Obama and Jobs, by the Numbers

Obama and the August jobs report

Well, the game-changing jobs report has come, and the game remains decidedly unchanged. (I’m not just picking on Business Insider here. Bloomberg, for example, asked whether this would be the “most important jobs report ever.” The Wall Street Journal and New York Times were only a bit less breathless.)

The U.S. added 173,000 jobs in August, a bit worse than economists expected but pretty much in line with recent trends. The unemployment rate fell to 5.1 percent, a bit better than economists expected, but pretty much in line with recent trends. The rest of the monthly report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics was similar: positive, but not particularly surprising.

So, straight in line with expect, really! Now for longer trends.

The job market is getting better: After 59 straight months of job gains, this shouldn’t be a controversial statement. But at a time when Donald Trump is claiming the “real” unemployment rate is 42 percent, it’s worth saying anyway. The unemployment rate is the lowest it has been since April 2008. Broader measures of underemployment are improving as well. And job growth has been impressive: The U.S. is adding jobs at a pace of about 3 million per year. (But while job growth is continuing, it is no longer accelerating.)

The unemployed are doing better, too: Regular readers know that the government only counts people as unemployed if they’re actively looking for work. That means the unemployment rate can fall for good reasons (people find jobs) or bad ones (people stop looking). Lately, the decline in the unemployment rate has been mostly for good reasons. One in four job-seekers found work last month, the highest job-finding rate of the recovery. And while the month-to-month figures are volatile, the trend has been steadily positive. For much of the recovery, unemployed workers were far more likely to stop looking than to find work; that’s no longer true.

Things are also getting better for the long-term jobless. About 2.2 million Americans have been out of work for more than six months, down nearly 800,000 over the past year. The typical job-seeker has been out of work for 11 weeks, down from a peak of nearly 26 weeks during the recession.

So, unemployment participation- could be better, but improving and on a good course.

Now, what about those employed?

Wages are rising, but slowly: You may have heard recently that wages are “stagnant.” That isn’t quite true. According to Friday’s report, average hourly earnings in August were 2.2 percent higher than a year earlier; other measures give slightly different numbers, but they all tell a story of wage growth around 2 percent per year, which is faster than the rate of inflation.

Wages are growing faster than inflation, but at a slow rate, and it's steady at that rate, not accelerating. Should be better, but we're still in the positive.

What about work hours, part time vs full?

More people are working full time: Jeb Bush wants Americans to work more hours — and they are. The number of people working part time because they couldn’t find full-time work ticked up in August, to 6.5 million, but that’s still 740,000 fewer people than a year earlier. Virtually all the employment growth during the recovery has been full time, and, at long last, the U.S. has as many full-time workers as when the recession began nearly eight years ago.

So continuing on this path would be good, but we're definitely still in major growth here, so that's fine.

There's also been a decline in employment-to-population ratio that peaked at 62.7 percent, fell to 58.2 percent, and then a small rebound began, increasing up to 59.4. This is attributed to several things- part of which is baby boomers retiring, part of which is people staying in college, but part of which is simply a sign that there's room for continued improvement in the economy- no surprise there, though it may also be a sign of longer trends which won't change even if the economy gets better.

So, a positive but mixed bag, most numbers are definitely in the good range and/or heading in a good direction, but there's also a 'room for improvement' on most.

Oh yes, and a final note: Last presidential election, Newt Gingrich promised to get gas down to 2.50 a gallon, Romney promised unemployment down to 6% (which even by the more conservative measurement criteria like Gallup uses has us at). Gas is 2.42 a gallon and Employment is 5.1%. Neither spelled out plans on how exactly they were going to achieve this, but it's kinda funny how Obama beat even their pie in the sky promises.

oh, and on the subject of income inequality.

Moreover, policies that prevent organized labor from forcing workers to pay union fees have been passed in former union strongholds such as Michigan and Wisconsin. Wages in states with so-called right-to-work laws are 3 percent lower than in other states, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

There are signs of change, however. Mr. Obama has issued several employee-friendly executive orders, including one that enables salaried workers to qualify for more overtime pay. And the president’s appointees on the National Labor Relations Board voted to give workers more bargaining power.

Presidential candidates, mainly Democrats but some Republicans, too, are talking about addressing wage stagnation and income inequality. A recent Gallup poll shows rising support for unions, though the levels remain considerably lower than 40 years ago.

Unions help income *noticeably* compared to states with anti-union laws, and Obama has taken action to try and help- but right now not too much is being done, which is likely for the reason for that 'only a little faster than inflation' number above.

The usual bs, the country has about a 40-50% unemployment rate.

40-50%?!?! If true, that would be gigantic news. 1 out of every 2 people without a job strains credulity, imo, but that's your claim. Source?

93 million people out of work, you do the math.

Ok, but at the moment, that's just a number that you typed. Again, source?

http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2015/01/09/workforce-participation-rate-hits-record-low/

You know you could just do your own research.

Your own article states that the major contributing factor to that number is old people (read: boomers) retiring and no longer wanting/needing to work.

That isn't unemployment. You have to want to work and be unable to get a job in order to be unemployed.

The article also lists unemployment as being 5.5%.

Originally posted by Tzeentch
Your own article states that the major contributing factor to that number is old people (read: boomers) retiring and no longer wanting/needing to work.

That isn't unemployment. You have to want to work and be unable to get a job in order to be unemployed.

93 million people unemployed.

I should do my own research? Agreed, but I did:
http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000

Thus my confusion. I have the unemployment rate peaking at 10% back in 2009.

I'm a bit confused by the terminology in your link. If 93 million didn't "make specific efforts to find employment sometime during the 4-week period ending with the reference week," what exactly does that mean, and what's the difference between that and unemployment? It seems impossible for literally 50% of the population to be without work, so it's an odd concept to consider.

Originally posted by Time-Immemorial
93 million people unemployed.

Because 16 year olds and retired baby boomers aren't classified as "unemployed".

Oh so you think changing the definition can change the facts?

"This person stopped looking for work" so now he's what? Not unemployed? 😂

Originally posted by Tzeentch
You'll notice that it does not state anywhere in the article that there are 93 million unemployed people. The article states that there are 93 million people not in the work force, which isn't the same thing.

Because 16 year olds and retired baby boomers aren't classified as "unemployed".

Do you have a job?

I do, sir.

Well, there's context to consider. Because, for example, I wouldn't consider a retired person or 16-year-old in the same class as, say, a 35-year-old who doesn't have a day job. Does it also consider minors under the age of 16? That seems an arbitrary cutoff point to me.

Also, the root source of the data for your article is the same site I just linked. Methinks there's a real difference between unemployment and what you're talking about.

I have a job too, for what it's worth. /srug

Your lucky, a lot of people don't. And those numbers Q99 posted are of coarse not accurate.

Taking out the retired baby boomers and 16 year olds, what we might go down to 60 million?

No, we'd go down to about 5.1%, which is what unemployment is right now. Any number is higher than the ideal, of course, but it's lower than it's been in a while (since early 2008, before the recession).

I don't accept that low numbers, and neither does anyone else, including wallstreet, which reeled last week about jobless claims.

Wall Street is a bit of an abstract entity. At the risk of repeating myself, source? I can't exactly search for "Wall Street angry at job numbers" and expect to get anything.

And the answer is 16.3 million. That's roughly 5.1% of the US population. Still a gaudy number to try to conceptualize, but, comparatively, small.