Are those jobs supposedly created since 2008 fictional bullshit?
The Great Obama Economy. It created more than 11 million jobs.
The final tally is in: 11.3 million new jobs were created under President Obama.
The president is claiming a big victory on getting Americans back to work again.
"Businesses that were bleeding jobs unleashed the longest streak of job creation on record," Obama wrote in a letter to the American people this week.
It makes one wonder why people are so unhappy with the state of the labor market if there are so many damn jobs out there. Why aren't wages going up?
How can we even be producing so many jobs if the economy is in a Depression.
The hard fact is that the past decade’s $10 trillion in deficit spending has produced the worst economic growth as measured by Gross Domestic Product in our nation’s history. You read that right, in the past decade our nation’s economy grew slower than even during the Great Depression. This stagnant, new normal, low-growth economy is leaving millions of working age people behind who have given up even trying to participate, and has led to a malaise where many doubt that the American dream is attainable.
Whoa! That can't be right, can it?
The following are U.S. GDP growth rates for every year during the 1930s…
1930: -8.5%
1931: -6.4%
1932: -12.9%
1933: -1.3%
1934: 10.8%
1935: 8.9%
1936: 12.9%
1937: 5.1%
1938: -3.3%
1939: 8.0%When you average all of those years together, you get an average rate of economic growth of 1.33 percent.
That is really bad, but it is the kind of number that one would expect from “the Great Depression”.
So then I looked up the numbers for the last ten years…
2007: 1.8%
2008: -0.3%
2009: -2.8%
2010: 2.5%
2011: 1.6%
2012: 2.2%
2013: 1.7%
2014: 2.4%
2015: 2.6%
2016: 1.6%When you average these years together, you get an average rate of economic growth of 1.33 percent.
That's both stunning and completely unsurprising. If the joke we have for a news media wasn't so pathetic, they would be using the term "Depression".
Fortunately, all those jobs being created are real. After all they are measured by surveys, right?
Actually, no.
Allow me to introduce you to the concept of the Birth/Death Model.
There is an unavoidable lag between an establishment opening for business and its appearance on the sample frame making it available for sampling. Because new firm births generate a portion of employment growth each month, non-sampling methods must be used to estimate this growth.
Earlier research indicated that while both the business birth and death portions of total employment are generally significant, the net contribution is relatively small and stable. To account for this net birth/death portion of total employment, BLS uses an estimation procedure with two components..
There is one truth and one lie in that statement.
The business birth and death portions of total employment is indeed significant.
However, the net contribution is NOT small and stable.
Morningside Hill did this breakdown of the BLS numbers.
In 1999 the Birth/Death Model added 0.9% of jobs created.
In 2003 it added 379.8% of jobs created.
In 2009, when more than 5 million jobs were being destroyed according to BLS surveys, the Birth/Death Model created 882,000 jobs.
Last year the Birth/Death Model accounted for 39% of jobs created.
A full 30% of jobs created since 2010 or 4.5 million out of 15 million jobs were added via the birth/death adjustment.
That's not small OR stable.
What's more, the BLS trend is to say that more and more jobs are being created through new businesses.
Which is a perfectly fine assumption to make...assuming it is true.
Is there any evidence that more and more businesses are being created in the U.S. to employ more and more people?
No, it's not true!
Even by the BLS' own measurements, new business creation is in a Depression.
Therefore 93.5% of those jobs supposedly created since 2008 are at the very least questionable, if not an outright lie!
Comments
The lies of government
if truly killing us all. Gee, with a labor participation rate at something like 62.7%, but unemployment reported as less than 5%, it's just a fucking sick, cruel joke on us.
C99, my refuge from an insane world. #ForceTheVote
Great essay. I would add who filled those jobs oh-by-the-way
Having worked in high tech I have seen the devastation to American jobs which various abused work visa programs have done, it occurred to me, even believing those figures, who is filling those jobs. Just for grins I went to Wikipedia and found that that for 2008 to 2014, that there were 1,542,113 new and continual work approvals for H1b visas. Extrapolating for the last previous years, we are looking at roughly 2 million of that 11 million jobs not filled by Americans. Add in other visa categories and we are looking at the fact that significant numbers of those new-Obama jobs were not filled by local American workers.
Now imagine that the number of new jobs is wrong which your GDP numbers suggest, the effect of jobs going to non-Americans as the numbers I cite are countable and real is made even worse.
So in essence, the new jobs number is much lower, and as a huge chunk were simply and effectively not available to Americans. Why count jobs which were never going to American residents.
Very good point
I didn't realize that H1-B's were that many.
Yah, the numbers add year after year.
Yah sort of a surprise to see how the numbers add up year after year.
I think maybe I should not have added to the jobs count renewals of stay as my thinking was that if not renewed, that would mean an open job. But still over the period of 2008 to 2014 something like 659,000 thousand new H1bs entered the country. A new trend that I saw last year was that companies with a big presence overseas began to transfer people to the States--which is a different visa altogether.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa
Correction
"Why count jobs which were never going to American
residentscitizens." Since the H1-B's are residents, in fact, they are legal residents.But by importing the labor to fill the jobs, business effectively exported the jobs along with the millions of jobs they truly exported to China and India amongst other countries.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
Yup. Correct.
@The Voice In the Wilderness Yeah, that way they can
Yeah, that way they can export the jobs without suffering the PR hit, and, hopefully, American citizens will hate on the employees rather than the employers.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Yes, I don't blame the H1-B's
I would do the same if I lived in a third World country. my grandparents did the same emigrating to America.
I blame the companies and the politicians. Most of the H1-B's are decent people. Some are arrogant assholes. Just like US citizens.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
And projecting to the
automated future?
Another thing is the ridiculous proportion of waitstaff/bartending jobs are in all that job creation we hear about.
The Dems sole economic issue -- nearly doubling minimum wage to $15-- is more irony than help to the workforce. It cuts, to about half, the time when owners buying a robot and firing the people can recover their investments.
Orwell: Where's the omelette?
Yes
and every President since Reagan has been relying on fake statistics to tout their job creation record.
The data on the increase in Millionaires and Billionaires is far more reliable, as is the earnings data by percentile rank.
"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott
True, but it's worse now
The B/D adjustment used to be in the margins.
Now it's the dominant feature.
It's all smoke and mirrors
But in most parts of the country, people know this, they feel it. So many of our cities are already dystopian urban wastelands.
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
Unrelated note
GOS hating on TYT now
For this:
Hate-Based Community, now.
someone who had their top-recced though poorly thought through diary called out by someone else expressed that if she deleted her diary, the people who rec'd it would feel bad.
The century-long effort to get the masses to think feelings is the sum and substance of political action has succeeded.
A fee-fee based community.
Orwell: Where's the omelette?
It is all about the essay I just published on
the row between TYT's Michael Tracey and their heroine Maxine Walters. They are exactly what I wrote my rant about. Hysterical, over-emotional, irrational people using emotions as a weapon.
https://caucus99percent.com/content/waters-vs-tracey-or-feeling-vs-thinking
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
Good article.
The BBC's four part documentary "Century of the Self" can be seen at archive.org; I think YouTube.
A hundred years now where government/business work with psychologists and spies to manipulate the public by inculcating identity and self and the sole matters of meaning.
Rarely watch TV, but even the commercials are about families and friends getting over on each other so they can get or keep their Precious.
Orwell: Where's the omelette?
@gjohnsit dkmich wrote a diary
dkmich wrote a diary about that recently. Michael Tracy is now being pilloried for mentioning that Maxine Waters pushed his microphone (and his arm) away. It's amazing to watch the insane circus on both sides: the right wing have practically got it down as Waters beating him, while the Democratic machine and its partisans are doing their best to destroy Tracey's reputation. The words "ridiculous reporter" and "racist white man" came out in the media within hours.
Bullshit piled high on every side.
Waters should be ashamed of herself, not so much for shoving Tracey's arm (though that was unprofessional) but for WHY she shoved his arm: because she was pissed off because she couldn't give him a decent, truthful answer to his question about Obama working with Russia. Of course, Obama worked with Russia for a while, because he wanted to stop the Islamic State (some of the rest of the Executive Branch may not have wanted to stop them, given the connections between parts of our government and the Saudis, who funded IS in the first place, but I don't think Obama was fully on board with the PNAC insane failed-state murder plan for the ME.)
But admitting that Obama worked with Russia messes up the story. The story is that extremist Trump and his fringe Republican allies have evil connections with evil Russia which endanger us all. They're on the bad side. Obama, Hillary, the DNC, the Democratic party generally, the mass media, Bush Republicans, and the CIA are on the good side.
Tracey's question challenged the story. She didn't have a good lie ready, and she wasn't willing to tell the truth, so she shoved his arm.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
statistical "modeling"
I just love the fruits of statistical modeling! It makes me nostalgic for the grand halcyon days of the Dewey Administration (1949 - 1952).....
Oh, wait a minute! You mean that Truman was President during all that time?? Oops!
You've done an excellent job of documenting how the employment books have been cooked over the years to blame those who are still short a livelihood rather than the politicians who actually bear that blame by rights. Thank You!
n.b. You can view the notorious photo of President Truman holding the copy of the Chicago Tribune bearing the banner headline "Dewey Defeats Truman" here. The photo is still under copyright so I can't post it here.
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
65 years later?
wtf? Friggin' copyright laws, like everything else, are written to protect the 1%.
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
Blame the Mouse
What Disney wants, Disney gets. And Disney will keep moving the goalposts to protect their copyrights of Mickey Mouse and other Disney-created characters, ad infinitum.
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
Pirates
Yeppers.
There's a political party -- a worldwide one -- which has as part of its platform a global return to reasonable public-domain terms for all intellectual works.
It's the Pirate Party. And I support it!
EDIT: For a taste of why I'm a Pirate, try this on for size:
Yeah. What they said!
You can read the full text of the statement here.
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
Count number of unemployed people, not percents
that's what I do sometimes, for reality check. What if the numbers were compared to The Great Depression? I think there are around seven million counted as "unemployed" currently. "We" use to have Social Security programs to fix that shit, or I thought we did. The one tiny shred left of what is called a "safety net" keeps getting smaller, look how many people fall through to the streets today. Quite a few, but who notices when it is just 5%, because 95% surival is good I guess. Tough beans for the bottom dwellers, full employment for the win. Nowadays, the "head" of Human Services (lol) is quoted saying to the disabled "We need you to work", wtf kinda brainwashing produces that thought? I don't know.
Anyway, I get my Depression numbers from this page when I compare the people to the percents, it is affirmation of the impoverished reality before me, and not some fake bullshit about full employment. Recovery in The Great Recession means 1931 or 1937 numbers, the lowest numbers but still, that is what "full employment" means, granny in the ditch alongside a bunch of indebted millenials. No wonder the Idiocacry keeps voting "Yes we can" and "Make America Great Again". Same same both sides do it, and I was one of the chumps in 2008 too, sorry about that.
@eyo And then there's the
And then there's the people who are "employed" 15-20 hours a week at shit wages.
Or, for that matter, 60 hours a week at 3 different jobs at shit wages.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
You have to take a geometric average, not an arithmetic one
A technical note:
You can't take an arithmetic average when you're discussing growth rates. You have to take a geometric average. So, you need to get to total ten year growth: (1+r1)*(1+r2)...*(1+r10). Then you take the tenth root to get the average growth rate. It differs for the two periods you outlined using your figures. In the thirties, total growth was 10.09% (i.e. GDP in 1939 was 10.09% higher than in 1929). Between 2007-2016, total growth was 13.98%. The average growth rate in the 30s was 0.966%, in the 2007-2016 period it was 1.32%.
But total GDP isn't a good measure for what you want to get to I think. You'd also want to adjust for population growth rates. The US population grew a total of 7.3% in the 1930s, that's the slowest ever. It was only marginally higher in the 2007-2016 period (7.5%). So, not much of a difference, but important to acknowledge that.
@subirgrewal
Welcome Subir!
Good to see you here!
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
Thanks
I was wondering about that. But I just woke up.
We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg
I saw this several months ago:
I saw this several months ago: Top Ex-White House Economist Admits 94% Of All New Jobs Under Obama Were Part-Time, and this statistic probably has a rather significant bearing on the Job Market. I think it is clear that the Obama Adman and his supporters have been promoting a rather skewed set of facts to support their fake narrative. Conversely, I think it is safe to say that Trump's Job Market numbers in 2020 are going to be factual, not at all skewed (because he won't need to skew them) and they are going to be outstanding. Hell, they already are outstanding, which is why I have been saying for several months that we are probably in for 8 years of a Trump Presidency, and further, VP Pence will probably be a shoe-in for 2024. The Democratic Party is dead, if you ask me.
Trump's economic numbers
are going to be the greatest, most classy numbers you have ever seen.
You'll be able to eat off those numbers.
Believe me!
In other news, KSA, Bahrain, UAE, and Egypt have withdrawn their diplomats from Qatar on grounds that it supports terrorism (LOL). Diplomatic relations are suspended in order to preserve their national security. Qatari diplomats have 48 hours to leave the country. Source CNN, as well as various Arab media.
What a crock. I think what's really happening is that Prince Tamim's statement a week ago or so was actually true, and that Qatar is weak on Iran. If it won't back the next round of wars, then they have to be thrown under the bus.
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
Qatari troops are being pulled from
the Yemeni theater, all Qatari nationals must leave the four countries (KSA, UAE, Bahrain and Egypt).
There is some serious ratfornication afoot.
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
They win in 2020
the Dem party is dead. Turn out the lights, the party over.
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
So all the new jobs are part time?
But the future is all about working less! The problem is not that we are working less, but that we aren't being paid enough.
But the future is all about consuming less, and to convince people to consume less we have to pay them less. The problem is that the people who are making less are making too much less while the people who are consuming too much are holding on, and society is charging too much for inescapable expenses (rent, health care, etc) while adding to the number of "inescapables" (cell phones, which are twice as expensive as land lines, cable tv, it started with the 2 income family needing 2 cars)
The "ideal" future will be people working something like 16 hours a week and spending the rest of the time with family and friends, writing novels or making music or performing in plays. We don't need to return to a life of wage slavery, we need to adjust to and embrace the new, better world - but we have to prevent it from being a dystopian nightmare first. We need a basic minimum income - one that guarantees a decent life, not one that props up capitalism. http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/12/23/mincome-in-dauphin-manitoba_n_63...
On to Biden since 1973
Boy, FDR really shouldn't have backed off on those
spending programs in 36 and 37. Whoopsie.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver