Originally posted by: ProfJohn
Originally posted by: Bowfinger
Originally posted by: ProfJohn
Originally posted by: Bowfinger
Originally posted by: Genx87
Also rebutted in one of the threads you're avoiding, the unemployment rate is artificially low since there are so many people who've abandoned hope of finding jobs. Were we to measure it the same way as our peers, the actual rate is reportedly in the 8-9% range.
Who are our peers?
Other industrialized Western democracies.
My only comment on the whole unemployment argument.
"Only" comment? Why is that? What about all the other points raised by myself and others? You're really good about evading everything except a few little nits here and there you think you can refute.
1. Look at Sweden and its unemployment numbers and how they figure them. There is HUGE controversy over there about how and what the "real" numbers should be. So spare me of the ?how other nations? figure their rates. At best the rate is a guess, nothing more.
Which, as I already said, is a tangent to my main points, but thanks for evading.
2. The numbers today are figured out the SAME way they were under Bill Clinton. ...
No, they aren't, which I already pointed out had you bothered to read my response.
The fact is that the BLS materially changed their methodology for calculating Employment in either January, 2003, or January, 2004. This is documented in their notes, and resulted in increasing the number of employed by almost one million. Therefore, you cannot directly compare today's employment figures with Clinton-era figures. Further, as I also pointed out earlier, the Employment figure does not measure the quality of jobs, nor does it differentiate between full-time and part-time employment. Not all jobs are created equal.
I haven't verified whether BLS has changed their Unemployment methodology materially or not. We do know, however, that the BLS Unemployment figures ignore those who've given up. Therefore, not all 4.6% Unemployments are created equal either.
Make up your fricken mind, did they change methods or not? Make a claim, and then say you verifiy that claim? Doesn't that make your whole argument pointless?
My apologies, I thought you actually had some clue what you were talking about. I should have realized you're just mindlessly parroting the talking points.
BLS has two distinct measures related to employment, their
Employment stats, i.e., the number of employed, and their
Unemployment stats, i.e., the percentage of people looking for work. They have materially changed their
Employment methodology (in Jan'03 or '04, don't remember which), causing an almost 1 million increase in the number of jobs reported. They apparently have NOT materially changed their
Unemployment methodology. You refered to both stats in your post. I therefore addressed both in my reply.
Prove that they changed their method, or shut up about it.
Kiss my you-know-what. If you truly doubt the veracity of my claim, I've given you two ways to check it. You can check the earlier threads, or you can go direct to BLS and read the notes accompanying the 1/03 and 1/04 Employment reports. Of course I suppose remaining ignorant is an option too. The choice is yours.
I have yet to see NO evidence that the method they use is any different than what was used under Clinton.
"Have yet to see NO"?
By the way, I love the way you evade the substance of my post by fixating on this particular nit. I even said in my initial reply that the methodology change may or may not be relevent to your claim about adding 6.6 million jobs. What you're evading are the things we do know, that the August, 2003 date was cherry-picked to make the number as big as possible, that it is even then barely above break-even due to workforce growth, that it is nowhere near enough to fill the 6 million+ job hole left during Bush's first term, and that the quality of these new jobs are not as good as the jobs lost.
Here, let me just paste in the whole section again, since you somehow deleted it when you posted your ?:09 "response" above:
- The "6.6 million jobs" added is equally deceptive. First, it ignores the number of jobs lost during Bush's first term. (The selection of Aug 2003 as the starting point is no coincidence, it is another example of cherry-picking statistics to deceive.) Second, it ignores the normal growth in the labor force. Roughly 150,000 additional jobs are needed each month just to break even with growth. That means we needed about 5.7 million new jobs since Aug 2003 just to keep up with growth. The net gain is a paltry million or so jobs -- much better than nothing, but nowhere near enough to fill the 6+ million job hole left in Bush's first term.
Finally, it ignores the fact that most of these new jobs are not as good as the jobs they replace. The salary and benefits are inferior. In many cases, part-time jobs have replaced full-time jobs. When I last researched this, there was roughly a 50% increase in part-time employment, accounting for the vast majority of new jobs created at the time. This is all documented in an old thread here.
(One other note, the Bush administration BLS instituted a new methodolgy for counting employment, magically adding almost one million phantom jobs to its count. I don't remember, however, whether this went in in January, 2003, or January, 2004, so I don't know if it's part of the "6.6 million" claim or not. In any case, I documented this in the same thread mentioned above.)
I don't suppose you'd now care to address the primary points I raised?
I highly doubt anyone will ever change the method, because if the change resulted in lower figures the press would raise holy hell about them "fixing" the figures.
Yes, one would think the so-called "liberal" media would have been all over it, yet somehow ...