Tag Archives: Unemployment

The U.S. Economy Is in Better Shape Than You Might Realize

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It isn’t commonly known, but we have the highest post-pandemic growth among the G7 nations, the group that includes the U.S., Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom.

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We also have the lowest inflation.

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Could last year’s biggest piece of legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act — which passed with zero Republican support — have helped reduce inflation?

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We also have our lowest unemployment rate since 1970, more than 50 years ago.

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Perhaps more voters will understand how well the economy is doing by next year’s election — unless, of course, they’re locked into the right-wing media/propaganda bubble. For them, the country is in horrible shape and there is no hope for a better tomorrow unless their favorite felon is returned to office.

The Biden Boom

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The economy sucks. It’s hard to escape that message, even if it’s not true. Eric Boehlert of Press Run criticized the reality-based press (not Fox) for “burying great news”:

Like clockwork, the first Friday of the month brought another blockbuster jobs report. The U.S. economy under President Joe Biden added another 400,000-plus new jobs in March, it was announced last week.

Biden is currently on pace, during his first two full years in office, to oversee the creation of 10 million new jobs and an unemployment rate tumbling all the way down to 3 percent. That would be an unprecedented accomplishment in U.S. history. Context: In four years in office, T____ lost three million jobs, the worst record since Herbert Hoover.

Yet the press shrugs off the good news, determined to keep Biden pinned down. ā€œThe reality is that one strong jobs report does not snap the administration out of its current circumstances,ā€ PoliticoĀ stressedĀ Friday afternoon. How about 11 straight strong job reports, would that do the trick? Because the U.S. economy under Biden has been adding more than 400,000 jobs per month for 11 straight months.

The glaring disconnect between reality and how the press depicts White House accomplishments means a key question lingers: Why is the press rooting against Biden? Is the press either hoping for a T____ return to the White House, or at least committed to keeping Biden down so the 2024 rematch will be close and ā€˜entertainingā€™ for the press to cover? Is that why the Ginni Thomas insurrection story was politely marched off the stageĀ after just a few days of coverage last week by the same news outlets that are now inĀ year threeĀ of their dogged Hunter Biden reporting? (ā€œABC This Weekā€ includedĀ 19 referencesĀ to Hunter Biden yesterday.)

Just look at the relentlessly dour economic coverage. For the press, inflation remains the dominant, bad-news-for-Dems economic story. Even on Friday, the day the stellar jobs report was released, ā€œinflationā€ was mentioned on cable news nearly as often as ā€œjobs,ā€ according to TVeyes.com.

AxiosĀ contorted itselfĀ by claiming Bidenā€™s promise to add ā€œmillionsā€ of new jobs (which heā€™s already accomplished), was being threatened because there arenā€™t enough workers, because so few people are out of workā€”Ā or something.

The home-run report itself was often depicted as a mixed bag. These were some of the glass-half-empty headlines that appeared in the wake of the latest runaway numbers:

ā€¢ ā€œAmericaā€™s Job Market Is On Fire. Hereā€™s Why It Doesnā€™t Feel Like Itā€ (CNN)

ā€¢ ā€œBooming Job Growth Is a Double-Edged Sword For Joe Bidenā€ (CNN)

ā€¢ ā€œWhy a Great Jobs Report Canā€™t Save Joe Bidenā€ (CNN)

ā€¢ ā€œUnemployment Hits Pandemic Low in March, But Uncertainty Looms Aheadā€ (Washington Post)

ā€¢ ā€œBiden Gets a Strong Jobs Report, But a Sour Mood Still Prevailsā€ (Washington Post)

Totally normal journalism, right? The president announces another blockbuster jobs report and the press presents it as borderline bad news.

Note that the above headlines about the sour mood prevailing despite the great jobs, and how uncertainty looms, came from theĀ Post, the same outlet that slotted the March jobs report into 87th placed on its website on Friday.

That afternoon readers on the dailyā€™sĀ homepage had to scroll down 87 headlines before they saw the first reference to the great economic news. Among the headlines that ran higher on theĀ Post site that afternoon [was] “Whatā€™s The Best Way to Share My Old Home Videos?”

On-air, CNN also downplayed the jobs report,Ā accordingĀ to Dean Baker, senior economist for Center for Economic and Policy Research. ā€œCNNā€™s coverage of the report quickly turned to inflation,ā€ he wrote. ā€œIn its more general coverage of the economy,Ā the jobs reportĀ ā€” which tells us about the employment and earnings situation for more than 160 million people ā€” was barely a blip.ā€

Sundayā€™s ā€œMeet the Pressā€ round table featured two segments with assembled pundits. One focused on how immigration might be a problem for Democrats in the midterms, the other on how T____ might be a problem for Democrats in the midterms. As usual, Bidenā€™s historic economic record was ignored.

Thatā€™s why, according to aĀ recent poll, 37 percent of Americans think the economyĀ lostĀ jobs over the last year, when itā€™s gained 7 million. (Just 28 percent of people know jobs were up.)

Virtually all the Beltway coverage today agrees on this central point: When it comes to the economy, Bidenā€™s approval rating is taking a hit because Americans are freaked out by inflation. But maybe itā€™s taking a hit because AmericansĀ are under the false impression that jobs are disappearing. Voters donā€™t know what they donā€™t know because the press isnā€™t interested in telling them about record job success and an economy thatā€™s years ahead of where experts thought it would be coming out of a global pandemic.

Biden is facing not just one organized opposition in the form of the [Republican Party], but another in the form of the Beltway press corps.

Last week, theyĀ hit Biden with 14 separate questions at a press briefing over the supposed ā€œgaffeā€ he made, expressing his moral outrage over the mass killings Russian President Vladimir Putn has unleashed in Ukraine. . . . The press didnā€™t ask a single question about the state of the Ukraine war.

And remember all winter how the press treated Covid as the most important ā€œcrisisā€ Biden faced and hung the pandemic around his neck? Today, the topic has vanished, the press has given the White House no credit for steering the country back to normalcy, and instead has latched onto gas prices as being a defining issue under Biden. The buried Covid coverage represents a telling example of how an issue that the press itself claimed would define the Biden administration gets translated into no news when it turns towards positive territory.

The Beltway press needs to take its thumb off the Biden scale.

Unquote.

The Labor Department reported today that there were 166,000 new jobless claims last week, the lowest number since November 1968, when the population was much smaller.

The change since Biden took office. They didn’t all start driving for Uber:Ā Ā 

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Sadly, the writer quoted above has died in a bicycle accident:

Eric Boehlert, a veteran journalist who was a fierce critic of right-wing misinformation and hypocrisy in the news media, died on Monday in New Jersey. He was 57.

Something to Read and Share If You Care About This Damn Country

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From Paul Waldman of The Washington Post:

America, youā€™re on your own from here on out.

That is the message President Txxxx sent over the weekend with his quartet of executive orders ā€” a quintessential Txxxx non-solution to a monumental problem largely of his own making.

This may be the last significant action ā€” or at least an action that pretends to be significant ā€” that the president takes between now and Election Day to deal with the coronavirus pandemic and the economic crisis it has caused. And it will accomplish almost nothing.

Letā€™sĀ break it down:

  • The supplemental unemployment insurance included in the Cares Act, which provided the 30 million or so Americans who have lost their jobs with an additional $600 a week, has expired. Txxxxā€™s order claims to restore $300 of that and asks states to chip in another $100. But it establishes a new program that could take months to implement and is potentially unconstitutional anyway, since the power to appropriate money lies with Congress, not the president.
  • Txxxx ordered the temporary suspension of payroll tax collection, an action which, if it survives legal challenge, will doĀ practically nothingĀ to help the economy (by definition, people who are unemployed are not on payrolls). It will, however, weaken the Social Security and Medicare systems, which are funded by payroll taxes. As written, his order onlyĀ defersĀ collection of those taxes, which means employers and employees would have to pay them back later, though TxxxxĀ claimedĀ that if reelected, he would ā€œterminateā€ the taxes, which he also canā€™t do.
  • Txxxx instructed his administration to ā€œconsiderā€ banning evictions at properties with federally owned mortgages. There is an eviction tsunamiĀ on its wayĀ that could see tens of millions of Americans lose their homes. This does nothing to prevent that.
  • Txxxx delayed interest and payment requirements for student loans until the end of the year. This is the only one of the orders that might actually help people.

So in total, these executive orders will have little impact on the economic crisis Americans are facing. But just as Txxxx claims that his handling of the pandemic itself has been a story of unmitigated success, when he performed a signing ceremony before a crowd of dues-paying members at one of his golf clubs, heĀ saidĀ the executive orders ā€œwill take care of pretty much this entire situation.ā€

That was the tell. Txxxx took this step because the allegedly masterful dealmaker couldnā€™t be bothered to work with Congress to arrive at an agreement on a comprehensive rescue package, and now he will simply say that his work is done.

So much of how Txxxx operates was evident in this episode: claiming powers he doesnā€™t actually possess, issuing orders of questionable legality, lying about what they do, claiming to solve problems he hasnā€™t actually solved, creating worse problems over the long term and doing it because he wasnā€™t up to the hard work of governing. The fact that he essentially turned the announcement into an ad for one of his golf clubs ā€” yet again seeking a way to use his office to benefit his personal financial interests ā€” was the icing on the cake.

From this point forward, when asked about the pandemic, Txxxx will say as he has so many times before that he has done a terrific job and everything is as good as it could be. Yet while many of our peer countries are beginning to return to normal life, the United States could reach more thanĀ 200,000 deathsĀ from covid-19 by Election Day at current rates, along with millions more infections (and as weā€™re learning, many people who survive the illness are left with a long and difficult recovery).

In the same way, when heā€™s asked about the continued economic misery in the country, heā€™ll say:Ā I solved it ā€” donā€™t you remember those executive orders? Everyone is thanking me because the economy is doing so great now.

Meanwhile, so many needs that an actual rescue bill ought to address are going unmet: real aid for the unemployed, aid to states and localities to save their imperiled budgets that are already leading to layoffs and slashed services, aid to schools, aid to the Postal Service that the president seems to beĀ trying to hobble, genuine eviction protections, money to enable states to conduct a safe and secure election in November and so much more.

Itā€™s still possible for Congress to pass such a bill, even if the president thinks itā€™s no longer necessary. Perhaps Republicans who have been so reluctant to provide too much assistance to the country will realize that Txxxxā€™s spin isnā€™t working and their own survival could depend on not giving up quite yet on arriving at an agreement.

All those lost lives and shattered families and shuttered businesses canā€™t be waved away with an absurd ceremony at a golf club. Txxxx may think they can, but the rest of us have to confront reality. And itā€™s only getting worse.

Unquote.

Fortune’s site has a “comprehensive guide to voting in all 50 states”. It’s time to register if you aren’t and then vote Democratic when you can.Ā 

You can see if you’re registered here.

Biden on a Staggering Statistic

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From Joe Biden and his team:

Today, we learned that another 2.1 million people filed for unemployment last week, bringing the total number of new unemployment claims since this crisis began to more than 40 million. This is just the latest evidence of D—- T—-ā€™s utter failure to do what a president should and must do: lead in a crisis. He ignored the warnings, refused to prepare the country, and wasnā€™t honest with the American people about what was needed ā€” and we are all living with the horrific results. Now, nearly a quarter of the American workforce has filed for unemployment ā€” a figure so staggering that it would have seemed unthinkable not long ago.

Though the coronavirus is to blame for planting the seeds of this damage, we know that D—- T—-ā€™s persistent failure to act is responsible for the tragic and unprecedented scale of the crisis. T—- was warned for months about the urgency of the situation, but sat on his hands ā€” undermining public health experts and spinning false promises to the American people to prop up his political standing at the expense of public safety.

Germany, by contrast, had its first reported case of coronavirus almost a week after the United States, but has suffered only a tiny fraction of the unemployment weā€™ve faced thanks to a swift and effective public health response. Millions more Americans would be employed today ā€” and our lives would have a far greater semblance of normalcy ā€” had T—- responded with similar resolve. A devastating study released last week found that 36,000 people could have been saved had [the Toddler] taken action even one week earlier. Instead, more than 100,000 Americans have been lost forever, and the day-to-day lives and future dreams of 40 million people and their families have been thrown off course.

Even now, T—- refuses to focus on getting help to those who need it most. The largest single recipient of relief funds intended for small businesses was a hotel executive and major T—- donor who claimed more than $58 million in taxpayer bailout money. A private jet company founded by a T—- donor received another $27 million. And a cell phone location-tracking company that has been hired by the T—- campaign to target voters obtained nearly $3 million.

Meanwhile, actual small businesses and mom-and-pop entrepreneurs ā€” the lifeblood of local economies ā€” are being turned away in droves. As if that werenā€™t enough, T—- has also used the cover of this crisis to brazenly fire five inspectors general, the public watchdogs whose job it is to guard against corruption ā€” including the official responsible for providing oversight of pandemic relief funds.

The corruption is obvious ā€” the incompetence even more so. Two months after Congress passed the CARES Act to speed relief to the American people, not one dollar allocated for the Main Street Lending Program ā€” a $600 billion fund designed to help small and medium-sized businesses across America ā€” has been disbursed. Not one dollar, as businesses keep laying workers off and struggle through some of the most brutal months in modern history. Wall Street has gotten the help it needs; Main Street is still waiting. There is no excuse for this Administrationā€™s lack of urgency or care given all that the American people are enduring right now.

I oversaw implementation of the nearly $800 billion Recovery Act ā€” with less than 0.2 percent waste, fraud, and abuse. That response didnā€™t happen by magic. It took sustained focus and constant pressure and personal engagement at the highest levels to make sure we were implementing the program efficiently and effectively on behalf of the American people. We need that type of response right now ā€” albeit on a dramatically larger scale.

D—- T—- should be laser-focused on getting relief out as fast as possible to the people who actually need it ā€” with no favoritism and no fraud. That he continues to occupy himself with self-pitying tweets and dangerous conspiracy theories in the face of an ongoing, world-historic crisis killing thousands of Americans each day and putting millions more out of work is beyond comprehension. I pray that the President thinks of them.

Unquote.

Don’t bother praying. God helps those who help themselves in November.

The Devastating Transformation of Work in the US

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Quote: “Corporate profits and income inequality have grown in large part because US firms have successfully taken advantage of the weak state of unions and labor organizing … to transform work relations. Increasingly, workers, regardless of their educational level, find themselves forced to take jobs with few if any benefits and no long-term or ongoing relationship with their employer.”

mhl's avatarReports from the Economic Front

Two of the best-known labor economists in the US, Ā Lawrence F. Katz and Alan B. Krueger, recently published a study of the rise of so-called alternative work arrangements.

Here is what they found:

The percentage of workers engaged in alternative work arrangements ā€“ defined as temporary help agency workers, on-call workers, contract workers, and independent contractors or freelancers ā€“ rose from 10.1 percent [of all employed workers] in February 2005 to 15.8 percent in late 2015.

That is a huge jump, especially since the percentage of workers with alternative work arrangements barely budged over the period February 1995 to February 2005; it was only 9.3 in 1995.

But their most startling finding is the following:

A striking implication of these estimates is that all of the net employment growth in the U.S. economy from 2005 to 2015 appears to have occurred in alternative work arrangements. Total employment according to theā€¦

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