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!!!

It’s the Jobs Stupid!!

Posted: July 15, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: U.S. Economy | Tags: , , , , | Comments Off on It’s the Jobs Stupid!!

Here’s a trajectory for POTUS to chew on from the recently released statistics on Industrial Production and Capacity. This is a key indicator of an economy’s well being. It’s down again. There’s something about Obama’s use of the words “right trajectory” on Anderson Cooper the other night that makes me think he should ask Harvard to give him a bit of a refund on that ‘education’. How hard is to understand that when production keeps falling that is not a good trend? He’s had to have the inside scope on these numbers for at least a week. Why give Cooper and the world the impression of something else?

Industrial production decreased 0.4 percent in June after having fallen 1.2 percent in May. For the second quarter as a whole, output fell at an annual rate of 11.6 percent, a more moderate contraction than in the first quarter, when output fell 19.1 percent. Manufacturing output moved down 0.6 percent in June, with declines at both durable and nondurable goods producers. Outside of manufacturing, the output of mines fell 0.5 percent in June, and the output of utilities increased 0.8 percent. The rate of capacity utilization for total industry declined in June to 68.0 percent, a level 12.9 percentage points below its average for 1972-2008. Prior to the current recession, the low over the history of this series, which begins in 1967, was 70.9 percent in December 1982.

The graph (which uses seasonally adjusted data) comes from Brad Delong’s “Bad News About Industrial Production”. I would imagine his education taught him the right frame for what is the ‘right trajectory’ and the ‘wrong trajectory’ when discussing macroeconomics with his UC Berkely Students. I know my economics professor Campbell R. McConnell taught me well at the more humble University of Nebraska where I cut my economist baby teeth. Now, I know we’re supposed to be a service economy and that things like manufacturing, transportation and mining aren’t supposed to be relevant to us any more. I still can’t help asking how many young people with nothing more than a devalued high school diploma would rather face a life building cars than mowing the lawns of Goldman Sachs Bankers? Is any one beginning to have similar questions on the mythical hope and change meme of last year? Is it still just you and me? The Sinoperuvian lesbians of hillbilly America?

Today, even the editorial page of the Gray Lady even asked the right questions.

Unemployment is rising. Foreclosures are surging. Lending is still constrained. So why exactly is the Obama administration waiting to act?

Their answer is not so different from mine of the past two days.

If wait-and-see is anything other than a near-term tactic, it’s bound to be a miscalculation. The need for expanded relief and recovery efforts is compelling. Rather than avoid those fights, the Obama team must win them.

The Index of Industrial Production is a key leading indicator of macroeconomic health. It is released monthly by the Fed. “The indicator measures the amount of output from the manufacturing, mining, electric and gas industries. The reference year for the index is 2002 and a level of 100.” It is sitting now at 95.4 (which of course is less than 100) which means it’s lower than it was when the index was set. It measures REAL production output. This means were producing less stuff and of course, that means there are less people necessary to hired to produce less stuff. That’s not good.

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