The job creation numbers are outright lies.

[Beaker]

Here in Chicago, the Sunday Tribune is THE place for help-wanted ads. During the Clinton Years, the jobs section was 3-4 sections deep, running in the range of 80-90 pages, week after week. On Holiday weekends it would often drop to 2-3 sections, but it was still hefty(by today's standards).
Since Bush was inserted into the Presidency, I can't remember the job section ever beeing more than one section, or running more 24 pages. Today's section is a whopping 20 pages, and that includes some full and half page Ads- something there was almost never room for during the heyday of the Clinton employment pages.

The job creation numbers are total bullshit, meant to prod the electorate into Christmas spending to jumpstart the economy. A better number that I'd like to see reported is the average pay of jobs lost vs. the average pay of jobs gained- I think that it would be a truly scary set of numbers to a lot of people.

[pinkpops]

1. Yeah, there's not much hiring around here

though some are being riffed and rehired by outsourcers at lower wages and benefits.

[CityZen-X]

13. Walmart Needs Janitors

I guess they must be talking about the jobs that are available at Walmart. Or maybe the scab openings in the Los Angeles area, due to the grocery strike. And the reconstruction of the burned out communities here in Caleefonia.
Hey a few more major fires, the INS doing their job, Shock & Awe a few more defenceless countries..............

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[pinkpops]

4. As someone once said

who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?

[Webster Green]

5. More like spin................

For instance, the new numbers don't reflect the huge number of people out of work, who have exhausted all their benefits. If you don't have an active claim, you aren't considered unemployed.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

9. U6, Chelly.

The realest numbers. A bunch of seasonal hires are simply a drop in the hat, against that number. Obfuscation.

[JNelson6563]

11. Yes, all the numbers are false

The GDP, the UE #s, it's all a facade. Just like the war on terra.

Smoke and mirrors is this misAdminstration's bread and butter friend. Wake up.

Julie

[Beaker]

16. anything released by this mis-administration is suspect-

as far as I'm concerned. Want-ads are a fantastic barometer of the job market, and they haven't changed appreciably in the past 2-3 years. It would interest me where all these supposed jobs have been created, and at what pay, part-time, full-time, permanent or temporary- a job, is NOT a job, is NOT a job.

When I see verifiable good numbers, as in an increasing number of pages in the jobs section, I'll give the monkey his due banana.

[Beaker]

19. Why in the world was this post deleted?

I didn't completely agree with what the poster had said, but I don't recall anything in the post that would have rendered it 'delete-worthy'...Some of the mods sure seem to have thin skins and itchy trigger-fingers these days.
I guess it reminds me a little too much of life under the PATRIOT Act.

[Selwynn]

3. Not outright lies

Here hiring has picked up quite a bit. Just because you haven't seen something in your area doesn't mean the numbers are wrong (or prove they are right - it does nothing, it is anecdotal). I do agree with you however, I'd like to see information on the pay disparity between the jobs folks you to have and the jobs they get rehired to.

[kalazh]

6. Bush is a

liar

[kentuck]

7. I heard John Kerry make the statement that 250,000 dropped off rolls..

last month and were no longer looking for work. He said the same thing happened the month before. Where did he get these statistics? Is this true? Kerry said the economy is much worse than being portrayed...

[htuttle]

10. It's probably from the U6 Unemployment numbers

Here's a quick definition I googled up about the various sorts of unemployment statistics:

The official unemployment rate estimated and reported monthly by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) using data from Current Population Survey is one of six alternative measures of unemployment tracked by the BLS, officially labeled U1-U6. The "official" unemployment rate is U3. The other five measures seek to document different ways in which labor can be underutilized, including unemployment duration, job losers, discouraged workers, marginally-attached workers, and part-time workers.

I couldn't find any current U6 rates in a quick search, but I did hear recently it was around 10%. I'm sure Kerry could easily get them from the BLS (but, as you may recall, many BLS statistics aren't released anymore due to an Executive Order from Bush...).

[Don_G]

8. Of Course

So is the economy and the props are hidden from the public for now.

[Vitruvius]

12. The Bu$h job creation numbers are as reliable as a Rethugnican vote count.

And note the spin atop the fakery; the Bu$h Administration destroys millions of jobs, then fakes the numbers to claim that 100,000 or so came back (for the Xmas season), then they call it job creation?

[LittleApple81]

14. Guess what: the army DOESN'T want jobs created.....

Ironically, a resurgent job market could hurt the president on Iraq by reducing the attractions of the military. “If the economy picks up, it could be disaster,” says a senior Army officer evaluating retention. And while Rumsfeld is routinely restaffing community draft boards, no one is seriously considering that idea—yet. But the Pentagon chief conceded that McCain was right to warn him against signaling U.S. retreat through “Iraqification.” The question now is whether Americans will signal retreat—at the recruiting offices and polls.

_____________

So, they want a hungry and hopeless crop of young people to be willing to go die for the BFEE?

Last paragraph in this article http://www.msnbc.com/news/991206.asp

[Yavin4]

15. The Job Creation Numbers Are Real

They reflect two things: (1) people have lowered their job expectations and are willing to take lower-paying survival jobs, and (2) the various economic stimuli that Bush and Greenspan have injected into the economy.

[cliss]

17. OK, so if we can't trust the figures from

the Labor Department (that's Elaine Chao, a Bush cheerleader), then what can we trust? I agree that there's something wrong with the figures. My personal hunch: anything that comes out of Washington is suspect. We've all seen what they're capable of.

So -- if counting jobs is not the right way to gauge how people are doing, is there another way? Example: 2 married people have both lost their jobs, went through unemployment for a while, and are now back at work again. The husband had to take a pay cut. It hurt, but the house was at stake. He figures he'll wait for a higher paying job when the economy turns up. His wife also had to take a pay cut; she's working as a temp right now, earning less with no benefits or health coverage.

This couple is managing to scrape by and avert a foreclosure, but are they better off? No. But they are employed. This is a story I've heard lots of times here in Portland.

Labor figures are deceptive. So if we can't trust them, what can we use to gauge if people are worse off, and that the labor figures are outright lies?

1) welfare rolls - I believe they've gone up
2) Food stamps - I'm not sure about this
3) personal bankruptcies - I know these have gone way up
4) median income - what's happened here?
5) foreclosures & repossessions - don't know
6) homelessness & requests for food baskets - ?

These would be better indicators of how people are really doing. The jokers in Washington can try to fool us all they want, but the real world will eventually intrude on their positive images.

[Selwynn]

18. It's not the numbers, its the spin that's wrong..

A couple good posts above already explain pretty well what I mean by that.

[srpantalonas]

20. foreclosures are up