Economist Heidi Shierholz: “There’s never been a pool of missing workers this large”

Posted: January 7, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: jobs, Stock Market, Team Obama, The Great Recession, the villagers, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | 16 Comments

Economics isn’t my area of expertise, but I can read, and the top story at Huffpo right now is pretty disturbing. Author Lila Shapiro spoke to some economists, including Heidi Shierholz, about the December jobs report, which came out today.

Although the unemployment rate fell to 9.4 percent from 9.8 percent in December, bringing the total number of officially unemployed Americans to 14.5 million, only 103,000 jobs were added in December according to the Labor Department’s BLS report — a number significantly lower than expected. (The Wall Street Journal reported that many Wall Street analysts were predicting “at or above 200,000” new jobs.)

The news gets worse: less than half of the drop in unemployment rate can be attributed to new job creation — the other half came from 260,000 Americans who have dropped out of the labor force altogether.

This brings the percentage of Americans who are either employed or actively looking for work down to 64.3 percent, what economist Heidi Shierholz calls “a stunning new low for the recession.”

[….]

“We have now added jobs every single month for a year,” Schierholz said. “So you would think that there would be labor force growth, these missing workers starting to come back in. Not only is that not happening, it’s actually starting to go in the other direction. There’s never been a pool of missing workers this large. It’s not clear to me when they’ll come back.”

That can’t be good, no matter what the White House and CNN try to get us to swallow.

At the Wall Street Journal the reaction to the jobs report doesn’t make things sound much better. One headline reads: Markets Whipsawed After Jobs Report. Here’s the gist:

Investors hoped that the jobs report would confirm expectations that a robust recovery was finally filtering through to long-stagnated labor markets. But after traders positioned aggressively this week on lofty expectations of a strong payrolls figure, the disappointing data had a relatively muted impact.

[….]

The Labor Department reported that the U.S. economy created 103,000 new positions last month, far below market consensus expectations for a 150,000 gain. In November, the economy added 39,000 jobs. The unemployment rate fell sharply to 9.4% from 9.7%.

Sustainable job creation has been elusive in an economy that is still recovering from the 2008 financial crisis. As a result of the troubled job market, analysts think the Federal Reserve is likely to continue full steam ahead with its controversial $600 billion plan to reinflate the economy.

Dakinikat can give us her expert take on this, but as a layperson, I think it’s obvious that the country is on the wrong track and some one needs to light a fire under the President and his incompetent economic advisers.

HEY VILLAGERS! WE NEED JOBS!!!

Progressive Intrigue

Posted: January 5, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: the blogosphere, the villagers, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , | 21 Comments

Arianna kills The New Yorker

I am just plain fascinated by the story that’s detailed now on Vanity Fare about the lawsuit against Ariana Huffington brought  by Peter Daou and James Boyce.   I remember when Ariana came to one of the early FDL book salons in search of progressive credentials. She even friended me on Face book at the time.  She was–at best–a C lister then and I don’t even think I rate a letter even now.  Peter Daou, of course, is familiar to any of us that were remotely connected to the Hillary Blogosphere or campaign back in the day.  Peter is just one huckava nice guy among all of his other attributes.  There evidently was some meeting in 2004 that all attended where Ariana supposedly walked away with the idea for HuffPo–an extremely valuable piece of blogosphere web estate–leaving the others out in the cold.  Six years later, there’s a law suit.  The entire thing seems made for a movie of the week and it’s drawing some flak for getting inspiration from the Facebook movie.

That meeting had a lot of witnesses …err.. attendees. Some of them are the A listers of progressive causes.   The idea was to come up with a Democratic version of the Drudge report. Celebs reported to be at the table include David Geffen, Larry David, and Norman Lear.  Oh, the casting possibilities just fill the mind!  It is reminiscent of the founding of Facebook and parallels to the story and movie fill the Vanity Fare missive.  Both of the plaintiffs on the suit have blogged for HuffPo at one time or another which also makes the situation quite tangled up and blue.

Wired–as with the weirdness surrounding the Wikileaks–figures prominently in the tale also. Dauo evidently reached the Rubicon when Andrew Breithbart claimed the HuffPo nativity scene as his own.  Huffington said since Breithbart had not attended the 2004 discussion, he had nothing to do with the inception of HuffPo.  During the discussion, she did not mention Daou or  Boyce.  She mentioned Larry David and wife.  She talked about Andrew Sorkin.  Meg Ryan even made a cameo appearance in the narrative.  Lots of A Listers got their plug plugged.   No Boyce.  No Daou.

Daou and Boyce say that they were the ones who conceived of “a Democratic equivalent of the Drudge Report”—a shorthand description of what the Huffington Post is all about—and called it http://www.fourteensixty.com (for the number of days between presidential elections). According to their 15-page November 14, 2004, memorandum about “1460,” which Boyce gave Huffington before the December 3 meeting, the core objective of the Web site was to “use the potential of the Internet to the fullest extent possible to continue the momentum started during the [2004 presidential] campaign and re-organize the Democratic Party from the outside in, not the inside out.” Daou and Boyce say that they presented their general thoughts about 1460 at the December 3 meeting. (Full disclosure: Boyce has worked as a consultant for Vanity Fair.)

So, Huffington is now an alternative media doyenne who makes appearances on all the right Main Stream News Channels, talk shows, and panels. (I dare you to get her to friend you now!!)  Also, there’s the little matter of how much HuffPo is worth.  Asset pricing a website is always tricky business but given their traffic ratings, it’s probably worth more than The New York Times right now and probably The Washington Post.  Plus, it doesn’t come with all that old timey print baggage like presses, labor unions, and delivery trucks.   Well, to be more specific see The Vanity Fare article estimate.  Yup, I can hear your whistle right over the cable modem.

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