Fictional Job Report Stats - The Obama Way!

The reports echo what Thomas Perez in the Labor Department and the President want reported, on behalf of a failed administration. That is way the seasonally adjusted data soft-pedals the 94,298,000 Americans relegated to Not in Labor Force standing by the BLS. Since it fell from the record high 95,051,000 in January, at least some might argue Obama's largest increase of any individual BLS count showed a modestly positive trajectory for one month, at least. Slow clap.

A few more figures are worth considering in light of claims of an impressive February Employment Situation Report from the President's team at the Labor Department. Of the 242,000 jobs reported to have been added according to CES data gathered from around 165,000 businesses, it's important to note roughly 200,000 of those supposed gains materialize monthly based upon the birth and death cycle invention the BLS implemented from 2003 onward during months not considered recessionary for an assumed "dynamic economy". Americans find this treatment of the facts less compelling than the President's appointees.

The not seasonally adjusted counts are hardest to compare and least accurate in January and February, since major changes to BLS estimates conceived in 2000 were gradually implemented through 2003 for the expressed purpose of adjusting for population controls. Unfortunately, the reality since the change was introduced has seen not seasonally adjusted figures progressively separate from actual survey data to more nearly approximate what BLS statisticians' insist they were seeing or anticipated in ensuing months to bring actual collected data more in line with their predictions.

As a result of the adjustment process begun early this millennium, January's not seasonally adjusted count from about 165,000 businesses showed a loss of 2,961,000 employed Americans, falling from 144,116,000 to 141,155,000 on January figures. With February the second least accurate month of the year, as statisticians work to bring real data more in line with their vision of the workforce, a counterbalancing 850,000 jobs were added after successive months of job losses on Household Survey counts showed a repeat of late 2008 to 2009 results. Ahead of February's modest gains partially offsetting January's 3 million jobs lost by Not Seasonally Adjusted counts, job losses across four of the last six months on CPS counts showed workforce results skewing negative precisely the same number of months as the six-month period through January, 2009.

On Household Survey numbers, January's 666,000 loss of jobs (adjusted for population controls) was followed by 932,000 supposed jobs added, while statisticians' worked to bring  figures more in line with their seasonally adjusted estimates. Without further comment about the creative and potentially misleading figures early each new year since 2003, February's Employment Situation Report unquestionably appeared to be the best report on the past four months. Of course, that's in light of 1,107,000 part time jobs added in November, while just 50,000 jobs were added overall, according to nsa survey responses.

In January, the reported 666,000 jobs lost, paired with 384,000 part time jobs added, turned into the second month out of the last three during which Labor Department figures recorded upwards of 1,050,000 full time breadwinner jobs lost. So the bar for February looking like an improvement wasn't altogether high. It just needed to improve from devastatingly bad numbers late in 2015 through January's first ESR for 2016.

Since a range of measures all supported jobs added to the economy in February, let's look at a breakdown of who gained jobs and what kind of jobs those actually were, according to the Household Survey results. 18 yo 19 year olds gained 103,000 jobs in February, while 16 to 17 year olds added 15,000 more for teens increasing jobs numbers by 118,000 for the month. The age group having gained the most jobs is shown as 55 years and older at 393,000 jobs on Household Data Table A-9, but incredibly, 227,000 of those went to super-seniors 65 years and over who reentered the workforce to supplement retirement income, according to HD Table A-6.

Hispanics turned in another banner month with 362,000 jobs added, which was softened somewhat by statisticians' more modest 300,000 seasonally adjusted estimate for the month. Since January 2009, Hispanics have gained 5,514,000 jobs, showing 24,967,000 employed after starting Obama's Presidency holding 19,453,000 jobs. The foreign born gained another 63,000 jobs and are second only to Hispanics with 4,301,000 jobs gained since they first appeared as a newly counted demographic on HD Table A-7 in January 2010. In February, the foreign born held 25,391,000 jobs, while their first official appearance on BLS counts showed 21,090,000 in January, 2010. Asians continued relentless workforce gains with an impressive 294,000 jobs added, which meant nearly three-quarters-of-a-million jobs went to Hispanics, the foreign born, and Asians combined, turning into 719,000 more jobs for mostly foreign demographics in February alone.

A remarkable 676,000 part time jobs were added in February, again, nearly doubling the 346,000 full time jobs based partly on the first months of the year's adjustments for "population controls" which make January, and to a lesser extent, February figures suspect, to say the least. The BLS acknowledged the anomalies by showing just 75,000 full time jobs added, while estimating 489,000 part time jobs added on seasonally adjusted figures from HD Table A-9. Since teens and super-seniors combined for 345,000 of the jobs added in February on top of the 719,000 gained by the three predominant foreign bloodline (non-native or recent newcomer) demographics, it seems natural to wonder how America's majority white demographic has fared under Obama.

Thanks to 784,000 jobs added in February, which more than offset the 357,000 losses estimated in adjustments for population controls in January on HD Table A-1, white Americans have for the first time across Obama's 86 months in Office topped a million jobs gained. At 118,584,000 in February, the nation's majority demographic making up 75.1% of the latest estimated 323,113,125 count from the U.S, Census Bureau has finally reached seven figures with 1,175,000 jobs gained from the 117,409,000 in place more than seven years after Obama was inaugurated January 20, 2009. Blacks or African Americans who make up 13.05% of the populace, according to USCB counts, have shown more than double the majority demographic's job gains at 2,391,000, counting 17,665,000 in February, after recording 15,274,000 in January, 2009.

I'm fully willing to acknowledge February's jobs report is the best of the past four, and arguably the best of the last seven months, a period during which four showed losses on the Household Survey. Nevertheless, in breaking down who's actually benefitting from modest gains, and dissecting some of the internal mechanisms used by the Labor Department for its estimates, most Americans would be horrified to learn what the real data shows. The only actual nationwide count from employers' payroll records is kept by the ETA, where Report r539cy uses state and U.S. territory employment office UI tax records to show a miserable 2,383,292 jobs gained through February 2016. One would think the nearly ten million jobs gained by Hispanics and the foreign born, combined, and 2.4 million more by blacks or African Americans would show clearly enough why the disenfranchised 94,298,000 Not in Labor Force Americans and America's majority demographic employment woes would suggest reason for change.

Record numbers casting ballots in Republican caucuses and primaries, including for the seemingly most aggressive outsider candidate, could be seen as a predictable response to Obama's seven-plus years of painful fundamental change.

Summation - most of the job figures have been skewed to report progress and while foreign workers have benefitted the most from Obama, more people than ever can find gainful employment that isn't part-time. Did Obama create this?

Yup.

Hate Working Weekends? Thank a union member - part 3 of 3

It is impossible to calculate the cost of the unions’ greed on the rest of us, but several recent studies provide some sobering, and frankly piss-offing (off-pissing?) indications. Policy Exchange, a conservative think-tank, calculates that people in the British private sector work 23% more hours than their public-sector counterparts over their lifetimes, thanks to public-sector strikes, sick days, fat holiday benefits and early retirement.

 Barry Bluestone, a left-wing economist, calculates that the price of America’s public services increased by 41% in 2000-08, while that of private services rose by just 27%.

Eric Hanushek, an economist at Stanford University, argues that replacing just the bottom 5-8% of American teachers with merely AVERAGE performers could move the United States from near the bottom to near the top of the international math and science rankings.

Public Sector Unions – death to thinking

The rigidity of the public sector does not merely reduce the quality of services. It also discourages innovation. In the private sector innovative firms routinely experiment with new business models, measure the success of those models and then expand the successful ones. But whenever public-sector managers have tried to do the same—by establishing magnet schools that focus on certain subjects, or charter schools with longer teaching days, for example—the unions have opposed them. Rabidly.

Greed Kills – How the Unions chewed off the teat that fed them.

Public-sector unions now face the biggest challenge in their history. Governments almost everywhere—particularly in the rich world—are being forced to cut back public spending. Many governments (for example in Ireland, Greece and Spain) are cutting public-sector pay. Others (for example in Japan and America) are freezing it. Greece is increasing the retirement age from 58 to 63 and making it possible to fire public servants. Britain is cutting government departments by as much as a quarter, and is reviewing pensions.

In the United States several rising Republican governors are keen to turn the short-term struggle over pay and benefits into a bigger battle about trade-union power. New Jersey’s Chris Christie and Minnesota’s Tim Pawlenty have both eagerly taken on the new “privileged class” of public-sector workers. Do the public exist to serve public-sector workers with their high pay and inflated benefits, they ask, or do public-sector workers exist to serve the public?

Tellingly enough, even people on the left are beginning to echo these complaints. Andrew Cuomo, the incoming Democratic governor of New York, is rattling his sabre against public-sector unions despite the fact that they make up an important part of his base. Davis Guggenheim, an impeccably liberal film director whose credits include Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”, subjected the teachers’ unions to a merciless critique in “Waiting for Superman”, flagellating them for perpetuating a broken system and presenting Randi Weingarten, the head of the American Federation of Teachers, as “something of a foaming satanic beast”, as one reviewer put it.

The unions have responded by proclaiming war on cost-cutting governments. They have already organized strikes and protests. Millions of French workers marched against Nicolas Sarkozy’s modest plans to raise the retirement age by two years. Hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets in Ireland and Greece against austerity measures. London Underground workers have repeatedly paralyzed transport in the city. Cities across the US needed to be fumigated after the Occupy Whatever Flea Party came through town after town.

Despite all the bloviating “take them out” references by the likes of Hoffa and the putrid acts of the OWS fleabags, public-sector unions will find it hard to win these battles in the long run. Or even the short run.

They have not been particularly successful in mobilizing public anger, considering the scale of the cutbacks, nor have they notched up any notable victories. The Greek and Irish governments have implemented their austerity packages and Nicolas Sarkozy has raised the retirement age in France. They are also discovering that many people in the private sector regard their public-sector colleagues as an overprivileged, underworked remora on the belly of productive society. Spanish civil servants were shocked at how little support they got when, last June, they protested against a 5% cut in pay. And a recent poll showed that 65% of people in stick-in-the-mud Greece want civil servants to lose their job security.

 The pressure to rationalize the public sector is likely to continue in coming years. The debt level in OECD countries is expected to rise to 120% of GDP by 2014, thanks to a combination of ageing populations and inherited obligations, some of them driven by the public sector’s insatiable appetite for pensions. Joshua Rauh, of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, reckons that seven American states will have exhausted their pension assets by 2020. America itself will have its debt level over 108% of GDP – not far off from Greece in a year or two. 

Check your boots for cling on poop.

It would be a mistake to write off the public-sector unions. They are masters of diverting attention from strategic to tactical questions. Undoubtedly the unions will lose some of their privileges over the coming years; the scale of the debt crisis makes this inevitable. But will governments have the courage to tackle the root causes of the problem (such as pensions) rather than dealing with secondary problems (such as wages)? 

And will they dare to tackle questions of power rather than just pay and perks? If they are to claim victory in the coming fight, they need not just to restore the public finances to health - rather they need to remove the tiger grip of mediocrity placed around the necks of scociety by the uions and the limp souled politicians that support them.

Buy union made? I'd rather go without.

America is Soft and Lazy. So Says Barry.

President Zero continued his 2012 De-Election campaign in Asia this week by telling attendees at the Asia-Pacific economic summit that America has gotten “lazy” in the past few decades at attracting foreign investment. Thanks Barry, really, thanks very much.

What he should have said, in the light of his administration’s handling of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, is that America has become quite adept at BLOCKING foreign investment. 

TransCanada Pipelines wants to invest $7 billion in building a pipeline across the United States to carry oil from Alberta to the Gulf Coast. If we were merely lazy, we’d have accepted the project and the thousands of new construction jobs long ago. That would be the path of least resistance, not to mention common sense.But we refuse to take the easy way out. The bureaucrats and the environmentalist whacks produce exhaustive studies. The brightest lights in Hollywood mobilize. The White House calculates its political interest. 

How thoughtless of President Obama to underestimate the effort expended in rejecting a foreign investment.

To delay the project for more than three years and then, after giving every indication that it would go through, announce that the ultimate decision will be kicked past the 2012 election takes hard work and frankly a political death wish we have seldom seen the likes of in US politics. Well, except for Carter. And Clinton.

The president’s “lazy” comment is one of a series of remarks carrying an undercurrent of disapproval of the country he is so luckless as to govern. A few weeks ago, he observed that Americans had gotten “a little soft and we didn't have the same competitive edge that we needed over the last couple of decades.” 

At a San Francisco fundraiser, he lamented that “we have lost our ambition, our imagination, and our willingness to do the things that built the Golden Gate Bridge and Hoover Dam.” This from the man that cancelled NASA manned space programs so we have to beg rides from the Russians. 

Obama is prone to the cynical view of the hip socialist, floating above the foibles of the great unwashed masses in America. It never seems to enter his mind that HE might have disappointed us, but he certainly seems to think that we have disappointed him. We’ve been lazy and soft in our practices going back decades, hopeless until the advent of one Barack H. Obama, the would-be Savior President frustrated by the recalcitrant nation of fools he is forced to work with, a Picasso who has been dealt a bad canvas.

The distance between President Obama’s self-image and reality is as big as the Grand Canyon. 

Ambition? 

His heroic stimulus bill funded roadwork to create temporary insta-jobs and subsidized green-energy projects, some of which would have happened anyway. 

Imagination? 

He perpetually wants to send federal money to the states to prop up their existing un-affordable public union and welfare structures. 

Willingness to do the hard things necessary to build? 

His National Labor Relations Board is harrying Boeing for the offense of building state-of-the-art aircraft in a non-unionized South Carolina plant.

It’s within the president’s power to do a few major things to make us more competitive. The president has shown no interest. He apparently prefers waging a blunt-force campaign against a “do-nothing Congress” and carping about what’s wrong with us.

The only thing wrong with all of us that I can see is that we voted for him. We may be lazy, and have gotten soft, but I think this is one mistake that we will soon be rectifying.