December 252,000 job added - Unemployment down to 5.6%

[Fanatical Meat]

US Population.

2010 309,300,000
2012 313,900,000
2013 316,100,000
2014 320,000,000

And it looks like that is just enough to keep up with population growth.

Doesn't look like this is accounting for boomers who are retiring
I vote we keep the partisan crap to a minimum and focus on the fact that our elected leaders have done next to nothing to help out. Some have even sabotaged jobs remember the Government shut down?

 

[werepossum]

Oh I remember the arguments back then, may have even been from eskimospy as well, that the spending levels of the last Bush year and first few Obama years were necessary due to the weakened economy. Now that the worst is behind us and we have seen that the sequestration was not as catastrophic as a lot of economists predicted it would be, lets get spending under control.

I personally don't have problems with stimulus packages as long as they are kept separate from regular spending. During a severe recession people tend to hold onto their money, and employers tend to try to get ahead of the curve by laying off their way to profitability. I think stimulus packages can give the economy some breathing room, break that cycle, by injecting more money into the economy. My main objections are expecting stimulus spending to actually fix the economy (the improvements last only as long as the increased spending - you can't buy prosperity, only rent it) and this assumption that once a stimulus has been voted in, it's now the new baseline.

 

[Matt1970]

I personally don't have problems with stimulus packages as long as they are kept separate from regular spending. During a severe recession people tend to hold onto their money, and employers tend to try to get ahead of the curve by laying off their way to profitability. I think stimulus packages can give the economy some breathing room, break that cycle, by injecting more money into the economy. My main objections are expecting stimulus spending to actually fix the economy (the improvements last only as long as the increased spending - you can't buy prosperity, only rent it) and this assumption that once a stimulus has been voted in, it's now the new baseline.

They can also be implemented/designed better. An economy that was supposedly staving for cash gets a stimulus that takes years to pay out?

 

[fskimospy]

Oh I remember the arguments back then, may have even been from eskimospy as well, that the spending levels of the last Bush year and first few Obama years were necessary due to the weakened economy. Now that the worst is behind us and we have seen that the sequestration was not as catastrophic as a lot of economists predicted it would be, lets get spending under control.

Interest rates are at the zero lower bound. Cutting spending now would be a terrible idea. Why wouldn't you wait until interest rates or higher or inflation is happening?

Can you provide a coherent economic argument for cutting spending now?

 

[Matt1970]

Interest rates are at the zero lower bound. Cutting spending now would be a terrible idea. Why wouldn't you wait until interest rates or higher or inflation is happening?

Can you provide a coherent economic argument for cutting spending now?

You said wait till the economy improved. Now you are saying wait till interest rates are higher. What are you going to say when interest rates are higher?

 

[werepossum]

They can also be implemented/designed better. An economy that was supposedly staving for cash gets a stimulus that takes years to pay out?

Maybe, but our manufacturing base loss makes that difficult. The classic stimulus is a short term tax cut, get people out and spending. Only problem is that very little discretionary spending is on goods produced in America, so much of that money leaves the economy and only comes back as loans. The Pubbies like tax cuts for employers, but unless there's more business there's little need for more employees unless the employer is doing a new venture. If it's a new manufacturing venture, America is not near the top of attractive places to start a new manufacturing venture. Employers and resource owners can invest more into the stock market, but that mainly helps the rich.

When one is a colonial style economy based om importing finished goods and exporting raw materials, one hasn't many effective tools for stimulus. Infrastructure strikes me as a pretty good compromise investment for stimulus. A lot of the equipment and materials are now imported, and thanks to GATT we can't really ban foreign companies so some of the profit goes out of the country, but at least the labor is mostly American. (Perhaps not mostly legal American, but still.)

 

[fskimospy]

You said wait till the economy improved. Now you are saying wait till interest rates are higher. What are you going to say when interest rates are higher?

No, I have always said exactly the same thing. Inflation and rising interest rates is how you know the economy has actually improved.

You still haven't provided an economic argument for contractinary fiscal policy that can't be offset through monetary policy. I know you want spending cuts for ideological reasons, but provide an actual economic argument for why this would be better?

 

[Matt1970]

Maybe, but our manufacturing base loss makes that difficult. The classic stimulus is a short term tax cut, get people out and spending. Only problem is that very little discretionary spending is on goods produced in America, so much of that money leaves the economy and only comes back as loans. The Pubbies like tax cuts for employers, but unless there's more business there's little need for more employees unless the employer is doing a new venture. If it's a new manufacturing venture, America is not near the top of attractive places to start a new manufacturing venture. Employers and resource owners can invest more into the stock market, but that mainly helps the rich.

When one is a colonial style economy based om importing finished goods and exporting raw materials, one hasn't many effective tools for stimulus. Infrastructure strikes me as a pretty good compromise investment for stimulus. A lot of the equipment and materials are now imported, and thanks to GATT we can't really ban foreign companies so some of the profit goes out of the country, but at least the labor is mostly American. (Perhaps not mostly legal American, but still.)

Oh I have talked about us needing more made in USA goods more times than I can remember. You bring what is left of manufacturing back to the US and you will see a lot of our problems work themselves out.

 

[Matt1970]

No, I have always said exactly the same thing. Inflation and rising interest rates is how you know the economy has actually improved.

You still haven't provided an economic argument for contractinary fiscal policy that can't be offset through monetary policy. I know you want spending cuts for ideological reasons, but provide an actual economic argument for why this would be better?

I can think of about 18 Trillion reasons why we need cut spending and stop borrowing money. For a while there we were paying 10% of our total tax revenue on interest alone.

 

[First]

I can think of about 18 Trillion reasons why we need cut spending and stop borrowing money. For a while there we were paying 10% of our total tax revenue on interest alone.

lol

 

[fskimospy]

I can think of about 18 Trillion reasons why we need cut spending and stop borrowing money. For a while there we were paying 10% of our total tax revenue on interest alone.

You are still providing no economic argument for what you want to do. Tell me how cutting spending while interest rates are at record lows and while we are at the zero lower bound for interest rates leads to a superior outcome for the U.S. if you can't do that, why are you holding that opinion?

 

[theeedude]

You are still providing no economic argument for what you want to do. Tell me how cutting spending while interest rates are at record lows and while we are at the zero lower bound for interest rates leads to a superior outcome for the U.S. if you can't do that, why are you holding that opinion?

Facts are not important, reason is not important. Debt is baaaaad.

 

[Matt1970]

Facts are not important, reason is not important. Debt is baaaaad.

Facts have clearly not been on your side pal. You show income growth by raw numbers only that when factoring in inflation show an actual loss. Then you try to show raw job growth that only seemed to be the same as population growth.

 

[Matt1970]

You are still providing no economic argument for what you want to do. Tell me how cutting spending while interest rates are at record lows and while we are at the zero lower bound for interest rates leads to a superior outcome for the U.S. if you can't do that, why are you holding that opinion?

Because things will be that much better with a near balanced budget.

 

[fskimospy]

Because things will be that much better with a near balanced budget.

How? By what mechanism?

 

[ralfy]

"Labor Participation Rate Drops To Fresh 38 Year Low; Record 92.9 Million Americans Not In Labor Force"

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-...-year-low-record-929-million-americans-not-la

 

[fskimospy]

"Labor Participation Rate Drops To Fresh 38 Year Low; Record 92.9 Million Americans Not In Labor Force"

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-...-year-low-record-929-million-americans-not-la

Why do people read zerohedge?

I wonder how many fools they bankrupted with their calls to buy gold to stave off the coming hyperinflation/economic collapse?

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

Why do people read zerohedge?

I wonder how many fools they bankrupted with their calls to buy gold to stave off the coming hyperinflation/economic collapse?

Are there any factual errors with the linked page or any of the participation rate numbers presented?

 

[fskimospy]

Are there any factual errors with the linked page or any of the participation rate numbers presented?

To start they are trying to talk about job numbers using the household survey without mentioning that this is widely considered to be less accurate and much more volatile than the payroll survey, and doing so with no explanation of why they would use that alternate measure, other than that it better fit the story they are trying to tell.

This is pretty common practice for zerohedge, by the way. They have a pretty obvious shtick about imminent disaster, a mysterious cabal, etc, etc. That's how they generate traffic. The sad part is that I think some people actually put their money on things based on that site.

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

To start they are trying to talk about job numbers using the household survey without mentioning that this is widely considered to be less accurate and much more volatile than the payroll survey, and doing so with no explanation of why they would use that alternate measure, other than that it better fit the story they are trying to tell.

This is pretty common practice for zerohedge, by the way. They have a pretty obvious shtick about imminent disaster, a mysterious cabal, etc, etc. That's how they generate traffic. The sad part is that I think some people actually put their money on things based on that site.

Both survey methods are legitimate and are considered mainstream metrics to measure employment. Although the payroll survey is a generally the preferred measure of employment, it definitely has shortcomings since it doesn't capture the self-employed. Seems to me that you're really reaching here.

Household vs. Payroll Surveys: Which is More Reliable
http://www.incontext.indiana.edu/2005/november/7.asp

 

[Pens1566]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevemoore/2014/10/06/under-obama-one-million-more-americans-have-dropped-out-of-work-force-than-have-found-a-job/

Which is largely a function of baby boomers hitting retirement and "dropping out" of the workforce.

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

Which is largely a function of baby boomers hitting retirement and "dropping out" of the workforce.

That's ONE reason.

 

[fskimospy]

Both survey methods are legitimate and are considered mainstream metrics to measure employment. Although the payroll survey is a generally the preferred measure of employment, it definitely has shortcomings since it doesn't capture the self-employed. Seems to me that you're really reaching here.

Household vs. Payroll Surveys: Which is More Reliable
http://www.incontext.indiana.edu/2005/november/7.asp

Nope. There's a reason why the BLS chooses the payroll survey to report numbers each month; it is considered more accurate, ESPECIALLY for a single month's data. The payroll survey covers about 500,000 businesses while the household survey covers about 60,000 households. This means that they household survey sampling error for a single month is more than 400% of the payroll survey.

To put that into numbers, a statistically significant chance in the payroll survey is about 100,000 jobs while the household survey margin is close to 450,000 jobs.

Here's a good article from the BLS that helps explain this more thoroughly:
http://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/ces_cps_trends.pdf

ie: had they used the payroll survey numbers and accounted for sampling error in the two surveys it's quite likely they end up with a non-significant change. Even under their own choice to use household numbers they have a statistically non-significant article.

Now who is reaching?

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

Nope. There's a reason why the BLS chooses the payroll survey to report numbers each month; it is considered more accurate, ESPECIALLY for a single month's data. The payroll survey covers about 500,000 businesses while the household survey covers about 60,000 households. This means that they household survey sampling error for a single month is more than 400% of the payroll survey.

To put that into numbers, a statistically significant chance in the payroll survey is about 100,000 jobs while the household survey margin is close to 450,000 jobs.

Here's a good article from the BLS that helps explain this more thoroughly:
http://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/ces_cps_trends.pdf

ie: had they used the payroll survey numbers and accounted for sampling error in the two surveys it's quite likely they end up with a non-significant change. Even under their own choice to use household numbers they have a statistically non-significant article.

Now who is reaching?

The BLS uses BOTH surveys as BOTH are needed to give a complete picture of the labor market. This is clearly stated in your link. Seems to me that you're the one who's really reaching here by attempting to denigrate Zerohedge for using employment numbers that are also used by the BLS. If they had used the payroll method numbers instead, the graph trends presented would look nearly identical...you know that, I know that.

I get it that you don't like Zerohedge...but you're argument in this particular case is really quite questionable.

 

[fskimospy]

The BLS uses BOTH surveys as BOTH are needed to give a complete picture of the labor market. This is clearly stated in your link. Seems to me that you're the one who's really reaching here by attempting to denigrate Zerohedge for using employment numbers that are also used by the BLS. If they had used the payroll method numbers instead, the graph trends presented would look nearly identical...you know that, I know that.

Yes, the charts in the article would be broadly similar, but the headline and literally the entire text of the article would be unsupportable.

The BLS uses both for different ways of looking at employment, but as I have already said twice, the payroll survey is more accurate, particularly for any given month, even more particularly for change from month to month, and this article is about a single month to month change.

I get it that you don't like Zerohedge...but you're argument in this particular case is really quite questionable.

It's actually indisputable as per the BLS's own numbers. The article is highlighting a non-significant result. You should be joining me in indicting zerohedge here.