A month ago, we joked when we said that for Obama to get the unemployment rate to negative by election time, all he has to do is to crush the labor force participation rate to about 55%. Looks like the good folks at the BLS heard us: it appears that the people not in the labor force exploded by an unprecedented record 1.2 million. No, that’s not a typo: 1.2 million people dropped out of the labor force in one month! So as the labor force increased from 153.9 million to 154.4 million, the non institutional population increased by 242.3 million meaning, those not in the labor force surged from 86.7 million to 87.9 million. Which means that the civilian labor force tumbled to a fresh 30 year low of 63.7% as the BLS is seriously planning on eliminating nearly half of the available labor pool from the unemployment calculation. As for the quality of jobs, as withholding taxes roll over Year over year, it can only mean that the US is replacing high paying FIRE jobs with low paying construction and manufacturing. So much for the improvement.
Chart below shows it all – that jump is not a fat finger!
In those charts it looks so awful.
Hard to believe that such bad news ends up making our unemployment rate go down.
And we are having one of the mildest winters in many years, so the normal low jobs added in January is not low.
So, again, it looks good.
Add to that the graphic Obama’s White House put out to sell the original Stimulus.
It showed that, EVEN IF WE DID NOTHING, our unemployment would have much improved by now!
One version of it is here, from Jan 2012:
http://www.therightsphere.com/2012/01/unemployment-at-8-5-or-how-obamas-stimulus-failed/
Notice on the Obama chart that WITHOUT his ”Stimulus” we should have been at 6.5% unemployment by now, not 8.3%.
Listening to the hoorays of the left sort of reminds me of a scene from George Orwell’s 1984 where one of Big Brother’s faithful applauds the LOWERING of his chocolate ration….double-plus-good!
CURT
this is so bad, HE will be forever known as the worse job’s killer in the HISTORY of the UNITED STATES
OF AMERICA,
I’ll tell you some charts you won’t show here and probably won’t hear about on FOX. They hate any good news about the economy.lol
Stock market is Booming. Nasdaq at 11 year high while Dow and S&P 500 are at 4 year highs.
@Richard Wheeler:
RIIIIIIIIIIIght.
Fox News won’t cover good financial news.
This header was quite large, it read:
Drenched in Green: Data Catapult Nasdaq to 11-Year High
Read more: http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2012/02/03/drenched-in-green-data-catapult-nasdaq-to-11-year-high/#ixzz1lMT5oPz3
However, your little point about the stock market “booming?”
http://www.foxbusiness.com/index.html
Look at the MARKET SNAPSHOT in the upper right part of Fox’s homepage.
Change the graph from one day to one year and three years.
Scan through the DJIA, NASDAQ, S&P 500 as the Fox 50.
The market has barely topped last year’s highs.
At least it is headed in the right direction, though.
@Richard Wheeler:
Project much rich?
Leftists like yourself were talking down the economy under Bush and trying to undermine the war in Iraq all so you could get back into power. Now you accuse us of doing what you did. I should expect that from a Murtha Marine. Vermin is too kind a word to describe you.
Bravo to Fox News. Any bets on Hannity highlighting it? LOL
H.R. Just keep hoping for that bad news and praying Newt can rise from the dead after getting eviscerated tomorrow in Nevada.
The chart and related story are bogus. They’re a false interpretation; a deliberate distortion of reality, intended to deceive.
The number of people leaving the work force does not correspond to job losses. For one thing, many people who are retiring commonly do so at the end of the year. They’re leaving the work force, but that doesn’t mean that the jobs they’re leaving are gone.
Companies that have been planning down-sizing very often do so at the end of the year. This has the effect of increasing end-of-year job losses, but doesn’t signify a shift in the economic trend that has occurred in that particular month.
Large numbers of seasonal workers whose jobs relate to holiday shopping are also routinely laid off at the end of the year. This includes retail sales workers, warehouse workers, people involved in holiday shipping, etc.
Consider this article: December Jobs Report: Cuts decline in final month of 2011
If you don’t like that source, Google “December job cuts fall” and pick one you like better.
Looking at the BLS statistics, between Jan 11 and Jan 12, the noninstitutional population, which are those people 16 of years of age and older who are not incarcerated, grew by 3,565,000 people. The number of employed grew by about 4,000,000 and the number in the labor force grew by 1,759,000. Somehow the addition of 500,000 or so people to the employment roles dropped the unemployment rate almost 1.5 percentage points. Men over 16 and men over 20, saw a signifcant drop in their unemployment rates. However in those two categories, the number of those not in the labor force stayed roughly the same.
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t01.htm
(CURT: Thank you for putting the shortcut to embed a link back.
I never could figure that thing out.)
Greg, you’re right.
The number of people leaving the work force does not correspond to job losses.
BUT, if the number of people leaving the work force is as high as it is, it skews the unemployment number to the point where it becomes less meaningful.
But in the stock market today we saw the bulls focused on payroll growth, and the bears focused on the labor force participation rate.
We all have a tendency to use data to support our worldview, and today’s report is a great example of how everyone saw what he or she wanted to see.
Curt’s link to ZeroHedge reported that the headlines overlooked a drop in the labor force participation rate.
That was true.
The labor force participation rate fell to a 30-year low of 63.7%, as noted in this chart from the BLS.
The drop in the labor force participation rate makes a sham of the unemployment rate, since the labor pool keeps shrinking.
And, no, they are not all RETIRING.
Of the 1.2 million people who dropped out last month, some are retiring folks, others are people newly on disability, then add in the discouraged workers who have run through their 99 weeks since Obama extended Unemployment Benefits that far and finally add in businesses that let attrition happen or go all the way out of business.
The percentage of Americans who are working has dropped from 67% in 2001 to less than 64% today.
It isn’t all baby boomers looking to retire a bit early.
How are young people counted when they have not been employed but seek their first job and cannot find one?
Seems the BLS underestimates this group as well.
Nan G
I would have thought that the returned MILITARY would have add up to the unemployed,
therefor raising the numbers?
bye
H.R. Where have I ever said anything negative about The Marine Corps or any who serve our country proudly and at great risk.
What have YOU done for your country?
@ilovebeeswarzone:
Unless returning vets qualify for Unemployment Insurance (checks) they do NOT count as part of the BLS’s total of officially unemployed Americans.
Only people getting those checks are counted.
There are 1st time filers.
There are continuing unemployed getting the checks.
Those make up the official stats.
When we point out how many discouraged workers there are we are looking at those who have run out of benefits but still not gotten work.
Those, alone, number 1.2 million in the month of January 2012.
Nan G
thank you, I hope the MILITARY get pay when they return just the same.
bye
She does a lot better of explaining the job and unemployment numbers than I tried to do.
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/chao-obama-unemployment-high/2012/02/03/id/428432
another vet
yes she said it right,
he spend too much on foreign affairs and less on AMERICA NEEDS. I say HE THINK GLOBAL and it’s wrong,
the priorities should be in AMERICA FOR AMERICANS first,
the jobs must be for AMERICANS FIRST, THE INCENTIVES MUST BE TO AMERICANS FIRST, THE AID MONEY SHOULD BE IN AMERICA TO AMERICANS, FIRST , THE DOOR AND BORDERS SHOULD BE SHUT TO FOREIGNERS UNTIL AMERICANS HAVE ALL A JOB, THAT MEANS NO SANCTUARY,
NO NEW IMMIGRANTS, NO ILLEGALS, NO AIDS OUTSIDE OF THE USA UNTIL ALL AMERICANS
HAVE A JOB.
bye
The 1.2 million number is nothing but a population adjustment.
@ilovebeeswarzone: Actually, he spends too much time on himself.
another vet
you mean in front of a mirror
I feel very strongly that the GLOBAL EXCHANGE is abuse so much now, that there is most probably more money going out of the COUNTRY, THEN MONEY SPEND HERE, which diminish the AMERICAN JOBS AND POWER, that should be reverse radicely to retrieve the potential of rising to the standing where AMERICA
was before, the time has come to back up, stick together and start to make what we need, in all faces of need,
it will slowly catch up with us,to create as it was before, then export the surplus and limit the import,
to the minimum, decreasing it to very low, we must do it as a whole NATION commited to each other priority where everyone participate their able share, then the RICH will come back and set the ground to have jobs for AMERICANS ONLY, AND THE MIDDLE CLASS WILL TAKE PRIDE IN WORKING FOR THE RICH TO PROFIT,BECAUSE THEY TOO WILL PROFIT, AND THE POOR WILL TAKE PRIDE TO BE NEEDED IN WHAT THEY WILL BE ABLE TO GIVE, AND AMERICA WILL SING AGAIN TOGETHER UNITED AGAIN,
IT IS A POSSIBLE DREAM NOW THAT WE HAVE NOTING MORE TO EXPECT,
EXCEPT
THE NEXT ELECTION
bye