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Was Jack Welch Right on Twitter? Are Unemployment Numbers “Unbelievable”?

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Jack Welch on Twitter: Unbelievable Jobs Numbers

Unemployment Numbers “Surprisingly Good”-

On Friday, October 5th, just two days after the first Presidential debate the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the unemployment data for September, which were “surprisingly good”. The experts were not expecting such a large drop. The Seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 8.3% in July and had fallen to 8.1% in August and then the unemployment numbers for September came in at a shocking 7.8%.

Upon hearing these numbers, Jack Welch sent a Tweet from his Twitter account that has enraged Democrats. He said,

Jack Welch

  • @jack_welch
    Unbelievable jobs numbers..these Chicago guys will do anything..can’t debate so change numbers.

Jack Welch has an amazing resume,  the former CEO of General Electric, a best-selling author, a lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management and the founder of the Jack Welch Management Institute, etc.

Media Pounces on Jack Welch for Twitter Comments

But of course, that didn’t stop the Media from pouncing all over him. Huffington Post called his Tweet “Demented” and of course, the White House dismissed him as “ludicrous”.

“That’s a ludicrous comment. No serious person believes that the Bureau of Labor Statistics manipulates its statistics,” said Alan Krueger, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

I don’t know where Mr. Krueger has been over the last 20 years, but John Williams of Shadowstats.com has made quite a name for himself disbelieving BLS numbers for some time now. And we have published several articles about how the Unemployment numbers don’t match up with the Employment numbers. See: Employment vs. Unemployment and Is the Government Fudging Unemployment Numbers?  We published both of these articles long before the Presidential debate and Jack Welch’s Tweet.

As a matter of fact, James Dale Davidson founder of the National Taxpayers Union and author of Blood in the Streets, The Sovereign Individual, and most recently Brazil Is the New America: How Brazil Offers Upward Mobility in a Collapsing World wrote many years ago that he believed that Bill Clinton was fudging BLS numbers. So accusations of BLS fudging are nothing new.

As a matter of fact, it might be [Read more…] about Was Jack Welch Right on Twitter? Are Unemployment Numbers “Unbelievable”?

May Unemployment Statistics by State

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U.S. Unemployment Rate by State

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has released their Unemployment rates by State. So we can see how the various states compare. From the chart below we can see that California, Nevada, North Carolina, New Jersey, Washington D.C., and Rhode Island are all doing worse than the national average. New York, Connecticut, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Colorado, Idaho, New Mexico, Washington and Oregon are all average in their unemployment rates while the remainder are above average.

Unemployment Rate by State

How the Unemployment Rates of Various States Compare

Nevada continued to record the highest unemployment rate among the states at 11.6 percent in May. Rhode Island and California posted the next highest rates, 11.0 and 10.8 percent, respectively. North Dakota again registered the lowest jobless rate, 3.0 percent, followed by Nebraska, 3.9 percent.

South Dakota, 4.3%, Vermont 4.6%, and Oklahoma at 4.8% were all below 5%. While New Hampshire, [Read more…] about May Unemployment Statistics by State

Jobs Report

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Non-farm Payrolls

The latest jobs report came out on June 1st with the U.S. Department of Labor reporting that non-farm payrolls (jobs) increased by 69,000 in May (seasonally adjusted). See Current Employment Data for the unadjusted non-farm payroll data.

Non-Farm PayrollsToday’s chart compares the total nonfarm payrolls (blue line) to its two components Private sector job market (gold line) and Government sector job  market (red line). But rather than showing total jobs it shows the percentage change in total nonfarm payrolls (blue line) since the declared end of the Great Recession in 2009  (the vertical line). So at that point it is zero. Prior to that point private sector jobs were as high as 7% higher while public sector (government) jobs were 2% lower (i.e. the government increased its employment from 2007 through 2009).

This chart illustrates, the overall job market (blue line) continues to trend higher albeit at a pace that has slowed over the past several months. Today’s chart also illustrates that the government job market has been trending significantly lower since the first half of 2009 (with the exception of temporary census hiring in mid-2010). This decline is due to federal, state and local governments attempting to realign their budgets following an unexpected decline in revenues as a result of the historic plunge in housing prices (i.e. property taxes, capital gains, etc.) and nonfarm payrolls (i.e. income taxes, payroll taxes, etc.).

Percent change Unemployment

One of the major tennents of Keynesian economics is that during a recession as the private sector is shrinking the public sector should increase and provide jobs and run deficits. But the side of Keynesian economics that most politicians forget is that the public sector is supposed to shrink and budgets are supposed to be balanced and debts repaid during good economic times.

The Non-Farms Payroll chart is courtesy of Chart of the Day

About Those US Jobs

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By David Galland, Casey Research

US politicians make a great show of concerning themselves with the level of unemployment. And so they bluster about the need for this new program or that new program – in fact, about any new idea except for the one that will actually be effective. Namely, stop the meddling.

Recently there have been some interesting developments that merely confirm the government’s intentions are to continue doing exactly the opposite of what they should be doing.

For starters, we had the news that President Obama announced his administration was going to block the Keystone XL pipeline, blaming the decision on the Republicans and foisting responsibility for the call onto the back of Hillary Clinton’s State Department.

The story has received quite a bit of coverage, so I won’t repeat it here. However, I will mention a Reuters column by John Kemp, titled Keystone symbolizes what is wrong with US policy. As he points out, the initial permit application for Keystone XL was filed in 2008 – and yet here we are, going on four years later, and the president is complaining about the “rushed and arbitrary deadline” imposed by the Republicans as part of the latest round of budget theatrics.

The actual fact of the matter is that the United States is becoming increasingly unfriendly toward businesses that actually produce anything tangible, despite our politicians constantly carping about the evil capitalists sending American jobs overseas. [Read more…] about About Those US Jobs

How DEEP Will Cuts in Government Services Go?

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Plus: The check is STILL in the mail.

“Localities have chopped 535,000 positions since September 2008…”
USA Today (10/18)

Cuts in government services became conspicuous after the 2007-2009 financial crisis.

The first edition of Robert Prechter’s Conquer the Crash saw this coming, even though the book published nearly a decade ago:

“Don’t expect government services to remain at their current levels…The tax receipts that pay for roads, police and jails, fire departments, trash pickup, emergency (911) monitoring, water systems and so on will fall to such low levels that services will be restricted.” (p. 257)

Households throughout Massachusetts know exactly what Prechter is talking about. [Read more…] about How DEEP Will Cuts in Government Services Go?

“$100,000 A Year for Part-Time Work”

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Job Security May Not Be What It Used To Be for Some Government Positions

By Robert Jay

 


When these are the facts….
 
  • 61 percent of Americans “always or usually” live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.
  • 66 percent of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.
  • 24 percent of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.
  • Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
  • Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17 percent when compared with 2008.
  • In the United States, the average federal worker now earns 60% MORE than the average worker in the private sector.
(Business Insider, 7/15)
 
… Then people tend to get agitated when they learn that some part-time city employees are earning $100,000 a year.
 
Yes, it’s another “can you believe this?” financial story of a California town …  MORE
 

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