Tag: Unemployment

  • Labor Force Participation Rate Lowest Since 1981

    This story is actually over a month old.  It’s been sitting in the “drafts” folder.  Still just as relevant as the day it was published.

    In April the number of people not in the labor force rose by a whopping 522,000 from 87,897,000 to 88,419,000. This is the highest on record. The flip side, and the reason why the unemployment dropped to 8.1% is that the labor force participation rate just dipped to a new 30 year low of 64.3%.

    via ZeroHedge.

    Whenever you see anything about the “unemployment” rate always keep in mind that number only tells part of the story.  The bottom line is that things are really really bad out there.  Well that and the MSM doesn’t want to tell you about it.  Which is why you have to go to site like ZeroHedge to find out what’s really going on.

  • Teens Employment Lowest Since WWII – Obama Not Helping

    This article was published yesterday about the same time that Obama was in the Rose Garden making the situation worse:

    Fewer than 3 in 10 American teenagers now hold jobs such as running cash registers, mowing lawns or busing restaurant tables from June to August. The decline has been particularly sharp since 2000, with employment for 16-to-19-year olds falling to the lowest level since World War II.  …

    The drop in teen employment, steeper than for other age groups, is partly a cultural shift. More youths are spending summer months in school, at music or learning camps or in other activities geared for college. But the decline is especially troubling for teens for whom college may be out of reach, leaving them increasingly idle and with few options to earn wages and job experience.Older workers, immigrants and debt-laden college graduates are taking away lower-skill work as they struggle to find their own jobs in the weak economy. Upper-income white teens are three times as likely to have summer jobs as poor black teens, sometimes capitalizing on their parents’ social networks for help.

    Overall, more than 44 percent of teens who want summer jobs don’t get them or work fewer hours than they prefer.

    via HeraldNet.com.

    Holy Cow!!  Three passages worth repeating:

    [T]he decline is especially troubling for teens for whom college may be out of reach,
    leaving them increasingly idle and with few options to earn wages and job experience.

    Just who are these kids who are now left with few options?  My guess is urban city kids.  In the country there’s always work on the farm.  But in the city & suburbs we have thousands and thousands of idle kids.  Hanging around with noth’n to do; just look’n for trouble.

    Older workers, immigrants and debt-laden college graduates are taking away
    lower-skill work as they struggle to find their own jobs in the weak economy.

    Isn’t this the truth.  Have you ever been to a Wal-Mart where the greeter was under 50?  And now everywhere you go, every single stinking fast food place, sit-down restaurant, Target, Wal-Mart, grocery store, and nearly everywhere else has adult immigrants working there.  In the ’70s and ’80s these jobs were good (great) jobs for kids to get.  Two people I know very well worked at Jewel when they were in high school.  One put herself through college; the other bought a Camaro.

    With the new (unconstitutional) Obama plan on immigration the job market will now have another few million young people who are eligible to work … but will struggle to find decent employment.  It serves no one when you just set people up to fail.

    Upper-income white teens are three times as likely to have summer jobs as poor black teens….

    This is what I wrote yesterday; inner city kids are going to be one of the biggest losers in the immigration debacle.  Contrary to what some people believe, one cannot just walk into a job that pays $100,000 per year.  Everyone has to start somewhere.  Usually that means that kids bus tables at a local restaurant, caddie, work retail, mow lawns, wash cars, whatever.  These jobs are important because they teach critical lessons necessary to move up in the world: show-up on time, look nice, smile, how to deal with conflict, how to deal with a boss, etc.  You can’t just wake-up one day and think you’re going to get a job as a banker without having decent people skills.

    Obama is dooming generations of inner city kids to lives of and on government sustenance.  These kids will never reach their full potential because they have so many factors stacked against them: poor educational systems, uneducated parents, no access to jobs, and a president who’s bargained their futures for political gain.

  • Layoffs on Wall Street?

    After adding thousands bankers in the past two years, financial firms again appear to be on the verge of cutting that many positions and then some. Consultants and Wall Street recruiters say banks could eliminate nearly 21,000 jobs from their securities divisions in New York alone. Worldwide cuts could be even larger. Recruiters say big banks are in the process of finalizing their downsizing plans, and that layoffs could start soon.

    The latest round of job cuts could rival those that happened during the financial crisis. Back then, which was less than four years ago, Wall Street eliminated 28,000 positions. But that round of downsizing included the collapse of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, and the biggest crisis in the financial markets since the Great Depression. By comparison, the stock market is up this year, and just last week banks reported better than expected earnings for the first quarter. What’s more, at the same time large firms are firing, many smaller investment banks have been staffing up. As a result, overall employment on Wall Street might not drop as much as it did after the financial crisis.

    via Fortune Mag.

    Two thoughts:

    First, just so everyone knows, the crisis in not over; we’re not out of the woods yet.  It’s sad whenever anybody loses their job and there may be a lot more of this coming.  Bankers, especially investment bankers, are especially susceptible.  A story this week about how JP Morgan Chase lost $2 billion in their “synthetic credit portfolio” shows with what relative ease the wheels can fall off the bankers bus.  Everyone who works in that industry is on the edge everyday.

    Second, this is a fine example of the private sector doing something the public sector cannot — getting rid of unnecessary people.  We know from the 2010 U.S. Census that Illinois while Illinois is growing its 3% rate over a decade is enemic compared to other states; we lost a U.S. House seat.  Yet Illinois government continues to grow and grow and grow.  We need to right-size Illinois government.  Some agencies are actually understaffed; leaving taxpayers waiting for basis services.  Others are bloated with staff getting paid to attend baseball games.

  • Labor Force Participation Rate Messes with Unemployment Rate

    Exactly a month ago I wrote about the bogus employment numbers claimed for the Chicago area.  I claimed that there were no actual jobs “created” and that the only reason the employment rate went down was because people simply left the job market.

    Didn’t have this at the time… but my theory has real support.

    Changes in population and the participation rate can significantly impact the unemployment rate. If the Civilian noninstitutional population (over 16 years old) grows by about 2 million per year – and the participation rate stays flat – the economy will need to add about 94 thousand jobs per month to keep the unemployment rate steady at 8.2%.

    However if the population grows faster (say 2.5 million per year), and/or the participation rate rises, it could take significantly more jobs per month to hold the unemployment rate steady. As an example, if the working age population grows 2.5 million per year and the participation rate rises to 65% (from 63.8%) over the next two years, the economy will need to add 227 thousand jobs per month to hold the unemployment rate steady.

    via Calculated Risk.

    Wanna see a chart of the Labor Force Participation Rate?

    US Labor Force Participation Rate Chart

    US Labor Force Participation Rate data by YCharts

    Pretty wild?  That fall off represents millions and millions of people who are simply no longer working, looking for work, claiming unemployment benefits, or are new grads who can’t find work.

    It’s no wonder that more and more people are eating at McDonald’s.

  • IL, 3rd Worst for Business …again

    Let’s first get some background on the winners:

    In Chief Executive’s eighth annual survey of CEO opinion of Best and Worst States in which to do business, Texas easily clinched the No. 1 rank, the eighth successive time it has done so. California earns the dubious honor of being ranked dead last for the eighth consecutive year.  …

    Florida moved up from number three last year to number two. Last year, Florida Gov. Rick Scott penned a tongue-in-cheek letter to Texas Gov. Rick Perry, warning him that Florida is coming after the Lone Star State’s top ranking. Since Scott took office, his administration has enacted business tax and regulatory reforms that have contributed to the creation of more than 140,000 private sector jobs and an unemployment drop of 2.1 percentage points last year—one of the biggest decreases in the nation.It is perhaps no coincidence that Texas and Florida have the highest net migration of people to their states from 2001 to 2009. (By contrast, New York and California lost over 1.6 million and 1.5 million in net migration out of the states, respectively, over the same period.) People migrate in search of employment, but this can cut both ways. Texas is justly proud of adding to its employment numbers, something Gov. Perry cited numerous times during his brief campaign for the Republican Presidential nomination. Between June 2009—which marked the official end of the recession—and July 2011, the number of jobs increased in the state by 328,000. Nationally, the job growth in that time period was 697,000 according to figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This translates to Texas jobs making up 47 percent of the national net job creation. However, neither Texas, nor the nation, is adding jobs at a pace fast enough to bring down unemployment to historically normal levels. And Texas’ unemployment rate—while still below the national average—is now higher than that of 26 states

    via Chief Executive Magazine.

    Wow!!  Congratulations to Florida and Texas for being massive job creators.

    Illinois?  You rank 47th.

    One CEO commented that “Illinois is in a race to the bottom.”

    Congrats Gov. Quinn, Michael Madigan, Mayor Daley, and the rest of the cabal for driving businesses and job out of Illinois.  We’re shrinking while other states are growing.  You’ve forced millions of people to suffer while you’ve enriched yourselves.

    Pathetic.

  • Bogus Chicago-area Jobless Rate Dips

    Lies… Damn Lies… and Statistics:

    The February unemployment rate in the Chicago area dropped to 8.9 percent from 9.6 percent a year ago, according to preliminary data released Thursday by the Illinois Department of Employment Security.

    The Chicago area, which includes Joliet and Naperville added roughly 38,100 jobs  to the payrolls, according to the data, which was not seasonally adjusted.  …

    The unemployment rate identifies individuals who are out of work but looking for work.

    via Chicago Tribune.

    What was that last line again?  Oh ya, the unemployment rate identifies individuals who are out of work but looking for work.  And it’s missing one very important fact, it also ONLY includes people who HAVE WORKED.  Recent grads are not eligible for unemployment, so they don’t count.

    The “Chicago Area” as they call it consists of over 9.4 million people. Contrary to the facts of the story, there were no, zero, zilch job added to payrolls in February.  What really happened is that 38,000 or so folks removed themselves from the job market.

    0.40% of the folks simply gave up looking for work OR have been on employment for so long that the benefits simply ran out.

    If one took into account age, time on unemployment, underemployment and other factors we’d see that the real unemployment rate is far, FAR, higher.

  • Killer Received Unemployment While In Jail

    Authorities say a convicted killer who gained notoriety for having a murder scene tattooed on his chest received unemployment benefits while he was in jail.

    Sheriff’s Capt. Mike Parker said Saturday that Anthony Garcia, nicknamed “Chopper,” received more than $30,000 in fraudulent unemployment while in Los Angeles County jail from 2008 to 2010.

    via Fox News.

    Our government let’s these sorts of things slip through the cracks everywhere.  This story is from California; where at least someone was looking into the situation.  What do you think it’s like in Illinois where no one is looking?  My guess is much, much worse.

  • Illinois Unemployment vs. The Media

    Good News!!

    CHAMPAIGN, Ill. (AP) — Unemployment dropped to 9.8 percent in Illinois in December, state officials said Friday, a second straight monthly decrease that capped a year in which the jobless rate fell almost a full percentage point from 2010.

    via Chicago Tribune.

    Or, maybe not:

    The unemployment rate in the Chicago area rose to 10.2 percent in December from 9.3 percent a year ago, according to seasonally adjusted figures released Thursday by the Illinois Department of Employment Security.

    via Chicago Tribune.

    Hummm…  So, I can’t tell if this is good news or bad news.  So I did some searching and found a cool link at CapitalFax.com which led me to a supercool Google tool were one can graph public data.

    The unemployment rate for the last 20 years of several mid-western states:

    Then check out the same graph for the last 5 years:

    Wisconsin and Michigan appear to be heading in the right direction.  Illinois… not so much.