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Unemployment’s not 8.3% it’s 8.254%

30 comments

Well whatever it is, it sure isn’t the 5.6% promised for July 2012 if a Keynesian stimulus were introduced. BTW the six percent no stimulus estimate seems pretty accurate to me. The 8.254% number is from an Obama official trying to defend his boss.

Written by Steve Kates

August 4th, 2012 at 1:18 pm

Posted in Uncategorized

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30 Responses to 'Unemployment’s not 8.3% it’s 8.254%'

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  1. Unemployment Is Far Worse Than Obama Wants You To Believe: His Numbers Are Fraud
    posted 5/24/2012

    In spite of the media and Obama administration BS about how the unemployment picture is “improving” There are 572,000 less people working now then when Obama took office…….

    The unemployment statistics have become corrupted since Obama became president. For the last FORTY SEVEN CONSECUTIVE WEEKS, the numbers for the previous week have been revised UPWARD after they were released. Every single time, the number that came out was later increased after released. Nothing like that has ever happened before. Obama has corrupted the reporting process to make things look better than they are to forward his own political agenda under false pretenses.

    Revising the unemployment figures upward has double propaganda value for Obama. First, you get a headline about how unemployment has improved. Then, later, when the spotlight is off, they quietly revise the number upward. Then, the next week, with the new higher number for last week, they make a comparison to last week with the new higher number and again declare what an improvement there was. Quite simply, that’s fraud.

    JamesK

    4 Aug 12 at 1:32 pm

  2. So what? Unemployed people are invariably stupid and almost always support the Democrats or Labor. Like Chicagoans and Taswegians they never, ever learn. They always vote for the party that causes unemployment and blocks their chances of getting a job. If you are too dumb to work out that left wing policies increase unemployment then you are probably too stupid to learn new skills to get a job.

    John Comnenus

    4 Aug 12 at 2:46 pm

  3. Re JamesK’s article about the unemployment statistics-

    Loathe as I am to invoke comparisons to Orwell’s ’1984′, a device more overused than absurd, it reminds me of the chocolate rations in the book.

    There is a grand announcement on the televisors, greeted with enormous enthusiasm, that the chocolate ration is to be increased to 30 grams.

    The ration was previously 40 grams.

    Aqualung

    4 Aug 12 at 2:57 pm

  4. This is a devastating chart by @PoliticalMath over at @AoSHQ: http://minx.cc/?post=331594

    sdog

    4 Aug 12 at 4:07 pm

  5. The unemployment rate is not a helpful statistic because people move in and out of the labour force so much, and more so for women, and mothers.

    W.H. Hutt thought that workers who are engaged in job search should not be considered to be unemployed. They are self-employed in the productive activity of prospecting for jobs.

    Ed Prescott does not regarded unemplotment to be an economic concept, preferring to use hours worked per working age person.

    At http://www.fiap.cl/prontus_fiap/site/artic/20110613/asocfile/20110613121920/edward_prescott.pdf prescott shows in about slide 11 that U.S. HOURS PER WORKING-AGE-PERSON is down 10% between 2008:1 and 2009:3. in 2012, hours per working age person is still down 8% on 2008:1

    Jim Rose

    4 Aug 12 at 4:48 pm

  6. Jim

    Most of the the stuff you post is first rate. But honestly this one is pretty silly.

    Jc

    4 Aug 12 at 4:57 pm

  7. But honestly this one is pretty silly.

    So was his “The Media Is SO Not Biased, And Anyone Who Thinks It Is Is Just BIASED!” comment in the other fred.

    sdog

    4 Aug 12 at 5:12 pm

  8. yeah.

    This one is interesting… just the usual off-centred perspective which I appreciate.

    Prescott is probably right but it ain’t gonna happen on the nightly news.

    The Rose comment on the other fred was puerile

    JamesK

    4 Aug 12 at 5:29 pm

  9. you just can’t handle the truth.

    Cass sunstein has argued that
    • there limitless news and information options and, more significantly, the limitless options for avoiding it.
    • In gravitating toward those newspapers, blogs, podcasts and other media that reinforce their own views, citizens carefully filter out opposing or alternative viewpoints to create an ideologically exclusive “Daily Me.”

    you are upset that, from time to time, you cannot read your own ‘Daily Me’. anything that is not the echo chamber that is your ‘Daily Me’ is biased.

    Jim Rose

    4 Aug 12 at 5:41 pm

  10. Jim it’s notoriously difficult to prove bias.

    So let’s all be adult ok?

    As The Oracle said in The Matrix:

    I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Seeing outrageous bias for what it patently is, is just like being in love. No one can tell you your in love, you just know it. Through and through. Balls to bones.

    Or somesuch

    JamesK

    4 Aug 12 at 5:52 pm

  11. Jim

    Do you think the American ABC’s immediate attempt to associate the theater massacre with the Tea Party was bias. How would that enter into the bias studies you’re citing.

    Don’t get me wrong, I really don’t care much about bias for private firms.

    The first study you cite reminds of Andrew Leigh sordid attempt to disapprove bias at the ABC but to also brazenly suggest there was a right wing lean.

    As James says it is very difficult to prove it.

    JC

    4 Aug 12 at 5:58 pm

  12. The proof is in the pudding. The majority of Americans see the media as biased, no matter what the People Who Are Smarter Than Us(TM) tell them.

    sdog

    4 Aug 12 at 6:06 pm

  13. Pshew, ( Anne dramatically wipes sweat from brow) I was worried there for a second!

    Anne

    4 Aug 12 at 6:31 pm

  14. JC, the ABC is not subject to a hard budget constraint or any other market test. the use of great misfortunes for political ends is common-place..

    no counter-arguments or systematic counter-evedince has been offer to my notion that biased news outlets lose market share and eventually fold.

    Jim Rose

    4 Aug 12 at 6:42 pm

  15. The Keynesian stimulus doesn’t work – it couldn’t work. The proponents of Keynesian are snake oil salesmen.

    Johnno

    4 Aug 12 at 6:59 pm

  16. no counter-arguments or systematic counter-evedince has been offer to my notion that biased news outlets lose market share and eventually fol

    Apart from FoxNews on cable and The Wall Street Journal both of which are very successful what other right of centre MSM outlet is there to compete?

    The Big 3 free to air broadcasters are ABC, NBC, CBS are all heavily left biased – and not just their news and current affairs shows but their comedy and drama and educational shows too.

    Hollywood is heavily left biased.

    The New York Times, Washington Post and most traditional major news dailies in the large cities are left biased.

    Newsweek and Time are left biased.

    Where are competition Jim?

    Where are t5he centre right journalists to fill the posts?
    Where is there the non-leftist Journalism School factories?

    Which are the major traditional universities that don’t fill the students heads with ill-liberal leftist brainwashing?

    Jim what we are witnessing is cultural brainwashing on an epic scale and you are blind.

    JamesK

    4 Aug 12 at 7:09 pm

  17. Their ABC language biases are often so slimy a leftard academic doing a bias study might miss it….accidentally of course.

    Re Franny on RN recently….a UK murder via suffocation by Muslim “honour killers” was described as a “cultural crime” …..nil mention of Islam, the religious imperative didn’t get a guernsey.

    The truth is “Islamophobic.”… of course, yet again?

    Alfonso

    4 Aug 12 at 7:15 pm

  18. Wrong thread

    Alfonso

    4 Aug 12 at 7:16 pm

  19. JamesK, I did not day that the major outlets were right-wing.

    I said that U.S. newspapers are located almost exactly at the median voter in their home states. Another finding is US media outlets are relatively moderate – they are located between the median Democratic and median Republican congressmen.

    Jim Rose

    4 Aug 12 at 7:20 pm

  20. Jim – I’m perfectly aware of what you are saying.

    What I’m saying is that you are wrong.

    The US media is well well to the left politically of the people they supposedly serve.

    Overwhelmingly MSM are suppportive of SSM and abortion.

    Most Americans aren’t.

    When it’s put to the people SSM fails even in blue states like California.

    In 32 of 32 times its gone to the electorate (soon 36) by the ruling class, it has been defeated

    It’s forced thru a few state legislatures with browbeating as in New York but it wasn’t part of the election campaign there the year before.

    Otherwise the leftism is forced by the various Supreme courts in states or the SCOTUS in the case of RoevWade.

    All of which wildly has been wildly supported by the major dailies in all major cities and the national major dailies and the Big 3 free to air broadcasters.

    The leftism (and it is extreme) is endemic in the media class and MSM.

    In the universities, in public servants other than firefighter and police and in Hollywood.

    Wake up!

    JamesK

    4 Aug 12 at 7:33 pm

  21. Heckuva job, Barry

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/friday-humor-i-am-pledging-cut-deficit-we-inherited-half-end-my-first-term-office

    .

    4 Aug 12 at 7:48 pm

  22. Ed Prescott does not regarded unemplotment to be an economic concept, preferring to use hours worked per working age person.

    I actually think total hours worked is a really good indicator of where the labour market is headed or if it has improved or not.

    I’m just saying it is good for identifying a trend.

    Half of the unemployment in Australia in 2008-09 was sucked up by cuts to working hours. Thank God Work Choices was still operative.

    .

    4 Aug 12 at 7:58 pm

  23. jamesk, on abortion, the USA is evenly split on pro-life versus pro-choice

    state legislatures pass laws safe in the knowledge that they will be struck down the next day. they were playing to a grandstand made up soley of values voters.

    when the supreme court became a little vague on some precedural aspects of abortion law in the early 1990s, the state legislatures started showing much more restraint because the median voter would be annoyed.

    where Roe v. Wade to fall, some states would permit abortion, some would not.

    Jim Rose

    4 Aug 12 at 9:27 pm

  24. jamesk, the Center for Reproductive Rights predicts estimates that 21 states are likely to outlaw abortion immediately where Roe v. Wade to fall. This assessment is based not only on current law, but on the political makeup of the state legislatures.

    On the other hand, abortion is likely to remain legal in many states, according to these groups.

    see http://www.factcheck.org/2008/04/effect-of-overturning-roe-v-wade/

    Jim Rose

    4 Aug 12 at 9:31 pm

  25. jamesk, the Center for Reproductive Rights predicts estimates that 21 states are likely to outlaw abortion immediately where Roe v. Wade to fall.

    If we are lucky maybe some more.

    JamesK

    4 Aug 12 at 9:34 pm

  26. Growth in part-time employment accelerated while full time employment growth has fallen in every down turn in Austraia since at least 1978. The 2008/09 downturn was no different.

    As for the US, by what process is cutting household disposable income supposed to help the economy?

    sdfc

    4 Aug 12 at 10:20 pm

  27. As for the US, by what process is cutting household disposable income supposed to help the economy?

    Funny that, the Keynesians aren’t interested in long term wages growth.

    .

    4 Aug 12 at 10:25 pm

  28. Let me put it in simple terms for you Dot. How is deflation supposed to assist a recovery?

    sdfc

    4 Aug 12 at 10:28 pm

  29. The long depression was sustained deflation where real wages, output, GDP etc all grew in normal and real terms. Why do you bring up this stupid canard about deflation?

    Your policy might be inflationary but it doesn’t help exports. How does that help a recovery?

    .

    5 Aug 12 at 10:43 am

  30. sdfc, do you have evidence of a link between deflation and recession?

    see Deflation and Depression: Is There an Empirical Link? by kehoe and atkinson

    Deflation and depression do seem to have been linked during the 1930s. But in the rest of the data for 17 countries and more than 100 years, there is virtually no evidence of such a link.

    no attempt is made to control for the type of monetary regime or the extent to which the deflation was anticipated. Perhaps a link could be teased out. without such controls, the data show no obvious relationship. The bar has thus been raised for those who claim that deflation and depression are closely linked.

    since WWII, one country has come close to having both a depression and a deflation: Japan in the late 1990s. Since 1960, Japan’s average growth rates have basically fallen slowlyy, and since 1970, its average inflation rates have too. Attributing this 40-year slowdown to monetary forces is a stretch.

    Jim Rose

    5 Aug 12 at 12:25 pm

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