Positive spin on job growth from CNN and CNBC: 'Strongest jobs recovery in decades'

[ProgressiveEconomist]

From http://money.cnn.com/2010/09/02/news/economy/jobs_recovery/index.htm :

"Strongest jobs recovery in decades. Seriously

By Chris Isidore, senior writer; September 2, 2010:

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- A jobless recovery? Hardly. By historical standards, the labor market is recovering nicely -- job growth has started earlier than in past recessions. ... The unemployment rate hit a high-water mark of 10.1% in October 2009 and has since fallen to 9.5%. Payrolls began growing in November and, excluding the impact of temporary census jobs, the economy has added jobs every month since January. That's a much quicker peak than previous job market recoveries.

After the 1990-91 recession ended, the economy lost nearly 300,000 additional jobs in the 11 months that followed. And the 2001 recession was followed by a so-called jobless recovery that lasted for nearly two more years. "Sustained, positive job formation began earlier in this recovery than in the prior two recoveries," said Lakshman Achuthan, managing director of Economic Cycle Research Institute.

But today's economy is different. The problem is that the damage done during the Great Recession was so severe, it will take a lot more growth than normal to dig the job market out of its hole. There were 8.4 million jobs lost in 2008 and 2009 -- roughly 7% of all jobs at the start of the recession. That compares to a loss of 3.1% of all jobs during the 2001 recession and the jobless recovery that followed, and only 1.9% of jobs lost during and after the 1990-91 recession. ...

Brusca said given the fact that job losses took place throughout 2008 and 2009, it's still too soon to conclude whether the recovery is going to come up short. He's still hoping growth picks up in the fall as businesses start to gear up for the holiday shopping period. ...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

flpoljunkie posted this as a reply in a GDP thread on Erin Burnett's (CNBC) Meet The Press smackdown of Rich Lowry's (National Review) lies about "no effect" of the President's stimulus (at http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=433&topic_id=431125&mesg_id=431554 ); I felt it deserved its own thread in light of the pervasive economic gloom here in GD on Labor Day.

Yesterday, Erin Burnett stunned the MTP roundtable with her proclamation that we are experiencing "the strongest jobs recovery in decades".

[leveymg]

1. This ignores that jobs creation has been flat since Q4 2009.

There was a steep recovery of some jobs losses in Q3-4 2009, but very little has happened since.

[Aramchek]

2. you are ignoring the fact that private sector growth has been continuous for months

not flat, as you claim.

[leveymg]

4. In the IT services sector it has been flat. Overall, it has been flat

because of cutbacks in public employment.

While there has been some encouraging growth in manufacturing, overall, the jobs situation hasn't changed much this year. And, as far as manufacturing is concerned, we had a record trade in goods deficit of $50 billion last month. So, that isn't doing so well, either.

[Aramchek]

5. have we lost private sector jobs this year or gained them??

if your answer is that we have gained them, then by definition, job growth is not flat.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

6. Huh? LINK and CHART: Private sector job growth. Washington Monthly September 3, 2010

From http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2010_09/025514.php :



"... All told, the economy has added 763,000 private-sector jobs in 2010. For comparison purposes, note that the economy lost nearly 4.7 million private-sector jobs in 2009, and lost 3.8 million in 2008.

With that in mind, here it is, a different homemade chart, showing monthly job losses/gains in the private sector since the start of the Great Recession. The image makes a distinction -- red columns point to monthly job totals under the Bush administration, while blue columns point to job totals under the Obama administration."

[leveymg]

8. Here's the BLS unemployment figures - 2010 looks pretty flat to me.

Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey - http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost

Series Id: LNS13000000
Seasonally Adjusted
Series title: (Seas) Unemployment Level
Labor force status: Unemployed
Type of data: Number in thousands
Age: 16 years and over


Download:
Year Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Annual
2000 5708 5858 5733 5481 5758 5651 5747 5853 5625 5534 5639 5634
2001 6023 6089 6141 6271 6226 6484 6583 7042 7142 7694 8003 8258
2002 8182 8215 8304 8599 8399 8393 8390 8304 8251 8307 8520 8640
2003 8520 8618 8588 8842 8957 9266 9011 8896 8921 8732 8576 8317
2004 8370 8167 8491 8170 8212 8286 8136 7990 7927 8061 7932 7934
2005 7784 7980 7737 7672 7651 7524 7406 7345 7553 7453 7566 7279
2006 7059 7185 7075 7122 6977 6998 7154 7097 6853 6728 6883 6784
2007 7085 6898 6725 6845 6765 6966 7113 7096 7200 7273 7284 7696
2008 7628 7435 7793 7631 8397 8560 8895 9509 9569 10172 10617 11400
2009 11919 12714 13310 13816 14518 14721 14534 14993 15159 15612 15340 15267
2010 14837 14871 15005 15260 14973 14623 14599 14860

[ProgressiveEconomist]

9. You're shifting topics--All the other posts in this thread are about EMPLOYMENT.

Unemployment is something else entirely, since it incorporates trends in labor force participation.

[leveymg]

10. Tell that to the 15 million unemployed - that's the REAL issue.

The differences are technical and of little concern to anyone other than economists. Unemployment is all too real, and voters understand it. Try explaining that we're in a record recovery based upon the figures for private-sector employment -- a selective measure -- and people think we're full of BS.

You understand that too, I hope.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

11. "...unemployed--that's the REAL issue", Not in this thread--your'e off topic

You could start your own thread about unemployment, but you are off-point here

[leveymg]

13. You're missing my point - you want to shift the public frame of reference

But, that won't work - it'll just cause cognitive dissonance and raise public distrust if we start making this argument this late in the game.

If unemployment does not come down sharply in the next few months, we are screwed at the polls in November. Screwed, and rightly so.

I am not OT - I'm just pointing out an unintended consequence to your argument.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

16. What is your point? Why are you spamming this thread?

[leveymg]

18. No. I'm pointing out your argument is counter-intuitive.

And trying to warn you that this argument is a political live grenade that will blow up the second it gets lobbed toward the opposing trench.

This isn't spamming a thread. I'm trying to point out the defects in a set of talking point before they blow up. I'm on your side - listen to my criticism, and tell me how I'm wrong if you like, but don't accuse me of being trollish. I'm not.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

20. "I'm on your side". Is that why you have more posts in this thread than I do?

[leveymg]

22. I was responding to some others, when you didn't. What's wrong with that?

If you like, you can repost this later. But, it's still BS, as someone else at the bottom of the thread has said.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

24. To which posts did I fail to respond? I note you failed to respond to Aramchek's reply #5,

where he nailed you for bluffing with made-up supposed employment statistics.

[leveymg]

25. My mistake on that one.

It would have seemed redundant to respond to Aramchek and you, as the points were similar. I'll go back and do so, if you like.

[AnArmyVeteran]

12. Why isn't every democratic leader carrying around that chart to show people?

Or do they want to lose?

[ProgressiveEconomist]

14. Excellent question. Another is why we NEVER see charts like this one on TV or

cable exceopt on the Rachel Maddow show?

If we did, IMO it would be impossible for liars like Rich Lowry (National Review), Charles Krauthammer ('Inside Washington'), and just about every Republican congressperson to repeat every week, "The stimulus had no effect."

[leveymg]

17. The obvious answer to the "stimulus had no effect" meme is "unemployment would be far worse

if there had been no stim." But, the fact that unemployment remains stuck at near 10 percent means the economy is seriously, systemically ill, and the measures being taken by this Administration and Congress aren't working or are inadequate -- to correct the problem of unemployment, which is the economic factor that most people can relate to and correctly believe to be most important. Particularly important to the unemployed.

[leveymg]

15. It gives a misleading impression. They would be pilloried if they started

arguing that we've done a fabulous job of cutting joblessness. Because, the growth is sectoral, and the measure of private sector job growth doesn't reflect unemployment, which is the frame of reference most people are used to.

[eridani]

30. Because people who aren't political junkies don't give a shit about charts

They vote on values.

[NYC_SKP]

3. Eh, it's just a blip due to gubmin hirin' census takers...

:sarcasm:

K and R.

:hi:

[ProgressiveEconomist]

7. CSPAN/CNN/Fox 'News' alert: President's $50 billion infrastructure jobs plan speech is imminent;

should start shortly after 3pm Eastern.

He landed in Milwaukee at about 2:30 pm Eastern and is making his way to the podium.

CSPAN just cut to a rebroadcast of 'Washington Journal', as it usually does before cutting to a live event.

It's an interesting discussion of economic trends with a George Washington U professor.

[MadHound]

19. Meanwhile, the true count of unemployment is holding between sixteen and seventeen percent

The U3 and U4 numbers have been going up, and there are an average of three people needing to work for every single open job. Oh, and let's not forget there are millions who are underemployed and whose job, once they get one, is paying far less than they used to get paid.

The operative word in this post is SPIN. This is simply more bullshit propaganda designed to make the public feel good while the economy continues to be in the dump.

The fifty billion dollar jobs bill is encouraging, however we really need something about ten times greater to pull us out of the ditch we're in. That was supposedly going to come from the first stimulus, but in some misguided spirit of bipartisanship, forty percent of that money wound up going for tax credits.

We need a true jobs creation program on the order and scope of the the WPA. We can't afford to continue to half ass it with a drip here and a drop there. People are truly suffering and they need help ASAP.

Oh, and please don't do like the 'Pugs do, piss on us and try to tell us it's rain. People know that the job market is still in the basement and propaganda like this piece only serves to turn the public off.

[leveymg]

21. Exactly.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

23. "forty percent of ... the first stimulus ... wound up going for tax credits" Don't you mean

"the largest middle-class tax cut in history"?

Why is it that so many Democrats seem to want to put thoe worst possible face on thier substantial accomplishments?

Reversing a deep recession is difficult, but we've made progress and IMO need to get behind President Obama's efforts instead of undercutting them as less than perfect.

When he talks about the economy, President Obama usually says, "Privat sector jobs have increased every month this year". If it's true, as the chart in reply #6 above shows, what would you propose he say instead? "My stimulus plan had no effect?"

[NYC_SKP]

26. Here's more...

For all the grief we began with, I'm impressed with the recovery and the utter disaster that was diverted.

Many would say that it's still not good enough. Well, fair enough, it's still not good enough.

But it's going in the right direction.

The White House Blog

Let's Stop Torturing Facts and Start Working Together

Posted by Jared Bernstein on September 06, 2010 at 02:16 PM EDT

Lindsay Graham has often shown that he’s fully capable of being reasonable and bipartisan. Which made it particularly disappointing to see his misleading use of numbers yesterday.

On Meet the Press, the Senator, against a wave of evidence to the contrary, argued that the Recovery Act has been “an absolute disaster” and called for cancelling “a lot” of what’s left in the bill (transcript here).

His evidence for this claim: “...we’ve lost two-and-a-half million jobs since the stimulus passed.”

Take a look at the figure below and you’ll see why this is so misleading. He’s conflating two periods of very different employment trends. In the first, when his team’s policies dominated, employment hemorrhaged at nightmarish rates. In the second, when the Recovery Act was on the scene, job losses in the private sector began to diminish, and this year, turned positive.


Private Payroll Employment Trends



In fact, over the past eight months, the private sector has added over three-quarters of a million jobs (763,000). And reams of analysis associate this turnaround with the Recovery Act.

To conflate these two obviously different periods, when the difference is in fact a direct contrast between our policies and theirs, is seriously misleading.

But it is standard Republican practice these days. They drove the car in the ditch, stood by the road wagging their fingers while the Recovery Act and other policies got it out, and now, as the car is starting off in the right direction, are saying, “hey, their plans can’t be working because that car used to be in a ditch!”

Let me be clear. The car, as I said, is finally moving in the right direction, but it needs to go a lot faster. Eight years of deep neglect has seriously damaged its engine and it’s not going attain full speed right away.

That’s why President Obama continues to work with anyone who’s willing to help to build on the momentum you see in the chart below. As he put it just last Friday: “...the key point I'm making right now is that the economy is moving in a positive direction, jobs are being created, they're just not being created as fast as they need to given the big hole that we experienced. And we're going to have to continue to work with Republicans and Democrats to come up with ideas that can further accelerate that job growth.”

Most recently, the President called for a significant downpayment on forward-looking infrastructure program (pdf) (fully paid for) to continue the work on the nation’s roads, rails, and runways begun in the Recovery Act. It’s a critical next step on longer term investments in the nation’s productive capacity that will, in the short term, create good jobs for folks facing particularly high unemployment.

In the interest of getting that car back up to speed as quickly as possible, we urge Senator Graham and his colleagues to work with us on this and other bipartisan ideas.

Jared Bernstein is Chief Economic Advisor to the Vice President

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/09/06/lets-stop-torturing-facts-and-start-working-together

:patriot:

[ProgressiveEconomist]

27. Excellent post. Thanks. I didn't even know there was a White House blog with

direct input from Bernstein--I'll have to start monitoring it.

[MadHound]

29. Tax cuts, whether for the rich or the middle class, are the worst type of stimulus tool

It would have simply made more since to put that money towards jobs, infrastructure repair, etc. Instead, items like sixteen billion that was tagged to go towards school construction and repair instead got bumped for tax cuts.

I would have been willing to see the tax cuts, including mine, go towards truly trying to get our economy going than being blown on tax cuts. It simply doesn't make good economic sense.

What I would rather Obama do is not say anything and get to work with the Dems on a true jobs creation program, not this piddly ass fifty billion he is now proposing (along with bonus tax cuts whose cost will be named later). Put a few hundred billion into job creation, which will create the demand that will enable the private sector to create even more jobs. Because the job numbers, despite the spin, are atrocious. Yes, fifty seven thousand private sector jobs were created last month, big whoop. Our economy still needs to create at least 125 thousand jobs/month in order to simply keep up with the growth of our labor force. Instead we lost jobs overall and our economy is still sinking.

Making happy-happy, joy-joy talk can only take a politician and a country so far. Sooner or later things actually have to be accomplished.

[eridani]

31. Tax cuts are fucking stupid, unless directed at the lowest earners, like a FICA holiday

Yes, I got a tax cut, which had absolutely jackshit to do with my budgeting this year. It just was nowhere near large enough to affect my spending patterns. All that money should have gone into direct hiring, like a Civilian Conservation Corps program. Working or not working changes your budgeting dramatically; tax cuts do not.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

34. A FICA tax holiday is directed at the lowest earners? Wait til Wednesday, when the President

is expected to announce a FICA tax holiday. You'll see that it is drected at employers who expand their Social Security tax payrolls for ANYONE who makes under the FICA earnings cap of $107k or so. See http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=4529457&mesg_id=4529529 for a description. I predict you won't like that, either.

Mayme you'd prefer another expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit, which IS targeted at low-income earners?

[eridani]

36. That is the ONLY useful tax cut

The tax cuts in the stimulus bill were just a waste of money that made the bill way weaker.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

28. Twice as many Americans believe their taxes have gone UP under Obama as recognize

that in fact their taxes have gone DOWN, according to a CBS poll posted in another GD thread

(at http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x9085485 )

IMO, that's what happens when Democrats fail to toot their own horn about their accomplishments, such as the largest middle-class tax cut in American history, or the fastest jobs recovery in decades.

[eridani]

32. What in fucking HELL did you expect? Tax cuts at the level most received them--

--are completeley unnoticable. People don't care because the amounts are so piddling that they don't change anyone's life. Bragging about tax cuts just helps to elect Republicans, because that is THEIR value. Average voters don't give a shit about charts, or even assertions of fact. They vote on values, and in response to changes in their lives that are really noticable. Our value should be that public goods are GOOD, and that you have to pay for them with taxes. Publicly supported infrastructure is what makes private businesses able to function.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

35. 'They vote on values.... one value should be ...' How on earth do you propose to CHANGE

the average voter's values so they line up with yours? Shouldn't those who want ot win elections propose policies that appeal to values voters already have?

IMO, tax cuts appeal to the apparent most important American value: Where's MINE?

[eridani]

37. That is the value that is killing us. What about defending public goods?

It is the refusal to push back on the values debate that is rendering us powerless. Republicans have been shaping values for 30 years, and Dems gutlessly go along with that. Why?

[Scurrilous]

33. K & R

:thumbsup:

[mzmolly]

38. K and R.

:kick: