March figures show biggest job gains in three years

[Descartes]

Your child analogy is very apropos. So turn the other cheek eh, I've heard of that.

Read his post again. His only commentary is to slam those with whom he doesn't agree. Someone recently said, "To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist."

shira would do well to unclench his fist.

I didn't really read it like that, but admittedly I focused more on the content of the article and what it might mean rather than OP's thoughts/position on the matter.

For what it's worth, someone has to unclench first. Until then, it's just eye for an eye, one backlash after another.

I'm not putting myself on a pedestal or saying I don't clench a fist now and then, but I'm personally very exhausted by the constant arguments. Not just on these forums either, obviously, but just about everywhere. When what should be positive news (new jobs) gets posted, there's a large percentage of the population that possesses a default inclination to shit on it for no other reason than it came from the wrong team.

 

[EagleKeeper]

Let us summarize the salient details:

During Bush's last year in office, the economic picture was steadily INCREASING monthly job losses.

During Obama's term in office, the economic picture (see the graph at the top) has been steadily DECREASING monthly job losses, and now at last we see a significant job gain.

Conservative President = more and more job losses.

Liberal President = fewer and fewer job losses, and now a gain.

Drop back 8 years and you will see the same pattern.

 

[ProfJohn]

Why do you think there was a sudden jump?

I wouldn't call it a 'jump'

Take away 48,000 census works and then factor in the winter weather and we are seeing a slightly improving job situation.

There are no numbers on that graph, but it appears that over the past 5 months we have broke even or maybe gained a few jobs. Certainly an improvement over the months prior to that, but nothing to get excited about yet.

And again, you can't really point to any Obama policy and claim it is the reason for the recent improvements in the job market. As someone else said, we are at the end of the longest recession in decades and sooner or later the job market had to improve.

 

[nonlnear]

Drop back 8 years and you will see the same pattern.

That infantile partisan reductionism on both sides causes people to ignore the complexity of reality in favor of spoonfed talking points, making their opinions completely intransigent in the face of even the most insightful analysis, and that it is on this unshakable foundation of true believers masses that the statist Republicrat hegemony is established?

Both sides cry out for a canned of ruler soda as long as it has the right color (red or blue of course!), blithely ignoring the fact that they are pushing buttons on the same vending machine.

 

[Special K]

It's going to be a long, slow slog for job recovery --- we knew this a year and a half ago.

My worry is that there will be a new 'low' ---- instead of 4-4.5% being considered 'full employment', we've lost so much of the economy that 5.5-6% might become the new standard ...

Unless the American Economy goes on a McJob binge.




--

This is something I have been wondering about as well. Clearly employers have learned to be more efficient with fewer workers since the recession started. If this trend continues, will the "new normal" level of unemployment rise to 6-7%?

 

[Elias824]

In every recession stuff gets wrose for as while, then starts getting better after awhile, the question is what did bush/obama do to make it more/less severe.

 

[shira]

That infantile partisan reductionism on both sides causes people to ignore the complexity of reality in favor of spoonfed talking points, making their opinions completely intransigent in the face of even the most insightful analysis, and that it is on this unshakable foundation of true believers masses that the statist Republicrat hegemony is established?

Both sides cry out for a canned of ruler soda as long as it has the right color (red or blue of course!), blithely ignoring the fact that they are pushing buttons on the same vending machine.

I object! My talking points aren't spoon-fed - I make them up entirely by myself, out of whole cloth.

 

[her209]

Drop back 8 years and you will see the same pattern.

Did Bush have to deal with the severity of the housing crisis and financial crisis?

 

[nonlnear]

I object! My talking points aren't spoon-fed - I make them up entirely by myself, out of whole cloth.

I didn't say the talking points were systematically wrong. They are patently infantile in their reductionist analysis. That's all...

 

[Moonbeam]

This is something I have been wondering about as well. Clearly employers have learned to be more efficient with fewer workers since the recession started. If this trend continues, will the "new normal" level of unemployment rise to 6-7%?

While I have to remind you that I know nothing, I don't think so. I do not believe the situation is static, that there is only x amount of work to get done by y amount of folk functioning at z level of efficiency, such that if z goes up y goes down. I know nothing, again, like I said, but seem to recall hearing somewhere that when efficiency rises employees income also does or that efficiency is supposed to have that effect, and I would guess that the amount of income folk have affects x, namely that increasing income increases demand which increases x.

 

[ProfJohn]

Did Bush have to deal with the severity of the housing crisis and financial crisis?

Bush had to deal with the dot.com crash and then 9/11


Not as bad as the housing and financial crisis, but not a walk in the park either.

 

[EagleKeeper]

Did Bush have to deal with the severity of the housing crisis and financial crisis?

The housing crisis is not be resolved by Obama's policies. The people are not getting help that was promised/intended - it is getting tied up in red tape and paperwork. Jawboning by him is not solving the issues.

Bush laid the foundation for resolving the financial issue; Obama followed it up.
Whether it should have been done the way it was and without the oversight and cronyism; who knows. What has been done is done and there is not do-over in this situation.

Bush inherited a financial crisis also; plus the 9/11 and follow ons.

Both have inherited problems from the predecessor and both are attempting to resolve them according to their own beliefs.

Not until the problem has been resolved; can any valid comparisons be made. Anything before becomes partisan politics.

Apples have to be compared to apples. Cherry picking numbers to meet ones point without looking at the underlying data generates flawed predictions and expectations.

 

[shira]

The housing crisis is not be resolved by Obama's policies. The people are not getting help that was promised/intended - it is getting tied up in red tape and paperwork. Jawboning by him is not solving the issues.

Bush laid the foundation for resolving the financial issue; Obama followed it up.
Whether it should have been done the way it was and without the oversight and cronyism; who knows. What has been done is done and there is not do-over in this situation.

Bush inherited a financial crisis also; plus the 9/11 and follow ons.

Both have inherited problems from the predecessor and both are attempting to resolve them according to their own beliefs.

Not until the problem has been resolved; can any valid comparisons be made. Anything before becomes partisan politics.

Apples have to be compared to apples. Cherry picking numbers to meet ones point without looking at the underlying data generates flawed predictions and expectations.

There you go again, being all rational and fair-minded. That has GOT to stop.

 

[EagleKeeper]

You caught me()

 

[shira]

I didn't say the talking points were systematically wrong. They are patently infantile in their reductionist analysis. That's all...

The difference between me and a true troll is that I know when I'm oversimplifying. But just try getting anyone to pay attention to an analysis that requires two whole sentences, let alone multiple paragraphs.

Frankly, I wish there were a strictly enforced rule on ATPN that in any new thread the OP is required (1) to read and understand the entire story, which may well involve conducting a web search for information that goes beyond just the original article, and (2) when making an argument, to provide a good-faith description of OPPOSING arguments.

 

[nonlnear]

The difference between me and a true troll is that I know when I'm oversimplifying. But just try getting anyone to pay attention to an analysis that requires two whole sentences, let alone multiple paragraphs.

Frankly, I wish there were a strictly enforced rule on ATPN that in any new thread the OP is required (1) to read and understand the entire story, which may well involve conducting a web search for information that goes beyond just the original article, and (2) when making an argument, to provide a good-faith description of OPPOSING arguments.

I can appreciate the satirical value of the occasional thread such as this. I am not old enough in ATPN years to know what to expect from whom (yourself included), so I was simply responding to the apparent form of the thread in front of me. I think we can agree that our motives are probably very similar here...

 

[Moonbeam]

I didn't say the talking points were systematically wrong. They are patently infantile in their reductionist analysis. That's all...

Perhaps in the long journey up from certainty about one's inculcated core beliefs to the destruction of all we were ever taught, it helps to see how absurd are the beliefs of others. Personally, because somewhere along the line, I ceased to gain a sense of self worth regarding my standing in a pack or herd, I moved more into the column of a clown or joker and sometimes the role of a mirror or mimic to the end of providing just such an absurd target.

If I show people some really absurd beliefs, maybe even their own in some reflective way, it might just happen they will begin that same journey.

An extreme partisan of one extreme surely reflects a partisan on the other end of the spectrum, no, as, you suggested?

So while you may profit not from what he said, having already left partisan camp, those dudes he refers to in another job loss thread may have a chance to see themselves for the fools they really are, eh?

Naturally, I won't hold my breath.

"They say the answer to a fool is silence but experience has shown that any other answer will, in the long run, have the same effect.

 

[Patranus]

Only 12,900,000 jobs to go.

(I would also like to see underemployment figures - the "jobless" figures are meaningless without knowing underemployment)

 

[juiio]

Underemployment went up from 16.8% to 16.9%

 

[CADsortaGUY]

Only 12,900,000 jobs to go.

(I would also like to see underemployment figures - the "jobless" figures are meaningless without knowing underemployment)

"underemployment" isn't a good number as it's not based on anything real - it's based on feeling - not hard metrics. When libbies tried to use it against Bush I said the same thing - it's just not something that's really measurable.

 

[ShawnD1]

Something about this chart really bugs me. While I understand that red is usually a color used to indicate a decrease in something, why are the increases colored blue? When I first saw this graph, the first thing that came to mind was that red=republican and blue=democrat. Why aren't the gains colored green? Is this chart intended to mislead people or am I the only person who made this mistake?

 

[Patranus]

"underemployment" isn't a good number as it's not based on anything real - it's based on feeling - not hard metrics. When libbies tried to use it against Bush I said the same thing - it's just not something that's really measurable.

Underemployment is VERY real and 100% measurable.

Underemployment is when someone wants to work full time but cannot find a full time job.
The unemployment figures include that people in the employed column.
Now, we do not know if every single one of these 120,000 or so jobs was part time or not.

 

[Special K]

"underemployment" isn't a good number as it's not based on anything real - it's based on feeling - not hard metrics. When libbies tried to use it against Bush I said the same thing - it's just not something that's really measurable.

How is it not based on hard metrics? Here are all of the unemployment metrics and their defintions:

http://www.qualityinfo.org/olmisj/ArticleReader?itemid=00000486

U3 is the commonly cited statistic, but it leaves out a large number of people. I assume Patranus is referring to the U6 statistic when he talks about underemployment. U6 is a more accurate measure because it includes people who want a full time job but have given up trying to find one.

Here's a video that does a pretty good job of explaining how the various unemployment statistics are calculated:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUOiOi-XaoQ&feature=player_embedded

 

[Hacp]

Who the fuck cares about underemployment? Unemployment is at 9.7%. I guess that's the new benchmark for Obama, keeping it at 9.7.

 

[ShawnD1]

Who the fuck cares about underemployment?

I'm going to quote this so you can't take it back later.


Underemployed people are those "working poor" that Michael Moore loves to talk about. They don't get enough hours to cover their expenses and thus rely on their savings, they don't have enough hours to qualify for full time benefits like health insurance, and they slowly get closer to bankruptcy with each passing month.