The difference between 47.6% of population with full time jobs in Nov 2020 and 52% is 11.5 million

 Think of each of those 11.5 million full-time units forming a household, buying a house, buying a car, buying a washing machine, raising some kids, paying taxes for good schools to which to send them, etc.

That's what's missing.

Sad! 

Just a reminder that the harrowing nature of full time employment in the United States hasn't changed much as of Nov 2020

 As a percentage of population, full time in Nov 2020 remains in the basement digging holes at 47.6%, reminiscent of the historic lows pre-Reagan and the double Reagan recessions of the early 1980s.

Full-time never recovered after the Great Financial Crisis of 2008, if you mean a return to pre-GFC1 levels. Under Obama and continuing under Trump full time after eight long years finally clawed its way up to 50.4% in 2019 on an average annual basis, only to be felled again by a lousing, stinking virus.

But don't make the mistake of blaming the virus. Conditions were long too weak to support pre-GFC1 levels of full time employment. Contrast this with the vigor of the Reagan/Bush surge in which full time went from 47.3% to 52.2% in just six years.

That missing vigor is the irreducible fact of the present economic malaise now in its twelfth year which very few acknowledge let alone understand.

  

Fake News from Drudge vs. Trump reminds me of Fake News from Rush Limbaugh for Trump: "Economy in same place as Great Recession..."

 Anyone with any brains can see that the economy is about where it was at the beginning of 2019, not where it was in 2009, at least on paper.

Rush was telling us for months that businesses were being destroyed by the lockdowns and that they would not recover. Now he's telling us "we can survive a massive unknown hit like this thing by the coronavirus" and calling for "even more stimulus", i.e. what Democrats always call for, spending money we don't have, which is anything but conservatism from "The Big Voice on the Right".

The entire GOP signed off on the massive deficit spending to purchase this V-shaped recovery Drudge doesn't want to recognize, but 8.4 million still don't have the full time work they had just a year ago. That's a massive hit which will take years to recover. As in 2009, however, older workers who lost their full time jobs this time around won't recover them either. Full time will recover only as population grows. 

Neither Drudge nor Rush Limbaugh think too much of the intelligence of their patrons. Their understanding is thimble-deep.

But neither do Democrats nor Republicans. They go into panic mode to preserve as much of the status quo as possible with bailout gimmicks, same as ever. And when the bailouts end, the dispossessed will face what they always face: disillusionment. 

Sad!

Hey look at that, Trump finally got his 40% unemployment rate in April 2020

Trump's greatest US economy ever suddenly has 25 million people on insured unemployment compensation

Somebody must have been asleep at the switch for something that bad to happen so quickly.

Who was that?

The only thing Trump has accomplished at "warp speed" is ruining the US economy because he ignored a deadly virus until it was too late

Trump, the supposed savior of US manufacturing, has presided over the utter collapse of manufacturing capacity utilization to a level in April 2020 never experienced in the post-war. The president could lawfully and easily order this unused capacity to make masks which would in fact protect everyone, and other PPE for hospital workers and care-givers to protect our front line workers, but he has not. Were he serious about re-opening the country, he would have made this JOB 2 on Feb 1, after JOB 1, which was hard-stopping all passenger air travel, the primary vector for the pandemic. Trump didn't do JOB 1, either.

Industrial production generally has imploded to levels never seen since 1919. The so-called America first president has done nothing in three years to make America strong enough to prevent this from happening. Remember Ann Coulter said long ago already that Trump was a lazy ignoramus. 

Motor vehicle production annualized has tanked 11 million units in just two months to fewer than 72,000 annualized. That's the typical monthly sales figure for a single popular car. 

Oh, I've forgotten unemployment, which also is unprecedented, though understated, at 14.7%. It's actually closer to 20%. North of 33 million not-seasonally-adjusted have made first time claims for unemployment from March 19th inclusive.

Trump's numbers are truly great, as in "you great oaf!"

Yes the government has "bailed out" the workers and the businesses, but with a Rube Goldberg machine which has been completely unfair in its results, picking winners by virtue of their established access to bankers or savvy state systems of unemployment administration. Bank or live somewhere not up to speed? Dats tuff, Anwar. You're a loser anyway.

Meanwhile coronavirus infections are set to soar again because our president is throwing a tantrum to open the country but hasn't made it safe to do so. He's had two months for that but has produced BUPKIS. If you want people to go back to work, they need masks. Where are the masks? Oh well, you were on your last legs anyway.

How anyone can vote to re-elect this level of horrific incompetence and reptilian danger is beyond me.

The S&P 500 closed tonight at 2,488.65

That's down only 23% year to date.

Pretty remarkable, that. I mean, look at these first time claims for unemployment over the last two weeks: 8.7 million not-seasonally-adjusted, 9.9 million seasonally-adjusted.

The market in the past has often risen on bad jobs numbers, but this is ridiculous. It's a total disconnect. These are apocalyptic numbers, yet the market is holding on just 23% down.

There's trillion$ of aid in the pipeline to bail out businesses and individuals, but how long can that last? And to what effect? At some point the laws of supply and demand and inflation will have their say, and it isn't going to be pretty, especially if a 4th bill is passed in the Congress, which now seems likely. Had economics ever been susceptible of replacement by passing bills, we would have done it long ago and enjoyed prosperity without work all this time!

Yeah, right.  

The coronavirus infection is a momentous turning point for America. 

Politically speaking about coronavirus . . .

The virus and the economic problems themselves have basically drowned out the Democrat race for the presidency. Trump is front and center in all of it, dominating the news cycle.

The news is very bad for Trump, but the focus is on him and the problems, not the Democrats.

Neither Biden nor Sanders have much going for them personality wise or policy wise. Their voices sound frail and small in the face of these enormous challenges.

Trump is clearly in his element . . . for now.

But wealth destruction, massive unemployment and death now stalk him politically as much as they do the rest of us in reality. It's not going to help him to insist he knew this was a pandemic all along as he did yesterday when he's on camera denying it was not long ago. Besides, if he already knew, he should have taken drastic action like canceling jet travel on Feb 1. Instead he simply canceled the jet travel of a few Chinese nationals. Had he been knowledgeable, he would have known too that all those travelers by jet from China had asymptomatic spreaders in their midst. That's in part why we have an explosion of cases everywhere. They also came from other hotspots on jets to America. Trump bungled this badly and allowed the pandemic to come here.

Anecdotally people in my orbit are heeding the call to stay home. Commuter trains into Chicago are nearly empty, says a close friend. Road traffic is very light on workdays here in Michigan. Work orders have dried up and employees are on-call, if they haven't been furloughed outright. Work-from-home for the $40k or less crowd is estimated to be possible for just 17% of all individual wage earners in the US. Higher earners have more opportunity for that, but it will probably not last long for some as the economy nose dives. Many will soon be underwater, if they aren't already. This is going to cost an enormous sum and do tremendous damage to the people and the economy.

And to think it was mostly preventable with a little common sense, something neither party seems capable of providing.

This is a catastrophe, a pathetic display of human incompetence.    

Still waitin' for Trump to lockdown the country, eh?

The full time jobs deficit in Feb 2020 in the US is enormous, in the many millions

Bernie Sanders isn't wrong about being worse off than in 1975: Real median earnings of full-time men in 2018 are worse than in 1973 according to the US Census Bureau

VDARE's Ed Rubenstein tries to put lipstick on foreign born pig, but their population and employment both are up 1.7 million under Trump, their labor force is up 1.4 million: There is no "Trump effect" suppressing The Great Replacement

Here.

OK geezer

Whatever happened to 65 and out? ... Can you name a single institution of American life that’s functioning better today than it was before the boomers took over?

Matthew Hennessey must be like 120 years old to know how things were before the boomers took over.

Someone really should tell this guy full retirement age is 66-67, not 65, for people born in 1943 and later. To get what people used to get at 65, THEY MUST WORK LONGER.

There are 10.347 million 65 and older working in 2019 on average. The 65s were born in 1954. There's 4.07 million right there. They hit full retirement age this year, at 66. But after that it starts stretching out: 66 years 2 months if born in 1955, then 66 years 4 months, and so on until 1960 when full retirement age is 67 years old. And there's over 4 million in each of those years, too. So you think it's bad now, just you wait Henry Higgins, just you wait.

Go ask these people if they wish they could retire already. A majority of them would rather be among the 42 million their age who are no longer in the labor force. And that will become more true with every passing year. Believe me.

Meanwhile 48 million GenXers are employed. They are not being stifled by 10 million who refuse to retire.

Story.

Missing full-time jobs in January 2020: 6.3 million

Previous peak for average full-time as a percentage of population: 2006

Percentage @ peak: 52.3%

Percentage in Jan 2020: 49.85%

Full-time in Jan 2020: 129.379 million

Full-time in Jan 2020 @ 52.3% of 259.502 million: 135.719 million

Missing full-time: 6.34 million

I don't mind if you steal my Trump/Limbaugh BFI Unemployment Rate chart, just don't call it the Big Fat Idiot Unemployment Rate, PLEASE

Just think of all those girls 40 years ago: They were at home, eating but not working, and they just threw it all away (what WERE they thinking? and what on earth are they thinking NOW?)

Introducing the Trump/Limbaugh Big Fat Idiot Unemployment Rate, and the good news is in January 2020 we're back on track to more people not working but still eating, just like under the Carter Administration 40 years ago

Bernie was right in 2015 and it's even worse now: Real wages of men are lower than they were 45 years ago, a fiasco

Wolf Richter:

The median earnings of men working full time year-round in 2018 ticked up to $55,291. Adjusted for inflation, this was below the amount they earned in 1973, according to the annual data trove released by the Census Bureau today. In other words, there has been a “real” income decline for men over the past four-plus decades! ... [M]en’s real earnings are a fiasco.

LOL: Donald Trump's crackpot 35% unemployment in February 2016 is 37% today

Jeffrey Snider:

In February of 2016, then-candidate Trump deployed his typical grandiose, exaggerated style after his win in the New Hampshire primary.

“Don't believe those phony numbers when you hear 4.9 and 5 percent unemployment. The number's probably 28, 29, as high as 35. In fact, I even heard recently 42 percent.

[T]he once fake unemployment rate has become his primary campaign symbol.

Big Fat Idiot Rush Limbaugh 2/5/2016:

We have an audio sound bite here from Obama ... He was heralding first-time unemployment rate as being under 5% for the first time in seven years ... Well, there’s a reason he said it. It’s because it’s the only way you can ignore the 94 million Americans not working, not in the labor force ... This is an abject joke. It’s a total joke.

Coronavirus in Wuhan is like unemployment in the US

If you're not counted, you're not dead.