Unemployment rate drops to 8.5%

[GHook93]

How did we get under 9%? You know when Christ was screaming how great Obama was. We did it because unemployed workers benefits ran out and they fell off the books. Read below to get to 6% unemployment in 2015, the economy MUST add 13 million jobs over the next three years — 360,000 each month! That isn't happening especially when 212K is considered an amazing feat!

Not to mention they are counting employment from Dec! Seasonal work anyone? There is alot of it!

Unemployment Drop May Be as Good as It Gets | Economy In Crisis
Job growth in the range of 130,000 should be expected to accommodate labor force growth, but not do much to lower the unemployment rate. That is hardly a pace that will restore economic health, or validate President Obama’s heavy intervention in the economy and industrial policies in the upcoming presidential campaign.

The unemployment rate would be higher but for the fact that many unemployed professionals have established home-based businesses that really don’t provide full-time employment but do take workers off the unemployment rolls.



Also, many adults have quit looking for work altogether, and the adult labor force participation rate remains depressed. In December, working age adults not participating in the labor force — those neither employed nor looking for work — increased by 194,000, almost as many as who found jobs.

Strong gains were notched in retail and wholesale trade, warehousing and transportation, leisure and hospitality, and health care and social services. Manufacturing added 23,000 jobs and construction added 17,000.

Gains in manufacturing production are not accompanied by stronger improvements in employment largely because so much of the growth is focused in high-value activity. Assembly work, outside the auto patch, remains handicapped by the exchange-rate situation with the Chinese yuan.

The situation with the yuan is the single largest impediment to more robust growth in manufacturing and its broader multiplier effects for the rest of the economy. The Obama administration indicated over the holidays it has no intention of challenging China on this issue, and it enjoys the unlikely support of Republican House Speaker John Boehner.

Government employment fell by 12,000 as private sector jobs added 212,000. Lower property values translate into lower assessments and property values with considerable lag in most communities, and in 2013, the housing recession will dramatically reduce local tax receipts and employment. Coupled with federal budget cutbacks, government employment should fall by about 20,000 a month through the end of 2012.

The private sector, less the heavily subsidized health care and social services industries and temporary businesses services, only added 191,000 jobs. In the months ahead, gains in core private sector employment must improve dramatically if the economy is to halt the decline in real wages and provide federal, state and local governments with adequate revenues, and that is not happening fast enough.

Concerns for Growth

The economic crisis in Europe and mounting problems in China’s housing sector and banks worry U.S. businesses about a second major recession and discourage new hiring. The U.S. economy continues to expand but is quite vulnerable to shock waves from crises in European and Asia.

Factoring in those discouraged adults and others working part time for lack of full time opportunities, the unemployment rate is about 15.2%. Adding college graduates in low skill positions, like counterwork at Starbucks, and the unemployment rate is likely closer to 18%.

Prospects for lowering those dreadful statistics remain slim. The economy must add 13 million jobs over the next three years — 360,000 each month — to bring unemployment down to 6%. Considering continuing layoffs at state and local governments and federal spending cuts, private sector jobs must increase about 385,000 a month to accomplish that goal.

Growth in the range of 4% to 5% is needed to get unemployment down to 6% over the next several years. In fourth quarter of 2011, the economy grew at about 3% but that is expected to slow to 2% in 2012.

Growth is weak and jobs are in jeopardy because temporary tax cuts, stimulus spending, large federal deficits, expensive and ineffective business regulations, and costly health care mandates do not address structural problems holding back dynamic growth and jobs creation — the huge trade deficit and dysfunctional energy policies.
Unaddressed

Oil and trade with China account for nearly the entire $550 billion trade deficit. This deficit is a tax on domestic demand that erases the benefits of tax cuts and stimulus spending.

Simply, dollars sent abroad to purchase oil and consumer goods from China, that do not return to purchase U.S. exports, are lost purchasing power. Consequently, the U.S. economy is expanding at 2% a year instead of the 5% pace that is possible after emerging from a deep recession and with such high unemployment.

 

[JoeB131]

That is some good news

It looks like our republicans are going to have to start posting threads about how Obama had nothing to do with it

He probably didn't, and the job growth is anemic.

That said, it deflates Romney's rational for running pretty well. If unemployment gets below 7% by November, Obama will probably walk away with a win.

 

[iamwhatiseem]

Unemployment, when adding back in the people who have drooped out of the market due to giving up, is roughly 10.5%

 

[rightwinger]

Without reading one damn response, let me guess, they are denying this fact. Its not because of Obama. Blah blah blah.

well the fact is despite a growing population there are 5 million fewer looking for work today who did work before Obama. If you include them the real unemployment rate is around 16% Blah blah blah

Here is the thing, as the economy improves, he is more and more secure in the fact that he will win again.

where exactly is the evidence of improvement?? How can business improve when you have an anti business president?

Especially against that pathetic gop crowd.

how can they be pathetic if they all believe in freedom from big liberal government as our Founders did?

Obama must fail.....blah...blah....blah
I will not acknowledge an improving economy until I have no other choice.....blah....blah...blah
When I acknowledge the economy is better, Obama had nothing to do with it......blah....blah...blah

 

[NYcarbineer]

Yes it its, however the rate remains above 8 percent -- the level that Obama's team once promised would represent the ceiling on unemployment with the passage of the 2009 stimulus package.

Most of those new jobs were in the service sector, for the holiday rush. We will know more about the actual numbers in February, when the January unemployment numbers come out. Businesses traditionally hire many more workers in holiday and summer seasons.

Obama never made that promise.

Unemployment was already over eight percent when the Stimulus passed, so there was no way it could "keep unemployment below 8%"

Yeah, it was the head of his economic team, Christina Romer that made the promise...standing in front of the White House giving a press briefing. Funny how President Obama never contradicted her as he stumped back and forth across the country to get "his" stimulus passed.

The reason that it couldn't keep unemployment below 8% was that it was badly conceived and then carried out ineptly.

That's false. The 8% promise was never made. If anyone bothered to read the Romer report you would know that. Conservatives won't read the report, or will ignore it,

for no other reason than that they like the lie better than the truth.

 

[hortysir]

That's false. The 8% promise was never made. If anyone bothered to read the Romer report you would know that. Conservatives won't read the report, or will ignore it,

for no other reason than that they like the lie better than the truth.

The report projected that the stimulus plan proposed by Obama would create 3 million to 4 million jobs by the end of 2010. The report also included a chart predicting unemployment rates with and without the stimulus. Without the stimulus (the baseline), unemployment was projected to hit about 8.5 percent in 2009 and then continue rising to a peak of about 9 percent in 2010. With the stimulus, they predicted the unemployment rate would peak at just under 8 percent in 2009.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-m...-good-jobs-report-and-old-promise-resurfaces/

 

[edthecynic]

Unemployment, when adding back in the people who have drooped out of the market due to giving up, is roughly 10.5%

That, of course, is a CON$ervative lie based on the false ASSumption that no Boomers have retired. The actual rate, known as the U4 rate, is 9.1% seasonally adjusted, 8.8% not adjusted.

 

[Synthaholic]

That's false. The 8% promise was never made. If anyone bothered to read the Romer report you would know that. Conservatives won't read the report, or will ignore it,

for no other reason than that they like the lie better than the truth.

The report projected that the stimulus plan proposed by Obama would create 3 million to 4 million jobs by the end of 2010. The report also included a chart predicting unemployment rates with and without the stimulus. Without the stimulus (the baseline), unemployment was projected to hit about 8.5 percent in 2009 and then continue rising to a peak of about 9 percent in 2010. With the stimulus, they predicted the unemployment rate would peak at just under 8 percent in 2009.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-m...-good-jobs-report-and-old-promise-resurfaces/

And any predictions were based on governors actually using the money as planned. Rick Parry, in Texas, just took the stimulus money and used it to pay down Texas' debt. So did other Republican governors.

So, wouldn't this skew the end results?

 

[hortysir]

That's false. The 8% promise was never made. If anyone bothered to read the Romer report you would know that. Conservatives won't read the report, or will ignore it,

for no other reason than that they like the lie better than the truth.

The report projected that the stimulus plan proposed by Obama would create 3 million to 4 million jobs by the end of 2010. The report also included a chart predicting unemployment rates with and without the stimulus. Without the stimulus (the baseline), unemployment was projected to hit about 8.5 percent in 2009 and then continue rising to a peak of about 9 percent in 2010. With the stimulus, they predicted the unemployment rate would peak at just under 8 percent in 2009.

PolitiFact | Amid good jobs report, an old 'promise' resurfaces

And any predictions were based on governors actually using the money as planned. Rick Parry, in Texas, just took the stimulus money and used it to pay down Texas' debt. So did other Republican governors.

So, wouldn't this skew the end results?

And Rdean has a thread in here that lists 100+ Republican Congressmen and Senators that voted against Stimulus I but took money to create jobs.

Which is it?