U.S. unemployment rate falls below 6%

It's clear that the US, thanks to its stimulus policies, is doing a much better job of recovering from the 2008 disaster than Japan or Europe.

Joblessness, however, is structural and will always dog the developed world from now on. That's because globalization continues to ship local jobs, including engineering, IT, etc., off to China. Govt policy, no matter how good, can only do so much.

Most of these jobs are minimum wage, However, Japan doesn't even have 4% unemployment. Besides, I'm more worried about the riots in the next 10 - 12 years when tens of millions of Americans, including myself, lose their Medicare coverage..

JeffLee Oct. 04, 2014 - 07:18AM JST It's clear that the US, thanks to its stimulus policies, is doing a much better job of recovering from the 2008 disaster than Japan or Europe.

What it means is that U.S. has nearly 10 million workers only marginally engaged in their work situation. They don’t contribute their full potential to their households, the economy or society in general. While reporting a low, declining unemployment number may comfort people, we can’t ignore the millions of workers feeling the pain of the real unemployment number rising to over 12.5 percent last month. Why The ‘real’ unemployment rate Is higher than you think is another disturbing fact that compounds the challenge. The longer you’re without a job, the less likely you’ll get called back for an interview. If your close to one year of unemployment, the callback rate falls by more than half. Many employers see these would-be workers as damaged goods. These same people could be contributing greatly to the economy. Instead, they are spending their days trying to secure employment or working in unfulfilling and part-time jobs. The challenges is not solely job creation, but creating the right jobs to maximize a labor force. Getting people back to work is good, but if the quality of their employment is down or the money earned insufficient you create other problems.

"U.S. unemployment rate falls below 6%." That number is very misleading and meaningless as it only counts the 62.7% who are "participating in the civilian labor force." What about the other 37.3% who are not?

"Why The ‘real’ unemployment rate Is higher than you think is another disturbing fact that compounds the challenge."

Yes, indeed. I was in Britain in the mid 80s when entire towns and regions were basically unemployed. And the maritime eastern provinces of Canada were basically a massive welfare zone until oil was discovered in the 90s.

In southern Europe now, the "real" jobless rate maybe over 50 percent, and that's even after many young adults have fled!

I found those situations far, far more "disturbing" than Obama's America today.

Today, given the outflow of all the manufacturering and IT expertise and capital that American workers nurtured and is now being handed over to China on a plate by the multinationals, the US has done a pretty good job of preserving jobs. A real and decisive solution is to bring back the tariffs and adapt more Keynesian policies, which gave America its postwar prosperity in the first place.

The GOP has a foolproof way to eliminate minimum wage workers: Eliminate the minimum wage.

Seriously, almost every GOP proposal would exacerbate income disparities, which are already the greatest in American history.

Are these jobs decent paying full time jobs with a future?? Ha ha ha. Just minimum wage, part time and other rubbish. But politicians don't care about that inconvenient fact, only numbers.

Yea! Finally back to where it was when George W. Bush was president.

Yea! Finally back to where it was when George W. Bush was president.

Wrong. In January 2009 (when Obama took office), unemployment was at 7.8%. It maxed out at 10% in October 2009. It was back down to 9% in February 2011 and has steadily (though gradually) decreased since then. Any fool can see that the heavy unemployment from mid-2009 to mid-2011 was the direct result of the financial meltdown, which occurred before Obama took office. You fail to mention that the unemployment rate was at 5% in January 2008 and at 7.8 percent in January 2009. That's an increase of 2.8 percent in only one year (the last year of the Bush presidency). That increase continued until late 2009, until things steadied and returned to the levels seen at the end of the Bush administration in late 2012. They have continued to go down since then. That's roughly 5 solid years of decline in unemployment numbers. (The legitimacy of U.S. unemployment statistics is another matter, but all these numbers were generated by the same algorithms.)

So.... as much as you would like to refer to the Bush years as the good old days (and they were early on - as a continuation of the economic boom created during the Clinton administration), Obama has seen unemployment steadily decrease for five solid years. Housing/real estate are finally starting to recover. The stock market has more than doubled since Obama took office. (The Dow declined by more than 20% over the course of the Bush presidency.)

So tell me again about how great Bush was for the economy?

JohnBecker: ... as much as you would like to refer to the Bush years as the good old days (and they were early on - as a continuation of the economic boom created during the Clinton administration) ...

The dotcom bubble burst in 2000, peak was in March 2000. Bush wasn't elected til November 2000 and didn't take office until January 2001. NBER-declared recession started in March 2001, 2 months after Bush took office, but obviously a lot of economic factors were on the downturn prior to that.

GDP growth for Early 2000's recession:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Recession2001.PNG

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_2000s_recession

From 2000 to 2001, the Federal Reserve in a move to quell the stock market, made successive interest rate increases, credited in part for "plunging the country into a recession."[6] Using the stock market as an unofficial benchmark, a recession would have begun in March 2000 when the NASDAQ crashed following the collapse of the Dot-com bubble.

"So.... as much as you would like to refer to the Bush years as the good old days (and they were early on - as a continuation of the economic boom created during the Clinton administration),"

Um, Bush had the 9/11/2001 terrorist attacks to deal with early on?

turbosat,

In the 2000 election run bush and cheney were actively talking down the economy. It was amazing to see candidates state the economy was going into free fall and that the Clinton economy, the greatest economic boom ever in the USA, was going to collapse. And sure enough under bush it did. bush brought back republican policies from the 1930s that lead directly to the great bush recession starting in 2006 and peaking in 2008. And just as Clinton had to clean up the economy after the Reagan voodoo economic disaster Obama has done the same again cleaning up the massive failures of the bush/republican great recession. And of course while bush was destroying the USA economy he was wasted trillions of tax payer hard earned money on wars based on lies that have ultimately ended in massive failure and only strengthened our enemies. iSIS comes directly out of the Iraq invasion and total failure to manage that country after shock and awe destroyed it. Final story, only democrats know how to run the government so that the economy grows. Republicans like bush and the loons in the Tea Party know only how to make the economy collapse and start wars that fail anc cost trillions. It is all there in fact based history.

"It is all there in fact based history."

Here are some real facts, zurcronium:

In the wake of a recession that began roughly seven weeks after Bush took office, America experienced six years of uninterrupted economic growth and a record 52 straight months of job creation that produced more than 8 million new jobs. During the Bush presidency, the unemployment rate averaged 5.3 percent. Real after-tax income per capita increased by more than 11 percent. And from 2000 to 2007, real GDP grew by more than 17 percent, a gain of nearly $2.1 trillion.

As for Obama’s claim that Bush “turned a budget surplus into a deficit”: by January 2001, when Bush was inaugurated, the budget surpluses were already evaporating as the economy was skidding toward recession (it officially began in March 2001). Combined with the devastating economic effects of 9/11, when we lost around 1 million jobs over 90 days, the surplus went into deficit.

And the average unemployment rate during Obama's presidency through May this year was over 8.2%.

Most economists agree that the economy does better under Democratic presidents than under Republican ones (and you can Google that). This is likely to do with moderately greater income equality ensured by the former - though that gap has shrunk as institutionalized policies and structural changes leave even Democratic presidents unable to permanently shift economic gains to the lower classes.

A comparison of Reagan, who confronted an oil-shock induced recession, and Obama is useful here. Not only has Obama overseen a greater fall in the unemployment rate (and these statistics account for labor participation), but he did so as the scope of government was greatly reduced - according to this Forbes article. Read it and weep, GOP true believers: Just like in so many other areas, science bends liberal. (Of course, you could always ignore statistics, particularly when you're Republican.)

http://www.forbes.com/sites/adamhartung/2014/09/05/obama-outperforms-reagan-on-jobs-growth-and-investing/

Of course, you could always ignore statistics, particularly when you're Republican

Could?? You're too generous.

Strangerland, they "create their own reality." Shrub oversaw a huge increase in the Federal bureaucracy accompanied with an increase in military activity unprecedented since the Vietnam war, yet some continue to argue that Obama is the socialist. These two massive Federal spending stimuli allowed Bush's charade to continue as long as it did - but the resulting crash was inevitable.

Rather than bicker pointlessly without end over partisanship, how about focusing on the data.

The Participation Rate is at decades low and most of the new jobs added are of the lowest paying non-permanent type. The middle class has become an endangered species. It's a bipartisan result.

By the time Obama gets out of office the official US debt will be around $20 trillion. The Federal Reserve is lying through its teeth when it says that it's considering raising interest rates. The Federal Government can't afford to pay more on its debt.

Like I said, when Medicare runs out in 2026 and Social Security in 2033, then what are the elderly and disabled going to do. It seems most likely that the Government is going to throw everyone under the bus.

As for Obama’s claim that Bush “turned a budget surplus into a deficit”: by January 2001, when Bush was inaugurated, the budget surpluses were already evaporating

When Clinton took over from Reagan-Bush, there was nothing resembling a "budget surplus" on the horizon. I recall Republicans laughing when the possibility of a surplus was first raised.

They never learn.

"Of course, you could always ignore statistics, particularly when you're Republican"

Looks like Laguna ignored the facts I posted.

The responses to the Great Recession were initiated during the Bush administration and, indeed, the next uptick in GDP growth was recorded two months after Obama took office, in March, 2009. Obama's recovery act wasn't signed until February 17th, 2009. GDP growth FLATTENED in Dec. 2009 at -0.24%, before Obama took office, indicating the start of the upturn.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_policy_responses_to_the_Great_Recession

... As of December 24, 2008, the Federal Reserve had used its independent authority to spend $1.2 trillion on purchasing various financial assets and making emergency loans to address the financial crisis, above and beyond the $700 billion authorized by Congress from the federal budget. ...

http://www.multpl.com/us-real-gdp-growth-rate/table/by-quarter

US Real GDP Growth Rate Per Year. Annual percentage change in US Real GDP, chained 2009 dollars (inflation-adjusted). Source: US Bureau of Economic Analysis

... Jun 30 2009 -4.06%, Sep 30 2009 -3.28%, Dec 31 2009 -0.24%, Mar 31 2010 1.60%, Jun 30 2010 2.72% ...

"jobless claims" have reached under 6%, not unemployment. The government bases the rate mainly on the number of people who file unemployment claims. You can file a claim if you are fired or kaid off. But you cannot file if you quit, or have worked at your job for less than 6 months. The majority of America's unemployed have already filed their claims, and are no longer counted, nor are those never filed a claim.

To say that less than 6% of people in America are without jobs is hilarious. The government will use any formula which avoids using simple facts.

One fact that they can't hide is that more than 100,000,000 are on some form of public assistance, which is a full third of the population.

It's clear that the US, thanks to its stimulus policies, is doing a much better job of recovering from the 2008 disaster than Japan or Europe.

Yes, America is doing a great job of borrowing money from future generations of Americans. The current generation can enjoy a "recovery" which now has one-third of the population on food stamps, and a labor participation rate which is now at only 62.8%, and matches the most miserable days of the Carter administration back in 1978. I am sure future generations will be thankful that they get stuck with the trillions of dollars in debt we ran up to fund a "recovery" which puts us equal to the bad old days of the late 70's.

Serrano,

You are hilarious. Thanks for the great laugh. Your rosy picture of the bush economic history does not include the last two years. I guess that is a statistic you missed somehow.

And your statement about the clinton surplus that bush destroyed is just plain wrong. Economists as the time Clinton was in his last year were worried that the federal debt would be paid down too fast. Well the bush voodoo economics crowd piled money on the rich and turned a huge surplus into a mammoth deficit and that was when the Clinton economy was still pushing forward despite the illegal change in the white house.

Yes, these are facts. Facts that include all 8 years of the bush Presidency, not the first six. Wow, was a joke! A near depression during the bush years overlooked. Very fox news like. Impressive.

Looks like Laguna ignored the facts I posted.

Serrano, praising Bush's economic management is like praising the pilots of that Asiana flight that crashed at SFO: "Aside from that, the rest of the flight was fine!"

Incidentally, it is also akin to praising Bush for keeping America safe from terrorists - except for that 9/11 incident that Clinton's advisers had explicitly warned him about.

I don't believe these stats, and anyway note that despite all previous assurances this will do nothing to stop the Fed keeping ultra easy policy in place to the benefit of the wealthy asset owning classes.

So are they still using the same formula they used in 2008 to calculate the unemployment rate ?

The US shipped its work off to china now wonders why many people are unemployed, seems obvious to me .

Bring the work back, kick china manufacturing into touch get America working again.

"Serrano, praising Bush's economic management is like praising the pilots of that Asiana flight that crashed at SFO: "Aside from that, the rest of the flight was fine!"

I didn't praise Bush's economic management, all I did was post some facts which don't make Obama look good by comparison, that's all.

Bush entered office with 4.2% unemployment and left with 7.6% unemployed; there were 32.9 million Americans in poverty when Clinton left office and 37.3 when Bush left; Bush oversaw an 11% increase in Americans without insurance; and to the $128 billion surplus bequeathed by Clinton, Bush left with a $1.3 trillion deficit.

No, Bush does not look good in comparison to anyone, not even Reagan.

Laguna...

When Bush left office the national debt was around $10 trillion. It's now nearly $18 trillion.

When Bush left office the national debt was around $10 trillion. It's now nearly $18 trillion.

...which, if adjusted for inflation and growth, means that they both added roughly equal amounts. The difference is that Bush splurged the money on wars while Obama invested in the American people.

So many people wasting their time in college. They should join the armed forces.