Category: Unemployment
The analysis published under this category are as follows.Tuesday, August 12, 2014
The De-industrialization of America: “True U.S. Unemployment Rate is 23.2%” / Economics / Unemployment
On January 6, 2004, Paul Craig Roberts and US Senator Charles Schumer published a jointly written article on the op-ed page of the New York Times titled “Second Thoughts on Free Trade.” The article pointed out that the US had entered a new economic era in which American workers face “direct global competition at almost every job level–from the machinist to the software engineer to the Wall Street analyst. Any worker whose job does not require daily face-to-face interaction is now in jeopardy of being replaced by a lower-paid equally skilled worker thousands of miles away. American jobs are being lost not to competition from foreign companies, but to multinational corporations that are cutting costs by shifting operations to low-wage countries.” Roberts and Schumer challenged the correctness of economists’ views that jobs off-shoring was merely the operation of mutually beneficial free trade, about which no concerns were warranted.
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Tuesday, June 17, 2014
U.S. Unemployment - They’re Lying To Us / Economics / Unemployment
One of the frustrating things about the monthly US jobs report is the way everyone focuses on the wrong number. The headline says “unemployment falls…” which sounds great, while the small print, which almost no one seems to read, explains that most of the improvement is due to people dropping out of the labor force. The number of new jobs created is frequently small or negative.
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Thursday, June 12, 2014
Unemployment and A Tale of Two Financial Crises / Economics / Unemployment
D.W. MacKenzie writes: The latest GDP report indicates a slowdown in overall economic activity in the first quarter of 2014. Apologists for the Obama administration attribute the recent slowdown to unusual winter weather. Some have even suggested that the first-quarter slowdown sets the stage for rapid economic growth for the remainder of this year: there is pent up demand and untapped potential productivity, they claim. Mobilization of unemployed resources and satisfaction of unmet demands could, in the remainder of 2014, translate into a faster annual rate of GDP growth, perhaps 3.5 percent. The flaws of this argument should be obvious. One can just as easily argue that the much larger slowdown of 2008 set the stage for fast growth in the 2009-2013 time frame. The 2008 crisis left us with much greater pent up demand and untapped productivity. Yet the recovery that began in 2009 nearly stalled in 2010 and has been extraordinarily slow. Why has the recovery been so very slow?
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Wednesday, January 22, 2014
Welfare, Minimum Wages, and Unemployment / Economics / Unemployment
Gregory Morin writes: Of the various flavors of government interventionism in our lives, the minimum wage is perhaps the most welcomed. It appeals not only to our innate sense of “fairness” but also to our self-interest. Its allure may erroneously lead us to the conclusion that because “it is popular,” ergo “it is right.”
Friday, November 29, 2013
Unemployed and Deployed in America / Economics / Unemployment
Wendy McElroy writes: Unemployment will be a global tipping point in 2014, and America will tip as well. Europe is already panicking about the likelihood of young people rioting in the streets next summer. The 17-nation Eurozone is predicting severe riots due to soaring unemployment, especially among the young. In September, the Eurozone's general unemployment rate was 12.2%; the rate for young workers was 24.1%. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, youth unemployment is nearly 60% in Greece, 55% in Spain and 40 percent in Italy and Portugal.
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Wednesday, September 25, 2013
Corporate Profits and Worker Unemployment / Politics / Unemployment
The informative business publication, Zero Hedge, featured the voice of common sense and economic insight, Rick Santelli.
"CNBC's Rick Santelli asks the (rhetorical) question that everyone should ask: "[What the Fed minutes said] is, listen, we have to wait for bigger confirmation that the economy is doing better; and for that, we're going to look at the employment side. [At the same time] we have the fewest people working that can work in 30 years, and all-time-record-high profits for corporations. Now, does that strategy sound rational to you?" It seems, now that Bernanke has seemingly promised that it will really never end, that Santelli's question will become increasingly critical in this country."
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Saturday, July 06, 2013
No Hope On The Jobs Front: Rising Unemployment in America / Politics / Unemployment
Do you remember the promise of the New Economy that was going to replace the lost “dirty fingernail” manufacturing jobs with innovative highly paid New Economy jobs? Well, the promise was just another deception from the elites who have stolen Americans’ future.
For the umpteenth consecutive month and year, the June BLS payroll jobs report (released on July 5) shows that the US economy has created no such jobs. The same old tired categories account for the same old lowly paid new domestic service jobs.
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Sunday, June 09, 2013
Another Phony U.S. Jobs Report From A Government That Lies About Everything / Politics / Unemployment
The payroll jobs report for May released today continues the fantasy.
Goods producing jobs declined, with manufacturing losing another 4,000 jobs, but the New Economy produced 179,000 service jobs.
Are these jobs the high-powered, high-wage “innovation jobs” that economists promised would be our reward from Globalism. I’m afraid not.
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Sunday, June 02, 2013
More Euro-zone Economic Austerity in face of Record Unemployment / Economics / Unemployment
Christoph Dreier writes: Unemployment in the euro zone hit a two-year high in April. According to the latest figures of Europe’s Eurostat statistical agency published on Friday, the unemployment rate rose from 12.1 percent in March to 12.2 percent last month. Fully 24.4 percent of young workers have no job.
The highest jobless rates are found in the southern countries, which have plunged into deep recessions since 2008. At the top of the list is Greece, with an unemployment rate of 27.0 percent, an estimated economic contraction of 4.2 percent this year. A stunning 62.5 percent of youth are out of work.
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Friday, May 31, 2013
Euro-zone Unemployment Crisis Driving Workers to Migrate to UK / Economics / Unemployment
Euro-zone unemployment rates hit new economic depression extremes, with Greece leading the PIIGS nations that collectively have a youth unemployment rate of more than 50% that continues to encourage mass migration out of the PIIGS to either Germany, or the UK as the below table illustrates there exists a huge gap between the single markets jobs markets.
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Sunday, May 26, 2013
An Even Deadlier Disaster than Bangladesh Garment Factory Collapse for the Third World / Politics / Unemployment
The recent collapse of a garment factory building in Bangladesh, resulting in the death, at latest count, of more than 1,100 workers who were employed there, has led to international outrage not only against the building’s owner but also against the various retailers in the United States and Europe, many of them prominent, that have sold clothing produced in that building. It is demanded that they assume responsibility for working conditions in the factories that supply them and not deal with factories that do not provide safe and humane conditions and pay fair wages.
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Tuesday, May 07, 2013
The New Untouchables of the 21st Century / Politics / Unemployment
Throughout history and throughout the world, there have been classes of untouchables. Best known perhaps (other than Elliott Ness and Wall Street bankers) are the caste that goes by the name in South Asia, a.k.a. the Dalits, but there are/were also for instance the Cagots in France, the Burakumin in Japan, and the Roma and Jewish populations in medieval Europe though the Middle East. In the US, one could include the black and native populations. Wikipedia has this definition:
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Sunday, May 05, 2013
Spain and France Facing Huge Unemployment / Economics / Unemployment
Brett Chatz writes: No end is in sight regarding the current rise in unemployment in Spain and France. Neither does there appear to be any economic panacea to reverse the European recession. As in spread betting and contract for difference, the end product of the austerity program is determined by the accuracy of the European wager on diminishing national deficits rather than on addressing the unemployment problem. CFD trading is making an impact on share trading decisions, just as the economic outlook of the ECB impacts monetary decisions within individual countries.
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Thursday, March 21, 2013
Figuring Out Cyprus, Will the Real Unemployed Please Raise Your Hands? / Economics / Unemployment
This week’s letter will be a very short part of a book I am writing with Bill Dunkelberg (the Chief Economist of the National Federation of Independent Businesses) on the future of employment. It has taken longer to write than I initially anticipated, for a host of reasons, chief among which is that the future is not as obvious as I originally thought. Diving into the data has brought a few surprises. It doesn’t help that I have (probably to the frustration of Dunk, although he is way too polite to say it) changed the focus from “merely” what we need to do to create jobs (which is still an important part of the book) to what kinds of jobs will the future bring and who will get them.
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Monday, March 11, 2013
Unemployment Down, But February Jobs Report Not All Rosy / Economics / Unemployment
Jeff Uscher writes: The report had some positive news, as the unemployment rate fell to 7.7%, the lowest rate since December 2008.
While the preliminary numbers for February show that 236,000 new jobs were created, exceeding analyst estimates by a wide margin, the figure for January was revised down from 157,000 to 119,000. However, the December number was revised up from 196,000 to 219,000. So for the three months of December 2012-February 2013, the economy has added a total of 574,000 jobs, well above expectations.
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Tuesday, March 05, 2013
Europe, Unemployment and Instability / Economics / Unemployment
The global financial crisis of 2008 has slowly yielded to a global unemployment crisis. This unemployment crisis will, fairly quickly, give way to a political crisis. The crisis involves all three of the major pillars of the global system -- Europe, China and the United States. The level of intensity differs, the political response differs and the relationship to the financial crisis differs. But there is a common element, which is that unemployment is increasingly replacing finance as the central problem of the financial system.
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Friday, February 15, 2013
Obama's New Minimum Wage Will Eliminate At Least 467,000 Jobs / Politics / Unemployment
Ben Gersten writes: In his State of the Union address Tuesday night, President Barack Obama urged Congress to raise the minimum wage from $7.25 to $9, saying the move would reduce poverty and stimulate the economy.
"Tonight, let's declare that in the wealthiest nation on Earth, no one who works full-time should have to live in poverty, and raise the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour," President Obama said. "This single step would raise the incomes of millions of working families. It could mean the difference between groceries or the food bank, rent or eviction, scraping by or finally getting ahead.
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Tuesday, February 12, 2013
State of The Union - Where is U.S. Unemployment Headed? / Politics / Unemployment
This evening Eastern Time U.S. President Obama is scheduled to give his annual 'State of the Union' address. Favoured topics are said to be U.S. unemployment and jobs creation, and gun control. I expect Mr. Obama also to address the issue of defense spending, where he recently has been reported as saying 'Deep cuts' threat to security, Obama says in reference to pending defense budget cuts.
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Friday, February 01, 2013
January 2013 Jobs Report: Four Reasons U.S. Unemployment Will Stay High / Economics / Unemployment
Diane Alter writes: The U.S. Labor Department released the January 2013 jobs report Friday, showing the unemployment rate inched upward from 7.8% to 7.9%.
Employers added 157,000 jobs in January, short estimates of 168,000, which would have kept the unemployment rate stable.
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Friday, January 25, 2013
High Unemployment Isn’t Just an American Dilemma / Economics / Unemployment
George Leong writes: We have nearly eight percent of Americans pounding the pavement, but it is more likely double that if you count the workers actually unemployed or underemployed. But the problem of high unemployment is not only an ongoing issue in America; it’s a problem that is found in pockets all around the world, from the rust belt in Ohio to the massive manufacturing plants in China.
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