This is really too much. From the woman who wants us to pass bills so we can find out what’s in them, and tells us all to quit our jobs and become violinists, comes unemployment checks are the fastest way to create jobs. Eeeeesh! Read more
It really is depressing. The good news is unemployment drops to 9.5%, the bad news is, the job market lost another 125,000 jobs. Read more
Just a quick post to show you what the financial press is saying about yesterday’s job numbers. First from Bloomberg … what the Fed is saying: Read more
Why should I be surprised? The economy is expected to have created a boatload of jobs … except it’s not the economy, it’s the census, and it’s not the census … it’s how the census jobs are counted. If they can’t count jobs correctly, how can they be expected to count people? Read more
This morning the Bureau of Labor Statistics released March unemployment numbers indicating the unemployment rate stayed at 9.7 percent.
I rarely point to other posts without at least trying to add an original thought. But this most recent post by AP at Hotair is so well thought through and so well sourced that I do not really need not care to add anything. Read more
Remember all those “green jobs” we were promised as a part of the Obama economic plan?
California is likely to see modest job losses in the near term from its aggressive climate change policy due to higher energy costs and other factors, the state’s independent Legislative Analyst’s Office said. Skip related content
The budget watchdog was responding to a request by Republican state Senator Dave Cogdill to study the effects of California’s 2006 climate change law, which mandates changes to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.
California’s environmental vanguard approach is being hotly debated in the state ahead of a November gubernatorial race and in the midst of an economic downturn that has pushed unemployment to recent records. Many other states and the federal government are watching closely.
“We believe that the aggregate net jobs impact in the near term is likely to be negative,” said the report, dated March 4. “Reasons for this include the various economic dislocations, behavioral adjustments, investment requirements, and certain other factors,” it said.
Once again, reality and economics trumps politics and wishful thinking.
Although we do not have the text of the forthcoming jobs bill from Congress, Reuters says they have obtained a copy of the bill.
The Labor Department reported on Friday that another 85,000 jobs were lost in December. The unemployment rate remained at 10%, but, the “total jobless rate”, which includes those discouraged workers who are no longer looking for work, moved up to 17.3%. A perhaps even more revealing statistic is that the total labor force (those working, and those looking for work) in this country is now only 64.6% of working age Americans…the lowest it has been since 1985. Currently, 15.3 million Americans are out of work.
In the construction industry, we’ve seen a loss of 27,000 jobs in November, and 53,000 jobs in December. And, one third of those lost jobs were in heavy construction…the very industry that was a main target of the $789 billion Stimulus package passed last February. Our President touts the fact that the Stimulus bill will create 17,000 jobs in “green” technology at a cost of $2.3 billion. Using that as a bench mark, how many trillions would it take to create 15.3 million jobs for those currently out of work?
Curiously, although this country’s gross domestic product grew at a 5.4% rate in the last three months of 2009, we are still shedding jobs…we now have 7.2 million fewer jobs than we did in December, 2007. So, what is the problem? If our GDP increased, why is it that we are continuing to see more and more unemployment?
As with anything, there are several possible reasons. Many employers, rather than laying off employees, simply reduced their hours of work. So, for these employers, an increased demand doesn’t necessarily mean that more workers will be hired. Current employees are now working more hours to take up the slack.
But, I believe there is much more to this problem, and, that is government. Business doesn’t operate in a vacuum. Employers today are faced with policies emanating from Washington that can do nothing but impede growth. Under the proposed health care bill, virtually all employers will have to provide health care to their employees, or pay a tax. What will that cost an employer, and how will he or she be able to cover that cost? Cap and Trade looms. What will that do the cost of buying electricity to to power manufacturing plants, and, what “carbon” tax will have to be paid to even manufacture a product? With Congress claiming that it will shift its attention to the deficit this year, what increased taxes will have to be paid?
If this administration was truly concerned about “creating” jobs, it shouldn’t consider a Son of Stimulus, it should simply get out of the way…forget health care, forget cap and trade, and let capitalism work in an environment free from costly government intervention.
As Ronald Reagan said, government isn’t the solution, it’s the problem. This little clip starts with Jim Cramer and ends with Alan Greespan both agreeing. Washington’s crazy socialist agenda of spend and control has business frozen in its tracks with no intention of hiring until absolutely necessary. Watch and learn you lefties.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpRr-Zb6vBk
Greenspan went on the predict lower unemployment by mid next year … but not by much.