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America's Happy Talk Media: No Jobs Is Good News!
The propagandists in the corporate media are scratching their heads trying to figure out how to paint a rosy picture using the shockingly bad employment news out of the Labor Department last week.
Here's the raw data:
The official unemployment rate fell from 9.4% to 9.0%, when the prediction had been that it was going to move up slightly to 9.5%
The number of new jobs added was a net 36,000, the lowest increase since last September, when the economy was still losing jobs.
Here are some of the media quotes:
Associated Press: "The unemployment rate dropped sharply last month to 9 percent, based on a government survey that found that more than a half-million people found work."
MSNBC: "The U.S. labor market slowed sharply last month, generating just 36,000 net new jobs, the fewest in four months, as winter storms depressed payrolls growth. Still, the unemployment rate dropped sharply to 9 percent, the lowest level in nearly two years."
Fox News: "Economic growth is gaining momentum, with factories busy and service firms expanding, but one critical area still lags: job creation."
Hoops were being jumped through here to try to make something terrible look good.
Here's the reality: In a trend that has continued now since October, the number of net new jobs created by the US economy has fallen once again, thanks to layoffs by construction companies, warehouse and transportation companies and especially public employers like state and city governments and school districts, which undercut minor gains in the manufacturing and retail sectors. A gain of 36,000 jobs has to be put in perspective too--the US economy has to add 150,000 new jobs a month just to accommodate the growth in the size of the working age population. That's a figure we haven't seen since October. The average number of jobs created monthly over the last three months was just 83,000, according the the Labor Department.
And as for that 0.4% drop in the official unemployment rate to "just" 9%? That was the result of a decline in the number of people still considered to be "in" the labor force, which reportedly shrank by 504,000. These are people who have given up trying to find a job--for example people over 62 who may have just decided, after trying for a year or two, to retire early, take Social Security, and give up, or who have decided to stay home and take the kids out of daycare to save money, instead of beating the street looking for a nonexistent job. The overall labor participation rate--the percentage of working age Americans actually in the labor market, either working or looking for work--fell in January to a recession low of just 62.4%. That is, fewer than 2/3 of working-age Americans are even in the jobs market these days!
This is not good news. It is terrible news. And no amount of beating around the bush, or even outright cheerleading based upon the cherry-picking, or misinterpreting of the date, can make it good.
The only surprising thing about the latest Labor Department report on employment and unemployment is how wrong-footed the economic media, and the analyst community, were about it. On the eve of the department release of the date, everyone was writing about expectations that job growth would surge to 150,000 or even 185,000, and that the official unemployment rate would tic up slightly to 9.5%. There was even the requisite spin on this anticipated rise in unemployment, which explained that it was actually a good thing because it reflected a rise in the overall size of the labor force as formerly discourage workers come back into the job market to look for work.
Funny how when they're trying to explain a rise in the unemployment rate, the media propagandists are quick to mention the increasing size of the labor force, but when it turns out that a decline in the overall labor force is the reason for a decline in the jobless rate, they are silent, or bury the news at the bottom of the news story.
When you put this latest sorry jobs news together with last weeks report that housing prices in all the major markets are headed back down for what is called a "double-dip" housing recession, it paints a very gloomy picture for the American economy. And that's before you factor in the impact of rising oil prices, as traders factor in the growing political turmoil across the Middle East.
It looks like hard times ahead, whatever the corporate media are saying.
48 Comments so far
Show AllWho was it that said ,"there are lies, damned lies, and statistics"? The MSM are always speaking of how things are going for the plutonomists while trying to control us, the great unwashes masses.
'Who was it that said ,"there are lies, damned lies, and statistics"?'
All of us did, John. All of us here, that is. You must have heard it here. Or, do you sneak around searching out foreign news?
Was it only me but I found it awful to see the president standing before The Chamber of Horrors . . er, Commerce trying to win their hearts and minds by promising to cut spending, deregulate, and do all the other stuff one would think they'd want to hear. It was a "please love me" speech, and we know how well those usually work. He tried to appeal to their "love of America" sentiments (as if they had any) and was almost begging them to throw him the crumb of a few jobs ("get in the game"). I have begun to wonder if he thinks he can get them to "build a bridge."
He's either the most cynical or the most deluded (probably both) person ever to hold the office.
The working class in this country (which actually includes a lot of people who mistakenly think they're upper middle class -- it depends on the source of their income: a high paid wage slave is still a wage slave). Business wants people who work cheap, spend what little they have on fads and junk, and ultimately get all the money for themselves as they depopulate the increasing number of the no longer useful and necessary.
Some might hope he'll get some cojones somehow but he won't.
I was watching CBS news when I saw that, and it makes perfect sense: corporations and business want American workers to be more like Chinese slaves! Less environmental controls, less worker protections in factories, etc., etc.
It's the perfect circle of pain, starting with outsourcing and in-sourcing, meaning it's coming home now, full circle.
I was watching CBS news when I saw that, and it makes perfect sense: corporations and business want American workers to be more like Chinese slaves! Less environmental controls, less worker protections in factories, etc., etc.
It's the perfect circle of pain, starting with outsourcing and in-sourcing, meaning it's coming home now, full circle.
That would be Mark Twain.
Twain coined the phrase during the gilded age when robber barons were bilking the nation out of billions of dollars.
As they continue to bilk many nations around the globe out of trillions of dollars, today's banksters make the robber barons look like frat boy pranksters.
It was Reagan with his happy talk, sociopathic-psychopathic-optimism psychobabble that trained the MSM to push the happy talk propaganda that he perfected to instill the gullible, ignorant[a choice]American public into mindlessness. the inability to and/or to know to discern thoughts from fiction. Reagan's happy talk deluded the public to acquiesce to the "Manufacturing Consent" doctrine started in 1920 by Walter Lippmann but was enhanced by TV, with Reagan being the catalyst to institutionalize mindlessness in collaboration with businesses and the pretend christians[biblical harlots] which gives it legitimacy with peer pressure. Mindlessness is evidenced daily, hourly by the minute and second on TV.Reaganomics is the result of a vain diseased man, Reagan, who was almost deaf and wouldn't wear a hearing aid and Alzheimer starting in his 1st term. This takes the mystery as to why the economy is in depression as Reaganomics is in effect today. Reagan initiated the huge budget deficits to fund the Pentagon with the Treasury bond proceeds for the national debt, which Admiral Mullen has declared as a threat to national security, to protect us FROM THREATS TO NATIONAL SECURITY, the Pentagon protection racket scheme of; fund US,for protection the Pentagon, or else.........! This is Reaganomics, created and implemented by a diseased man almost deaf with Alzheimer's. This takes the mystery as to why this country is bankrupt!Reaganomics, funding a threat to national security, the Pentagon, to protect US from threat to national security. What should we expect from someone with Alzheimer's.
here's another good one liner: figures don't lie but liars sure can figure
the death spiral continues...
9%? Why aren't the real numbers being reported, which is somewhere around 23% out of work, and a whole lot more working part-time who need to work full-time! The jobless rate was never any worse during the Great Depression of the 1930's than about 25%, so regardless of what the MSM tells us, we are in a depression now. Well, we could all move to Red China and work for 85 cents an hour, because that's where the jobs have gone! Thank you corporate America!
The unemployment rate reported in the media reflects only those who qualify for unemployment benefits. Since qualification is not automatic it undertabulates real unemployment, and since benefits are only offered for six months, the numbers can always be expected to fall eventually.
That tale about people opting out of the job search is so bogus! No one can afford to do that. What you have is people losing their homes, living in their cars or in tent cities, wandering like ghosts from one food pantry to the next. There are young people (with college degrees) returned to their parent's homes, friends living on friends couches, desperation.
Im one that opted out. I was able to do that by taking my pension WAY earlier that I wanted to. In two years of looking for a job the only thing I could land was a temporary census job. I am an older person that is not currently employed, so my guess is I am not even considered for any of the jobs I apply for. My understanding is that many HR departments simply will not hire anyone who is not currently working.
If it wasn't for my pension, we would be burning through our life's savings right now. I feel very sorry for anyone that is out of work and doesn't have SS or a pension to fall back on because from my experience, the chances of them getting a job is somewhere between slim and none.
I have seen job ads that state specifically that you need not apply if you are not currently employed...
If your hair is grey, stay away.
If your hair is white, take flight.
Don't tell me what you did, we're gonna hire a kid.
Sure, you've got the qualification
but you'd want too much renumeration.
And while your performance might be great,
do you know what old folks do to our insurance rate?
So if you see our ad please don't reply
even if it's a matter of do or die.
If that's rap's yours, I'd like to borrow it.
It's mine. Feel free to use it.
I was listening to NPR the other day when these jobs reports came out and kept listening for mention of people leaving the labor force, but none was forthcoming.
I was intrigued recently by a statement from Nader in a recent column that Terry Gross is a censor. I always thought her show was just fluff and did not bother to listen much. However, since Nader's article I have been tuning in.
Mostly it is fluff including reviews of TV shows and the like. However, the other day she had the editor of the NYT on to discuss Wikileaks/Assange, and I begin to see what Nader means. There were so many nefarious moments in this interview and because it's a bit off topic, I will only recount a couple.
They started the discussion with how polarized politics are these days and somehow blamed Wikileaks. People are indeed polarized in the U.S., especially Democrats seem to hate Republicans, but as we have recounted innumerable times on this site, there is no polarization in Washington. The good cops and the bad cops serve the same masters. The monied interests have always owned the government.
I realize that the most important fiction propagated by the media these days must be the supposed split between the D's and R's. If people could ever see that the donkeys and elephants are really just dogs and ponies, we might rise up.
Another aside by the editor was that the NYT and others were searching for people that have been harmed by Wikileaks though probably not by the NYT itself because they so carefully redacted names. I picture NYT reporters stepping over the dead bodies of people killed in Afghanistan by the military in order to ask people if they know anyone who was outed by Wikileaks.
So be prepared for more Julian Assange (or should we call him Julian Sausage after his dalliances in Sweden?) character assassinations.
I heard that interview two. I was working in the garage as was listing to it as background noise. That is until the character assignation the NYT hack did on Assange. Then I stopped what I was doing to carefully listen to it.
The NYT hack, commented on Assange's appearance, about him wearing filthy white socks, dirty shirt, dingy coat, and smelling like he hadn't bathed in days. (Like that has anything to do with government leaks). Then he made a comment about Assange having a pacifist agenda, and he made that comment in a derogatory fashion, implying that was a bad thing. I thought to myself Fu$& you and the NYT, you a$$hole.
I felt a little like I was listening to a Fox News interview, instead of one on NPR .
hey, NC-Tom!
yes, NPR lost me after 911, when I was desperately looking for an alternative to the official coverage...
although NPR's marketing has always been different, voices speaking in more reasonable tones, enunciating more clearly, formulating longer sentences that imply intelligent reflection and appear to allow for revealing discourse with reputable guests, the underlying message, once understood, was all too similar to the one I was trying to avoid: the US government was victim, not perpetrator...
I saw they were part of the team...never went back...turned off all tv in 2000...
Hey, right back at you!
There are still a few good shows on there. Diane Rehm has good shows from time to time. So does "This American Life". Most other news type shows are pretty hit and miss for anything decent. For laughs "Click and Clack" the car guys are pretty good along with "Wait, Wait Don't tell me". Also science Friday is interesting for timely science info.
That "New York Times hack" you're referring to is the executive editor of the New York Times, which makes it much worse, Keller is the ultimate censor.
He's the one who held his own reporter James Risen's scoop about how the NSA was spying on hundreds of thousands of Americans' electronic communications without any warrant for a year, until the November elections were safely past.
He also prevented his science reporter, who had a fully edited piece exposing GW Bush's use of a secret cueing device during the Bush/Kerry presidential device, from running it a week before the 2004 election, claiming he didn't want to "influence" the balloting.
Talk about a censor in the so called free press!
Visit Dave Lindorff's website at www.thiscantbehappening.net
dupe
Look NPR gets 33% of its funding from small donors like us.
I have been disgusted with NPR's center-Right coverage for years now.
There are a few good shows on NPR like "On the Media" and locally on WNYC
we have the Brian Lehrer Show who has actually had Daniel Ellsberg on the air.
But "All Things Considered" and "Weekend Edition", the News flagships are atrocious.
For this reason, I stopped giving to WNYC...
Why can't we organize a group of progressive listeners and bundle our contributions
until Peace Activists, Environmentalists, Peak Oil theorists and alternate voices
are represented?
An NPR donor boycott....
I had heard that when Assange was being "interviewed" by Steve Kroft on 60 minutes, it quickly turned into practically an FBI interogation. At one point Kroft threatened him whth a remark that he "shouldn't mess with the forces of nature".
Kroft then ridiculed Assange's concerns for his safety, and when Assange brought up the issue of death threats from US politicians and officials, Kroft proceeded to explain, dripping with condesention, that the US has something called the First Amendment and these people issuing these threats were just excecising their free speech rights. (I'm not making this up!)
For his part, Assange kept his cool through this nonsense. I'm sure he learned a lot about the US media that day.
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/EMRATIO
A different way of looking at the numbers.
I posted elsewhere but note that the US Labor force participation was the lowest labor force participation in the period measured was from the 1950s to the 1970s the same time US families made their greatest gains financially. (The exception of minorities like Black families duly noted)
Then The Mid 70s hits and Nixons change to Bretton Woods. Women enter the US labor force en-masse. The US worker "stagnates".
The boom busts of the 80's and 90's occur with drop in employment and then the huge drop 2008.
Real wages continue to decline via inflation and quantitive easing. Even were all those jobs recovered the US Households would not be as in good shape financially as they were in 1970.
Even If a modicum of jobs ever recovered This will become the "new normal" with the US worker now "conditioned" into believing it better then the "alternative" with both parents working harder for less as Corporate profits Grow.
The "Shock doctrine" an action.
The system is rotten to the core. The Boom Bust cycles are getting the worker used to having to work ever harder for less and thankful for that job at "wal-mart" and the Politician that can create "wal-mart" type jobs will be seen as a "saviour".
There is no "fixing" the current system. Capitalism has to go.
GW NORTH:
"Even If a modicum of jobs ever recovered This will become the "new normal" with the US worker now "conditioned" into believing it better then the "alternative" with both parents working harder for less as Corporate profits Grow.
The "Shock doctrine" in action."
I believe you've nailed the key issue. With corporations free to scope the planet in pursuit of the lowest paid labor pools, added to the U.S. citizenry picking up the tab for the armed guards needed to secure other nations' resources, a new bottom line is being forged. Living standards and wages will come to represent something along the lines of the "law of averages." Indeed, for all the attempts to chase 3rd world "illegal aliens" out of this nation, many will learn what it feels like to live (or perhaps just survive) exactly as they do.
Typical analysis is that Barack's approval ratings are going up because he is moving to the middle and gave the rich their tax breaks. "I get that," said Bill Maher. Chris Matthews and a host of others go along with this flawed analysis. I suppose the public will be ecstatic to have their Medicare and SS stripped, just as they are so relieved to have a 9% official employment rate. How do I know this? I listen to the media.
Yea. Barry's numbers went up because the corporate media started praising him when he moved even further to the right. What the corporate media defines as the middle keeps shifting to the right (now I am afraid the corporate-media-defined "middle" is far to the right of Ronald Reagan) and has absolutely nothing to do with the opinions of the great majority of citizens.
Who needs statistics?
Any of us, with a bit of casual observation, can see that the U.S. economy is in BIG trouble.
Besides those of us who are not working, or not working enough- everywhere you see familiar stores, once landmarks of the neighborhood, now shuttered and dark.
Even if they are lucky enough to still be in business, these stores and community services are severely cutting back their hours of operation.
If you go out-of-town for a few weeks the difference in just a short amount of time is a shocking on upon your return home.
Meanwhile, we read in the papers everyday that the banks & corporations are doing quite well. Is this a lie, too? (would that it were so!)
I just went to the closest Main Street from my house today and was shocked to
see 3 more Storefronts for rent....
Due to the Climate-Change snow and ice storms I hadn't ventured down there much
over the Winter.
I wonder how many other Main Streets have the same?
There is a reason that for 30 years the neoliberal lackies have been spouting their nonsense - supply side economics, trickle down theories, the Laffer curve, etc etc - non-stop and in the face of economic realities that don't mesh with their horsesh*t theories.
They have been preparing the American and world's populace for today's final push of neofeudalism and all its attendant trappings upon us.
The coordinated propaganda effort of over 3 decades has successfully gutted any chance at an building an informed opposition to the calculated theft of our money and resources.
Now, lacking even a language with which to combat said horsesh*t theories and theft, we sullenly succumb to the final stages of our servitude.
And what does that mean, exactly, "found work"? If those of us with graduate degrees and years of experience take jobs out of desperation because our UI benefits are being cut, we count as being employed. Anyone working for minimum wage or just barely over that- with no benefits- counts as being employed. Never mind that you have to work 2-3 jobs just to get by or that it's unlikely you'll ever again earn decent wages with health insurance (not that I'm a fan of that) and retirement. So, eventually when everyone in America settles for low wage jobs- woohoo! Low unemployment!
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
I periodically scan the corporatist McNews dial to see what the neo-lib/neo-con Establishment is chattering to itself. Last night on PBS McGlaughlin Group, ye olde
U.S. Spews & World Distorts editor, Mort "Zionist" Zuckerman, was troubled enough by the real unemployment situation in the U.S. to actually suggest that the U.S. needs to quickly ramp up some "large infrastructure jobs projects" because "it takes time to ramp these things up." Yep, it also takes federal funding whether you do it as contracts with special kick-backs shopped to thousands of private contractors or as a New Deal type Civilian Conservation Corps.
The only reason a super-rich Amurkan Zionist like Mort would even temporarily cover his "free market" fundamentalism temporarily under his $1500 suit jacket in order to issue such a nervous warning is that if an anti-poverty uprisings take place in Amurka, the resulting government(s) will probably not be so earnestly pro-Israel and could be anti-Israel, just as may happen after the current uprisings across the Middle East. I laughed so hard at his blurting out of that neo-lib/neo-con apostasy I nearly fell on the floor.
Oh, and BTW, Democracynow.org is today reporting what the "mainstream" corporatist news is studiously ignoring:
Jobless Rate Drops as 200,000 Unemployed Workers Drop Out of Labor Force
"The U.S. official unemployment rate dipped to nine percent in January, but only 36,000 new jobs were added to the economy. The only reason the level dropped was because the number of unemployed workers who have given up looking for work rose by 200,000 to 2.8 million. These former workers are no longer considered part of the labor force and are not counted in the unemployment rate."
[http://www.democracynow.org/2011/2/7/headlines]
Other sources put the estimate of folks who've given up looking since early December at over 500,000.
PBS Paul Solman hasn't acknowledged either the 200,000 or 500,000 numbers and claims with his "U-7" unemployment figure that unemployment declined .8% to match the rate of decline claimed by the government, although his U-7 number puts real unemployment at 17%. I suspect real unemployment is approaching and will hit 23% by June of this year at the latest. There will be over 6 million 99ers by December--with roughly two to three dependents each--so 18 million Americans suffering intense economic hardship within a population of 26 to 27 million real unemployed suffering worsen hardship of varying degrees. Average peak unemployment during the Great Depression was 25% with an absolute peak of 27%.
There is no way the corporate media or the political parties are going to be able to mask the level of suffering for much longer. Government sector layoffs alone this year and next will fillet them alive. The U.S. WILL reach a tipping point between late 2011 and 2015 (when the Pentagon is predicting peak oil), just like those countries in the Middle East. The question we folks who are left-of-DLC need to ask ourselves is: Will we be locally, regionally and nationally ready for it? We need a new national movement ASAP. Time for a populist progressive (inclusive of socialists) leadership summit to layout a new organization plan with clear policy planks that everyday people can understand.
Time for us all to buy rifles, because the fascists are already armed.
This is stupid tough talk, which has nothing behind it. Buy all the rifles, assault rifles and guns you want, and the right and the military and the cops will always have you seriously outgunned.
You'll notice that the Tunisians and the Egyptians making their revolutions aren't using guns. They are tossing some rocks and are swinging sticks when attacked, but they're not trying to out-gun the military police. That would be a fools' game. Yet they can win if they stay determined.
That is the way forward in any successful people's revolution.
Dave Lindorff
www.thiscantbehappening.net
Visit Dave Lindorff's website at www.thiscantbehappening.net
As a good Republican, I propose we eat the poor. Statistics show they will soon be cheaper than corn, and lower costs mean higher profits. And profit is God.
I'm not actually kidding. I've no doubt this discussion, or something like it, is taking place at this moment behind closed doors. Not to 'eat' the poor, literally, although perhaps to recapture their bio-fuel content. When profit is God, this is where you go.
An unsustainable credit house-of-cards has been built out of the American economy. When (not if) it implodes, Auschwitz-style solutions will be bandied about, just like the last time a country found itself in this kind of pain.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
Hmmm... I don't see Auschwitz-style "final solutions" on the way because Auschwitz was an extermination camp and Amurkan plutocratic fascists would rather profit from our forced labor than exterminate healthy adults simply because of race. They'll let perceived racial and economic inferiors who aren't healthy enough for work starve to death in open air tent camps and render the corpses into fertilizer to grow food for the folks in the work camps. I do see the increasingly privatized and booming prison industrial complex probably expanding into more massive Arbeitslager (concentration forced labor camps), and I also see an increasing likelihood of bloody Balkanization following a period of scattered and crushed rebellions. Amurkans are probably too stupid and brainwashed now to organize an intelligent revolution.
Are you making a modest proposal?
Who invented wage slavery?
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
That is an excellent question and I bet Professor Michael Hudson of the U. of Missouri would know the answer. His articles are sometimes posted on counterpunch.org with an email link. You should email him.
Thanx for the link
Wikipedia says Cicero used the concept, but it was first used in 1836 by labor organizers, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery
Lots of Southern pro-Slavery propaganda used the term, which always prompted classromm discussion.
"When you put this latest sorry jobs news together with last weeks report that housing prices in all the major markets are headed back down for what is called a "double-dip" housing recession, it paints a very gloomy picture for the American economy."
Why is this a surprise? Housing prices are related to income, which has been under attack since Reagan's inauguration. As pressure on income continues, housing prices will follow.
Well, let's see...the list of things Bush did that Obama hasn't done yet......
...It'll come to me......let me think about it.......
...something Bush did that Obama hasn't......
Oh! I got it!
Bush used to release good numbers, or less bad numbers and the press would go crazy over them and then, a bit later, when no one was paying attention...
They'd release the somewhat more accurate 'revised' figures.
But I'm sure Obama won't do that!
He won't revise them.
Looks like the USA is shifting from greedy to needy for a segment of the populace not accustomed to being needy. 37.6% of people old enough to be considered a part of the workforce are no longer, the lowest labor participation rate since 1977 when women were rapidly entering the workforce in an attempt to counteract the decade of Stagflation and rapidly diminishing real wages. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Labor_Participation_Rate_1948-2011.svg
"The overall labor participation rate--the percentage of working age Americans actually in the labor market, either working or looking for work--fell in January to a recession low of just 62.4%. That is, fewer than 2/3 of working-age Americans are even in the jobs market these days!"
This could be a picture of Spain,Greece, Tunisia, Egypt...tell me why Americans are not protesting the reality that there is nothing on the horizon, and worse...as bad as conditions are in the aforementioned countries, at least there were some government subsides on fuel, rice, bread. Here, the unemployed and the wealthy still have to pay 3.50 for that loaf of bread, and food stamps don't cut-that is on the chopping block too.
Also, the Raygun mantra of trickle down and rugged individualism makes our society completely disconnected from the plight of those in front of them. The recent phenomena of "doubling up" with family members, as a result of job loss, foreclosure is great for those who have that option. So many are on their own, and there is no safety need to speak of.