Real Incomes Have Been Essentially Flat For 6 Years

The Full-Time Jobs Depression: 6.2 Million, 5.1%, Off 2007 High

Full-time jobs hit their all-time high in November 2007 at 121.9 million. Five years later they are at 115.7 million. That's down 6.2 million full-time jobs, or 5.1%.

And US population has grown 13 million over the five year period.

Figures through 11-01-12.

Chart and data here.

Today's Civilian Employment/Population Ratio Was First Achieved 35 Years Ago!

The ratio of employed to population today is 58.7, a level first achieved way back in December 1977.

Persons not in the labor force, that is, persons not counted as unemployed by the federal government, reached an all-time high recently of 88.9 million. Between 1975 when records started being kept and 1992, this number increased by about 0.7 percentage point per year. Under Clinton this number increased by about 1.04 percentage point per year. Under George W. Bush, 1.7 points per year. Under Obama, 2.7 points per year. 

The trend is not our friend.

Boosting Minimum Wage 40% Reduces Youth Employment 25%

You talkin' to me?

Way to go, Brownie!

Story here:

In November 2007, teens represented 4.0% of the entire U.S. workforce. In November 2012, teens account for just 3.1% of the reduced U.S. workforce. At this point, jobs that were most likely to have been held by teens are 14 times more likely to have been negatively affected by the employment situation over the past five years than their numbers among the entire U.S. workforce would suggest.

In retrospect, it seems that the U.S. Congress' action to boost the minimum wage by nearly 41% in three stages from 2007 through 2009 without doing anything to boost the revenues of teen employers by an appropriate percentage to compensate them for their higher costs of doing business during this period of time wasn't such a hot idea.

Unemployment In November Said To Decline To 7.7%

Down from 7.9% in October.

The report is here:

"Hurricane Sandy made landfall on the Northeast coast on October 29th, causing severe damage in some states. Nevertheless, our survey response rates in the affected states were within normal ranges. Our analysis suggests that Hurricane Sandy did not substantively impact the national employment and unemployment estimates for November. BLS will release the regional and state estimates on December 21st. For additional information on how severe weather affects employment and unemployment data, see Question 8 in the Frequently Asked Questions section of this release."

The reported employment growth average for 2012 fell from 157,000 per month in last month's report to 151,000 in this month's report, putting 2012 through November behind 2011's average of 153,000 new jobs created per month.

The participation rate in the labor force declined 0.3 in the raw data, 0.2 in the seasonally adjusted data, probably the biggest reason for the headline number to decline.

Translation: as more people aren't looking for work, they don't count! Meanwhile job creation looks like it declined quite significantly in just one month if the average for the year dropped 6,000 per month in just 30 days, which means November must have been pretty bad to have had that large of an effect.

There's somethin' funny goin' on here, Lucy.

CNBC Shills For Obama, Ignores Big Spike In Jobless Claims

CNBC obviously wants nothing to stand in the way of Obama and the Democrats solving the fiscal cliff by raising taxes on everybody.

It's amazing how the commie sympathizers blatantly rewrite the headlines in denial of reality.

Initial claims for unemployment spiked up to nearly 500,000 in the latest report, and CNBC says claims fall, focusing only on "seasonally adjusted" numbers from the Dept. of Labor.

Claims in the "not seasonally adjusted" category spiked up nearly 140,000 in the last week, and over the last four weeks have averaged 435,000, far in excess of a number in the low 300,000s consistent with an environment of job creation.

Since CNBC says the "temporary spike caused by Superstorm Sandy has faded" that can only mean the spike up which they ignore had a different cause.

Elections have consequences, and higher taxes and ObamaCare are going to cause more joblessness, as the last four weeks suggest. 

One Month Later, Obama Still Has Less Than 51% Of Popular Vote

One month after the election, Obama still can't crack the 51% level in the popular vote.

With 127.6 million votes counted, he's still at 50.88%, only just slightly better than George W. Bush's 2004 win with 50.73% when 122.3 million voted.

W didn't have a mandate then, and Obama doesn't now.

The truly remarkable thing about the presidential election remains the voters' giant shoulder shrug in the worst economy since WWII. We'll never know how things might have turned out had the Republicans not picked a me-too liberal and run a real conservative instead of Mitt Romney, whose first act after his nomination was formalized was to trot out his wife to assure us all how conservative was her husband. Liberal Democrats aren't the only ones suffering from projection syndrome.

As it was the voters shrugged in comparison to 2008 and 2004 when 43% and 42% of the population voted. This year just 40% did.

As FDR bought election after election during the Great Depression of the 1930s with direct federal assistance programs and interventions in the New Deal and culminating in the Social Security Act of 1935 in the Second New Deal, Obama has similarly blunted the pain of our economic straits with massive expansions of unemployment insurance, food stamps, welfare and disability, cell phones, heating assistance, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, culminating in the Supreme Court's validation this summer of ObamaCare.

Whatever else may be said, doling out the goodies worked then, and it has worked again, which speaks volumes about the ineffectual nature of the kind of conservative revolution worked by Ronald Reagan, which was no revolution because it was at heart a compromise with the liberal welfare state, not an overturning of it.

Half of America may still hunger for a real meal of conservatism, but so far, all they've been fed are Twinkies.

ObamaCare Part-Times 59 Cedar Falls, Iowa, Public Employees

Because ObamaCare has a look-back period of one year for determining who must be offered health insurance, employers all across America are cutting back the hours of every employee they can to 29 per week right now in order to be exempt from the provisions starting in 2014.

The latest employer in the news is Cedar Falls, Iowa, which hopes to save about $850,000 by cutting its 32 hour workers to 29 hours, as reported here:

City attorney Tom Meyer said if every one of those 59 workers were to remain at 30 hours per week and get health insurance, it could cost the city as much as $850,000 per year.

Truman Cut Spending Big Time In 1945. The Economy Boomed.

Speaker John Boehner, wake up.

Arnold Kling, here:

When World War II ended in 1945, President Harry Truman faced a problem. Public opinion called for a rapid demobilization that would bring the boys home as soon as possible. But the Keynesians who were gaining prominence in the economics profession warned that a rapid decline in government spending and the size of the public work force would produce, in the late economist Paul Samuelson’s words, “the greatest period of unemployment and dislocation which any economy has ever faced.”

Thankfully, Truman ignored the Keynesians. Government spending plummeted by nearly two-thirds between 1945 and 1947, from $93 billion to $36.3 billion in nominal terms. If we used the “multiplier” of 1.5 for government spending that is favored by Obama administration economists, that $63.7 billion plunge should have caused GDP to fall by $95 billion, a 40 percent economic decline. In reality, GDP increased almost 10 percent during that period, from $223 billion in 1945 to $244.1 billion in 1947. This is a rare precedent of a large drop in government spending, so its economic consequences are important to understand.

Pravda Says Illiterate Americans From Communist Controlled Schools Elected Communist Obama As President Of An America Suffering From A Psychosis Called Liberalism

That about sums it up.

From the Department of It Takes One To Know One, English.Pravda.ru, here:

Obama's Soviet Mistake

19.11.2012 15:23

By Xavier Lerma

Putin in 2009 outlined his strategy for economic success. Alas, poor Obama did the opposite but nevertheless was re-elected. Bye, bye Miss American Pie. The Communists have won in America with Obama but failed miserably in Russia with Zyuganov who only received 17% of the vote. Vladimir Putin was re-elected as President keeping the NWO order out of Russia while America continues to repeat the Soviet mistake. ...

Recently, Obama has been re-elected for a 2nd term by an illiterate society and he is ready to continue his lies of less taxes while he raises them. He gives speeches of peace and love in the world while he promotes wars as he did in Egypt, Libya and Syria. He plans his next war is with Iran as he fires or demotes his generals who get in the way.

Putin said regarding the military,

"...instead of solving the problem, militarization pushes it to a deeper level. It draws away from the economy immense financial and material resources, which could have been used much more efficiently elsewhere."

Well, any normal individual understands that as true but liberalism is a psychosis. O'bomber even keeps the war going along the Mexican border with projects like "fast and furious" and there is still no sign of ending it. He is a Communist without question promoting the Communist Manifesto without calling it so. How shrewd he is in America. His cult of personality mesmerizes those who cannot go beyond their ignorance. They will continue to follow him like those fools who still praise Lenin and Stalin in Russia.  Obama's fools and Stalin's fools share the same drink of illusion.

Reading Putin's speech without knowing the author, one would think it was written by Reagan or another conservative in America. The speech promotes smaller government and less taxes. It comes as no surprise to those who know Putin as a conservative. Vladimir Putin went on to say:

"...we are reducing taxes on production, investing money in the economy. We are optimizing state expenses. The second possible mistake would be excessive interference into the economic life of the country and the absolute faith into the all-mightiness of the state. There are no grounds to suggest that by putting the responsibility over to the state, one can achieve better results. Unreasonable expansion of the budget deficit, accumulation of the national debt - are as destructive as an adventurous stock market game. During the time of the Soviet Union the role of the state in economy was made absolute, which eventually lead to the total non-competitiveness of the economy. That lesson cost us very dearly. I am sure no one would want history to repeat itself."

President Vladimir Putin could never have imagined anyone so ignorant or so willing to destroy their people like Obama much less seeing millions vote for someone like Obama. They read history in America don't they? Alas, the schools in the U.S. were conquered by the Communists long ago and history was revised thus paving the way for their Communist presidents. Obama has bailed out those businesses that voted for him and increased the debt to over 16 trillion with an ever increasing unemployment rate especially among blacks and other minorities. All the while promoting his agenda.

"We must seek support in the moral values that have ensured the progress of our civilization. Honesty and hard work, responsibility and faith in our strength are bound to bring us success."- Vladimir Putin

The red, white and blue still flies happily but only in Russia. Russia still has St George defeating the Dragon with the symbol of the cross on its flag. The ACLU and other atheist groups in America would never allow the US flag with such religious symbols. Lawsuits a plenty against religious freedom and expression in the land of the free. Christianity in the U.S. is under attack as it was during the early period of the Soviet Union when religious symbols were against the law.   

Let's give American voters the benefit of the doubt and say it was all voter fraud and not ignorance or stupidity in electing a man who does not even know what to do and refuses help from Russia when there was an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Instead we'll say it's true that the Communists usage of electronic voting was just a plan to manipulate the vote. Soros and his ownership of the company that counts the US votes in Spain helped put their puppet in power in the White House. According to the Huffington Post, residents in all 50 states have filed petitions to secede from the Unites States. We'll say that these Americans are hostages to the Communists in power. How long will their government reign tyranny upon them?

Russia lost its civil war with the Reds and millions suffered torture and death for almost 75 years under the tyranny of the United Soviet Socialist Republic. Russians survived with a new and stronger faith in God and ever growing Christian Church. The question is how long will the once "Land of the Free" remain the United Socialist States of America? Their suffering has only begun. Bye bye Miss American Pie! You know the song you hippies. Sing it! Don't you remember? The 1971 hit song by American song writer Don McLean. ...

Was Socialist France The Model For ObamaCare's 50 Worker Rule?

Mike Tanner for The New York Post, here:

Under ObamaCare, employers with 50 or more full-time workers must provide health insurance for all their workers, paying at least 65% of the cost of a family policy or 85% of the cost of an individual plan. Moreover, the insurance must meet the federal government’s requirements in terms of what benefits are included, meaning that many businesses that offer insurance to their workers today will have to change to new, more expensive plans. ...

Under the circumstances, how likely is the company to hire that 50th worker? Or, if a company already has 50 workers, isn’t the company likely to lay off one employee? Or cut hours and make some employees part time, thus getting under the 50 employee cap? Indeed, a study by Mercer found that 18% of companies were likely to do exactly that. It’s worth noting that in France, another country where numerous government regulations kick in at 50 workers, there are 1,500 companies with 48 employees and 1,600 with 49 employees, but just 660 with 50 and only 500 with 51.

Tanner might have emphasized that as companies become 49ers because of ObamaCare, the workers will increasingly become 29ers, part-timers who are exempted from coverage under ObamaCare because they are deliberately kept to 29 hours per week.

After being 99ers for so long, that's about as good as it's going to get.

Austin, MN, Hires Part-Timer To Save $18K On "Benefits"

"Benefits", as in health insurance.

The guy will work 30 hours per week and make $60K a year, but will get no benefits.

Story here:

He will not receive fringe benefits of pension, health insurance, life insurance or disability insurance. ... With the hiring of Erichson as a flex-time employee, the HRA [Housing and Redevelopment Authority] will save about a total of $38,000 ($20,000 in salary and $18,000 in benefits). The arrangement is planned to be revisited after one year of employment.

Yeah, at which time he'll be cut to 29 hours per week.

Capisce?

Community College Cuts Part-Timers' Hours To Avoid ObamaCare Costs

The Cheerleaders Against ObamaCare

The Community College of Allegheny County in Pennsylvania will cut 400 part-timers' hours to less than 30 hours per week to save $6 million in costs mandated by ObamaCare.

Story here.

Companies everywhere are in revolt against ObamaCare, which mandates coverage be offered when full-time workers exceed 49 in number, but full-time now "redefined" as 30 hours worked on average per week instead of 34 or 35. Leftism is nothing if not based on constant redefinition of reality.

So the path is clear if you're an employer: reduce full-time positions to 49 and part-time everyone else to no more than 29 hours per week. The result in America will be fewer and fewer full-time jobs and inadequate part-time jobs for more and more people, many of whom will be unable to afford to buy insurance through one-size-fits-all ObamaCare and will be thrown into state Medicaid programs where they will receive healthcare which you wouldn't wish on Fido or Morris.

ObamaCare is an ugly war on jobs, and is reminiscent of nothing so much as Stalin's war on the Kulaks of Ukraine, whom he starved to death when collectivization failed to produce the "mandated" amount of wheat. People will not begin to appreciate the comparison I suppose until our government decides the size threshold of companies must be lowered to, say, 39 full-time employees from 49 to get ObamaCare to "work", and to, say, 20 hours per week from 29 to mandate "more coverage". But by then business will already be flat on its back and the size of the proletariat will have swelled. Single payer can't be far behind.

They are saying out there that Romney lost because he focused on too many numbers, but Obama is using mandated numbers to slowly crucify you.

UGLY.

Neal Gabler Can't Face It That Democrats Have Betrayed Social Security

Here, for Reuters:

"There is no gainsaying that the basic purpose of the [Ryan] budget is to dismantle New Deal and Great Society programs that assist the poor and gradually remove the juice from the third rail by privatizing Social Security and essentially voucherizing Medicare. To save the country from the flood of debt, they must save us from FDR and LBJ."

The Ryan Budget isn't even the law of the land because Democrats have stopped it in the Senate. But for two years, two years!, Democrats have enthusiastically advocated and voted for reductions in the payroll tax, removing the juice from Social Security, in order to put cash into people's hands and stimulate the economy. Democrats did this in the lame duck session in December 2010, when they still had complete control of the US government: House, Senate, White House:

"In December 2010, as part of the legislation that extended the Bush tax cuts (called the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010, the government negotiated a temporary, one-year reduction in the FICA payroll tax. In February 2012, the tax cut was extended for another year."

Looks to me like Democrats represent the biggest threat to the sacrosanctity of Social Security.

Unemployment in October Ticks Up to 7.9%

Read the report from the BLS here.

This is the big picture:

"Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 171,000 in October. Employment growth has averaged 157,000 per month thus far in 2012, about the same as the average monthly gain of 153,000 in 2011. In October, employment rose in professional and business services, health care, and retail trade."

The average jobs added per month of 155,000 in the last two years has been insufficient to alter significantly the rate of unemployment, seeing that unemployment ticked up 0.1 points from September. All year the unemployment rate has been no higher than 8.3%, and no lower than 7.8%.

Meanwhile the long-term unemployed, those part-timed, those no longer in the labor force and those entering the labor force for the first time, who all number in the tens of millions, fight for that small pool of jobs. At 300,000 new jobs per month, double the current rate, it would take over 8 years to suck up 30 million people.

There remains no driver for jobs in an economy barely growing at all at 2.0%.

Blame Walmart For The Part-Timing Of America, And ObamaCare For Ramping It Up

From a very good story by the New York Times, reproduced here:

The rise of big-box retailers like Walmart . . . with their long operating hours and complex staffing needs, has contributed to the increase in part-timers.

Mr. Flickinger, the retail consultant, said when Walmart spread nationwide and opened hundreds of 24-hour stores in the 1990s, that created intense competitive pressures and prompted many retailers to copy the company’s cost-cutting practices, including its heavy reliance on part-timers.

Susan J. Lambert, an expert on part-time work and a professor of organizational theory at the University of Chicago, said the use of part-timers had also escalated because of the declining power of labor unions. “They set a standard for what a real job was — Monday through Friday with full-time hours,” she said. “We’ve moved away from that.”

ObamaCare will now put this part-timing trend into high gear as more and more employers seek to avoid ObamaCare's 30 hour rule, at which employers must provide a healthcare benefit. More and more employers are going to schedule people for up to 29 hours per week, and not one more.

If you read the full story excerpted above you'll wonder to yourself how $15,000 per year part-time earners are going to be able to afford to purchase healthcare at Obama's healthcare exchanges, especially since holding two part-time jobs is already impossible in the experience of most part-timers. The answer is they won't be able to afford to purchase insurance, and will be shuffled off to crappy care under Medicaid, which is going bust already.

The healthcare debacle in America is only just beginning, thanks to Obama and the Democrats.

Obama Sings His Version Of "If I Had A Hammer"

Well I've had a hammer

I've hammered in the morning

I've hammered in the evening

All over this land

I've hammered out class war

I've hammered out en-mi-ty

I've hammered out hate between the rich and the poor

All over this land

Well I've had a sickle

It's a lopper in the morning

It's a lopper in the evening

All over this land

I've lopped off full-time jobs

I've lopped off G-D-P

I've lopped off home-owners' e-qui-ty

All over this land

Well I've had a checkbook

I've used it in the morning

I've used it in the evening

All over this land

I've milked it for traveling

I've milked it for par-ty-ing

I've spent a wad on my brothers and my sisters

All over this land

Well I've got a hammer

And I've got a sickle

And I've got your checkbook

All over this land

I'll smash you middle class

I'll cut you down to size

I'm making you equal and equally poor

All over this land

h/t Tomas

Transformation After Four Years: Lost AAA Credit Rating, 8.97% Average Unemployment, Average Report of GDP 0.825%, Housing Values Down 13%

"After decades of broken politics in Washington, and eight years of failed policies from George W. Bush, and 21 months of a campaign that's taken us from the rocky coast of Maine to the sunshine of California, we are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America."

-- Sen. Barack Obama, October 2008, Columbia, Missouri

Fewer Jobs, And More Of Them Part-Time Because Of Obama

Population has increased 10.1 million from four years ago, from 304.5 million to 314.6 million.

Total civilian employment has decreased 2.1 million, from 145.1 million to 143.0 million.

Full-time jobs have fallen 4.5 million, from 119.7 million to 115.2 million.

Part-time jobs have increased 1.9 million, or 7.6%, from 25.1 million to 27.0 million today, and this number will continue to climb as employers turn full-timers into part-timers in order to avoid having to offer insurance to workers working 30 or more hours per week as required by ObamaCare.

'The question in this election is not "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" We know the answer to that. The real question is, "Will this country be better off four years from now?"'

-- Sen. Barack Obama, October 2008, Canton, Ohio

And the answer is No.

VP Joe Biden Grossly Underestimated The Drop In Housing Equity

My jaw almost hit the floor when I heard Vice President Biden in debate with Paul Ryan say this:

BIDEN: I don't know how long it will take. We can and we will get it [unemployment] under 6 percent. Let's look at -- let's take a look at the facts. Let's look at where we were when we came to office. The economy was in free fall. We had -- the great recession hit; 9 million people lost their job; $1.7 -- $1.6 trillion in wealth lost in equity in your homes, in retirement accounts for the middle class. We knew we had to act for the middle class. We immediately went out and rescued General Motors. We went ahead and made sure that we cut taxes for the middle class. And in addition to that, when that -- when that occurred, what did Romney do? Romney said, "No, let Detroit go bankrupt." We moved in and helped people refinance their homes. Governor Romney said, "No, let foreclosures hit the bottom."

The vice president isn't even close to appreciating the devastation endured by home owners in this country.

Here's a chart I posted previously taken from the most up-to-date figures from the Federal Reserve showing peak to trough owners' equity dropping a whopping $6.9 trillion, not $1.7 trillion.

The vice president not only doesn't grasp the scope of the losses experienced by the middle class, the Obama administration hasn't done one thing to put housing on a proper footing going "forward", the slogan of their campaign.

Instead, Obama & Co. spent the first two years ramming health care reform which we didn't want down our throats at the same time we were losing our homes.

If ever anyone should be FIRED! for incompetence and malfeasance, it's these guys. Otherwise get ready to spend your retirement years living in the back seat of your rescued Government Motors automobile.