Bill Cunningham repeating stupid: "95 million Americans can't find work"

Last night in the first hour of the show.

"Not in the labor force" explained.

They aren't LOOKING for work. They are your retired parents. They are your kids in high school, college and graduate school. They are your stay at home mothers and fathers. They are the sick and the disabled.

Personally, I think Rex Nutting's a commie, but he couldn't be more right about the fake news of "not in the labor force"

Rex Nutting is right. Our side has been trafficking in this piece of fake news for years, a factoid originating with Zero Hedge and endlessly repeated by the Goodyear blimp of gasbags Rush Limbaugh, touching all and sundry from Donald Trump on down to little known radio hosts on low power stations in Michigan like Steve Gruber in Lansing. Correct it try though you may, every attempt to stop it fails. It's embarrassing, not in the least because it exposes the endemic inability to think critically and the proclivity to believe in authorities which share your political opinions.

For all the good it will do, Rex Nutting goes once more unto the breach, here, with excellent links and a good graph, too:

There are a lot of “fake statistics” bandied about in service of some ideology or another, but I’d like to focus on just one example in which I have expertise from my work covering the monthly employment report over the past 20 years: The idea that there are 95 million Americans who are out of work but not counted as unemployed.

This statistic pervades the conservative discourse about our economy (or at least until Jan. 20). The implication of this statistic is that the government and media are lying to us. Instead of an economy that’s slowly improving as President Barack Obama has been telling us, our economy is actually a catastrophic failure, unable to provide any work for nearly 100 million people. ...

This is the perfect fake statistic, because it’s absolutely true. And completely meaningless.

What a hypocritical gasbag Rush Limbaugh is about Trump's spending plans

Why, Donald Trump could be another FDR!, he says today. He could consolidate Republican rule for decades if he spends the money correctly!

Rush doesn't have a clue about the Obama stimulus, let alone have any principles. He thinks the stimulus was $1 trillion or so, when it was actually nearly $5 trillion, so far. I say so far because the damn thing was built into the outlay train. And look what we've gotten for it. A big fat nothing-burger. Crummier economic growth than under Bush, full-time jobs over 6 million behind trend, and a big fat national debt of nearly $20 trillion.

But Trump's version is going to be successful! Sure it is. $1 trillion or $5 trillion or $10 trillion under Trump isn't going to do anything it couldn't do under Obama.

The February 2009 Obama stimulus got added to Bush's 2009 fiscal year spending, and to every frickin' year thereafter. The fiscal 2008 baseline outlays were $2.9825 trillion.

And here are the annual outlays thereafter in excess of that baseline:

2009: $535.2 billion

2010: $474.6 billion

2011: $620.6 billion

2012: $554.5 billion

2013: $472.1 billion

2014: $523.6 billion

2015: $776.1 billion

2016: $1.017 trillion.

The giant joke on the American people here is that Republicans went right along with this charade the whole time Obama was president.

And now that Trump is running the show, an even bigger joke is about to be played on the American people.

Academic Ann Douglas' analysis is a cloister-f*^k: "Even some white men feel they've been left behind"

Here, where her attachment to the ideology of "sexism" blinds her to the real consequences of Obama's intentional inattention to the fate of the white middle class of both sexes, no sex, homosex, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera:

Yes, Hillary was a flawed candidate. Her penchant for privacy—not surprising given what the Republicans and the national press have put her through since 1992—was her Achilles heel, leading to the use of a private email server that came to symbolize her alleged untrustworthiness. It also led her to be not adroit enough with the media. Hillary misread the country: the fury about the wages of neoliberalism—which, yes, she embodied—that was gripping people, young and old, on the Right and the Left. Thus, she didn’t have a galvanizing progressive message that, as the Sanders campaign demonstrated, millions were hungering for, even some white men feeling they’ve been left behind.

Even some white men? 

How about 4 million whites of both sexes, Ann, in the core of the working population aged 25 to 54 years, who've been left behind in fact and don't just "feel" they have:

ECRI notices what I noticed in September: Whites missed the job boat under Obama, have fewer jobs than nine years ago

My post was about full-time jobs, here in September. Asians, blacks and Hispanics all had net gains in full-time jobs from their respective 2007-2008 peaks through the second quarter of 2016, from 0.2 million to 1.5 million while whites still suffered from huge losses in full-time totaling 4.4 million. On a percentage basis minorities' gains ranged from 2% to 23% while white losses were 7%, the impact of which was so huge because whites represent 64% of the population. 

Mish's comment on the ECRI story here was this:

Minorities fared far better at job gains on a percentage basis than whites. 

While the ECRI story here concluded this:

Whites actually have fewer jobs than nine years ago, while Hispanics, Blacks and Asians together gained all of the net jobs added, and more. 

Once again Rush Limbaugh is full of it about the late, great recession

Here's Rush on November 15th:

In the first place, this so-called recession, the worst since the Great Depression 2008, I don't care, folks, it wasn't! ... Democrats have lived off of this economic collapse narrative for eight years now, and it's horse hockey. The truth of it is that there hasn't been a recovery from it. ... Hell, the recession that Reagan inherited in 1980 dwarfs this one. I mean the thing that Reagan inherited when he became president in 1980, this doesn't even get close to touching it, how bad it was. ... This has really been a sore spot for me for all these eight years, is how supposedly bad that was and how Obama single-handedly rescued us from it, and it was all the Republicans' doing, and it all happened because of the Iraq war. ... We haven't replaced these jobs that were lost. They keep talking about the employment rate being way down, record lows, what a crock.

Rush doesn't remember the 1980s very well, when he was in his 30s. Without a college education and a long enough personal history to compare things to while experiencing the hard knocks of life trying to get his radio career going, those years understandably seemed worse to him than they really were. Honest people everywhere recognize it was that way for them, too. Unfortunately Rush still doesn't seem to be able to measure the 1980s properly let alone put them in their proper perspective economically.

Take first time claims for unemployment. Reagan's weekly average 1981-1988 was 406,000. Obama's  weekly average 2009-2016 (still unfinished) is 373,000, 8% less severe overall. But the averages around each recession peak are much closer in severity. First time claims 1981-1983 averaged 491,000 weekly, while claims 2009-2011 averaged 477,000 weekly, the latter only 2.85% less severe overall. Peak claims in 1982 averaged 30.1 million, in 2009 only 2% lower at 29.46 million.

While the Obama jobs recession was not quite as severe in terms of the persistence of high first time claims for unemployment, full-time jobs took forever to recover under Obama. Under Reagan they had bounced back almost immediately. In 1981 the pre-recession peak in full-time averaged 83.243 million. By 1984 that level had been recovered with 86.544 million full-time jobs on average. Three years, that's it. In 2007, by contrast, the pre-recession peak in full-time averaged 121.091 million, but it took EIGHT YEARS to recover that level. Full-time finally averaged 121.492 million in 2015. That's why it hasn't felt like things are looking up until this year, in 2016.

If you were an adult in the 1980s, you probably remember the Savings and Loan crisis from 1986-1995, but you probably don't think of the Reagan era as a period of widespread bank failures comparable with what we recently experienced in the Great Recession, and you would be right. Losses from such failures as estimated by the FDIC for the period 1981-1988 total $8.9 billion. But for the period 2009-2016 estimated losses from bank failures soared to $57.3 billion, 544% higher. Even adjusted for inflation the recent losses were well in excess of 200% higher than in the 1980s. 

Or take housing. The Case-Shiller Home Price Index fell at most about 14% from the late 1970s to the mid 1980s through the Reagan recessions. I remember my dad was pretty unhappy about it because he retired in 1980 and was sitting in a house he hoped to sell for more money one day, but the value kept declining. But that was nothing compared to what happened between 2006 and 2012 when the index tanked over 36%. The foreclosure rate averaged just 0.5% in 1980-81, but soared to 3.8% in 2008-09, an increase of over 600% in the rate. Many millions of people lost homes in the Great Recession, but they are nameless and faceless to Rush Limbaugh because to him things were much worse in the 1980s. But not in reality. I saw homes in foreclosure in my own middle class neighborhood in 2007 that I never saw back in 1980 in my dad's hometown.

Perhaps the best way to visualize how much worse the most recent recession was compared with the early 1980s is to examine quarterly current dollar GDP. You had one tiny blip in quarterly current dollar GDP between December 1981 and March 1982 when it declined all of $0.01 trillion, 0.3% that's it. The truth is GDP recovered the next quarter ending June 1982 and never looked back.

Fast forward to 2007-09. There were four quarterly declines: A decline of $0.02 trillion between 12/31/07 and 3/31/08; a decline of $0.29 trillion from 9/30/08 to 12/31/08; a decline of $0.17 trillion from 12/31/08 to 3/31/09; and a decline of $0.04 trillion from 3/31/09 to 6/30/09. The previous peak level in quarterly current dollar GDP wasn't recovered until a year later, in June 2010. It took almost two years, not one quarter as in 1982. All told GDP fell from peak to trough by $0.5 trillion or 3.37%. 

The recession of 1982 was child's play compared with 2007-2009. Rush just can't see it because he was already rich during the Great Recession.

Your guiding light in this time of tumult he is not.   

Hillary can't claim she'll continue the good economy because it isn't a good economy

From the macroeconomic point of view of GDP, jobs and homeownership, the economy under Obama has been a bad joke.

Economic growth is lagging, lagging I say, the horrible, awful George W. Bush . . . by $2 trillion. Current dollar GDP under Obama has grown a paltry 28.2%. Under Bush, the worst in the post-war until now, it at least grew by 41.7%. Obama should kill to have George Bush's economic growth, and Hillary probably will, by starting another war. Nothing boosts GDP like war-spending.

Meanwhile job growth as measured by monthly total nonfarm has slowed in 2016 by over 20% compared with 2015, to 181,000 new jobs monthly vs. 229,000 new jobs monthly last year. Is that a hopeful trend?

And if you think 2015 was so great, it wasn't. If the same percentage of the population had been working in 2015 as worked in 2007, there would have been 7 million more employed than there were. There has been a huge contraction in employment, which explains the GDP problem. Without work there is no product.

You can see this vividly in full-time jobs. Compared to October 2007, we have just 2.6 million more full-time jobs in October 2016 than we had in 2007. Think about that. Just 2.6 million more full-time jobs but population has increased by 22 million. After recessions, full-time has always recovered to the previous highs in 2-3 years, but not under Obama. This time it took 8 years, a terrible stain on the economic record.

Next consider housing. There have been 6.4 million completed foreclosures since September 2008 even as the Feds have done everything they can to get housing prices to recover, distorting the economy to the point that today the typical $247,000 existing home is unaffordable for 90% of individual wage earners. No wonder the homeownership rate, at 63.5%, has plunged to a level last seen in 1985.

In the end about all Hillary surrogates have to boast of is the stock market. Larry Kudlow featured one on his radio program this weekend doing just that. But estimates of how many Americans own stocks vary considerably. Gallup recently put it at 52%. Pew in 2013 put it at 45%. Shockingly, the Federal Reserve itself estimates it's more like 13-15%. In the best case only half the country is reaping benefits from stocks, and probably a lot less than half.

Those people who had the foresight to invest in March 2009 have done extremely well. On average the S&P 500 is up over 17% per year since then through September 2016.

But how have long term investors done, people who buy and hold in retirement accounts? Since the last stock market boom peaked in August 2000, they are up only 4.32% per year. That's almost 64% worse than the historical post-war performance of 11.9% with little upside on the horizon as the market has made new all-time highs and is obscenely valued.

Nothing Hillary Clinton is proposing looks remotely likely to improve any of these measures, except maybe by starting a new war.

My boy will be 18 next year. Please don't vote for her.

Carrying the water for Democrats, the NY Times lies about "healthy job growth": Additions are more than 20% behind the 2015 rate

In "Last Economic Snapshot Before the Election Shows Healthy Job Growth".

The Bureau of Labor Statistics states up front in this latest economic snapshot that additions to nonfarm payrolls are way behind the 2015 average in the first ten months of 2016:

Compared to October 2007, there are just 2.6 million more full-time jobs in October 2016

You talkin' to me?

In October 2007 there were 122 million employed full-time, in October 2016 124.6 million.

Meanwhile part-time jobs are up 3 million over the period, from 24.7 million to 27.7 million.

That's an extra 5.6 million jobs total in 9 years, that's it. Population is up 21 million.

Way to go, Brownie! 

If Republicans had any brains they'd be pointing out that GDP is running $2 trillion behind Bush and employment 6 million

But no, they have their heads up their ass because Trump talked about grabbing pussy.

Which proves that Republicans don't care about the economy and the middle class, only about their privileges under the establishment.

Which is why they hate Trump, because he does care. 

Rush Limbaugh's memory of 1980 is terrible

He just said the unemployment rate in 1980 was in the double digits, but it wasn't.

In 1980 the unemployment rate averaged 7.2%. In July it peaked at 7.8%.

That hurt a lot because it had been as low as 5.6% in 1979. 

Joe Pags thinks "not in the labor force" does not include the retired, but it does

It's shocking how many people still think, wrongly, that "not in the labor force" includes huge numbers of people who could be or should be working but aren't.

Today on his show Joe Pags said the number not in the labor force, currently over 94 million, does not include retired people, when, for example in 2014 the retired constituted 44% of those "not in the labor force". The truth is the retired always constitute the single largest proportion of those "not in the labor force".

The sick and disabled in 2014 accounted for almost 19%, and people going to school made up another 18% of the total "not in the labor force". Tell me there are some claiming disability who don't have one who should be working, but don't tell me the damn kids should be working. 15.5% were homemakers while 3.5% had other reasons. There's probably many people in these categories who might want a job but can't find one, or ought to be working but aren't, but nothing even remotely close to the almost 39 million retired at the time.

Joe Pags joins a long list of idiots who are quite outspoken in their ignorance about this, including Zero Hedge, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Donald Trump, et alia. Thinking there might be vast numbers of hidden unemployed in "not in the labor force" is just plain lazy stupid.

None of these apparently have had the slightest interest in checking this out on Al Gore's amazing internet using the google machine, which takes you to this page at the Bureau of Labor Statistics with one of the better explanations out there.

I can only conclude the ignorance in the case of Joe Pags is willful because Joe Pags is smarter than that. But then again, he thinks Ted Cruz is a natural born citizen.

His bad.

Hillary gets the best she can from Janet Yellen: Economy still too weak for the Fed to further normalize interest rates

Actually, the Fed is too weak morally to normalize interest rates, and won't move until after the election. A December hike if Trump is elected may well send the markets tumbling down, which you know will be blamed on his election, not on the Fed.

Meanwhile banks continue to get rich while impoverishing savers $100 billion quarterly since the end of 2008. That's $3.2 trillion they'll have robbed from the American people by the end of 2016.

Government of the banks, by the banks, and for the banks.

Politico reports here:

The Fed’s target rate is now just 0.25 percent to 0.50 percent, a remarkably low figure this late in an economic recovery that gives the central bank little room to maneuver should a new crisis or recession arise. So the Fed’s move avoids a market meltdown but offers fresh rhetorical evidence for Trump and other Republicans who argue that the economy is extraordinarily weak. ... Trump has also said that as president he would replace Yellen, whose term runs until February 2018. And he has ripped the Fed for creating what he has called a “false economy” with high stock prices but only modest wage gains and a very low labor-force participation rate.

Under Obama minorities have been hired to full-time jobs at the expense of whites

Les Deplorables: Under Obama full-time employment for Asians, Hispanics and blacks has recovered, but not for whites

Hm. How did that happen?

Maybe because race hiring quotas became de facto mandatory for private employers in late 2013 because of 2010's Dodd-Frank legislation.

Full-time for Asians in the core 25 to 54 years age group has recovered by 1,232,000 jobs after eight years

Full-time for Hispanics in the core 25 to 54 years age group has recovered by 1,426,000 jobs after nine years

Full-time for blacks in the core 25 to 54 years age group has recovered by 166,000 jobs after nine years

Full-time for whites in the core 25 to 54 years age group has not recovered and is still 4,368,000 jobs behind from 2007

Age discrimination update: Unemployment rate for those 55+ estimated to be 12%, 2.5 million want to work but can't get hired

Reported by Reuters, here:

Further, if you add jobless workers who gave up looking after more than four weeks, the 55-plus unemployment rate is a whopping 12 percent, SCEPA [Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis at the New School] analysis shows. Looked at another way, 2.5 million older Americans want a job but do not have one.

New York Times opinion piece against age discrimination never once mentions the main reason for it: The young can be paid much less

The number one cost of doing business is employees, and employers will do anything they can to reduce it: fire the old and hire the young, ship the jobs overseas to cheaper labor markets, and the coming zinger, automate them out of existence.

From the story here:

The problem is ageism — discrimination on the basis of age. A dumb and destructive obsession with youth so extreme that experience has become a liability. In Silicon Valley, engineers are getting Botox and hair transplants before interviews — and these are skilled, educated, white guys in their 20s, so imagine the effect further down the food chain.

Age discrimination in employment is illegal, but two-thirds of older job seekers report encountering it. At 64, I’m fortunate not to have been one of them, as I work at the American Museum of Natural History, a truly all-age-friendly employer.

I write about ageism, though, so I hear stories all the time. The 51-year-old Uber driver taking me to Los Angeles International Airport at dawn a few weeks ago told me about a marketing position he thought he was eminently qualified for. He did his homework and nailed the interview. On his way out of the building he overheard, “Yeah, he’s perfect, but he’s too old.”

Through past recessions full-time jobs bounced back by 12 million on average, but not under Obama who is 9.6 million short

In August 2007 there were 122.9 million working full-time, and in August 2016 there were 125.9 million

Gee, that Obama guy has made so much progress . . . imagine, 3 million more full-time jobs after nine years.

What an amazing man!

DNC finance director Jordan "no homo" Kaplan is out, returns to full time consulting

Story here, which of course doesn't mention his Wikileaks "no homo" fame.