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Jobs Numbers and WTH are They Thinking

Jul 02, 2010 | By: Mr_Blue | Comments | Permalink | Tags:

New jobs report came out today, July 2, 2009, and it was ugly. Oh, BTW, “They” being neoliberals/conservatives when they deny unemployment insurance to millions of Americans.

First the jobs report. The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ new release is here but here is a little taste:

Total nonfarm payroll employment declined by 125,000 in June, and the unemployment rate edged down to 9.5 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The decline in payroll employment reflected a decrease (-225,000) in the number of temporary employees working on Census 2010. Private-sector payroll employment edged up by 83,000.

So, the 2010 Census was driving much of the job growth over that last several months. Interesting because this shows how effective a direct jobs program can be in creating jobs. The private sector did create 83,000 jobs last month but this far from enough to spur economic growth. Remember, we have lost over 7 million jobs since this Great Recession began - so the Jobs Hole is very very deep.

As for the unemployment rate, don’t be fooled by the slight decrease. This slight decrease was due to a number of people dropping out of the work force - giving up looking for a job. Not good.

Now for WTH are they thinking:

We are hearing many republicans saying that the problem is unemployment insurance and that there are jobs out there people just have to lower their salary expectations. There are also many Democrats that are thinking the same way but are not going to come out and say that. One driving force behind this ridiculous rhetoric is politics but another is a flawed ideology.

The ideology is based on an incredibly flawed notion that the labor market is self-correcting or self-equilibrating. It should be left alone to correct itself and that unemployment insurance and even minimum wage laws create problems. This ideology has proven flawed over and over again but it stays alive because it helps justify anti-worker policies. But let’s assume neoliberals/conservatives are correct about labor market - that would mean we would have to lower our living standard to developing world standards and/or possible enter into some debt servitude/slavery regime.

These people don’t care that over a million people are about to have no source of income to buy things like food or even pay bills but unfortunately for some reason this flawed thinking is getting traction.

Good luck.