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Economy Adds Zero Jobs in August as Recession Fears Grow
The U.S. economy added a net total of zero jobs for the month of August, prompting new fears about a double-dip recession.
Job seekers collect employment information at an outdoor job fair at the Crenshaw Christian Center in South Los Angeles, August 2011. The U.S. economy added a net total of zero jobs for the month of August, prompting new fears about a double-dip recession. (photo: AFP) Private-sector firms added 17,000 jobs, while state and local governments continued to shed workers. The unemployment rate held steady at 9.1 percent.
The result was worse than the anemic projections that the economy would add around 75,000 jobs for the month. It is a far cry from the 117,000 jobs added in July, and that number isn't enough to keep up with the growth in population.
Deeper in the numbers, there were more signs for concern. The average workweek dropped by 0.1 hour, and average earnings fell by three cents. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down more than 180 points 40 minutes after opening.
The economy needs to add at least 150,000 jobs per month to keep up with population changes, which points to the problem for President Obama, who is likely to face a difficult path to reelection next year given the sluggish job growth.
Polls show a majority of voters disapprove of Obama's handling of the economy, and Obama's daily approval numbers have at times slipped below 40 percent.
The latest figures add urgency to the jobs speech Obama will deliver next Thursday to a joint session of Congress. Obama, who is not scheduled to speak publicly on the jobs figures on Friday, is expected to offer a mix of proposals to reduce the long-term deficit while giving the economy a jolt in the short run.
The White House released a statement from Katharine Abraham, a member of the Council of Economic Advisors, that said it is important not to read too much into any single report. Abraham also said the figures highlight the need for Congress to pass a surface transportation bill when it returns to Washington next week to keep construction workers on the job.
In a statement, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) blamed the "triple threat" of higher taxes, more failed "stimulus" spending and excessive federal regulations for undermining private-sector job growth.
He said these policies have created "a fog of uncertainty that's left small businesses unable to hire and American families worried about the future."
Yet taxes have actually gone down for most households this year given the agreement in December on a payroll tax cut. That deal also extended all of the Bush tax rates, which are now set to expire at the end of next year.
Still, Democrats and the White House would like to raise some business taxes and want to let expire Bush tax rates on wealthier households. They failed to get any of these tax measures included in the recent deal to raise the debt ceiling.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said he believes there are some areas where his conference can work with Obama on policies to help get people back to work. In a statement, he said he agreed with Obama's suggestion earlier this week that states should get more control over infrastructure projects. Cantor also mentioned reforms to the unemployment system as an area where there might be some compromise.
The anemic growth will be a talking point in the debate about whether Washington should continue to focus on reducing spending or whether it should consider targeted spending measures or tax breaks to stimulate job growth.
Republicans in the House do not want to increase spending and have suggested the payroll tax cut could be allowed to expire, and that federal unemployment insurance would not be extended again. Some economists say allowing those two provisions to expire would just choke off the economy more.
The president's budget office on Thursday downgraded its expectations for the economy over the next year, saying it expected unemployment to hover around 9 percent through Election Day 2012.
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16 Comments so far
Show AllMaybe we should send some of our unemployed over to Afghanistan to partake of some of the money lost in the rebuilding of that country. They could also supplement their income with a little dope smuggling on the trip back home.
"I think it may be a good time for a National Strike for Jobs, Justice, Housing, Healthcare, Education and Environmental Protection for all."
Good summary, VP!
"Stop the Machine! Create a New World!" Please join thousands of us who are fed up with the destruction of our country by the President, Congress, Supreme Court and their funders on Wall Street. Come to DC in October prepared to nonviolently put a spanner in the works. www.october2011.org
So 0 new jobs when the USA needs 150,000 per month just to keep pace with Population Growth and the rate doesn't budge.
The true number to look at is the Workforce Labor Participation Rate which is at near historical lows. The true Unemployment rate is over 20+%.
The Oilybomber Can't win reelection with those numbers but will probably push Free Trade Agreements as the answer.
The only Question that is answered by new Free Trade Agreements is How can I guarantee my $250,000 1/2 hour speeches After my time in the White House is up?
Obama is a Predator Vampire Squid himself.
Late last week I moved about 80% of my 401K out of equities and into fixed return instruments. Our economy is being led by a guy who hasn't cared much about the unemployment rate. And the Republicans are not going to allow him to care now.
1. Penalize companies that send jobs overseas.
2. Increase public jobs nationwide and statewide.
Sorry about this but we have to raise taxes on the wealthy by cutting out their subsidies, loopholes, and the obscene amounts of money they are hoarding.
"In a statement, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) blamed the "triple threat" of higher taxes, more failed "stimulus" spending and excessive federal regulations for undermining private-sector job growth."
That is a very constructive comment. It will create many jobs ... Where are their great ideas for getting out of this mess? I am totally disgusted - as always.
And job growth in June and July were revised down from 46,000 to 20,000 and 117,000 to 87,000 .... In October we will find out that August's numbers have been revised and actually 15,000 jobs were lost ... but inexplicably the unemployment rate will go down by a point (and the pundits will say that is a hopeful sign.)
Then Barry will tell us he created a million new jobs by defunding social security and making the unemployed work for free to "develop skills and job traiing."
Yes, and have you noticed how unemployment is all over the news all of a sudden? Big drum-roll for O's speech next week.
No one at the top cares about jobs. Obama truly believes he can win with the billions the rich will give him for his campaign. He doesn't need the working class, because he has the "liberal" class, which I define as all of the zombies who follow the likes of Thom Hartmann, Ed Schultz, and Rachel Maddow, three of the biggest prostitutes for the plutocracy out there today. All three of these people make a lot of money, all based on support for Obama. Remember, Schultz got his TV show based on Obama's win and his huge support for Obama during the election.
There are tons of "liberals" today doing very well economically. I know lots of them, mostly professionals like doctors and lawyers. Lots of them will vote for Obama because they blissfully turn a blind eye to the suffering of others.
I forgot to add in this "liberal class" who will support Obama all of the writers at The Nation, and most of rest of the "liberal" press, like Juan Cole, Markos Moulitsas, NYT, Washington Post, Robert Scheer, Joshua Marshall, Matt Taibbi (I hope I am wrong about Matt, but he has some troubling undercurrents to his articles), and on and on and on. Obama knows these people may criticize him, but their comfortable and even large incomes depend on him, not Rick Perry, Michelle Bachmann, or Sarah Palin.
Isn't this what we call Reaganomics? Bush/Cheney and the U.S.Chamber of Horrors has driven us into a bottomless pit.
"I can hire one half of the working-class to kill the other half."
- Jay Gould, Gilded Age rail tycoon and land speculator
The remnant middle-class and working-class people who most need to rise and organize are bombarded by two things no other similar population has ever experienced in previous history: (1) A 24/7/365 global "news" (read: corporatist, militarist infotainment propaganda) cycle that Josef Goebbels himself couldn't have dreamed up, and (2) pervasive legal and illegal over-medication including over-reliance on psychological stimulants, 'lite anti-psychotics' and anti-depressives that tend to make their users over time into complacent zombies and affect their hormone balances. American children are the most over-medicated in the world--by their own deteriorated public school system--and many of them grow up believing unquestioningly in "better living through chemistry."
Conditions will soon be so harsh for so many Americans and their friends and loved ones that it will shake them out of their TV/drugged haze to awaken into a Brave New World they haven't even begun to think through. That's when we'll need true leaders the most--especially for the younger generation.
As far as economically desperate dupes carrying out government & corporate crack-downs against poverty-driven civil unrest? Well, we have millions who've cycled through multiple tours in brutal occupation zones, far too many of whom took part in brutality and were psychologically brutalized and "preemptively" numbed to future brutalities they might take part in or experience.
But they don't need to murder people to brutalize them into submission. They can detain them for years sans habeas corpus, psychologically and/or physically torture them, detain or deport their family members, beat the living shit out of them, permanently maim and inflict brain damage on them (sound cannons are perfect for doing this to entire crowds), destroy their reputations, careers, family relationships, etc.
In the old days of the company towns they'd hire armed goons and use sheriffs' deputies to evict entire groups of families onto the street and sometimes send goons to burn them out. They'd have armed goons drive by at night with shotguns and shoot through the windows of the "shotgun shacks" many workers' families lived in.
The assault on collective bargaining starting in Wisconsin earlier this year rolled the relationship between ownership/management and labor back to the 1920s--the days of open, violent class warfare in the streets. The public and enough of "organized" labor just haven't woken up to that fact, yet. But with negligible (and this month, null) net job creation faster than population growth and 300,000 public sector workers a year losing their jobs with no end in sight, the pressures to face that grim reality will rapidly mount. Accelerated offshoring of jobs all this year hasn't helped, and there's no end in sight on that either.
This means, because we are the Divided States of Alzheimers, the sinking middle-class and working-class are going to have to learn the bloody lessons of the labor struggles from the 1870s to the 1930s all over again--only on a larger scale, within a population twice the size it was in 1939, with "free trade" as a barrier to rebuilding domestic manufacturing jobs, high-tech warrantless surveillance, electronic nationwide blacklisting, Next Generation Identification and other techno-fascist hurdles to overcome that didn't exist in the earlier struggles. It's going to get rough and tough and chaotic. Maybe too chaotic for an intelligent revolution. That's my biggest worry.
Follow the Right-Wing Money Funding the Attacks on Working People and a Living Wage:
http://www.publiceye.org/economic_justice/labor/anti_labor/fundweb.html
Economic Justice Home Page:
The Well-Funded Anti-Labor Arsenal
http://www.publiceye.org/economic_justice/labor/anti_labor/fundweb.html
It is not simply about low taxes for corporate elites, but about tax breaks for supporting the think tanks that push public policy into bankruptcy. The Koch brothers could not influence the way they do if they were not fueling and feeding these think tanks for profit. It is high time that the think tanks are placed directly in the high beams of scrutiny from the public sector.
Check the link above and see the money trail !!!!!
Most of us are anemic because all the blood is sucked out of the economy by the top 2%. No transfusion will work fully until that vampire group is taken off our necks.