The Fallout 3: Recovery? Say What?

Continued From Part 2

The Nattering One has not glanced at a labor report in quite awhile.  Who wants to read propaganda and damn lies?  

There's that negativity, come on now, lets have quick gander, just for shits and giggles, lets see how good that recovery we keep hearing about is going...  alright then, if you must...

Although job growth was below expectations, July marked the sixth straight month employment expanded by more than 200K while the "advertised" unemployment rate climbed 0.1% to 6.2%.


Sounds good, at least on the surface.  But, as Johnny Cochran used to say, lets not have a rush to judgement.  Maybe we should dig a little deeper into those BS, er BLS numbers.


The long term unemployed now account for 32.8 % or 3.2 million of the 9.6 million unemployed workforce.  


At one point since 2009, those who have been jobless for more than 27 weeks, accounted for over 70% of the total number.


Improving? Over the past year, long term unemployed decreasd by 1.1 million or -25%, over the past two years, down 50%, yet, still double the number when the "great recession" began in 2007.


On the surface this sounds good, but all this means is: For the 50th time in 51 months, more unemployed workers stopped looking for employment than found jobs.  


This means that while 200K found new jobs, more than 200K stopped looking for jobs.

From IBD:  Three cheers for Washington gridlock! But this is still a job recovery about half the pace of the norm.
The number of involuntary part time workers or those working part-time because they cannot find full-time employment stood at 7.5 million. 

The growth of the service and healthcare sectors vs the vaporization of the manufacturing sector is witnessed by...




There are about 12% more people working part time than before the recession and about 2% fewer people working full time hours.


This trend will continue to grow as reported by the Atlanta Fed: 34% of firms indicated they expect the share of part time employees in their firm to be higher in two years.


The underemployment number which includes people who want to work but have given up searching and involuntary part time, edged up to 12.2%.

2.2 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force.  Marginally attached?  Sounds like a booty call for a hook up...  Not so fast Joe...


These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. 


They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey.

The civilian non institutional population is 248 million of which 92 million are not counted as in labor force.  Civilian labor force is 156 million of which 146 million are employed.


The employment to population ratio is 59%. 20 million of the working 146 million are part-time.

The labor force participation rate, or the share of working-age Americans who are employed or at least looking for a job...


increased to 62.9%  in July after holding at 62.8% for three consecutive months.

Translated, 37.1% or 92 million are now "not in the labor force", unemployed and/or not looking, a % low that has not been seen since 1978.

How does this translate into the recovery? Yeah Joe, I got your recovery, right here... from a pissed off senior

With the country in such an employment mess for literally the past 7 years, why isn't Congress working on job creation measures? The real answer is, because they are clueless. They got us in this situation in the first place, and either don't know how to fix the mess they made or don't want to, and just hope we all die off and solve their problem that way. 
The REAL unemployment rate is at least 13%, not 6%, and the job numbers you hear about on the news are low-level jobs, part-time (meaning no benefits) or otherwise undesirable jobs that no one can live on.  
At age 62, frankly, I don't want to work 2 crappy jobs to get by, neither of which provides benefits and both of which are 40 miles from my home. 
Companies are hiring cheap and young, and the work ethic shows it - this is ONE reason why there is no economic growth in this country and why businesses are struggling.  
They are peopled with staff that doesn't give a damn, while good experienced people are unable to find work because they are "overqualified." 
I remember a time not all that long ago when businesses paid well to attract good people. I have never seen such dismal salaries as I see today - and nothing else is going down, not rent, not utilities, certainly not medical care. 
Quite frankly, now that I have been forced into early retirement (thank God when my unemployment ran out, I was able to segue onto SS, but this is at least 8 years sooner than I wanted to stop working)... MORE ON THE S.S. SITUATION LATER
I am seriously considering moving out of this country, like many other expats. In Costa Rica, Panama or other places, the medical care is excellent and one third the cost it is here, and the quality of living is outstanding on less money.
The Nattering One muses...  If you count carefully, there are 31.8 million that can work, but can't find a full time job.  146 + 9.6 + 2.2 = 157.8   20 + 9.6 + 2.2 = 31.8 divide by 157.8 employable = 20% under/unemployment.

Median household income is well below year 2000 levels, because there are more part time workers.  Since, 2000 the median household income has fallen by 6.6%, from $55,030 to $51,371. Thirty-five states have seen a statistically significant decrease in their median household income. 


Well those must be the greater fools gobbling up all this overpriced real estate, because they can qualify under stricter underwriting, right?  Is that why mortgage applications have fallen off?


I guess those highly compensated part time workers can also afford the healthcare, dental and vision costs that their employers are not paying. 


Since 2011, said costs are rising at an alarming rate of 19% per annum... yeah, I got your target, right here.  Oh, and since they are living paycheck to paycheck, inflation being at the target 2% will not affect them in the least.... 


Maybe that's why since 2008, the number of food stamp recipients has grown 70% to 47 million. (more on this later)





There's just a small taste of the fallout, from making bad choices. More to come in Part 4.

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