Eight years ago, the accepted wisdom was that the American economy had to produce roughly 175,000 jobs each month just to keep up with population growth. Different economists had different numbers that they used for this point, but they were essentially all between 150,000 and 200,000 jobs required for the economy to avoid increasing unemployment. I mention this because the August Employment report just issued shows that the country gained 151,000 jobs last month in non-farm employment. Of these jobs, roughly one-sixth were government employment with private jobs growing by 125,000.
These are not bad numbers; don't misunderstand what I am saying. They are mediocre, however. They line up more with the low, low GDP growth figures that have been coming for nearly a year. For a while, the jobs figures have seemed to be much better than the GDP figures for the same period. That difference has been so great that some conspiracy types have postulated that the government was inflating employment figures in order to help the Clinton campaign. (I guess when the president and the candidate lie so consistently nothing the government says is believed.)
I was not surprised to hear the media reaction to the news. I was listening to CBS radio in my car when the news came out. For a few minutes before the release, they told me a few times that the expectation was for 180,000 new jobs. Then the actual number came out about 16% short of the estimate. Without missing a beat, the business reporter said that we were in the eighth year of what she called the "recovery", so this was to be expected. Really? Two minutes earlier, we were also in the eighth year of the so called "recovery" and we were expecting 180,000 jobs. Nothing had changed except that she wanted to make the number seem better. After she said that, another reporter said that he had seen one estimate that there would only be 130,000 new jobs, so this was good. Is he kidding? I don't normally care what the estimates are, but if you keep telling us about the average estimate for all economists and that average is missed badly, you don't suddenly mention the one guy who estimated the lowest and tell us "all is well." Actually, you don't do that unless you are in the mainstream media and are trying to make things look better than they actually are.
The dishonesty of the media is really the new normal. After all, here are the actual numbers for the government's report: Unemployed (by the government's definition): 7.8 million; Underemployed (people who want full time jobs but can only get part time work): 6.1 million; Marginally attached unemployed (people without work who want a job but who haven't looked for a job in the last month): 1.7 million. That means a total of 15.6 million people cannot find appropriate jobs (or any jobs for most). In other words, there is roughly 9% of the workforce in this category. And remember, there are millions of people who have just given up and stopped working or even hoping for a job. If we count them, we are clearly still at more than ten percent who cannot get the job they need. Once again, this is the new normal. After eight years of a so-called recovery, we should not have numbers like that.
These are not bad numbers; don't misunderstand what I am saying. They are mediocre, however. They line up more with the low, low GDP growth figures that have been coming for nearly a year. For a while, the jobs figures have seemed to be much better than the GDP figures for the same period. That difference has been so great that some conspiracy types have postulated that the government was inflating employment figures in order to help the Clinton campaign. (I guess when the president and the candidate lie so consistently nothing the government says is believed.)
I was not surprised to hear the media reaction to the news. I was listening to CBS radio in my car when the news came out. For a few minutes before the release, they told me a few times that the expectation was for 180,000 new jobs. Then the actual number came out about 16% short of the estimate. Without missing a beat, the business reporter said that we were in the eighth year of what she called the "recovery", so this was to be expected. Really? Two minutes earlier, we were also in the eighth year of the so called "recovery" and we were expecting 180,000 jobs. Nothing had changed except that she wanted to make the number seem better. After she said that, another reporter said that he had seen one estimate that there would only be 130,000 new jobs, so this was good. Is he kidding? I don't normally care what the estimates are, but if you keep telling us about the average estimate for all economists and that average is missed badly, you don't suddenly mention the one guy who estimated the lowest and tell us "all is well." Actually, you don't do that unless you are in the mainstream media and are trying to make things look better than they actually are.
The dishonesty of the media is really the new normal. After all, here are the actual numbers for the government's report: Unemployed (by the government's definition): 7.8 million; Underemployed (people who want full time jobs but can only get part time work): 6.1 million; Marginally attached unemployed (people without work who want a job but who haven't looked for a job in the last month): 1.7 million. That means a total of 15.6 million people cannot find appropriate jobs (or any jobs for most). In other words, there is roughly 9% of the workforce in this category. And remember, there are millions of people who have just given up and stopped working or even hoping for a job. If we count them, we are clearly still at more than ten percent who cannot get the job they need. Once again, this is the new normal. After eight years of a so-called recovery, we should not have numbers like that.
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