Posted on 01/06/2012 5:57:49 AM PST by C19fan
Nonfarm payroll employment rose by 200,000 in December, and the unemployment rate, at 8.5 percent, continued to trend down, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Job gains occurred in transportation and warehousing, retail trade, manufacturing, health care, and mining.
(Excerpt) Read more at bls.gov ...
Lots of folks have left the work force entirely.
But anything to make Zero look good.
Military spending still doesn’t increase the size of the overall economy. It only redirects resources. That isn’t wrong, necessarily, but that doesn’t that military spending grows the economy, it just redirects it from civilian goods and investments to military goods and investments. Theoretically, the money spent on the military would have either been spent or invested in the private sector if there was no military.
“December jobs are temporary...”
In December, our little zip code went from 1 full time UPS driver and 1.2 Fed Ex drivers to two UPS trucks with a driver and runner. Fed Ex had two Fed Ex trucks with a driver and a runner plus a rental truck with a driver to deliver the bigger so called free deliveries. There were vans with no markings with both delivering services.
This week, we are back to the 1 full time UPS driver with no runners and the 1.2 FedX drivers with no runners. The .2 driver delivers the expensive next day letters and deliveries.
In the business section of town besides the 1 month growth of UPS and FedX seasonal hires, both Targets and the local Walmart had a lot of temps. The Target temps were easy to identify, their red shirts weren’t the official Red Target shirts, and they wore the “my name is” tags from the store’s party/stationery supplies. Walmart had tags for the temps that were similiar to but not the permanent id tags worn by regular Walmart employees. The small local department store used the “my name is” tags. Home Depot did the same and our local ACE stores had retired people back working.
Many of the grocery stores, both chain and local, have college kids who have done Christmas, Easter Break and Summer jobs in the past.
I’m sure that this was replicated across the nation and made up a large % of so called wonderful new jobs.
All of those temps are now gone this week.
My wife caught a snip of a local tv channel praising the new jobs. Their so called proof was an interview with a new startup company, which has hired 4 people in the last couple of months and plans to add more. My wife couldn’t recall the name of this breakthrough company.
There is nothing wrong with the temp hirings for the holidays. I did temp holiday jobs in the late 1950’s. I got spending money and discounts, and the stores got a hard working young guy for their busy time.
“Wish we could trust the numbers.....”
We can’t for at least another year.
There is an interesting small trend out here. The trend is positive for us Senior citizens and probably not good for the younger workers.
Due to the losses in IRA’S and 401Ks, formerly retired people are seeking and getting jobs.
A lot of these people are on MediCare and their employers don’t have to pay the high health care insurance costs for them.
A 68 year in age lady, we know lost her husband, recently and needed a job.
She was hired right before Thanksgiving for 3.5 days a week with no benefits. She is a good worker and went to 4 days a week and then 5 days before the end of the year. When, she went to work after New Years, she was told that, she was the new office manager,and the other one had been fired. The other person probably spent more time with sick kids and their problems than she did on her job.
The previous office manager was a younger working mother with a very high cost medical insurance plan. So her boss, a private medical care provider has one less salary and less costly benefits. Our friend got a small raise and some type of monthly health care cafeteria supplement. She asked for a dental plan and will get one.
She is happy to have a job, but she didn’t want a full time one at the age of 68.
She could be one of many like her in the health care industry. Another lady, who was planning to retire in a medical office, got a good raise, as her boss fired a younger full time person to keep her. She said that she is seeing a lot of formerly retired ladies back to work this past week in the medical office complex she is in.
In other industries in our county, smaller companies are getting rid of marginal employees, dividing their work and salaries among those taking on more responsibility. Of course they don’t have to pay the ever increasing health care costs of that the terminated one got.
One of our formerly retired 70 year old male friend needed extra income to make up for his IRA losses and got a job about 2 years ago, that has evolved into full time. He is a workaholic and enjoys this. His boss told him that since he and his wife were on Medicare, he was saving a lot of money. He and his wife will have a good dental plan starting this year, he/his boss is contributing to the company’s 401k, and his boss will create a cafeteria plan for medical costs not covered by Medicare. He is at the age where there is no penalty for earning too much while on SS. Since he is still contributing a good sum to SS each month, he got a big raise this year in his monthly SS payments.
His wife is a part time sales lady with a local business. She got a good raise last year and has seen her monthly SS payments increase due to her still working. She and her boss and similiar co workers are looking at other options since they don’t cost the company re health care. She is pushing for a 401 k to shelter her income and to build up savings tax free.
Here is a good hard look at the bs posing as good employment news:
Obama Unemployment Magic Trick: Indefinitely Detain 4 Million People from Workforce
Townhall.com ^ | January 7, 2012 | John Ransom
Posted on Saturday, January 07, 2012 5:19:50 AM by Kaslin
Although there’s little doubt that job creation is speeding up in the private sector, unemployment is not going down as widely touted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). In fact, it’s likely unchanged since the beginning of the recession because the government is deliberately undercounting the workforce to make unemployment appear to go down.
Missing in the latest labor report are at least 1.2 million job seekers who have been added to the civilian population over the last year but not to the work force, thereby artificially deflating the unemployment rate.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2829861/posts
Millions of people exhausted their UC benefits in December and are conveniently no longer counted as “unemployed” by the regime.
False. The operative factor is whether you are looking for work.
Hands down, no contest, the single most persistent economic myth on FR.
The labor force is shrinking, that is a fact. Many older people unemployed in their 50’s, 60’s and early 70’s, who would normally keep working, are giving up. This is fact, they are going from unemployment to SS.
There absolutely is no way to defeat a liberal in an argument regarding economics if one comes out of the box looking like an idiot about the subject.
Other people think that the Government counts every unemployed person each month. To do this, every home in the country would have to be contacted—just as in the population census every 10 years. This procedure would cost way too much and take far too long. Besides, people would soon grow tired of having a census taker come to their homes every month, year after year, to ask about job-related activities.
Yah, you keep believin’ that, laddie.
That's my argument, thank you. More on it below (please pay special attention to the second paragraph):
For those of you who are too lazy to read the facts, I'll summarize them for you: the government collects data about unemployment compensation, BUT the goverment does not use that data when calculating the unemployment rate.What do the unemployment insurance (UI) figures measure?
The UI figures are not produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Statistics on insured unemployment in the United States are collected as a by-product of UI programs. Workers who lose their jobs and are covered by these programs typically file claims ("initial claims") that serve as notice that they are beginning a period of unemployment. Claimants who qualify for benefits are counted in the insured unemployment figures (as "continued claims"). Data on UI claims are maintained by the Employment and Training Administration, an agency of the U.S. Department of Labor, and are available on the Internet at: http://workforcesecurity.doleta.gov/unemploy/claims.asp.
These data are not used to measure total unemployment because they exclude several important groups. To begin with, not all workers are covered by UI programs. For example, self-employed workers, unpaid family workers, workers in certain not-for-profit organizations, and several other small (primarily seasonal) worker categories are not covered. In addition, the insured unemployed exclude the following:
- Unemployed workers who have exhausted their benefits
- Unemployed workers who have not yet earned benefit rights (such as new entrants or reentrants to the labor force)
- Disqualified workers whose unemployment is considered to have resulted from their own actions rather than from economic conditions; for example, a worker discharged for misconduct on the job
- Otherwise eligible unemployed persons who do not file for benefits
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