May 2014 Jobs Reports: Good News, Bad News

According to this article this morning from CNNMoney, the official BLS Jobs Report for May, due this Friday morning, will show that the US economy will finally have recovered all the jobs lost in the Great Recession:

Set your sights on this number: 113,000.

That's how many jobs the U.S. economy needs to hit its break-even point, to finally recover all the jobs lost in the financial crisis.

Get ready, because we're about to get there this Friday.

That's when the U.S. Department of Labor will release its May jobs report, and the outlook is rosy. Economists surveyed by CNNMoney expect the U.S. economy added 200,000 jobs in May.

I guess that's the good news. But as the article also notes, it is a purely symbolic measure:

Breaking even is a key milestone, but was a long time coming. It took just two years to wipe out 8.7 million American jobs, but it took more than four years to recover them all, making this the longest jobs recovery on record since the Department of Labor started tracking the data in 1939.

Plus, the jobs that have returned are not necessarily the same ones we lost, nor are they in the same regions.

Here's the key - through all these four plus years of job growth to get back to where we were at the start of the Great Recession, we have been falling behind as it takes roughly 90,000 new jobs each month just to keep up with the new people entering the job market each month. If we take it back to the beginning of the Great Recession in December 2007, we are still in the hole on needed jobs by a bit over 7M (6.5 (years) x 12 (months per year) x 90K (jobs per month) = 7,020,000.)

The current month report from ADP continues the good news/bad news. The good news is 179K new jobs in the private sector (though fewer than "economists predicted.") The bad news (although painted as good news by Reuters):

U.S. companies hired far fewer workers than expected in May, but an acceleration in services sector growth supported views the economy was regaining strength after sagging early this year.

While other data on Wednesday showed the trade deficit hit its widest point in two years in April, a rise in imports to record highs underscored the economy's resilience.

Why is the increase in service sector jobs bad news? Because service sector jobs tend to be lower wage.

This blog post from the Washington Post's Wonkblog from 8/31/2012 covers this:

The United States lost about 8.1 million jobs after the recession began in late 2007. The economy has since recovered about 3.3 million of those jobs, starting in early 2010. That, in itself, should alarm policymakers. The labor market is still in a deep, deep hole.

But in some respects, the situation is even bleaker than that. The types of jobs that have come back so far don't seem to be paying as well as those that were lost.

A new report (pdf) from the National Employment Law Project finds that low-wage jobs, paying $13.83 per hour or less, have dominated the recovery to date. In many cases, they appear to be replacing higher-paying jobs that were lost in the first place.

That article was not the first time the Post had noticed the low wage aspect of the "recovery" as I noted in this blog post from April 2011.

The CNN article linked at the top of the page also showed a little "moving of the goalposts" in the world of economic and jobs reporting. Buried way down at the bottom of the page were these two paragraphs:

Back in 2006 and 2007, the unemployment rate hovered between 4% and 5%, but that work level was associated with an overheating housing market. Aiming for that rate may not be an achievable goal now, as baby boomers retire and some of the long-term unemployed may be permanently out of work.

Instead, economists surveyed by CNNMoney now define "full employment" in the economy as an unemployment rate at 5.5%. At that level, there's still normal turnover in the job market, which is considered healthy. The unemployment rate was 6.3% as of April, and economists expect it could take at least two years to get to 5.5%.

The official "unemployment rate" is already a fiction as it does not account for the long term underemployed, those who are "self-employed contractors" and the people who have given up looking for work. It does show how bad things are though that the economists feel the need to redefine "full employment" while recognizing that we are still a couple of years away from achieving even this revised figure.

As Bloomberg was reporting on the trade gap in April hitting the highest point in two years, Reuters was reporting that WalMart is once again trying to push "American Made." Not surprisingly, it is not going to happen easily:

When Walmart pledged last year to buy an extra $250 billion in U.S.-made goods over the next decade, it appeared to be just what was needed to help move America's putative manufacturing renaissance from rhetoric to reality.

But suppliers trying to reshore production as part of the initiative by the world's largest retailer are running into practical problems as they try to restart long-idled corners of U.S. manufacturing.

Companies that make the leap have to grapple with a host of challenges, including a shallow pool of component suppliers, an inexperienced workforce, and other shortcomings that developed during the country's long industrial decline.

It is not at all a surprise that there are these types of problems. As the article further notes:

Now, the retailer is asking companies to come back home - though they need little prompting. The forces pulling production back to the United States are powerful and real and include lower domestic energy prices, increasingly competitive wage rates, the benefits of greater automation, and a renewed appreciation for the value of being able to respond quickly to shifting U.S. customer demands.

My bold. "Increasingly competitive wage rates" = squeeze salaries down to as close to minimum wage as possible.

CNNMoney headline that 6 in 10 Say American Dream Is Unreachable is not a surprise at all.

And because I can:

McJobs: Bad and Getting Worse

A couple of years ago, you might remember that McDonalds got a lot of publicity out of a one day hiring binge. I wrote about it here with a follow-up about the Washington Post noticing that it was a "McJobs" economic recovery a couple of weeks later. So here we are, two years later and where exactly are we?

At best, we are treading water. At best.

Today, NBC News' web site had this article titled In tough economy, fast food workers grow old discussing the reality of older workers working in the fast food world. They had a companion article on fast food jobs as portrayed in the movies over the past couple of years (presumably in an attempt to off-set the negative implications of the original) but the stories in the first article should be heeded:

In many ways, she is a typical fast-food worker: She's older than you'd expect, has more years of schooling and works in the industry not for entry-level experience, but to try to keep her head above the financial storm that threatens to swamp her.

Due to the lingering effects of the Great Recession, the Hollywood image of the care-free, freckle-faced, teenage hamburger flipper is no longer the norm. Only 16 percent of fast food industry jobs now go to teens, down from 25 percent a decade ago.

And many of the older workers are educated. More than 42 percent of restaurant and fast-food employees over the age of 25 have at least some college education, including 753,000 with a bachelor’s degree or higher, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Yes, fast food jobs are not just for teenagers anymore.

I've actually noticed a few articles these past few months discussing working poor, low wage jobs, and the on-going unemployment crisis. First up is this from the Washington Post in January on the growing ranks of working poor:

Nearly a third of the nation’s working families earn salaries so low that they struggle to pay for their necessities, according to a new report.

The ranks of the so-called working poor have grown even as the nation has created new jobs for 27 consecutive months and is showing other signs of shaking off the worst effects of the recession.

As I discussed a couple of years ago, minimum wage is not a salary where someone is going to get ahead.

At the end of March, NBC News had an article looking at the growing ranks of poor families in the suburbs:

The number of suburban residents living in poverty rose by nearly 64 percent between 2000 and 2011, to about 16.4 million people, according to a Brookings Institution analysis of 95 of the nation’s largest metropolitan areas. That’s more than double the rate of growth for urban poverty in those areas.

At the end of this article, there were links to some further articles including, 'By the grace of God': How workers survive on $7.25 per hour and Media coverage of poverty: Why 'so little'? (coverage of a Dan Froomkin essay.)

On April 1 (and not an April Fools Day joke) CNN had an article on the lousy pay at the 10 most common jobs in the US:

Food prep workers are the third most-common job in the U.S., but have the lowest pay, at a mere $18,720 a year for 2012. Cashiers and waiters are also popular professions, but the average pay at these jobs tallies up to less than $21,000 annually. There are 4.3 million retail sales workers out there, making them the most common job, but the position pays only $25,310 for the year.

As a companion to the incredibly shrinking pay checks and the increase in the working poor, there are also the stresses put on workers by the jobs. First up here is this article from NBC News in early January, Temp employees more likely to succumb to workplace hazards:

The use of contingent workers by U.S. employers has soared over the past two decades. In 1990, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were about 1.1 million such workers; as of August 2012, the number was 2.54 million, down slightly from pre-recession levels but climbing.

...snip...

A study published this year of nearly 4,000 amputations among workers in Illinois found that five of the 10 employers with the highest number of incidents were temp agencies. Each of the 10 employers had between six and 12 amputations from 2000 through 2007. Most of the victims lost fingertips, but some lost legs, arms or hands.

...snip...

Another study, published in 2010, found that temp workers in Washington State had higher injury rates than permanent workers, based on a review of workers’ compensation claims. In particular, temp workers were far more likely to be struck by or caught in machinery in the construction and manufacturing industries.

Just last week NBC News had an article on work related stress:

So what did workers say is causing them the most agita? Everyone act surprised, it was a tie for No. 1: Low pay and unreasonable workload (14 percent each).

Lindsay Beyerstein at the Hillman Foundation had a post today on an LA Times article from last week on workers being ground down by the daily grind.

I guess we shouldn't worry too much though. Early in March, Forbes reported the results of a survey of US Management types:

Competitiveness at the Crossroads (2012) is an alarming report with far-reaching implications. Forget the U.S. budget sequester. Set aside the financial bubbles on which the economy currently rests. Pay attention to something much more fundamental: America has lost the ability to compete in the international marketplace.

...snip...

In the survey, Harvard’s MBA alumni were asked how American business stacks up against its competition on a variety of issues. The quality of management is obviously one of the most important of those issues: if there are disastrous shortfalls in the ability to compete, then surely the quality of management itself—the art and science of getting things done—must have a lot to do with it. Indeed if there are widespread failures in competitiveness across the whole economy, then it is likely that we have something even more serious: a generic problem with the strategies being pursued.

...snip...

American business is unable to compete internationally. But management—relative to competitors—is both strong and improving?

Bold in original. Forbes at least had enough sense to ask WTF?

Happy Tax Day everyone!

And because I can:

The Concern Trolls Very Serious People Are Out

Damn but just when I reach a point where I think things can't get any stoopider inside the Beltway, we have a week like this one with the release of President Obama's "budget" and once again the reality of stoopid is even worse than imagined.

Word leaked last Friday (April 5) that Chained CPI was going to be part of President Obama's budget, prompting me to point out a simple truth, "A Bad Idea Is a Bad Idea, No Matter Who Proposes It." Of course, starting Monday, all the usual suspects and even a few somewhat surprising suspects started pushing the idea as a wonderful thing, maybe even as good as sliced bread.

The first cheers I saw, came from the Wall Street Journal. It is difficult to detail all the errors in this piece but it starts with the idea that Social Security has any bearing on the Budget in the first place the goes on to "explain" why Chained CPI is just such a good idea:

The chain-weighted CPI registers slower inflation than the usual CPI because it allows for the substitution effect of price changes. When the cost of one item rises, consumers switch to a similar product that has not risen in price (or not increased as much). The substitution can occur intra-item (whole wheat bread instead of white bread) and inter-item (beer versus wine). The chained CPI takes the shifts into its calculation; the traditional CPI does not.

Of course, these types of discussions never point out how the folks who are already "substituting" are supposed to pay for price increases, just as it fails to recognize the basic facts of Social Security, including the fact that the average monthly benefit is $1,264 per month, which is barely more than a minimum wage job pays and we all know how richly you can live on minimum wage. (Yes, that's snark.)

The Washington Post also is on the bandwagon and loving them some Chained CPI, once again pretending that Social Security is a part of the overall Federal Budget:

Most important, the president committed himself in writing to more than $100 billion in Social Security spending restraint over the next decade, along with $400 billion in health program reductions.

Ruth Marcus yesterday earned her WaPo0 money by being oh so very concerned with how the Republicans react to the President:

The conundrum of President Obama’s budget is that he has produced a “come let us reason together” proposal aimed at a Republican Party that has demonstrated no interest in being reasonable.

On Tuesday, Jared Bernstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities wrote a blog post comparing Paul Ryan's "budget" with the President's by stating that if Ryan's budget is (self-described) as visionary, then the president's is "strategic." Bernstein quotes his colleague, Robert Greenstein (President of CBPP) who produced a statement in favor of President Obama's budget, and specifically, in favor of Chained CPI.

I can't begin to detail all the errors in Greenstein's statement but will try to address the most egregious ones. First off:

As it stands, the package makes tough policy choices while largely adhering to the principle, as enunciated by the Bowles-Simpson commission, that deficit reduction should not increase poverty or inequality. Nevertheless, the budget’s substantial spending cuts, both in entitlements and discretionary programs, would have real-world consequences for millions of individuals and families.

While there was a Bowles-Simpson commission, there was nothing "enunciated" by the commission as there was no report since the recommendations could not achieve the necessary vote count to be accepted as official. And once again, we have someone who should know better (and most likely does) trying to conflate Social Security as part of the overall Federal Budget.

Then there's:

Experts widely regard the chained CPI as a more accurate measure of inflation for the population as a whole. It may well be, however, less accurate for elderly individuals and many low-income people and, thus, understate the inflation that they face.

What experts are saying this? The best I have found is that the NY Times had an article claiming this that they would later correct as Dean Baker points out here.

Reuters presents it as The Grand Bargain while the Christian Science Monitor presents it as a great idea because liberals are angry so that must mean it is bi-partisnay or something.

Tiger Beat On the Potomac (h/t Mr Pierce) of all people, actually gets to the nut in their lede:

President Barack Obama says he’ll protect the most vulnerable seniors from his “chained CPI” proposal – but he’s not going to protect everyone. Not even all seniors.

The White House, fighting back against liberal critics who say he’s giving away too much, released details Wednesday of the protections Obama would include to make sure older seniors and low-income people don’t get hurt by lower benefits.

There it is. As I said the other day and will say many more times I'm sure, IF YOU HAVE TO MAKE SPECIAL PROVISIONS TO ASSURE PEOPLE ARE NOT HURT, YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG.

Such a simple damn concept. But of course, with all the people doing the cheerleading, none of them are people who actually have to live on Social Security so for them, it is only an intellectual exercise, not reality.

And because I can:

Jobs and Social Security

The January Jobs reports are out and for once, there is a modicum of (somewhat) good news. The Labor Department reported 157K new jobs for January 2013 and significantly revised both November and December 2012 numbers upwards:

Employers added 157,000 jobs in January, the Labor Department said, which was right in line with analyst expectations. The best news, though, was that revised estimates put job creation in November and December much higher than earlier estimated; the nation added a whopping 247,000 jobs in November and 196,000 in December, revisions that place those numbers a combined 127,000 jobs above earlier estimates.

The unemployment rate ticked up to 7.9 percent, from 7.8 percent, however, as both the number of people reporting having a job and the number looking for one edged up.

I'm sure we will hear a lot about how the January figures were "...right in line with analyst expectations" given how they are usually "surprised" that their predictions are wrong.

The .1% uptick in the unemployment rate (from 7.8% to 7.9% is not all that much of a surprise - or shouldn't be - if the economy truly is improving after all these years. The BLS U6 figure for the un/underemployed and marginally attached folks was unchanged at 14.4% (a figure that I believe is low but can't prove). Bloomberg reported the jobs news as:

Sustained hiring gains will give incomes a lift, buffering American workers from the sting of higher payroll taxes and helping them keep spending. At the same time, bigger employment advances are needed to drive down a jobless rate that Federal Reserve officials say is too high.

We can but hope Bloomberg is correct in this analysis that incomes will be lifted.

This past Wednesday, ADP reported 192K private sector jobs for January (versus 166K reported by BLS - see Bloomberg link).

One of the areas that seems to escape a lot of notice is how the jobs reports impacts the Social Security Trust Fund. Bloomberg touches on this with the mention of higher wages offsetting "...the sting of higher payroll taxes" but still seems to miss how higher employment will provide more funds to keep Social Security running without needing to be "fixed."

Of course, this in no way will stop people like Robert Samuelson of the Washington Post from offering up his fantasy of cutting Social Security as part of a "sequestration":

To be effective, a sequester has to hit millions of Americans so hard that, if it took effect, mobs of outraged voters would storm Capitol Hill.

Here’s my modest proposal to do that. Unless congressional negotiators agreed on at least $1 trillion in deficit cuts over a decade — personally, I’d go higher — then the desired amount would be raised in two ways: half from across-the-board income-tax increases and half from across-the-board Social Security cuts. People would see their take-home pay and retiree benefits reduced. There would be no mystery.

...snip...

It won’t happen. Truth in journalism: I have proposed this before. There were no takers. It would astonish me if there were any now. But the point is that there is a path to agreement. The fact that our so-called leaders don’t take it reflects their calculation that disagreeing is better politics.

Thankfully, he has had no takers so he has a sad.

Allison Linn at NBC News offers a counter to Samuelson and his gibberish with this report of a survey with results that fly in the face of so much Beltway Conventional Wisdom:

Most Americans think it’s important to preserve adequate Social Security benefits for younger generations — and they may even be willing to pay more taxes to get that assurance, a new survey finds.

The survey, released Thursday by the nonprofit National Academy of Social Insurance, found that about eight in 10 Americans think it is critical to support Social Security even if it means that working Americans have to pay more in taxes. A slightly higher percentage of the 2,000 people surveyed said they think it’s critical to save Social Security even if wealthy people have to pay more.

But here’s the thing: Many Americans also want something in return.

The study found broad-based support among both younger and older Americans for a plan that would gradually increase the amount of payroll taxes everyone pays and also eliminate the cap on the amount of income that can be taxed for Social Security. In return, that plan would call for raising minimum benefits and increasing cost-of-living-adjustments.

Raise minimum benefits, remove the cap on wages subject to Social Security, and increase cost-of-living-adjustments! Whocoodanode? Just the opposite of what Samuelson and the Washington Post (read: Pete Peterson) have pushed to get. It is only inside the beltway, with people who do not need Social Security, do we see the push to eviscerate it. Out in reality land, people understand the value of Social Security.

Now if we can just stop electing people who want to operate in Bizarro World.

And because I can:

Today's Anti-Social Security Propaganda

Well, it looks like there is a new push on in the long term destruction of Social Security today. Now, I usually write about the plight of the long term un and underemployed but I am getting close to Social Security eligibility so decided I would discuss the anti Social Security effort today.

I'll start with Fact Free Fred Hiatt's Concern Troll op-ed in today's (Monday, January 28) Washington Post. It seems Mr Hiatt wants to offer his advice to President Obama on "entitlement reform" using the guise of how Democrats and Republicans view the past four years:

To achieve a fiscal compromise, Obama agreed in 2011 negotiations with House Speaker John Boehner to changes in Social Security that would be anathema to liberals, but Boehner walked away from the talks.

...snip...

Both histories are factually correct. That coherent accounts can be written either way ought to suggest to partisans that neither version is quite the slam-dunk they imagine.

At a minimum, it ought to propel the White House to continue acting in the national interest, whichever party that seems to serve. And for a long time, Obama has said the national interest requires both revenue increases and reform of entitlement programs.

Once again, Mr Hiatt and the Post are pushing the myth that Social Security is a part of the overall Federal Budget and needs to be "controlled" to "fix the deficit" when in fact, Social Security loans to the Genera Fund have been propping up the Federal Budget for decades, allowing for the tax cuts over the years.

While I expect this type of nonsense from the Washington Post, today's Tampa Bay Times had a decidedly misleading headline ("US spends far more on seniors than on kids.") How is it misleading?

In 2008, all government (local state, and federal) spent $26,255 on average for each person 65 or older, most of which is Social Security and Medicare.

The blurb on children spending:

Conversely, the federal government spends relatively little on children and Medicaid is the largest single item. State and local governments spend much more n children because they pay for schools. But overall, governments spend far more than double on seniors than they do on children 18 and younger.

Finally, at the very bottom of this post, the Times offers a couple of caveats to offset the misleading nature of their headline and opening:

And boiling it down to a zero-sum game between young and old can make it seem as if those were the only choices. Indeed, other portions of the federal budget could be targeted instead, from defense spending to interest on the debt. Or people might be willing to pay higher taxes for government to do more.

Perhaps most crucially, if you spend dollars on the old, that can indirectly aid the young, and vice versa.

...snip...

Finally, some experts suggest that the issue isn't spending on the elderly versus spending on children. Rather, it's a question of what policies can promote high employment and growth versus policies that promote consumption today.

This brings us to Politico which offers this article titled "The quiet liberal plans for entitlement reform." Of course, the first "liberal" plan is the Chained CPI:

This new formula — a tweak to the consumer price index — would assume that people switch their buying habits when prices rise, rather than just buying the same things over and over. So, for example, if the price of ground beef goes up, someone might buy chicken or fish instead.

...snip...

But a lot of Democrats and liberals aren’t on board. They say seniors are already having a hard enough time with the current cost-of-living increases without dialing them back.

...snip...

That’s why liberals want any chained CPI agreement to be balanced out with measures to ease the burden on the seniors with the lowest incomes. For example, Paul Van de Water, a senior fellow at the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, suggests exempting people on Supplemental Security Income — which pays benefits to the lowest-income seniors — and making a special payment to seniors who have been on Social Security for 20 years because they get poorer as they get older.

Note to Politico and inside Beltway Villagers: if you have to make special provisions for the poorest and lowest income on the scale to avoid the bad impacts of a policy, that should by definition tell you the policy is bad for everyone.

For what it is worth, Politico does mention lifting the cap on Social Security earnings but limits this to:

Lift the cap so 90 percent of all Americans’ earnings are taxed — it’s only about 83 percent now — and a Social Security deal could raise about $550 billion in revenues over the next 10 years, according to estimates by Third Way, which has endorsed the approach. It would also wipe out Social Security’s deficit through 2020.

Of course, this is also misleading as "...wipe out the Social Security deficit through 2020..." discounts the loans Social Security has made to the general fund for 30 plus years and the surplus that was built up that was used to fund tax cuts.

There is a large amount of cluelessness across the board with the policies being discussed. A week and half ago, the "Business Roundtable" proposed raising the Social Security and Medicare eligibility ages to 70. Jon Walker at FDL Action made a rebuttal on this level of idiocy here. I would just like to ask these CEOs where the jobs are that allow folks to keep working until age 70? The BLS information for December 2012 shows the Unemployment Rate as 7.8 and the rate for the long term un and underemployed and those who have given up at 14.8% (a figure that I believe is much too low than actual). But of course, they don't actually have to do anything that might mitigate the problems they have helped to create.

And because I can:

The Vortex of Stupidity, also known as Washington, DC

I sometimes think that there has to be a crest to the levels of stoopid coming out of Washington, DC but obviously, I am wrong. Just the past two days, Dean Baker at his blog Beat the Press refuted three different pieces of so-called "conventional wisdom" by different members of the Beltway Village Idiots Pundits, Press, and Politicians in good standing.

First up was his having to counter a column from Steven Pearlstein of the Washington Post. Pearlstein says:

Europe is a different story. The bubble years allowed much of Europe to avoid making the kind of structural changes necessary to put its social welfare system on a sustainable fiscal path and reform its labor and product markets. The euro crisis — which is both a banking crisis and a sovereign debt crisis — has forced Europeans to begin addressing those issues.

Baker points out however:

Of course this is completely wrong. The countries with the well developed welfare states, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands are doing fine. The countries that are in crisis, Spain, Greece, Portugal, Ireland, have the least developed welfare states among the older EU countries.

Next up we have a WaPo0 opinion piece decrying the "looming short fall in public pensions." Baker points out here:

The pensions are underfunded in part because policymakers would not take seriously those of us who warned that pensions were making overly optimistic assumptions about stock returns before the market crashed. Returns have been well below expectations in the dozen years since the peak of the stock bubble in 2000.

The other reason is that some politicians, like New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, think it is really cute to not make the state's required contribution to the pension fund. Not surprisingly, if states get into the habit of not contributing to their pension fund, as has been the case in some states, then pension funds will be underfunded.

However it is more than a bit bizarre that we should therefore ripoff the workers who are counting on these pensions. Suppose state and local governments contract with construction companies for road work or hospitals to treat poor people. If the governments don't put aside the money to pay these contracts would we then think it makes sense to tell the contractors and hospitals to get lost?

Finally, today Baker goes after NPR and Nariman Behravesh, the chief economist of the forecasting firm IHS Global Insight, who thinks that the biggest problem we face is "the deficit":

Wow, isn't that impressive. So Europe, China and the rest of the world will be really impressed if the United States throws even more people out of work as long as it reduces its budget deficit! That's interesting, had it not been for NPR I never would have known people in the rest of the world thought this way.

As one of the 25 Million plus long term un and underemployed Baker mentions in his post, I would like to quote the inimitable Mr Pierce, "Fck the deficit. People got no jobs. People got no money.

David Dayen at FDL News today (Monday, October 22) covered a survey on the wage gap between federal workers and their private industry counterparts. Not so surprisingly, the public sector workers are paid far less than private sector jobs requiring comparable levels of skills and education:

If you compare organized federal employees, many of whom have college degrees, to unorganized service-sector and retail workers, then yes, you will find higher wages in the public sector. But if you do an apples-to-apples comparison between public employees and their private-sector counterparts in related fields, you will find that the public sector is significantly undervalued.

...snip...

You cannot lump together those who clean up the National Mall and those who work on scientific breakthroughs at the National Institute of Health, compare them to the “average worker,” and come up with a legitimate pay scale for federal employees. You have to go sector by sector and find the appropriate comparison in the private sector. And when you do that work, you see that federal employees are underpaid. This has an impact on millions of hard-working Americans, who are forced to take less than their skills would bring them back in the open market, because of a foolish tendency toward austerity and the demonizing of public workers.

Over these past few years, we've all seen many articles decrying the "generous pensions and salaries" of public sector workers, whether teachers, fire fighters, EMTs, or police at local levels or scientists at the NIH, NASA, JPL, EPA, or any other federal agency you wish to name.

My question is why?

One of the themes to emerge from this year's presidential race has been Mitt Romeny's "infamous" speech at a private fund raiser last May, calling 47% of the US basically moochers and freeloaders because they don't pay federal income taxes or they receive some level of federal benefits be it Social Security, VA or the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) among others.

But why is it so fashionable to trash people who have earned pensions, earned veterans benefits or Social Security or have used the EITC because of low wages? Shouldn't we be asking why there are so many people earning such low wages that they don't even pay a minimum federal income tax? I know for myself, I would dearly love to be earning a salary that would have me paying federal income taxes. Reuters offered this analysis on Friday (October 19):

The number of Americans not owing federal income taxes has been growing since the mid-1980s, and the increase largely stems from expansion of these two tax credits - championed by Republicans from conservative economist Milton Friedman to former President Ronald Reagan.

I want to work in my chosen field, earn a decent wage with benefits and pay my fair share of taxes. Instead, we see the "champions of industry" threatening employees with lay offs should President Obama be re-elected.

Right now, I'm a bit surprised we don't see more news articles like this one from the AP last Sunday (October 14) about a man attempting to rob a bank of $1 so he could be sent to a Federal Prison. How bad must it be to want to rob a bank so that you can get sent to prison. My guess is the three hots and a cot and health care sounded mighty appealing if the option was starving on the street.

And because I can:

Labor Day Weekend, 2012 Economic Report

Well, here we are once again. Labor Day weekend has rolled around; the time when all the politicians extol the virtues of the working man and woman. But as I pointed out last year, once a year praise by Beltway Village Idiots Politicians and Pundits or the local equivalent of same, does not actually make someone a friend of workers.

Just last night, if you were so inclined, you may have listened to Mitt Rmoney talk about workers:

You deserved it because during these years, you worked harder than ever before. You deserved it because when it cost more to fill up your car, you cut out movie nights and put in longer hours. Or when you lost that job that paid $22.50 an hour with benefits, you took two jobs at 9 bucks an hour and fewer benefits. You did it because your family depended on you. You did it because you're an American and you don't quit. You did it because it was what you had to do.

Emptywheel does a wonderful job of parsing and eviscerating that paragraph of Rmoney's speech here:

The passage is fundamentally important to the logic of the speech–and indeed, Mitt’s entire campaign–both because it pretends Mitt understands the struggles of average people and because it suggests Obama failed to deliver on Hope and Change.

...snip...

The average self-reported hourly wage of a Staples EasyTech Associate is $8.89. The average self-reported hourly wage of a Staples Sales Associate is $8.54.

Those jobs Mitt talked about as a symbol of America’s failed promise, the ones that don’t pay a living wage? That’s what Mitt’s campaign boasted about last night as his idea of an “engine of prosperity.”

And it was an engine of prosperity, for Mitt, for Stemberg. Mitt’s worth at least $250 million. Stemberg is reportedly worth $202 million. And they got that money by running an engine of prosperity that relies on workers who are Mitt’s own example of the failure of the American dream. “This just wasn’t right,” Mitt said himself. (Not to mention that some of the steel jobs Mitt destroyed probably were $22.50 an hour jobs, with benefits.)

A bit over a year and a half ago, I wrote this post, Let's Play With Some Numbers, where I put together what a single person with a full time job making minimum wage would have to deal with. And of course, few jobs paying minimum wage are actually remotely close to being 'full-time.'

Today's (Friday, August 31, 2012) NY Times had this article headlined with opening paragraph:

Majority of New Jobs Pay Low Wages, Study Finds

While a majority of jobs lost during the downturn were in the middle range of wages, a majority of those added during the recovery have been low paying, according to a new report from the National Employment Law Project.

This particular theme seemed familiar to me, then I realized I had written a post back in April 2011 on the same basic topic, only with a Washington Post article as the starting point. It turns out, the WaPo0 piece was based on a report (pdf) from the National Employment Law Project (NELP) and the NYT article is based on an updated report (pdf) from NELP. David Dayen discusses today's NELP report here. Dayen also has this on Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke's speech in Jackson Hole, WY earlier today. Dayen offers this analogy:

Water works well at fighting fires.
Everything is on fire.
We may hook up the hose at some point.
Not promising anything.

As I have written before (here and here though I have touched on it in many more posts), we keep hearing how the Fed is "poised" to act; they just never seem to be willing to take the step of actually doing something. I guess pretending is acting in a way though. Dean Baker talks about the NYT piece here while also touching on Benbernank's speech and the fed.

But hey! Did you see where Honey Boo Boo got higher ratings the other night than the Republican National Convention? We. Are. So. Fecked.

And Because I can:

Sometimes You Just Have to Respond to the Stoopid

Now, some folks may have noticed (ha!) that I have not been posting too much these last few months. Those who actually know me understand that I've had a very good reason for this. However, I have still continued to surf the news sites each day and keep up with various blogs as well. I figure Mr Pierce does such a fine job eviscerating the Zombie-eyed-granny-starver and so many other idiots, that there really isn't much I can say and definitely can't improve on. As well, Dean Baker continues to easily refute the gibberish of so many Beltway Village Idiots Pundits and Politicians, so there's not much need for my rants.

So, I laugh when I see where someone has butt shot himself while thinking of all the "butt calls" I have received from family and friends. And I get a little sad when I see legislators in my home state embarrassing themselves with their diatribes against teaching evolution. (Note: Gravity is still considered a theory as well, maybe some of these folks complaining about teaching evolution "cuz it's only a theory" should maybe be invited to test that gravitational theory from the top of the capital building - rhetorically speaking of course.)

But then, I wind up reading something that is so incredibly stupid and disingenuous, that I am moved to take a whack at it on my own. Today, I reached this point when I read this idiocy from Robert Samuelson at the Washington Post:

Judging by the political reaction, you’d think that Paul Ryan’s budget takes a meat ax to Medicare and threatens economic havoc for the elderly. Just the opposite is true: The Ryan budget spares older people from almost any change or sacrifice — and that’s the problem. We have (and, to be fair, this is mainly the doing of Democrats and their intellectual apologists) made those 65 and over into a politically protected class, of which nothing is expected and everything is given.

It is impossible to have an honest debate about the budget — and government’s size and role — unless this changes, because aiding the elderly is now the main thing the federal government does. If you remove that, fearing a backlash from the 50 million or so Social Security and Medicare recipients, you condemn yourself to bad choices: (a) you can’t deal with deficits, which may crowd out productive investment and risk a financial crisis; (b) you must dramatically squeeze the rest of government, including the social safety net, defense and research; or (c) you must raise taxes sharply, which may further slow the economy.

Now, I am admittedly not an economist (thank doG) but by my rough count those two paragraphs contain maybe two semi-factual statements and about ten misstatements, mis-directs, and outright lies.

My first response after reading Samuelson's gibberish was to rush over to Beat The Press and see if Dean Baker had already taken Samuelson to task. Alas, Dean has been otherwise occupied with taking Casey Mulligan of the NY Times Economix blog and the Washington Post to task for their various misstatements and mis-directs. I imagine he can only deal with just so much stoopid and disingenuousness in one day before reaching his fill.

So if I may quickly:
The Zombie-eyed-granny-starver's budget and Medicare 'Plan' does take a meat ax to Medicare and threatens economic havoc on the elderly (via Kaiser Health News).

Samuelson proclaims that the Ryan budget "...spares older people from almost any change or sacrifice..." (this seems to be an article of perceived Conventional Wisdom among the Villagers and TradMed if this and this are indicators. But the devil as always is in the details as this from Think Progress explains. I would like to add that the attempt at generational war by proclaiming loudly that "55 and above are exempt from the changes" presupposes that those of us older than 55 have no desire to see these programs available to our younger family and friends. Please note, not everyone has an "I've got mine, fuck you!" attitude, m'kay?)

I am going to close this without attacking the rest of Samuelson's gibberish and try to re-store my blood pressure to a more manageable level. But I would like to say that Samuelson continues to act as if the social safety net spending, Social Security, and Medicare have been stand alone problems these last ten years while ignoring the destruction of the US and world economies by the Banksters and fraudsters on Wall St.

[/Harrumph harrumph rant]

And because I can:

Economists try to explain why they were wrong on March jobs forecasts

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Once again, the economic community is scrambling to find the reasons why they were suprised by the March 2012 jobs report. The monthly report from ADP had private sector jobs at 209K increase for March 2012 which apparently led many economists to predict a similar number for the official report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that was released on Friday.

Oops. Wrong again.

We have been seeing stories such as this from today's NY Times about the "strong" jobs growth from earlier this year:

Although signs pointed to a strengthening economy earlier this year, the jobs report on Friday came with a message: don’t get ahead of yourself.

The country’s employers added a disappointing 120,000 jobs in March, about half the net gains posted in each of the preceding three months. The unemployment rate, which comes from a separate survey of households rather than employers, slipped to 8.2 percent, from 8.3 percent, as a smaller portion of the population looked for work.

120K jobs is not much more than is necessary to maintain the status quo of population growth (90K is the figure Dean Baker uses) and even 200K, while growing, does not appreciably put a dent in the long term un and underemployment rates. When there are 13M to 14M unemployed and 25M to 30M un and underemployed, 200K jobs is just not going to help all that much.

Surprisingly to me, the Benbernank may have been more realistic than many others (via Bloomberg.) Of course, the article goes on to quote Fed regional presidents as saying that the numbers, no matter how soft, probably won't cause the Fed to actually, you know, do something to ease the un and underemployment problem. No matter that a primary part of the stated Federal Reserve Mission statement is to pursue "maximum" employment.

It does appear that the consensus being reported is to blame the warm weather from January and February for the lighter number for March. Here's Dean Baker's take:

The slower job growth shown in the establishment survey in March likely reflected the fact that good weather pulled forward a lot of hiring so that workers who might typically have been hired in March instead found jobs in January and February. This is most obviously the case in construction, which showed a loss of 7,000 jobs after showing an average gain of 13,000 in the prior three months. Weather may also explain the decline of 14,200 jobs in employment services (the broader temp category) after the sector added an average of 45,600 jobs the prior three months.

The Washington Post presented this perspective this way:

Economists say the mild winter has artificially inflated job growth. February alone stole as many as 72,000 positions from March and future months, according to Macroeconomic Advisers.

Translation: The surge in hiring early in the year may not be as strong as it appeared.

The Post then goes on to "explain" things in an attempt to cushion the problem:

Typically, these bumps in demand are evened out through a process called seasonal adjustment. That allows researchers to compare one month’s economic activity with the next for a more accurate picture of the nation’s health. But this year’s weather was so abnormal that those models fell short, and economists are now scrambling to figure out how much of the growth over the past three months was simply due to a glitch in their systems.

Ah, just a "glitch in the system!" The Post ends their reporting with the rose-colored glasses firmly in place:

Typically, these bumps in demand are evened out through a process called seasonal adjustment. That allows researchers to compare one month’s economic activity with the next for a more accurate picture of the nation’s health. But this year’s weather was so abnormal that those models fell short, and economists are now scrambling to figure out how much of the growth over the past three months was simply due to a glitch in their systems.

...snip...

And despite the hand-wringing over the weather, economists seem to agree that the fundamentals of the recovery are solid. Bob Baur, global chief economist for Principal Global Investors, said he believes that the second half of the year will pick up steam as state and local governments enjoy rebounds in tax revenue and layoffs slow down.

MSNBC is showing the pretty face of the jobs picture in a similar fashion as the Post with it all just being "quirks" in the data.

The NY Times did have a report on what they termed "permabears," i.e., those economists who are skeptical of the strength of the US and global economies.

I'm on an email list from Monster.com and received one a couple of days ago on "Industry News." It included a link to an article on "Five High-Paying, Low-Stress Jobs":

1. Optometrist
2. Materials Scientist
3. Economist
4. Aeronautical Engineer
5. User Experience Designer

Since Economists seem to personify the old cliche, "Often wrong but never in doubt" it is no surprise at all that they are both highly paid and low stress. They suffer no repercussions for being wrong. Unlike the 25M to 30M long term un and underemployed who have to listen to their tap dances.

And because I can:

You know how bad you think things are? They're worse than that.

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I was doing my normal review of news web sites this morning when I came across this headline at the Washington Post:

The median U.S. wage in 2010 was just $26,363

At first I was shocked by this but then, not so much. David Dayen had this post at FDL News back in September

There were a couple other pieces of big news from the release of Census data. First, real median household income declined in 2010 by 2.3%. The average household now makes $49,445 a year.

My bold. If you think about it, with the rise of multi-person earners in households, the two figures are not at all incompatible. Nevertheless, it is still a concern It reinforces the message being sent by the folks at the various #Occupy efforts around the country.

This post from NASDAQ.com points out some of the aspects of this:

Though the average wage of a single earner stood at $39,959.30 per year, that number was skewed by those at the very top of the survey - the 93,725 earners who took home more than $1 million annually. That top sliver - a fraction of a fraction of the top 1 percent - collectively took home $224.6 billion , or about $2.4 million per top earner.

...snip...

When one end or the other of a set becomes skewed, averages become extremely misleading. The $40,000-per-year figure seems reasonable until you realize that just over 66 percent of all workers come in under that number. As the SSA states, "by definition, 50 percent of wage earners had net compensation less than or equal to the median wage."

In more prosperous times, it might have been safe to assume that the average 4-person household contained two wage earners, but with U-6 unemployment at a seasonally adjusted rate of 16.5 percent in September, that's far from certain. It looks like half of all American families are a single layoff away from living in poverty.

n the meantime, the major banks earnings are boosted by an accounting quirk called the debt value adjustment, which means that their earnings rise if their creditors perceive their debt as riskier, and thus less valuable, TheStreet reports.

When two facts like these are set against each other, is it any wonder that the occupations in Zuccotti Park, Dewey Square and Grant Park continue to gather momentum?

According to this wiki, the 2011 poverty line for a single person is $10, 890 while for a family of four it is $22,350. In this post from last December, I did a "what-if" based on one person working a full-time, minimum wage job. Obviously, there are millions of people not even close to working a full time, minimum wage job.

This Google Docs Spreadsheet breaks out the income/population spread in $5K increments. This article from The Atlantic offers some perspective on the various group sizes.

Yeah, I'm part of the 99%. Why aren't you?

And because I can:

"So be it"

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Yesterday, I wrote about my prediction for an "official" double-dip recession. One of the points I covered was the release by the Commerce Department of the second quarter GDP figures (along with the downward revision of the figures for the first quarter 2011 back to before the start of the Great Recession/Lesser Depression.)

Today, I have seen a couple of articles pointing out that the (lack of) government spending at all levels has been a large factor in the "disappointing" GDP figures. First up is this blog post from yesterday's Washington Post with the title "GDP Shocker: ‘Much of the drag was government’:

So what was the problem?

Government, according to Faucher. “The major drag came from government, on both the federal and state and local sides. Government subtracted 1.2 percentage points from growth in the first quarter, with the federal government accounting for about two-thirds of that,” he said.

Hoocoudanode, right?

Bloomberg reported it this way:

Spending and investment by state and local governments shrank at a 3.4 percent annual rate in the second quarter, matching the decline in the first three months of 2011, the U.S. Commerce Department said today. The fourth consecutive drop is the longest such slump since the government began compiling quarterly data in 1947.

The U.S. economy expanded at a less-than-forecast 1.3 percent annual rate, the Commerce Department said. State and local governments accounted for a 0.41 percentage point drag, the same as the first quarter, as governors and mayors adjusted to lower revenue by cutting employees and services.

Peterr over at Firedoglake has this post today pointing out the problems of folks at all levels when they have too much month left at the end of the money compounded by worry that Social Security checks may not be forthcoming in August. But this little nugget really says it all for me:

When even the Chamber of Commerce is telling Congress to worry about the economy, you know that the GOP has gone way off the deep end. OSK-Deutsche Bank economists concur, as do the folks at Macroeconomic Advisors

Now I do have to ask how many folks remember the response of Speaker of the House Boehner way back in February when it was pointed out to him that cutting jobs could hurt the economy:

So be it.

You really should be careful of what you ask for Mr Speaker.

And because I can:

The More Things Stay the Same

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Well, instead of being "surprised" by the June (lack of) Jobs Report, it seems the economists were "stunned" by the numbers (via Bloomberg):

Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd. in New York, said he was “stunned” by today’s U.S. employment report.

He wasn’t the only one.

Not a single economist among 85 surveyed by Bloomberg News correctly forecast the 18,000 increase in payrolls in June reported by the Labor Department. Estimates ranged from a low of 60,000 to a high of 175,000. The median was 105,000 -- almost six times the actual number.

...snip...

It’s not unusual for payroll figures to fall outside of the range of economists’ forecasts. The same thing happened last month, as well as in October, November and December of last year.

That last paragraph should become a mantra for economists looking for excuses, but it most likely will not. As I've mentioned in earlier posts, there are always extraneous reasons for things happening within the economy. Like bad weather. And there will always be extraneous impacts that should be accounted for in any economic forecasting.

The Very Serious People Missing the Interconnectedness of Everything

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As we see the various articles today about President Obama and the "grand bargain" being offered to get Republican votes for raising the debt ceiling, we also see further indications of the total cluelessness of so many of the folks who live inside of the beltway village.

A few weeks ago, I wrote this post explaining how good jobs would attack the so-called deficit problem. This is without addressing the $3.7T plus costs of our wars since 2001 nor that the cost of the Bush/Obama tax cuts are far larger contributors to the "problem."

The last few days, I have seen a couple of articles reinforcing for me that Pete Peterson and his acolytes are winning the battle. Just last Friday (July 1), Bloomberg had this article on the Government Accountability Office releasing a study (pdf) on how people are going to have to delay collecting Social Security and "buy an annuity" in order to pay for their retirements:

“The risk that retirees will outlive their assets is a growing challenge,” according to a study from the Government Accountability Office released today. Increased life expectancies and health-care costs coupled with declines in financial markets and home equity over the last few years have “intensified” workers’ concerns about how to manage their savings in retirement, the report said.

...snip...

“The risk that retirees will outlive their assets is a growing challenge,” according to a study from the Government Accountability Office released today. Increased life expectancies and health-care costs coupled with declines in financial markets and home equity over the last few years have “intensified” workers’ concerns about how to manage their savings in retirement, the report said.

Of course, the study does not and cannot explain how we are all supposed to be able to come up with the cash to buy an annuity nor does it explain how we're are supposed to find insurance companies that will actually be around to pay off on the annuities, even if we could afford them.

Beltway Economic Conventional Wisdom Assuring Economy Will Not Improve

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In the year plus that I have been writing about the economy and life as one of the long term un and underemployed, I've mentioned a few times how difficult it is to catalog all of the stupidity, cupidity, and overall cluelessness of the Beltway Village Idiots Politicians, Pundits, and Courtiers (here, here, here, and here for example). A few weeks ago, I predicted that we will have a "double-dip" recession, even though reality for many millions is we have been in a depression and there has been no recovery that would be necessary for there to be a "double-dip" in the first place. Nevertheless, over the weekend, there were a few articles premised on how the deficit/debt is the worst thing going on right now in the economy. This one from CNN yesterday (July 4) starts things off:

CNNMoney surveyed 27 economists and asked them to choose from a list of possible threats facing the economy. What scares them most? A sovereign debt default by a European country such as Greece. More than half of those surveyed ranked it as one of their top two concerns, with 10 choosing it as their number one worry.

...snip...

Relatively few of the economists surveyed were worried about the other risks they had to choose from -- a slowdown among emerging economies such as China, or budget cutting by federal, state and local governments.

"Austerity is a short-term risk, but will help long-term," said David Wyss, former chief economist at Standard & Poor's, now visiting fellow at Brown University. "The odds of too big a budget cut seems small."

My bold and there we have it. What's a little austerity to those who have no fear of the consequences of that austerity. Given the propensity of economists polled by news organizations to be wildly and incredibly wrong in their predictions while then expressing their continual "surprise" at being wrong, I think we can safely say that the budget cuts that are coming will be both too big and soon followed by economists chanting "Hoocoudanode?" when the negative impact becomes obvious even to the most obtuse of the Beltway Villagers.

Prediction: June Economic and Jobs Numbers Won't Be Appreciably Better Than May

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I'm not an economist so this is a fairly easy prediction for me to make. I'm basing this prediction on how the weekly Initial Unemployment Claims have gone up this month (see here, here, and here plus tomorrow's post when I write it). Or at least, the numbers have not dropped as much as anticipated. Either way, things are not improving.

Amazingly enough, (economists claim to be surprised all the time, I get to claim actual surprise when something surprising really happens), there have been a few news articles from different outlets, pointing out some unpleasant economic truths. First up is this article from Monday's (June 27) USA Today:

Whether the economic recovery in the U.S. can continue could depend on a single factor: consumer confidence. Confidence is important because consumers who are upbeat about prospects tend to spend more, driving corporate profits and job growth. Companies hire more employees, boosting spending, growth and confidence.

...snip...

According to a monthly survey released last week by Consumer Reports, households that earn less than $50,000 have been extremely downbeat on the economy every month since the survey's April 2008 launch. Such households make up half of the U.S. population. Meantime, affluent households — those that pull down $100,000 or more a year — have been feeling on average positive about the economy since February 2010.

The primary factor behind the disparity: jobs. Affluent households have seen little impact on job prospects overall. Meanwhile, low-income households have seen a net decline in jobs for 23 out of the past 24 months, according to the survey.

Please do click through and read the whole article as it offers a number of reasons besides those I've extracted to show how the affluent have benefited in this "recovery" while the rest of us have struggled.

Executive Pay and "Irrational Exuberance"

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This weekend, the Washington Post started a series on Executive compensation. The first article highlights the compensation discrepancies between the rich and the rest of us while the second covers stock options and bonuses. From the first article:

It was the 1970s, and the chief executive of a leading U.S. dairy company, Kenneth J. Douglas, lived the good life. He earned the equivalent of about $1 million today. He and his family moved from a three-bedroom home to a four-bedroom home, about a half-mile away, in River Forest, Ill., an upscale Chicago suburb. He joined a country club. The company gave him a Cadillac. The money was good enough, in fact, that he sometimes turned down raises. He said making too much was bad for morale.

Forty years later, the trappings at the top of Dean Foods, as at most U.S. big companies, are more lavish. The current chief executive, Gregg L. Engles, averages 10 times as much in compensation as Douglas did, or about $10 million in a typical year. He owns a $6 million home in an elite suburb of Dallas and 64 acres near Vail, Colo., an area he frequently visits. He belongs to as many as four golf clubs at a time — two in Texas and two in Colorado. While Douglas’s office sat on the second floor of a milk distribution center, Engles’s stylish new headquarters occupies the top nine floors of a 41-story Dallas office tower. When Engles leaves town, he takes the company’s $10 million Challenger 604 jet, which is largely dedicated to his needs, both business and personal.

The evolution of executive grandeur — from very comfortable to jet-setting — reflects one of the primary reasons that the gap between those with the highest incomes and everyone else is widening.

And from the second article:

Could the Cable Industry Have a Clue?

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The weekly report on Initial Unemployment Claims came out earlier today and while the numbers did fall a bit, they are still over the 400K threshold that seems to be the cut off for declaring that things are going to get better. From Reuters:

The Labor Department said on Thursday new jobless claims fell to 414,000 in the week ended June 11 from an upwardly revised 430,000 in the prior week.

Economists polled by Reuters had been looking for a smaller decline, to 420,000. Claims have been above 400,000 for two months, reflecting a rough patch in the recovery that has led to renewed weakness in an already anemic job market.

Just as they did last week, the reporter just brushes right on by how the figures for the week before had been revised upwards. Last week it was reported as 427K now revised up to 430K - the week before it had originally been reported as 422K but then revised up to 426K. I would not be surprised if next week's report revised this week's numbers upwards again, closer to the original figure from the economists of 420K.

Just How Many Speeches Did Ben Bernanke Give Yesterday?

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Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke gave a speech yesterday (Tuesday, June 7) to the International Monetary Conference in Atlanta, GA. Only one speech. Yet looking around the Toobz at the various headlines at news sites on this speech, it must have been an all things to all people speech as I've found at least four different perspectives presented, some of them directly contradictory.

The most prevalent theme appears to be The Benbernank as cheerleader (links embedded in titles):

McClatchy: Jobs report aside, Bernanke sees rosier second half of 2011

LA Times: Bernanke predicts stronger recovery in second half of year

AP via MSNBC: Bernanke sees stronger growth later in the year

Then there are the deficit hawk headline writers:

It's Not the Bad Economic News that Surprises Me

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Unlike economists, I can in no way ever claim to be surprised at all the continuing bad news on the economy (and yeah, I will continue to link to and milk that schtick). Just today, we have the Initial Unemployment Claims report (via CNN):

In the week ended May 28, 422,000 Americans filed for their first week of unemployment benefits, the Labor Department said Thursday.

While that marked a 6,000 decrease from the revised 428,000 initial claims filed the week before, it was worse than economists' expectations for 413,000 claims.

...snip...

Next up is the government's monthly jobs report due Friday. Economists surveyed by CNNMoney say they're expecting to see that 170,000 jobs were created in May and that the unemployment rate eased to 8.9% from 9% in April.

In case you're wondering, that "revised" figure from last Thursday's Initial Unemployment Claims report was revised upward from 424K. Given how woefully inaccurate the economists' predictions have been, I will go out on a limb as I stated yesterday and predict that the BLS numbers for May will be much lower than 170K. I'm thinking more likely closer to a quarter of that (42.5K) but I do hope that I'm wrong. As far as the "unemployment rate" easing, this article from the AP (via Yahoo) this morning (Thursday June 2) goes a long way to explaining why the "official" unemployment rate may drop. Good way to make the figures look better by not counting those who get frustrated and give-up.

Is There a Possibility of a Glimmer of a Clue?

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No. It probably isn't. Probably just some more wishful thinking on my part. Nevertheless, I was quite surprised this morning to see a few pieces around the web pointing out that a "new Republican Jobs bill" was just another tired rehash of the same failed policies of the last thirty years. Ezra Klein at the Washington Post, Paul Krugman at the NY Times, Steve Benen at Washington Monthly all pounded on the Republican "Plan" and for good reason. From the Klein link:

The best evidence that Washington has forgotten about the jobs crisis is to look at the plans emerging to address it. Yesterday's House GOP plan was a perfect example. It was, as MIT economist David Autor told me, a classic case of "now-more-than-everism": Everything on the agenda was also on the GOP's agenda in 2006, in 2002, in 1987, etc. It's lower taxes, less spending, fewer regulations, more trade agreements, more domestic oil production. You can argue about whether these proposals are good for the economy. But as Autor says, there's "no original thinking here directed at addressing the employment problem."

Actually, you can argue whether those "proposals" are good for the economy as we have thirty years of evidence that they are not good for the economy.