is juts a wierd time economically speaking. I honestly don't get it anymore.

I'm just glad I'm gainfully employed..... for now.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/01/10 16:55:04


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Curb stomping in the Eye of Terror!

Add in all those folks who "dropped out of the workforce", the real unemployment figure is closer to 10.7%.

Also, less jobs were created in '13 than '12.


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The important thing is that we got rid of unemployment benefits for a lot of these people, so any day they will decide to stop being lazy and go back to work.

So that is good.
   
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 d-usa wrote:
The important thing is that we got rid of unemployment benefits for a lot of these people, so any day they will decide to stop being lazy and go back to work.

So that is good.

Hmmm... there is an argument for that. I personally know a handful of friends who refuses to TAKE some jobs, because their UI benefits were just enough for them.

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Gathering the Informations.

 whembly wrote:
 d-usa wrote:
The important thing is that we got rid of unemployment benefits for a lot of these people, so any day they will decide to stop being lazy and go back to work.

So that is good.

Hmmm... there is an argument for that. I personally know a handful of friends who refuses to TAKE some jobs, because their UI benefits were just enough for them.

Why work at a gakky job for gakky pay just for the label of "working"?
   
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Curb stomping in the Eye of Terror!

 Kanluwen wrote:
 whembly wrote:
 d-usa wrote:
The important thing is that we got rid of unemployment benefits for a lot of these people, so any day they will decide to stop being lazy and go back to work.

So that is good.

Hmmm... there is an argument for that. I personally know a handful of friends who refuses to TAKE some jobs, because their UI benefits were just enough for them.

Why work at a gakky job for gakky pay just for the label of "working"?

Some of us like working.

I got laid off of my first IT job right before 9/11... afterwards, the job market tanked... I was in-between jobs for 11 months.

So, what did I do?

I immediately got a job deliever pizza at a local chain, and cut grass with my friend's lawnmowing business.

Why? Because I didn't wanna stay home collecting unemployment benefits, playing Diablo 2 all day...

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Gathering the Informations.

 whembly wrote:
 Kanluwen wrote:
 whembly wrote:
 d-usa wrote:
The important thing is that we got rid of unemployment benefits for a lot of these people, so any day they will decide to stop being lazy and go back to work.

So that is good.

Hmmm... there is an argument for that. I personally know a handful of friends who refuses to TAKE some jobs, because their UI benefits were just enough for them.

Why work at a gakky job for gakky pay just for the label of "working"?

Some of us like working.

I got laid off of my first IT job right before 9/11... afterwards, the job market tanked... I was in-between jobs for 11 months.

So, what did I do?

I immediately got a job delivering pizza at a local chain, and cut grass with my friend's lawnmowing business.

Why? Because I didn't wanna stay home collecting unemployment benefits, playing Diablo 2 all day...

I like how you went from "I was unemployed" to the go-to of "I didn't just want to collect benefits playing video games".

You know that depending on where you live, if you are collecting unemployment benefits you cannot be actively employed?

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/01/10 17:50:57


 
   
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Curb stomping in the Eye of Terror!

 Kanluwen wrote:
 whembly wrote:
 Kanluwen wrote:
 whembly wrote:
 d-usa wrote:
The important thing is that we got rid of unemployment benefits for a lot of these people, so any day they will decide to stop being lazy and go back to work.

So that is good.

Hmmm... there is an argument for that. I personally know a handful of friends who refuses to TAKE some jobs, because their UI benefits were just enough for them.

Why work at a gakky job for gakky pay just for the label of "working"?

Some of us like working.

I got laid off of my first IT job right before 9/11... afterwards, the job market tanked... I was in-between jobs for 11 months.

So, what did I do?

I immediately got a job delivering pizza at a local chain, and cut grass with my friend's lawnmowing business.

Why? Because I didn't wanna stay home collecting unemployment benefits, playing Diablo 2 all day...

I like how you went from "I was unemployed" to the go-to of "I didn't just want to collect benefits playing video games".

Well... what else was I going to do if I had to stay at home? There's only so much pr0n those days and we didn't have Netflix/Prime then...

Thanks for making me feel old KAN!

You know that depending on where you live, if you are collecting unemployment benefits you cannot be actively employed?

That doesn't stop you from looking. In Missouri, in order to keep the check coming, every two weeks, you're REQUIRED to go to an office called "Missouri's Career Workforce & Developement", and register yourself at their bank of computers to answer some basic questions. Such as, did you look for any jobs. If no, it directs you to a "monster.com" site to look, and if yes, you're supposed to document the name/phone number of those employers.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/01/10 18:26:15


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Something something BOOTSTRAPS! something something....


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 Easy E wrote:
Something something BOOTSTRAPS! something something....


Nice to know that denigrating someone who works hard is a thing...

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Implying a group of people in a bad situation are still in that situation ONLY because they aren't working hard enough is a very nasty thing.

Why didn't the jews pick themselves up by there bootstraps?

Why didn't the blacks pick themselves up by the bootstraps?

Why? Because they were being oppressed, sometimes life is more complicated than dusting yourself off and getting "better"

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 Alexzandvar wrote:
Implying a group of people in a bad situation are still in that situation ONLY because they aren't working hard enough is a very nasty thing.

Why didn't the jews pick themselves up by there bootstraps?

Why didn't the blacks pick themselves up by the bootstraps?

Why? Because they were being oppressed, sometimes life is more complicated than dusting yourself off and getting "better"

So the unemployed are all victims of institutional racism, socially acceptable discrimination, and genocide?

 
   
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 Alexzandvar wrote:
Implying a group of people in a bad situation are still in that situation ONLY because they aren't working hard enough is a very nasty thing.

Huh... please point out that I implied that.

Why didn't the jews pick themselves up by there bootstraps?

wut?
Why didn't the blacks pick themselves up by the bootstraps?

Again... wut?

Why? Because they were being oppressed, sometimes life is more complicated than dusting yourself off and getting "better"

O.o so I was oppressed?

News to me.

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Gathering the Informations.

 whembly wrote:
 Easy E wrote:
Something something BOOTSTRAPS! something something....


Nice to know that denigrating someone who works hard is a thing...

Because the Republicans haven't been demonizing the concept of collecting unemployment benefits or claiming that there's such rampant abuse despite there being measures in place to prevent abuse, like the ones you described earlier?
   
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 Kanluwen wrote:
 whembly wrote:
 Easy E wrote:
Something something BOOTSTRAPS! something something....


Nice to know that denigrating someone who works hard is a thing...

Because the Republicans haven't been demonizing the concept of collecting unemployment benefits or claiming that there's such rampant abuse despite there being measures in place to prevent abuse, like the ones you described earlier?

Again... what's wrong with hard work?

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Gathering the Informations.

 whembly wrote:
 Kanluwen wrote:
 whembly wrote:
 Easy E wrote:
Something something BOOTSTRAPS! something something....


Nice to know that denigrating someone who works hard is a thing...

Because the Republicans haven't been demonizing the concept of collecting unemployment benefits or claiming that there's such rampant abuse despite there being measures in place to prevent abuse, like the ones you described earlier?

Again... what's wrong with hard work?

Absolutely nothing is wrong with hard work...except for the fact that in some places, you cannot get reasonably paying "hard work".

But at the same time, you cannot gloss over the fact that there is a systematic demonizing of the welfare and unemployment systems in this country by the Republicans--which is almost always done in such a way that it can be boiled down to "pull yourselves up by your bootstraps".

You also have the whole resistance to a change in the minimum wage and how "you shouldn't raise the pay given for undeserving work" since it detracts from the pay that "deserving" work gets.
   
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Working hard enough to achieve goals, support yourself, and generally get what you want out of life is a great thing. It's to be commended.

Working as hard as possible? I don't understand the fetishization of it.

Plenty of people that don't work (objectively) very hard do quite well, while plenty of people that work themselves to death fail. In life, as in judo, the key is not the amount of effort, but how it is directed.
   
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Curb stomping in the Eye of Terror!

 Kanluwen wrote:
 whembly wrote:
 Kanluwen wrote:
 whembly wrote:
 Easy E wrote:
Something something BOOTSTRAPS! something something....


Nice to know that denigrating someone who works hard is a thing...

Because the Republicans haven't been demonizing the concept of collecting unemployment benefits or claiming that there's such rampant abuse despite there being measures in place to prevent abuse, like the ones you described earlier?

Again... what's wrong with hard work?

Absolutely nothing is wrong with hard work...except for the fact that in some places, you cannot get reasonably paying "hard work".

Great.

But at the same time, you cannot gloss over the fact that there is a systematic demonizing of the welfare and unemployment systems in this country by the Republicans--which is almost always done in such a way that it can be boiled down to "pull yourselves up by your bootstraps".

Um. Okay. I don't think I've really ever argued that... have I?

But, "pull yourselves up by your bootstraps" doesn't deserve the acrimony as it implies that most folks are incapable. Most folks are... on the flip side, these sames folks can run into bad luck.

But, blatantly ignoring that there's a segment of the population that do abuse the system is silly.

You also have the whole resistance to a change in the minimum wage and how "you shouldn't raise the pay given for undeserving work" since it detracts from the pay that "deserving" work gets.

Nah... I think most folks are worried what would happen if min wage do increase nationwide and what kind of pressure it'll cause on the workforce.

I think we can at least handle min wage around $9/hr... but the recent $15/hr is crazypants.

I'm curious what Seattle would look like a year after they've raised their min (I believe it's $15?).

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/01/10 19:32:37


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 Easy E wrote:


This is juts a wierd time economically speaking. I honestly don't get it anymore.

I'm just glad I'm gainfully employed..... for now.


Fear is the main reason for this phenomenon. Money is coming in well enough, but there's fear of Obamacare, fear of fiscal cliffs, fear about downturns, etc. And neither the executive nor legislative branches of our government -- including both parties -- have done enough to make corporate America feel comfortable.

The GOP is ordinarily perceived to be the steadier hand on the wheel in this regard, but they've been anything but thanks to the Tea Partiers, and that probably has a lot of executives really spooked.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/01/10 20:49:06


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Thank Labor Force Dropouts, Not New
Jobs, For A Falling Unemployment Rate
According to new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released this morning, the U.S. economy last month added 74,000 new payroll jobs, while the unemployment rate fell to 6.7 percent from 7.0 percent. Good news, right? Not really.

Yes, the unemployment rate has fallen significantly from its high of 10 percent in October of 2009. But it turns out the unemployment rate has been falling for a pretty depressing reason: people dropping out of the labor force. Last month, 347,000 workers dropped out, effectively sending the message that it wasn’t even worth looking for work anymore.

Here’s what the unemployment rate would look like if the labor force participation rate — basically the number of people in the economy working or looking for work — had remained constant since June of 2009:

Why June of 2009 and not some other random month? That is when the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Business Cycle Dating Committee — a group of economists who determine when recessions end and begin — believe the most recent recession finally ended.

To understand how the labor force numbers affect the unemployment rate, it helps to understand how the unemployment rate is calculated. First, BLS determines who is a member of the civilian non-institutional population: people who are 16 years of age or older who are not inhabitants of institutions (prisons, mental institutions, etc.) and not active duty members of the U.S. military. Next, BLS determines what percentage of those individuals are members of the labor force: that roughly consists of people who are either working or are looking for work. Then, BLS determines how many individuals within the labor force are employed. Subtracting the number of employed persons from the labor force gives you the number of unemployed, and dividing the number of unemployed by the total labor force gives you the unemployment rate.

If you hold total employment constant and increase the size of the labor force, the number of unemployed persons will increase, as will the unemployment rate. A shrinking labor force, however, can completely mask a serious job shortage by excluding those who stop looking for work altogether from the calculation of unemployed persons.

In June of 2009, the labor force participation rate was 65.7 percent (by way of comparison, the average over the last decade is 65.1 percent, while the peak was 66.5 percent in June of 2003). Since the end of the recession, that number has nose-dived. At the end of last month, it hit 62.8 percent — on par with what the U.S. experienced in the late 1970′s (although at the time, the number was on the upswing).

What does this all mean? Rather than being the sign of a vibrant economy, the falling unemployment rate is actually an arithmetic artifact of the BLS head-counting process. If the labor force participation rate had held steady since 2009, the number of people in the labor force today would total nearly 162 million people. Instead, BLS reports the official number to be just shy of 155 million.

And thanks to how BLS calculates and reports the official unemployment rate, those 7 million people are not included among the ranks of the unemployed. Add them back in and you have an unemployment rate that averages a very stubborn 10.8 percent since the end of the recession.

Some recovery, huh?

So... how do you stimulate the economy?

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 whembly wrote:
 Easy E wrote:
Something something BOOTSTRAPS! something something....


Nice to know that denigrating someone who works hard is a thing...


Whembly, we go head-to-head in these forums a lot. However, I know you are a decent person that wants other people to succeed. However, let's not pretend that hard work is the only variable in getting a job.

On a more cerebral level, if you believe in "reasoned self-interest" shouldn't you applaud people who take UI and get paid more than getting a job that pays them less than they get on UI?

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 Easy E wrote:
 whembly wrote:
 Easy E wrote:
Something something BOOTSTRAPS! something something....


Nice to know that denigrating someone who works hard is a thing...


Whembly, we go head-to-head in these forums a lot.

Sorry... I was fighting snark against snark. I was harsh... mucho appologies.
However, I know you are a decent person that wants other people to succeed. However, let's not pretend that hard work is the only variable in getting a job.

I've never stated that. o.O

That's why I was a bit touchy when I gave personal accounts and you brought in your "bootstraps" comment.

Let's not pretend that hard work CAN help in getting jobs, career and life goals. Cool?

I think we're battling different perceptions here.

*shrugs*

On a more cerebral level, if you believe in "reasoned self-interest" shouldn't you applaud people who take UI and get paid more than getting a job that pays them less than they get on UI?

Applaud? No. Absolutely not.

Is it a "reasoned self-interest" response... of course.

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whembly wrote:
So... how do you stimulate the economy?

Raising minimum wage is the easiest and fastest way.

The lowest-common-denominator gets more money to spend, which in turn immediately goes back into the economy, which will spur growth and thus justify the wage increase.



Problem solved.



Anticipatory counterpoint: "well then why doesn't that just happen, then?"
Anticipatory answer: Because bottom-up economics is the polar opposite of trickle-down, which lines the pockets of those at the top, at the expense of those at the bottom, who do not have the power to influence the decision.
   
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Would you be in favor of both raising the minimum wage AND cutting income taxes in each bracket?

The question is by how much... but, that's above my paygrade.

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whembly wrote:Would you be in favor of both raising the minimum wage AND cutting income taxes in each bracket?

The question is by how much... but, that's above my paygrade.

I don't understand the need for arbitrary tax cuts, but I'm not familiar with the US tax system. Generally speaking I like the idea of modular tax brackets.
   
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 azazel the cat wrote:
whembly wrote:Would you be in favor of both raising the minimum wage AND cutting income taxes in each bracket?

The question is by how much... but, that's above my paygrade.

I don't understand the need for arbitrary tax cuts, but I'm not familiar with the US tax system. Generally speaking I like the idea of modular tax brackets.

Well...we're talking about stimulating the economy... no?

I'd have a policy to link any minimum wage increases to cutting some taxes in the lower/middle income taxes.

Why?
A) Those who work in those min wage jobs should have more purchasing power.
B) Most middle class wouldn't be impacted by any min wage increases... so, cutting their taxes increases their purchasing power
C) Both A + B = profit !!?!? maybe?

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whembly wrote:
 azazel the cat wrote:
whembly wrote:Would you be in favor of both raising the minimum wage AND cutting income taxes in each bracket?

The question is by how much... but, that's above my paygrade.

I don't understand the need for arbitrary tax cuts, but I'm not familiar with the US tax system. Generally speaking I like the idea of modular tax brackets.

Well...we're talking about stimulating the economy... no?

I'd have a policy to link any minimum wage increases to cutting some taxes in the lower/middle income taxes.

Why?
A) Those who work in those min wage jobs should have more purchasing power.
B) Most middle class wouldn't be impacted by any min wage increases... so, cutting their taxes increases their purchasing power
C) Both A + B = profit !!?!? maybe?

So you mean middle class tax cuts? Because I have no issues with that, in its abstract form, but I hesitate to make an argument from a position of ignorance on this element. In any case, you said "in each bracket", which includes the top brackets. It's right up there in quote boxes. I dislike the idea of lowering taxes on the top bracket; I like the idea of the top bracket at a nice 50% rate.

   
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 azazel the cat wrote:

So you mean middle class tax cuts? Because I have no issues with that, in its abstract form, but I hesitate to make an argument from a position of ignorance on this element. In any case, you said "in each bracket", which includes the top brackets. It's right up there in quote boxes. I dislike the idea of lowering taxes on the top bracket; I like the idea of the top bracket at a nice 50% rate.


Fair enough... you do know that the the top 10 percent of taxpayers earners... paid over 70% of the total amount collected in federal income taxes in 2010...

So, eventually... if we're cutting anything you'd have to think about the upper bracket someday.

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It's not surprising that the top 10% paid 70% of taxes when the top 1% have 70% of the money.

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