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Triple Play | 88 comments (88 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)
Re: Triple Play (4.00 / 2)
the jobless rate in France is 10%, more than twice as high as America's 4.8%.

sigh.  I think everyone including Paul Craig Roberts has debunked the magic 4.8 percent, yet it keeps coming back like a bad penny.   PCR wrote in the paper version of Counterpunch (Jan 2006) that to keep up with population growth, the US should create 1,800,000 jobs per year (and that in itself is a frightening statistic).  However, instead a total of 1,054,000 new net private sector jobs were created in the preceding 5 years, and if you add the government-sector new jobs you get a total of 2,093,000 (he is using DOL statistics here).

This five-year figure is over 7 million jobs short of keeping up with population growth.  PCR asks, how can there be only 4.7 percent unemployment?  And answers his own question:  the figures are cooked.

The unemployment rate does not measure the millions of Americans who have lost their jobs to offshore outsourcing and to foreign workers brought into the US on work visas.  These millions of Americans have exhausted their unemployment benefits and severance benefits and have been unable to find jobs to return to the work force.  Economists refer to these millions of unemployed people as discouraged workers who have dropped out of the work force.  As they have given up searching for jobs, they are not considered to be in the work force and therefore do not count as unemployed.  [my boldface]

Now, this is a fascinating use of language.  People who give up trying to find jobs in a "jobless recovery" are referred to as having "dropped out" of the workforce as though they had wilfully decided to be idle.  People who cannot find jobs and therefore are not "in the work force" do not count as "unemployed" -- now from my admittedly nonwonkish labour perspective, if you are of working age and not in the workforce you are, in fact, unemployed.

In other words the Bushco spinmeisters have pulled another of their HumptyDumpty moves and redefined "unemployed" to mean whatever makes the situation look less dire.  Perhaps we should rephrase the cynical old Soviet saying to something more like, "We pretend there are jobs to apply for and they pretend to offer them to us."  PCR notes that 25,000 people recently showed up to apply for 350 openings at a Chicago Wal*Mart (he does not cite dates or names, so this is anecdotal but believable).  Long lines of discouraged people applying for a tiny handful of jobs -- this is what we used to call Depression.  And what the wingnut press happily refers to as a "hot job market."  Maybe a hot job market for BushCo pundits desperately slapping wallpaper over a crumbling economy, I dunno.

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...

by DeAnander (de_at_daclarke_dot_org) on Thu Mar 23rd, 2006 at 12:39:14 AM EST
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Re: Triple Play (none / 0)
Jeesh, DeAnander, where the hell were you when I got in a big ol' brawl here over American poverty?  I really could've used the some authoritative backup, I can tell you!  :-)

This thing about the American unemployment statistics keeps coming up.  I keep saying I think the statistics are rubbish, but I only have anectdotal evidence, common sense, and some scattered statistics for poverty and some inner-cities.  Do you have any handy links for where, exactly, the 4.8% is debunked?  I'd be forever grateful.

Maybe we can eventually make language a complete impediment to understanding. -Hobbes

by Izzy (izzy at eurotrib dot com) on Thu Mar 23rd, 2006 at 01:44:44 AM EST
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Re: Triple Play (4.00 / 2)
Jumpin' Jehoshaphat, Izzy, where were you when ET discussed these things?1

Take a look at the wiki: Economics Page (scroll down to topic Measuring unemployment and employment). There's a section on America. Also, Colman's diary Comparing unemployment statistics is on America too.

I contributed some information in this comment. It contains links to further information and discussion of American unemployment.

On the "dropped out of the market" people, a die-hard warrior of the marketista tribe, Diana Furchtgott-Roth of the Hudson Institute2, makes out that the rise in the number of these "disappearing jobless" shows the success of the American economy, since Americans are now prosperous enough for moms to stay home and bring up their kiddies (which is what they always wanted to do, huh), and for youngsters to stay longer in school.

1I know where you were really, you were in there fighting the good fight!
2The link to Furchtgott-Roth's screed is now broken. The Hudson Institute never seemed very proud of this "rebuttal" to Katharine Bradbury's study (pdf). I had a job getting hold of it, and now they seem to have pulled it. I'll email a copy to anyone who really, really wants one.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Thu Mar 23rd, 2006 at 02:31:12 AM EST
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Re: Triple Play (none / 0)
What?  You mean... I was vindicated?  I must have still been loopy.  Thanks, afew!  

D. Izzy

Maybe we can eventually make language a complete impediment to understanding. -Hobbes

by Izzy (izzy at eurotrib dot com) on Thu Mar 23rd, 2006 at 02:45:40 AM EST
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Re: Triple Play (none / 0)
btw, I should explain that I was too exhausted to re-visit that diary or to really read Colman's, which I should have.  The last thing I remember was you and I arguing over whether or not media should provide narrative.  That never was resolved, was it?  It's been nothing but open-thread joking and Olympics since then...

Maybe we can eventually make language a complete impediment to understanding. -Hobbes
by Izzy (izzy at eurotrib dot com) on Thu Mar 23rd, 2006 at 02:49:51 AM EST
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Re: Triple Play (none / 0)
Oh, and yes please, I'd very much like it if you'd email that to me, but only if it's no trouble.

Maybe we can eventually make language a complete impediment to understanding. -Hobbes
by Izzy (izzy at eurotrib dot com) on Thu Mar 23rd, 2006 at 02:52:32 AM EST
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Re: Triple Play (none / 0)
Shoot, nevermind on the email.  I just re-read and realized it wasn't what I thought.  I really should resist commenting this late at night!

Maybe we can eventually make language a complete impediment to understanding. -Hobbes
by Izzy (izzy at eurotrib dot com) on Thu Mar 23rd, 2006 at 02:55:04 AM EST
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Re: Triple Play (none / 1)
Sweet dreams!
by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Thu Mar 23rd, 2006 at 03:19:34 AM EST
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Re: Triple Play (none / 0)
Our discussion, which, iirc I dropped because we were stuck in a subthread at the bottom of a mine somewhere, was about whether and how we should use story to counteract the media's use of it. You're right we should pick that up again. I haven't got time right now for a diary. And, to be truthful, I'm not sure my thinking has settled down on this yet.
by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Thu Mar 23rd, 2006 at 03:18:49 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Triple Play (4.00 / 2)
On the "dropped out of the market" people, a die-hard warrior of the marketista tribe, Diana Furchtgott-Roth of the Hudson Institute2, makes out that the rise in the number of these "disappearing jobless" shows the success of the American economy, since Americans are now prosperous enough for moms to stay home and bring up their kiddies (which is what they always wanted to do, huh), and for youngsters to stay longer in school.

Note, however, that in Europe that's called "low labour participation" and a bad thing.

by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Thu Mar 23rd, 2006 at 02:59:09 AM EST
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Re: Triple Play (4.00 / 3)
There is a number comparable to the French one that includes discouraged workers. It's about 10% for the US last time I looked.
by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Thu Mar 23rd, 2006 at 02:58:01 AM EST
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Re: Triple Play (4.00 / 3)
The number of French workers with élan and panache however is through the roof.
by Alex in Toulouse on Thu Mar 23rd, 2006 at 03:43:43 AM EST
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Re: Triple Play (none / 0)
This is not exactly what we're looking for (I knowwhere it is, somewhere on the bls websire), but this is nevertheless telling:

Bush presidencies = lower labor participation rates

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Thu Mar 23rd, 2006 at 03:51:14 AM EST
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Too small... (none / 0)


In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Thu Mar 23rd, 2006 at 03:51:42 AM EST
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Re: Too small... (none / 0)
US figures?
by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Thu Mar 23rd, 2006 at 03:53:34 AM EST
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Re: Too small... (none / 0)
Yes. Sorry if it wasn't clear.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Thu Mar 23rd, 2006 at 04:14:11 AM EST
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Re: Too small... (none / 0)
Yup, that's an economy doing well and allowing everyone to retire early and stay at home to mind the kids.
by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Thu Mar 23rd, 2006 at 04:17:13 AM EST
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Re: Too small... (none / 0)
From the BLS?
by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Thu Mar 23rd, 2006 at 04:59:20 AM EST
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Re: Too small... (none / 0)
From the look of the graph, yes.

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.
by DoDo on Thu Mar 23rd, 2006 at 06:10:29 AM EST
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Re: Too small... (none / 0)
Whose unemployment is France's normally contrasted with? Is it the US?
by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Thu Mar 23rd, 2006 at 04:58:16 AM EST
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Re: Triple Play (4.00 / 2)
We could also add the extra 2+ million in jail (1.35 million prisoners in State and Federal prisons and an additional 665,000 in state prisons). That's 2 million that could be added to the active population, but for whom there should be no immediate jobs, thus propulsing the unemployment rate up by 1%. Who agrees?

ps: for comparison purposes, since mention of France was made, the carceral population ratio in the USA is 686 for every 100 000 inhabitants, while in France it is 90 prisoners for every 100 000 inhabitants. UK ratio: 140.

Sources:
Wikipedia,  (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison_en_France , , French Justice Ministry ((http://www.justice.gouv.fr/presse/conf150206a.htm), http://www.prisonstudies.org/ (etc etc - it's not like this is breaking news)

by Alex in Toulouse on Thu Mar 23rd, 2006 at 03:25:29 AM EST
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Re: Triple Play (none / 1)
See my unemployment diary referenced above. I wouldn't count all of them, but some certainly. Not to mention the numbers employed in the military, many of whom are from the sorts of background that would otherwise put them at high risk of unemployment or: poor, black and male and young.
by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Thu Mar 23rd, 2006 at 03:56:13 AM EST
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Re: Triple Play (none / 0)
Ok, hadn't noticed the link.
by Alex in Toulouse on Thu Mar 23rd, 2006 at 03:57:34 AM EST
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Re: Triple Play (4.00 / 3)
ah but Alex, many of those incarcerees are in the work force, rented out at subminimum wage to the corporadoes.

google for "prison industrial complex"

I hate it that you Euros are all relaxing at home after a good slow-food meal when I, half a world away, am still at the office allegedly working.  gotta go.

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...

by DeAnander (de_at_daclarke_dot_org) on Thu Mar 23rd, 2006 at 04:29:18 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Triple Play | 88 comments (88 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)
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