Unemployment

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Applications for US jobless aid jump to 313,000


WASHINGTON (AP) ? The number of people seeking U.S. unemployment benefits jumped last week, pushing total applications above 300,000 for the first time in nearly three months.

Weekly applications rose 21,000 to a seasonally adjusted 313,000, the Labor Department said Wednesday. That's the highest level since the first week of September. The four-week average, a less volatile measure, rose 6,250 to 294,000.
The increase is unlikely to raise concerns about the broader health of the job market. At least some of the rise occurred because of seasonal layoffs in businesses affected by the cold weather, such as construction. The department seeks to control for such seasonal factors but doesn't always do so perfectly.
Applications had been under 300,000 for 10 straight weeks, an unusually low level that indicates companies are laying off fewer workers.
Even with last week's increase, the overall level of applications is well below where it was 12 months ago. The four week average has tumbled 12.2 percent in the past year, and isn't that far from a 14-year low of 279,000 reached last month
"Though we have seen increases over the past three weeks in the four-week average, the trend in claims remains relatively low," Derek Lindsey, an economist at BNP Paribas, said in a note to clients.


The fall in applications has coincided with stronger job gains. Employers have added an average of 229,000 jobs a month this year, putting 2014 on pace to be strongest year for hiring since 1999. That's up from an average of 194,000 last year.
The unemployment rate has fallen to 5.8 percent, a six-year low, down from 7.2 percent a year ago.
Still, the number of people without jobs is concerning, with nearly 9 million Americans officially unemployed. That compares with 7.6 million before the recession. Yet barely a quarter of the unemployed are actually receiving unemployment aid.
That partly reflects the drop in layoffs. But it also suggests that Americans are more confident that they will find work when they do lose jobs. They also may be finding jobs faster than in the earlier stages of the recovery. As a result, they may be less likely to seek unemployment benefits. The percentage of laid off workers who apply for benefits is lower than it was just after the recession ended five years ago, economists estimate.
The total number of people receiving benefits dropped to 2.3 million in the week ending Nov. 15, the latest data available. That's the lowest level since December 2000.
Still, the job gains have yet to push up wages much, limiting the broader growth of the U.S. economy. Average hourly pay rose 3 cents in October to $24.57. That's just 2 percent above the average wage 12 months earlier and barely ahead of a 1.7 percent inflation rate.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/applications-us-jobless-aid-jump-313-000-133423296--finance.html

 

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[Big Puppy]

I think I'm ginna jump on the unemployment bandwagon. Why work to pay for all the lazy bastards.

 

[LAM]

I think I'm ginna jump on the unemployment bandwagon. Why work to pay for all the lazy bastards.

If you think $400/wk is good money you've obviously never made anything close a decent income, it's floor scraps especially since the purchasing power of the U.S declines by 25% every decade. So $400/wk today has the same purchasing power as $200/wk in 1994 dollars.

$400/day is only equivalent to what $50K a year could buy you 20 years ago.

 

[Swiper]

If you think $400/wk is good money you've obviously never made anything close a decent income, it's floor scraps especially since the purchasing power of the U.S declines by 25% every decade. So $400/wk today has the same purchasing power as $200/wk in 1994 dollars.

$400/day is only equivalent to what $50K a year could buy you 20 years ago.

and ur buddy Obama appoints a mass inflationist to head the federal reserve solely to devalue the dollar and boost asset prices for the rich while killing the middle class and poor cuz she thinks prices of goods aren't high enough. what a nice guy.....

 

[Big Puppy]

If you think $400/wk is good money you've obviously never made anything close a decent income, it's floor scraps especially since the purchasing power of the U.S declines by 25% every decade. So $400/wk today has the same purchasing power as $200/wk in 1994 dollars.

$400/day is only equivalent to what $50K a year could buy you 20 years ago.

It's not good money. But on the other hand it's excellent money. You don't even have to work for it. You fill out a couple papers and like magic, it comes in the mail. That's good money. Name any other job that doesn't make you work and gives you $400/ week.

 

[sneedham]

and ur buddy Obama appoints a mass inflationist to head the federal reserve solely to devalue the dollar and boost asset prices for the rich while killing the middle class and poor cuz she thinks prices of goods aren't high enough. what a nice guy.....

Agreed!!!!

 

[LAM]

and ur buddy Obama appoints a mass inflationist to head the federal reserve solely to devalue the dollar and boost asset prices for the rich while killing the middle class and poor cuz she thinks prices of goods aren't high enough. what a nice guy.....

Yea that started 45+ years ago when Paul Volcker was chairman of the FED and they adopted the monetary theory of Milton Friedman where the monetary base was doubled every decade to inflate away Vietnam war debts.

And if you actually knew anything about economics you would understand why the same approach was used for both the Japanese asset bubble burst in 1992 and in the U.S starting in 2009 but you don't.

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/BASE/

 

[LAM]

You can start with a liquidity trap when interest rates are already low and/or negative

 

[Swiper]

You can start with a liquidity trap when interest rates are already low and/or negative

explain how this is going to play out.

soon we'll be 20 trillion in debt. our current payment on the interest of the national debt is about 350 billion a year with zero percent interest rates. when rates rise to a historically low rate of 5% the interest Payment on it will be 1 trillion a year. we only take in just over 2 trillion a year.

 

[LAM]

explain how this is going to play out.

soon we'll be 20 trillion in debt. our current payment on the interest of the national debt is about 350 billion a year with zero percent interest rates. when rates rise to a historically low rate of 5% the interest Payment on it will be 1 trillion a year. we only take in just over 2 trillion a year.

As I've said before the Club of Rome has projected that the U.S economy will totally collapse by the 2050's. And it's going to be from the combination of low and stagnate wages which contribute to all that debt your talking about along with the trade deficit which also contribute to that debt and health care which will amount for about 35% of US GDP come the 2030's due to the lack of meaningful health care reform and of course decades of U.S imperialism all of which was put on credit.

There isn't an honest economist alive that claims the U.S economy is sustainable but they also won't talk about what the math clearly shows will occur. There is no economic homeostasis when you analyze the mathematics that drives U.S economy there can be only one end result it's not a matter of if but of when.

 

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Total US Debt Rises Over $18 Trillion; Up 70% Under Barack Obama


Last week, total US debt was a meager $17,963,753,617,957.26. Two days later, as updated today, on Black Friday, total outstanding US public debt just hit a new historic level which probably would be better associated with a red color: as of the last work day of November, total US public debt just surpassed $18 trillion for the first time, or $18,005,549,328,561.45 to be precise, of which debt held by the public rose to $12,922,681,725,432.94, an increase of $32 billion in one day

It also means that total US debt to nominal GDP as of Sept 30, which was $17.555 trillion, is now 103%. Keep in mind this GDP number was artificially increased by about half a trillion dollars a year ago thanks to the "benefit" of R&D and intangibles. Without said definitional change, debt/GDP would now be about 106%.
It also means that total US debt has increased by 70% under Obama, from $10.625 trillion on January 21, 2009 to $18.005 trillion most recently.
And now we wait for the US to become Spain, and add the estimated "contribution" from hookers and blow to GDP, once again pushing the total debt/GDP ratio below the psychological 100% level.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-12-01/total-us-debt-rises-over-18-trillion

 

[Dale Mabry]

Didn't G-dub double the debt? So Obama is right on track. Then the next pres will double it, then the next one after that will double it again. Regardless of party, it won't be either party's fault, it will be the other party's fault. Life in America, ain't it grand!

 

[Zaphod]

Didn't G-dub double the debt? So Obama is right on track. Then the next pres will double it, then the next one after that will double it again. Regardless of party, it won't be either party's fault, it will be the other party's fault. Life in America, ain't it grand!

It's the fault of the voters. They keep voting either democrat or republican. As long as either party is in power we will continue along this same path. It's the same end, they just have different means.

 

[Swiper]

Didn't G-dub double the debt? So Obama is right on track. Then the next pres will double it, then the next one after that will double it again. Regardless of party, it won't be either party's fault, it will be the other party's fault. Life in America, ain't it grand!

under bush it increased 5 trillion. under Obama it will increase 10 trillion by the end of his term, which is double of what it increased under bush.

 

[LAM]

under bush it increased 5 trillion. under Obama it will increase 10 trillion by the end of his term, which is double of what it increased under bush.

The increase under Bush was from legislation and with the exception of the $800B stimulus under Obama its been from lost revenue from the economic downturn while spending stayed at historic trends.


http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/W006RC1Q027SBEA

 

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[Zaphod]

There's the conundrum: Don't go to college and you're looked down upon, told to go to college to better yourself and get a better job, go in debt to get that education, then you can't get a job in your field of study. Instead you only hear "go back and get a different degree, a more practical degree." Or you can go to college, get your education, go in debt, only to not get a job in your field of study. Often taking shit jobs just to survive. In which case you're looked down upon, told to go back to college, get even further in debt, only to find you can't get a job in your field of study. No matter what you do you're fucked.

 

[Zaphod]

I have yet to see any signs of a recovery.

 

[Conceal30]

I saw one of my friends out last night. He has been laid off since November. He said he gets 974$ every two weeks after taxes. So basically 2,000$/month. So he's eating a big steak dinner and told me he just bought a new four wheeler. I started to get pissed off after hearing this. Isn't that our federal tax money paying for that dinner and four wheeler? How is it fair that he gets all that money every month and some people have to work 40/hours a week to make that? And now they just extended the length of time you can collect from 6 months to 9 months. He said he will be starting back working in April. How nice would it be to work 6 months then have 6 months off and collect unemployment. You could collect the money and then get another job on the side. Unbelievable. I would feel like a piece of shit if I were just collecting that money and not trying to find a job. Although if I knew I were getting my job back in a few months then why try to find a job? Its just that fact that my tax dollars are going towards this. I can imagine how many people abuse this.

actually you pay for your unemployment yourself, its part of the taxes that are taken of your check when your working, and its based on your salary. He gets that much because he evidently makes good money when he works, and pays a lot of taxes. People who collect unemployment dont bother me, you can only get it if you work the majority of the time. its the people who have never had a job in their life and get free money every month that pisses me off.

 

[Conceal30]

There's the conundrum: Don't go to college and you're looked down upon, told to go to college to better yourself and get a better job, go in debt to get that education, then you can't get a job in your field of study. Instead you only hear "go back and get a different degree, a more practical degree." Or you can go to college, get your education, go in debt, only to not get a job in your field of study. Often taking shit jobs just to survive. In which case you're looked down upon, told to go back to college, get even further in debt, only to find you can't get a job in your field of study. No matter what you do you're fucked.

I have a kid in college and 2 on the way. I have told them since day one, get an MBA or something medical like dr/nurse, or healthcare administration. or a law degree... anything else isnt worth the paper it printed on. the medical and legal field is constantly growing because the population is constantly growing, an MBA is universal. I have a friend who got 100k in debt getting a degree in psychology.... completely worthless

 

[Bowden]

Financialization of the economy is resulting in income inequality, wage stagnation, a large increase in the working poor.
Rent seeking is now the name of the game.

The capital is trickling up to the top and staying there.
It may eventually lead to a collapse of the economy and the creation of a society that will resemble feudalism.

The elites have and still are financially engineering the financialization of the economy, the leverage of debt and other types of financial instruments and have people arguing over crap like legalization of illegal immigrants will lead to competition for jobs.

We have now been reduced to arguing over competition between Americans and legalized immigrants over service sector low wage working poor jobs with low or no benefits.
A level of compensation that qualifies someone for welfare.

All while the elites go their merry way, becoming very wealthy at our expense.

 

[Swiper]

you can thank the federal reserve and the politicians that makes all that happen.

 

[LAM]

you can thank the federal reserve and the politicians that makes all that happen.

The private sector bears just as much blame as do the politicians after all it's their lobbyists that pull the strings of politicians and write major pieces of legislation that benefit their bottom line. Which ultimately comes down to the fact that money isn't value neutral and allowing private capital to be used in public elections could only result in a system of government that functions as it does in the U.S. There is no transparency.

All of these issues were brought up hundreds of years ago by Adam Smith, David Ricardo and Karl Marx.

 

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[LAM]

Most of the jobs created in the service sector are of the low wage variety in food service, etc.


With the velocity of the M2 money stock at a 55+ year low it's safe to say it's never going to get better. Not with an economy being lead by non-productive financial speculation.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-01-17/the-recovery-and-the-speed-of-money


http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/M2V/


The velocity has tanked since the tech sector bubble started to peak in 1997 and the capital gains rates were changed in the Tax Payer Relief Act of 1997. Even during all those years of false prosperity created by lax lending and easy money for housing it didn't pick up.

 

[Gregzs]

http://www.vox.com/2015/1/29/7938229/obama-economic-plan-chart

One chart that explains Obama?s new economic plan

President Barack Obama's 2015 State of the Union was different than all his other State of the Unions. Obama, for the first time, offered an economic plan that wasn't really about unemployment. And if you want to know why, look at the chart above.

The graph comes from the Economic Policy Institute, and it outlines one of the stranger facets of the recovery. Unemployment has fallen to normal levels ? 5.6 percent unemployment was routine in, say, 1995, a year that few remember as some sort of labor market hellscape. But the fall in unemployment isn't just driven by people getting jobs. It's also driven by workers disappearing from the labor market.

The unemployment rate doesn't include everyone without a job. It only counts people who don't have a job and have looked for a new one in the last four weeks. If you don't have a job and, for whatever reason, haven't looked for a new one in the last four weeks, you're not counted as unemployed. And that's a big part of what's brought the unemployment rate down: millions of workers who lost their jobs have stopped looking for new ones.

The measure you want to track here is "labor-force participation": the percentage of the adult population (excluding people in the military, prisons, mental hospitals, and nursing homes) that's either working or looking for work. When Obama took office, it was 65.7 percent. In December, it was 62.7 percent. That's a sharp drop.

There are good reasons for the participation rate to fall. Retirement, for example, reduces labor-force participation, and that's fine ? we don't want people to have to work until the day they die. And with the Baby Boomers hitting retirement age, we knew that labor-force participation was going to fall during Obama's presidency ? much as it fell during George W. Bush's presidency.

But there are bad reasons for people to be leaving the labor force, too. Being unable to find a job for months on end, despite sending out hundreds of resumes, is a bad reason. Being unable to find a job that pays enough for child care and your bus commute is a bad reason. We should worry about people who drop out of the labor force for those reasons just like we worry about the unemployed.

So to get a solid picture of the labor market right now, you have to do more than look at the unemployment rate. You have to do more than look at the labor-force participation rate, too. You also have to make a judgment about how much of the participation drop comes from demographic factors like aging, and how much is unemployment or underemployment in disguise.

The White House's Council of Economic Advisers took a go at this last summer: they concluded that roughly half the fall in labor force participation was to be expected, and the other half was partly "a cyclical decline in line with historical patterns in previous recessions" and partly "other factors, which may include trends that pre-date the Great Recession and consequences of the unique severity of the Great Recession."

The folks at the Economic Policy Institute also came up with a clever way to do try to tease out the numbers. They unearthed a Bureau of Labor Statistic paper from 2007 ? so, from before the recession ? called "Labor Force Projections to 2016: More Workers in Their Golden Years". The study included a projection of labor-force participation until, well, 2016. Obviously, in 2007, the BLS didn't know we were about to face the biggest recession in 80 years. This makes their predictions a good proxy for what would have happened to labor force participation without the downturn. EPI compared the BLS predictions to the actual numbers, figuring the difference is attributable to the recession.

Like any projection, the BLS paper might have been wrong. Perhaps labor force participation was always going to fall faster than the BLS thought. But if you take it as a benchmark, the results are devastating: it shows six million workers missing from the labor force. If they were all actively looking for jobs today, the unemployment rate would be 9.1 percent ? and no one would be talking about a recovery.

A complicated problem

Unemployment is a straightforward problem: it's people who want jobs but can't find them. Labor force participation is more complicated. Some of those six million missing workers are people who want jobs and have been so thoroughly discouraged trying to find them that they've given up. Some are students in college or grad school. Some are people who can't find a job that pays enough to offset the costs of transportation and child care. Some are members of families that got used to having only one income during the recession and now find it hard to go back.

No one ? including the Obama administration ? doubts that a big part of the problem here is too few jobs. But now that the economy is beginning to add jobs at a rapid clip, the White House is turning to the other side of the problem: many of the jobs on offer don't pay much, and certainly not enough to pull people back into the labor force. And this, in turn, is part of a longer-term problem in the economy: lower-skill workers haven't gotten a real raise in decades.

If you read the White House's new economic proposals closely, you see them trying to do two things: make jobs pay more by raising the minimum wage and offering various tax credits to workers, and make workers more valuable to employers by making it cheaper for them to go to college. This isn't an agenda that directly tries to create jobs so much as it's an agenda that tries to make the jobs that already exist more valuable to workers, and the workers that already exist more valuable to employers.

Solving this problem matters, and not just for the affected workers. This week, the Congressional Budget Office projected that deficits were going to grow faster than expected because the economy was going to grow more slowly than expected. And part of the reason they think America is going to grow more slowly in the coming years is fewer people are in the workforce.

"This is a very, very big deal," says Jared Bernstein, senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and a former White House economist. "Maybe the biggest deal. It?s not just that we want people to get back into the job market because it would improve their living standards. It?s also because the economy depends on it."

 

[Bowden]

The above post illustrates what has happened to capitalism and the impacts to labor force participation.
The capital is all trickling up to the top through capital gains and dividends and it is not trickling down into wage increases except in a small number of job types.
Many people I know over 50 who lost their jobs during the great recession are living off of their 401ks until they hit social security age.

Who in the hell wants to go to work for under 10 an hour at a low wage no benefit services industry job if they can afford not to?

 

[Swiper]

SF Bookstore Survived 100% Rent Increase, Great Recession & Competition from Amazon and eBooks, but Not $15 Mininmum Wage



The consequences of the clueless implementation of attempts to muscle the economy (minimum wage edition). Very sad.


From the website of Borderlands Books:

Borderlands is closing.
In 18 years of business, Borderlands has faced a number of challenges. The first and clearest was in 2000, when our landlord increased our rent by 100% and we had to move to our current location on Valencia Street. The steady movement towards online shopping, mostly with Amazon, has taken a steady toll on bookstores throughout the world and Borderlands was no exception. After that and related to it, has been the shift towards ebooks and electronic reading devices. And finally the Great Recession of 2009 hit us very hard, especially since we had just opened a new aspect to the business in the form of our cafe.
But, through all those challenges, we?ve managed to find a way forward and 2014 was the best year we?ve ever had. Overall, Borderlands has managed to defeat every problem that has come our way. At the beginning of 2014, the future of the business looked, if not rosy, at least stable and very positive. We were not in debt, sales were meeting expenses and even allowing a small profit, and, perhaps most importantly, the staff and procedures at both the bookstore and the cafe were well established and working smoothly.
So it fills us with sorrow and horror to say that we will be closing very soon.
In November, San Francisco voters overwhelmingly passed a measure that will increase the minimum wage within the city to $15 per hour by 2018. Although all of us at Borderlands support the concept of a living wage in principal and we believe that it?s possible that the new law will be good for San Francisco ? Borderlands Books as it exists is not a financially viable business if subject to that minimum wage. Consequently we will be closing our doors no later than March 31st.
Many businesses can make adjustments to allow for increased wages. The cafe side of Borderlands, for example, should have no difficulty at all. Viability is simply a matter of increasing prices. And, since all the other cafes in the city will be under the same pressure, all the prices will float upwards. But books are a special case because the price is set by the publisher and printed on the book. Furthermore, for years part of the challenge for brick-and-mortar bookstores is that companies like Amazon.com have made it difficult to get people to pay retail prices. So it is inconceivable to adjust our prices upwards to cover increased wages.
The change in minimum wage will mean our payroll will increase roughly 39%. That increase will in turn bring up our total operating expenses by 18%. To make up for that expense, we would need to increase our sales by a minimum of 20%. We do not believe that is a realistic possibility for a bookstore in San Francisco at this time.
The other obvious alternative to increasing sales would be to decrease expenses. The only way to accomplish the amount of savings needed would be to reduce our staff to: the current management (Alan Beatts and Jude Feldman), and one other part-time employee. Alan would need to take over most of Jude?s administrative responsibilities and Jude would work the counter five to six days per week. Taking all those steps would allow management to increase their work hours by 50-75% while continuing to make roughly the same modest amount that they make now (by way of example, Alan?s salary was $28,000 last year). That?s not an option for obvious reasons and for at least one less obvious one ? at the planned minimum wage in 2018, either of them could earn more than their current salary working only 40 hours per week at a much less demanding job that paid minimum wage.
Although the major effects of the increasing minimum wage won?t be felt for a while, we?ve chosen to close now instead of waiting for two reasons. First, the minimum wage has already increased from $10.74 per hour to $11.05 (as of January 1st) and it will increase again on May 1 to $12.25. Continuing to pay the higher wage without any corresponding increase in income will expend the store?s cash assets. In essence, the store will have less money (or inventory) six months from now, so closing sooner rather than later makes better business sense. But more importantly, keeping up our morale and continuing to serve our customers while knowing that we are going to close has been very painful for all of us over the past three months. Continuing to do so for even longer would be horrible. Far better to close at a time of our choosing, keep everyone?s sorrow to a minimum, and then get on with our lives
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2015/02/sf-bookstore-survived-100-rent-increase.html

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