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Fudged Employment Statistics: Birth-death adjustment scam

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Destructive cult of  GDP Fake Employment Statistics Slightly skeptical view on core CPI Productivity Myth and "Rising labor costs" hypocrisy    
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I’m totally shocked that the gooberment can’t get their shi* together. I wonder how much other data need revised. Any ideas?

easystreet. Comment to
Birth Death Model Outpaced By Business Failures
The Big Picture Nov 21, 2009

Official employment statistics does not take into account declining participation in labor market as well as overestimate the contribution to employment of new companies during the slow down (and underestimate those during acceleration of economy).  For some reason Bureau of Labor Statistics  does not provide the standard error estimate.  And this is a must for any "sampling" data (this is a survey of about 160,000 businesses and government agencies, representing approximately 400,000 individual worksites) and actually its accuracy can later be calculated based on other sources of data like tax records and social security payments.  Birth/death adjustment during economics slowdown definitely distorts the estimate up. 

The declining participation in work force also means that actual unemployment rate is higher.

The labor force participation rate is pro-cyclical, meaning that it goes up as tight labor markets induce new entrants into the labor market; and it goes down when soggy labor markets lead the discouraged unemployed to drop out of the labor force.

So, the short answer to the puzzle why there was a statistically solid job growth since mid 2006 might be related to the method of collecting the statistic. It might well be that nonfarm payroll growth really is/was almost absent and was result of aberration caused by the semi-absurd method of adjustment of data. That's a serious deficiency...

The unemployment rate is measured by the Household Survey and number of jobs lost in the Establishment Survey. The Birth/Death Revisions are to the Establishment Survey.

Detailed data in the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Business Employment Dynamics (BED) release, which comes out with a two-quarter lag, show employment growth of only 19 thousand in 2006Q3, while the nonfarm payroll tally for that quarter was over 450 thousand. The question arises why government reports more then 100K created jobs figure each month. Richard Benson in his paper How the Government Creates Jobs analyzed the situation in the following way:

Our elected officials and Wall Street executives all have a vested interest in keeping the perception of a robust economy alive. The employment data announced each month is critical to this perception, but a thorough analysis of the data suggests something quite different that what we are told.

Since 9/11, 60 percent of job creation has related almost directly to the housing boom and consumer spending, generated from home equity extraction through mortgage refinance. Remember, the Federal Reserve cut interest rates to one percent and kicked off the greatest housing bubble of all time. The housing boom created an America with over 1,200,000 real estate agents, and hundreds of thousands of jobs in the mortgage and home construction industry.

On the surface, the job market looks sound and Wall Street bulls take every opportunity to reinforce this belief whenever low initial unemployment claims are announced. But common sense tells me there is something brewing below the surface and this housing bust will have an even bigger impact on our economy, than previously suggested, by reducing employment and consumer spending, in a big way.

(The officially reported governmental statistics fail to note that a very high percentage of new jobs created in the past few years were commission-only jobs, or jobs with independent contractor status. Workers categorized as independent contractors are not eligible for unemployment benefits. This means all of the real estate agents who haven't made a sale, along with the mortgage bankers who no longer have a company to bring their loans to, will not be filing for unemployment, even though they haven't made a dime. The Department of Labor Statistics, however, continues to view these unemployed and vastly under-employed workers as holding full- time jobs.)

The latest employment data from the payroll survey showed it added 88,000 workers. However, the household survey - a broader measure - showed a loss of almost 500,000 jobs. According to the household survey, over 360,000 workers simply dropped out of the labor force in April. So, if you want to believe the Wall Street touts, please go right ahead and put your rose-colored glasses back on and tune into that movie with the happy Hollywood ending. If, on the other hand, you think like me and believe there is an economic storm brewing, please read on.

Our government "prints up jobs out of thin air" the same way the Federal Reserve prints up money. To manufacture jobs, The Bureau of Labor Statistics uses their very own Net Birth/Death computer model (see CES Net Birth/Death Model for job creation at www.bls.gov). The idea behind the model is simple: Because small firms are always failing and starting up and it takes a few months for them to report on the payroll survey, an estimate is needed for the new jobs created. So, back when the economy was recovering, the Net Birth/Death Computer Model added jobs that had very likely been created. Their methodology goes like this:

I realize the above may sound confusing, but it's actually meant to. This is economic propaganda created by our very own government! This false creation of jobs is not that much different from the over-stated earnings created by the executives at Enron that brought the company down.

Pimco's Gross analyses the situation in a slightly different way and with less emotions but points out to the same mechanism of computer generated jobs:

Here at PIMCO, we continue to expect the unemployment rate to go up. Thus, we are still (painfully, since December) long of duration, concentrated in the front end of the yield curve. And why are we still bearish on employment growth?

First and foremost, unemployment is a lagging variable, notably of momentum in discretionary aggregate demand. And discretionary aggregate demand has been unambiguously decelerating in recent quarters, and not just in residential construction, as displayed in the chart below.
 

The Great Puzzle

So why hasn’t the unemployment rate already risen? It’s the great puzzle, in the words of San Francisco Fed President Janet Yellen. The short answer to the puzzle is that the labor force participation rate has fallen, accounting fully for the drop from 4.7% to 4.5% for the unemployment rate over the last year. But this doesn’t make sense when you look at nonfarm payroll growth, which, again in the words of Ms. Yellen, has been gangbusters.

... ... ...

And a key reason is that the BLS, while very good at counting heads at existing firms, must make an assumption, in real time, about the birth-death rate for firms, so as to estimate the net gain/loss in jobs as firms open and close, a never-ending feature of a capitalist economy. In the early years of expansions, the birth assumption systematically is too low and the death assumption is systematically too high, which results in "jobless recoveries," which turn out to be not-so-jobless recoveries upon revision. The exact opposite holds in the late years of expansions and particularly in recessions. Such is the case, it would appear, at present.

Thus, in contrast to last August, when the job tally for the year ending March 2006 was revised up some 800 thousand, a stunningly large revision, the opposite is likely to unfold in this August’s benchmark revision for the year ending March 2007. Not to suggest, I hasten to add, that a downward revision equal to last year’s upward revision is in the cards. The honest answer is that we don’t know how big it will be. But available data, notably the BED and JOLTS data, point squarely to a downward revision.

So what, you say. Economists always bellyache about the quality of the data when they go against their forecasts. This is true. It is also true, however, that poor data can make for poor policy making, if and when the data is taken to be religiously true. This is particularly the case if the data is known to be lagging data of the business cycle, as is the case with the unemployment rate. Acting on the data, or refusing to act because of it, is the stuff of policy mistakes, sometimes known as recessions.

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[Apr 02, 2021] But let's be reasonable - how is it possible to have 700K - 800K initial jobless claims every week and create nearly a million new jobs?

Highly recommended!
If we are to believe authorities the USA. added 916K jobs in March, and the official unemployment rate is at 6% (note the word official; the current official U6 unemployment rate as of March 2021 is 10.70%; so the real number is probably much higher than 10%)
Fudging data became as prominent as it was in the USSR. The neoliberal empire can't afford objective stats.
Notable quotes:
"... monthly data is collected over a brief timeframe - just a few days - and that the calculations are seasonally adjusted. ..."
"... Yes, at least half the sheep population think they are real. It's insane how dumb people are today. ..."
Apr 02, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

variousmarkets

I spent the last 2 weeks digging into the numbers - especially timing of the surveys and data collection. I get the fact that weekly claims don't reflect new hires. I also realize that monthly data is collected over a brief timeframe - just a few days - and that the calculations are seasonally adjusted.

But let's be reasonable - how is it possible to have 700K - 800K initial jobless claims every week and create nearly a million new jobs? Does anyone really believe any of these numbers?

Globalistsaretrash

Yes, at least half the sheep population think they are real. It's insane how dumb people are today.

[Mar 28, 2021] Real unemployment is double the 'official' unemployment rate

Notable quotes:
"... The Globe and Mail ..."
"... The Globe and Mail ..."
"... The Endless Crisis: How Monopoly-Finance Capital Produces Stagnation and Upheaval from the USA to China ..."
Mar 28, 2021 | systemicdisorder.wordpress.com

How many people are really out of work? The answer is surprisingly difficult to ascertain. For reasons that are likely ideological at least in part, official unemployment figures greatly under-report the true number of people lacking necessary full-time work.

That the "reserve army of labor" is quite large goes a long way toward explaining the persistence of stagnant wages in an era of increasing productivity.

How large? Across North America, Europe and Australia, the real unemployment rate is approximately double the "official" unemployment rate.

The "official" unemployment rate in the United States, for example, was 5.5 percent for February 2015. That is the figure that is widely reported. But the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics keeps track of various other unemployment rates, the most pertinent being its "U-6" figure. The U-6 unemployment rate includes all who are counted as unemployed in the "official" rate, plus discouraged workers, the total of those employed part time but not able to secure full-time work and all persons marginally attached to the labor force (those who wish to work but have given up). The actual U.S. unemployment rate for February 2015, therefore, is 11 percent .

Share of wages, 1950-2014 Canada makes it much more difficult to know its real unemployment rate. The official Canadian unemployment rate for February was 6.8 percent, a slight increase from January that Statistics Canada attributes to "more people search[ing] for work." The official measurement in Canada, as in the U.S., European Union and Australia, mirrors the official standard for measuring employment defined by the International Labour Organization -- those not working at all and who are "actively looking for work." (The ILO is an agency of the United Nations.)

Statistics Canada's closest measure toward counting full unemployment is its R8 statistic, but the R8 counts people in part-time work, including those wanting full-time work, as "full-time equivalents," thus underestimating the number of under-employed by hundreds of thousands, according to an analysis by The Globe and Mail . There are further hundreds of thousands not counted because they do not meet the criteria for "looking for work." Thus The Globe and Mail analysis estimates Canada's real unemployment rate for 2012 was 14.2 percent rather than the official 7.2 percent. Thus Canada's true current unemployment rate today is likely about 14 percent.

Everywhere you look, more are out of work

The gap is nearly as large in Europe as in North America. The official European Union unemployment rate was 9.8 percent in January 2015 . The European Union's Eurostat service requires some digging to find out the actual unemployment rate, requiring adding up different parameters. Under-employed workers and discouraged workers comprise four percent of the E.U. workforce each, and if we add the one percent of those seeking work but not immediately available, that pushes the actual unemployment rate to about 19 percent.

The same pattern holds for Australia. The Australia Bureau of Statistics revealed that its measure of "extended labour force under-utilisation" -- this includes "discouraged" jobseekers, the "underemployed" and those who want to start work within a month, but cannot begin immediately -- was 13.1 percent in August 2012 (the latest for which I can find), in contrast to the "official," and far more widely reported, unemployment rate of five percent at the time.

Concomitant with these sobering statistics is the length of time people are out of work. In the European Union, for example, the long-term unemployment rate -- defined as the number of people out of work for at least 12 months -- doubled from 2008 to 2013 . The number of U.S. workers unemployed for six months or longer more than tripled from 2007 to 2013.

Thanks to the specter of chronic high unemployment, and capitalists' ability to transfer jobs overseas as "free trade" rules become more draconian, it comes as little surprise that the share of gross domestic income going to wages has declined steadily. In the U.S., the share has declined from 51.5 percent in 1970 to about 42 percent. But even that decline likely understates the amount of compensation going to working people because almost all gains in recent decades has gone to the top one percent.

Around the world, worker productivity has risen over the past four decades while wages have been nearly flat. Simply put, we'd all be making much more money if wages had merely kept pace with increased productivity.

Insecure work is the global norm

The increased ability of capital to move at will around the world has done much to exacerbate these trends. The desire of capitalists to depress wages to buoy profitability is a driving force behind their push for governments to adopt "free trade" deals that accelerate the movement of production to low-wage, regulation-free countries. On a global basis, those with steady employment are actually a minority of the world's workers.

Using International Labour Organization figures as a starting point, professors John Bellamy Foster and Robert McChesney calculate that the "global reserve army of labor" -- workers who are underemployed, unemployed or "vulnerably employed" (including informal workers) -- totals 2.4 billion. In contrast, the world's wage workers total 1.4 billion -- far less! Writing in their book The Endless Crisis: How Monopoly-Finance Capital Produces Stagnation and Upheaval from the USA to China , they write:

"It is the existence of a reserve army that in its maximum extent is more than 70 percent larger than the active labor army that serves to restrain wages globally, and particularly in poorer countries. Indeed, most of this reserve army is located in the underdeveloped countries of the world, though its growth can be seen today in the rich countries as well." [page 145]

The earliest countries that adopted capitalism could "export" their "excess" population though mass emigration. From 1820 to 1915, Professors Foster and McChesney write, more than 50 million people left Europe for the "new world." But there are no longer such places for developing countries to send the people for whom capitalism at home can not supply employment. Not even a seven percent growth rate for 50 years across the entire global South could absorb more than a third of the peasantry leaving the countryside for cities, they write. Such a sustained growth rate is extremely unlikely.

As with the growing environmental crisis, these mounting economic problems are functions of the need for ceaseless growth. Once again, infinite growth is not possible on a finite planet, especially one that is approaching its limits. Worse, to keep the system functioning at all, the planned obsolescence of consumer products necessary to continually stimulate household spending accelerates the exploitation of natural resources at unsustainable rates and all this unnecessary consumption produces pollution increasingly stressing the environment.

Humanity is currently consuming the equivalent of one and a half earths , according to the non-profit group Global Footprint Network. A separate report by WWF–World Wide Fund For Nature in collaboration with the Zoological Society of London and Global Footprint Network, calculates that the Middle East/Central Asia, Asia-Pacific, North America and European Union regions are each consuming about double their regional biocapacity.

We have only one Earth. And that one Earth is in the grips of a system that takes at a pace that, unless reversed, will leave it a wrecked hulk while throwing ever more people into poverty and immiseration. That this can go on indefinitely is the biggest fantasy.

[Sep 09, 2019] What's the True Unemployment Rate in the US? by Jack Rasmus

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... The real unemployment rate is probably somewhere between 10%-12%. ..."
"... The U-6 also includes what the labor dept. calls involuntary part time employed. It should include the voluntary part time as well, but doesn't (See, they're not actively looking for work even if unemployed). ..."
"... But even the involuntary part time is itself under-estimated. I believe the Labor Dept. counts only those involuntarily part time unemployed whose part time job is their primary job. It doesn't count those who have second and third involuntary part time jobs. That would raise the U-6 unemployment rate significantly. The labor Dept's estimate of the 'discouraged' and 'missing labor force' is grossly underestimated. ..."
"... The labor dept. also misses the 1-2 million workers who went on social security disability (SSDI) after 2008 because it provides better pay, for longer, than does unemployment insurance. That number rose dramatically after 2008 and hasn't come down much (although the government and courts are going after them). ..."
"... The way the government calculates unemployment is by means of 60,000 monthly household surveys but that phone survey method misses a lot of workers who are undocumented and others working in the underground economy in the inner cities (about 10-12% of the economy according to most economists and therefore potentially 10-12% of the reported labor force in size as well). ..."
"... The SSDI, undocumented, underground, underestimation of part timers, etc. are what I call the 'hidden unemployed'. And that brings the unemployed well above the 3.7%. ..."
Sep 09, 2019 | www.counterpunch.org

The real unemployment rate is probably somewhere between 10%-12%. Here's why: the 3.7% is the U-3 rate, per the labor dept. But that's the rate only for full time employed. What the labor dept. calls the U-6 includes what it calls discouraged workers (those who haven't looked for work in the past 4 weeks). Then there's what's called the 'missing labor force'–i.e. those who haven't looked in the past year. They're not calculated in the 3.7% U-3 unemployment rate number either. Why? Because you have to be 'out of work and actively looking for work' to be counted as unemployed and therefore part of the 3.7% rate.

The U-6 also includes what the labor dept. calls involuntary part time employed. It should include the voluntary part time as well, but doesn't (See, they're not actively looking for work even if unemployed).

But even the involuntary part time is itself under-estimated. I believe the Labor Dept. counts only those involuntarily part time unemployed whose part time job is their primary job. It doesn't count those who have second and third involuntary part time jobs. That would raise the U-6 unemployment rate significantly. The labor Dept's estimate of the 'discouraged' and 'missing labor force' is grossly underestimated.

The labor dept. also misses the 1-2 million workers who went on social security disability (SSDI) after 2008 because it provides better pay, for longer, than does unemployment insurance. That number rose dramatically after 2008 and hasn't come down much (although the government and courts are going after them).

The way the government calculates unemployment is by means of 60,000 monthly household surveys but that phone survey method misses a lot of workers who are undocumented and others working in the underground economy in the inner cities (about 10-12% of the economy according to most economists and therefore potentially 10-12% of the reported labor force in size as well). The labor dept. just makes assumptions about that number (conservatively, I may add) and plugs in a number to be added to the unemployment totals. But it has no real idea of how many undocumented or underground economy workers are actually employed or unemployed since these workers do not participate in the labor dept. phone surveys, and who can blame them.

The SSDI, undocumented, underground, underestimation of part timers, etc. are what I call the 'hidden unemployed'. And that brings the unemployed well above the 3.7%.

Finally, there's the corroborating evidence about what's called the labor force participation rate. It has declined by roughly 5% since 2007. That's 6 to 9 million workers who should have entered the labor force but haven't. The labor force should be that much larger, but it isn't. Where have they gone? Did they just not enter the labor force? If not, they're likely a majority unemployed, or in the underground economy, or belong to the labor dept's 'missing labor force' which should be much greater than reported. The government has no adequate explanation why the participation rate has declined so dramatically. Or where have the workers gone. If they had entered the labor force they would have been counted. And their 6 to 9 million would result in an increase in the total labor force number and therefore raise the unemployment rate.

All these reasons–-i.e. only counting full timers in the official 3.7%; under-estimating the size of the part time workforce; under-estimating the size of the discouraged and so-called 'missing labor force'; using methodologies that don't capture the undocumented and underground unemployed accurately; not counting part of the SSI increase as unemployed; and reducing the total labor force because of the declining labor force participation-–together means the true unemployment rate is definitely over 10% and likely closer to 12%. And even that's a conservative estimate perhaps." Join the debate on Facebook More articles by: Jack Rasmus

Jack Rasmus is author of the recently published book, 'Central Bankers at the End of Their Ropes: Monetary Policy and the Coming Depression', Clarity Press, August 2017. He blogs at jackrasmus.com and his twitter handle is @drjackrasmus. His website is http://kyklosproductions.com .

[May 08, 2019] How Accurate Are the US Jobs Numbers? by Jack Rasmus

Notable quotes:
"... Current Establishment Survey (CES) Report ..."
"... Current Population Survey (CPS ..."
"... The much hyped 3.6% unemployment (U-3) rate for April refers only to full time jobs (35 hrs. or more worked in a week). And these jobs are declining by 191,000 while part time jobs are growing by 155,000. So which report is accurate? How can full time jobs be declining by 191,000, while the U-3 unemployment rate (covering full time only) is falling? The answer: full time jobs disappearing result in an unemployment rate for full time (U-3)jobs falling. A small number of full time jobs as a share of the total labor force appears as a fall in the unemployment rate for full time workers. Looked at another way, employers may be converting full time to part time and temp work, as 191,000 full time jobs disappear and 155,000 part time jobs increase. ..."
"... The April selective numbers of 263,000 jobs and 3.6% unemployment rate is further questionable by yet another statistic by the Labor Dept.: It is contradicted by a surge of 646,000 in April in the category, 'Not in the Labor Force', reported each month. That 646,000 suggests large numbers of workers are dropping out of the labor force (a technicality that actually also lowers the U-3 unemployment rate). 'Not in the Labor Force' for March, the previous month Report, revealed an increase of an additional 350,000 added to 'Not in the Labor Force' totals. In other words, a million–or at least a large percentage of a million–workers have left the labor force. This too is not an indication of a strong labor market and contradicts the 263,000 and U-3 3.6% unemployment rate. ..."
"... Whether jobs, wages or GDP stats, the message here is that official US economic stats, especially labor market stats, should be read critically and not taken for face value, especially when hyped by the media and press. The media pumps selective indicators that make the economy appear better than it actually is. Labor Dept. methods and data used today have not caught up with the various fundamental changes in the labor markets, and are therefore increasingly suspect. It is not a question of outright falsification of stats. It's about failure to evolve data and methodologies to reflect the real changes in the economy. ..."
"... Government stats are as much an 'art' (of obfuscation) as they are a science. They produce often contradictory indication of the true state of the economy, jobs and wages. Readers need to look at the 'whole picture', not just the convenient, selective media reported data like Establishment survey job creation and U-3 unemployment rates. ..."
May 08, 2019 | www.counterpunch.org

The recently released report on April jobs on first appearance, heavily reported by the media, shows a record low 3.6% unemployment rate and another month of 263,000 new jobs created. But there are two official US Labor dept. jobs reports, and the second shows a jobs market much weaker than the selective, 'cherry picked' indicators on unemployment and jobs creation noted above that are typically featured by the press.

Problems with the April Jobs Report

While the Current Establishment Survey (CES) Report (covering large businesses) shows 263,000 jobs created last month, the Current Population Survey (CPS ) second Labor Dept. report (that covers smaller businesses) shows 155,000 of these jobs were involuntary part time. This high proportion (155,000 of 263,000) suggests the job creation number is likely second and third jobs being created. Nor does it reflect actual new workers being newly employed. The number is for new jobs, not newly employed workers. Moreover, it's mostly part time and temp or low paid jobs, likely workers taking on second and third jobs.

Even more contradictory, the second CPS report shows that full time work jobs actually declined last month by 191,000. (And the month before, March, by an even more 228,000 full time jobs decline).

The much hyped 3.6% unemployment (U-3) rate for April refers only to full time jobs (35 hrs. or more worked in a week). And these jobs are declining by 191,000 while part time jobs are growing by 155,000. So which report is accurate? How can full time jobs be declining by 191,000, while the U-3 unemployment rate (covering full time only) is falling? The answer: full time jobs disappearing result in an unemployment rate for full time (U-3)jobs falling. A small number of full time jobs as a share of the total labor force appears as a fall in the unemployment rate for full time workers. Looked at another way, employers may be converting full time to part time and temp work, as 191,000 full time jobs disappear and 155,000 part time jobs increase.

And there's a further problem with the part time jobs being created: It also appears that the 155,000 part time jobs created last month may be heavily weighted with the government hiring part timers to start the work on the 2020 census–typically hiring of which starts in April of the preceding year of the census. (Check out the Labor Dept. numbers preceding the prior 2010 census, for April 2009, for the same development a decade ago).

Another partial explanation is that the 155,000 part time job gains last month (and in prior months in 2019) reflect tens of thousands of workers a month who are being forced onto the labor market now every month, as a result of US courts recent decisions now forcing workers who were formerly receiving social security disability benefits (1 million more since 2010) back into the labor market.

The April selective numbers of 263,000 jobs and 3.6% unemployment rate is further questionable by yet another statistic by the Labor Dept.: It is contradicted by a surge of 646,000 in April in the category, 'Not in the Labor Force', reported each month. That 646,000 suggests large numbers of workers are dropping out of the labor force (a technicality that actually also lowers the U-3 unemployment rate). 'Not in the Labor Force' for March, the previous month Report, revealed an increase of an additional 350,000 added to 'Not in the Labor Force' totals. In other words, a million–or at least a large percentage of a million–workers have left the labor force. This too is not an indication of a strong labor market and contradicts the 263,000 and U-3 3.6% unemployment rate.

Bottom line, the U-3 unemployment rate is basically a worthless indicator of the condition of the US jobs market; and the 263,000 CES (Establishment Survey) jobs is contradicted by the Labor Dept's second CPS survey (Population Survey).

GDP & Rising Wages Revisited

In two previous shows, the limits and contradictions (and thus a deeper explanations) of US government GDP and wage statistics were featured: See the immediate April 26, 2019 Alternative Visions show on preliminary US GDP numbers for the 1st quarter 2019, where it was shown how the Trump trade war with China, soon coming to an end, is largely behind the GDP latest numbers; and that the more fundamental forces underlying the US economy involving household consumption and real business investment are actually slowing and stagnating. Or listen to my prior radio show earlier this year where media claims that US wages are now rising is debunked as well.

Claims of wages rising are similarly misrepresented when a deeper analysis shows the proclaimed wage gains are, once again, skewed to the high end of the wage structure and reflect wages for salaried managers and high end professionals by estimating 'averages' and limiting data analysis to full time workers once again; not covering wages for part time and temp workers; not counting collapse of deferred and social wages (pension and social security payments); and underestimating inflation so that real wages appear larger than otherwise. Independent sources estimate more than half of all US workers received no wage increase whatsoever in 2018–suggesting once again the gains are being driven by the top 10% and assumptions of averages that distort the actual wage gains that are much more modest, if at all.

Ditto for GDP analysis and inflation underestimation using the special price index for GDP (the GDP deflator), and the various re-definitions of GDP categories made in recent years and questionable on-going GDP assumptions, such as including in GDP calculation the questionable inclusion of 50 million homeowners supposedly paying themselves a 'rent equivalent'.

A more accurate 'truth' about jobs, wages, and GDP stats is found in the 'fine print' of definitions and understanding the weak statistical methodologies that change the raw economic data on wages, jobs, and economic output (GDP) into acceptable numbers for media promotion.

Whether jobs, wages or GDP stats, the message here is that official US economic stats, especially labor market stats, should be read critically and not taken for face value, especially when hyped by the media and press. The media pumps selective indicators that make the economy appear better than it actually is. Labor Dept. methods and data used today have not caught up with the various fundamental changes in the labor markets, and are therefore increasingly suspect. It is not a question of outright falsification of stats. It's about failure to evolve data and methodologies to reflect the real changes in the economy.

Government stats are as much an 'art' (of obfuscation) as they are a science. They produce often contradictory indication of the true state of the economy, jobs and wages. Readers need to look at the 'whole picture', not just the convenient, selective media reported data like Establishment survey job creation and U-3 unemployment rates.

When so doing, the bigger picture is an US economy being held up by temporary factors (trade war) soon to dissipate; jobs creation driven by part time work as full time jobs continue structurally to disappear; and wages that are being driven by certain industries (tech, etc.), high end employment (managers, professionals), occasional low end minimum wage hikes in select geographies, and broad categories of 'wages' ignored.

Join the debate on Facebook More articles by: Jack Rasmus

Jack Rasmus is author of the recently published book, 'Central Bankers at the End of Their Ropes: Monetary Policy and the Coming Depression', Clarity Press, August 2017. He blogs at jackrasmus.com and his twitter handle is @drjackrasmus. His website is http://kyklosproductions.com .

[May 05, 2019] Apres Moi le Deluge by Paul Craig Roberts

The jobs reports are fabrications and that the jobs that do exist are lowly paid domestic service jobs such as waitresses and bartenders and health care and social assistance. What has kept the American economy going is the expansion of consumer debt, not higher pay from higher productivity. The reported low unemployment rate is obtained by not counting discouraged workers who have given up on finding a job.
May 03, 2019 | www.unz.com

I was listening while driving to rightwing talk radio. It is BS just like NPR. It was about the great Trump economy compared to the terrible Obama one. The US hasn't had a great economy since jobs offshoring began in the 1990s, and with robotics about to launch Americans are unlikely ever again to experience a good economy.

The latest jobs report released today claims 236,000 new private sector jobs. Where are the jobs, if they in fact exist?

Manufacturing, that is making things, produced a mere 4,000 jobs.

The jobs are in domestic services. There are 54,800 jobs in "administrative and waste services." This category includes things such as employment services, temporary help services, and building services such as janitor services.

"Health care and social assistance" accounts for 52,600 jobs. This category includes things such as ambulatory health care services and individual and family services.

And there are 25,000 new waiters and bartenders.

Construction, mainly specialty trade contractors, added 33,000.

There are a few other jobs scattered about. Warehousing and storage had 5,400 new jobs.

Real estate rental and leasing hired 7,800.

Legal services laid off 700 people.

Architectural and engineering services lost 1,700 jobs.

There were 6,800 new managers.

The new jobs are not high value-added, high productivity jobs that provide middle class incomes.

In the 21st century the US economy has only served those who own stocks. The liquidity that the Federal Reserve has pumped into the economy has driven up stock prices, and the Trump tax cut has left corporations with more money for stock buybacks and dividend payments. The institute on Taxation and Economic Policy reports that 60 Fortune 500 companies paid no taxes on $79 billion in income, instead receiving a rebate of $4.3 billion. https://itep.org/notadime/

The sign of a good economy is when companies are reinvesting their profits and borrowed money in new plant and equipment to meet rising demand. Instead, US companies are spending more on buybacks and dividends than the total of their profits. In other words, the companies are going into debt in order to drive up their share prices by purchasing their own shares. The executives and shareholders are looting their own companies, leaving the companies less capitalized and deeper in debt. https://systemicdisorder.wordpress.com/2016/10/26/work-harder-for-speculators/

Meanwhile, for the American people the Trump regime's budget for 2020 delivers $845 billion in cuts to Medicare, $1.5 trillion in cuts to Medicaid, and $84 billion in cuts to Social Security disability benefits.

History is repeating itself: Let them eat cake. After me the deluge.

The French Revolution followed.

[Mar 09, 2019] The USA new class in full glory: rich are shopping differently from the low income families and the routine is like doing drags, but more pleasurable and less harmful. While workers are stuglling with the wages that barely allow to support the family, the pressure to cut hours and introduce two tire system

Notable quotes:
"... Buying beautiful clothes at full retail price was not a part of my childhood and it is not a part of my life now. It felt more illicit and more pleasurable than buying drugs. It was like buying drugs and doing the drugs, simultaneously."" ..."
"... "Erie Locomotive Plant Workers Strike against Two-Tier" [ Labor Notes ]. "UE proposed keeping the terms of the existing collective bargaining agreement in place while negotiating a new contract, but Wabtec rejected that proposal. Instead it said it would impose a two-tier pay system that would pay new hires and recalled employees up to 38 percent less in wages, institute mandatory overtime, reorganize job classifications, and hire temporary workers for up to 20 percent of the plant's jobs. ..."
"... Workers voted on Saturday to authorize the strike." • Good. Two-tier is awful, wherever found (including Social Security). ..."
Mar 09, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Guillotine Watch

"My Year of Living Like My Rich Friend" [ New York Magazine ].

"[S]hopping with T was different. When she walked into a store, the employees greeted her by name and began to pull items from the racks for her to try on. Riding her coattails, I was treated with the same consideration, which is how I wound up owning a beautiful cashmere 3.1 Philip Lim sweater that I had no use for and rarely wore, and which was eventually eaten by moths in my closet.

Buying beautiful clothes at full retail price was not a part of my childhood and it is not a part of my life now. It felt more illicit and more pleasurable than buying drugs. It was like buying drugs and doing the drugs, simultaneously.""

Indeed:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/dfO0TgcDUnI

Class Warfare

"Erie Locomotive Plant Workers Strike against Two-Tier" [ Labor Notes ]. "UE proposed keeping the terms of the existing collective bargaining agreement in place while negotiating a new contract, but Wabtec rejected that proposal. Instead it said it would impose a two-tier pay system that would pay new hires and recalled employees up to 38 percent less in wages, institute mandatory overtime, reorganize job classifications, and hire temporary workers for up to 20 percent of the plant's jobs.

Workers voted on Saturday to authorize the strike." • Good. Two-tier is awful, wherever found (including Social Security).

[Feb 26, 2019] THE CRISIS OF NEOLIBERALISM by Julie A. Wilson

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... While the Tea Party was critical of status-quo neoliberalism -- especially its cosmopolitanism and embrace of globalization and diversity, which was perfectly embodied by Obama's election and presidency -- it was not exactly anti-neoliberal. Rather, it was anti-left neoliberalism-, it represented a more authoritarian, right [wing] version of neoliberalism. ..."
"... Within the context of the 2016 election, Clinton embodied the neoliberal center that could no longer hold. Inequality. Suffering. Collapsing infrastructures. Perpetual war. Anger. Disaffected consent. ..."
"... Both Sanders and Trump were embedded in the emerging left and right responses to neoliberalism's crisis. Specifically, Sanders' energetic campaign -- which was undoubtedly enabled by the rise of the Occupy movement -- proposed a decidedly more "commongood" path. Higher wages for working people. Taxes on the rich, specifically the captains of the creditocracy. ..."
"... In other words, Trump supporters may not have explicitly voted for neoliberalism, but that's what they got. In fact, as Rottenberg argues, they got a version of right neoliberalism "on steroids" -- a mix of blatant plutocracy and authoritarianism that has many concerned about the rise of U.S. fascism. ..."
"... We can't know what would have happened had Sanders run against Trump, but we can think seriously about Trump, right and left neoliberalism, and the crisis of neoliberal hegemony. In other words, we can think about where and how we go from here. As I suggested in the previous chapter, if we want to construct a new world, we are going to have to abandon the entangled politics of both right and left neoliberalism; we have to reject the hegemonic frontiers of both disposability and marketized equality. After all, as political philosopher Nancy Fraser argues, what was rejected in the election of 2016 was progressive, left neoliberalism. ..."
"... While the rise of hyper-right neoliberalism is certainly nothing to celebrate, it does present an opportunity for breaking with neoliberal hegemony. We have to proceed, as Gary Younge reminds us, with the realization that people "have not rejected the chance of a better world. They have not yet been offered one."' ..."
Oct 08, 2017 | www.amazon.com

Quote from the book is courtesy of Amazon preview of the book Neoliberalism (Key Ideas in Media & Cultural Studies)

In Chapter 1, we traced the rise of our neoliberal conjuncture back to the crisis of liberalism during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, culminating in the Great Depression. During this period, huge transformations in capitalism proved impossible to manage with classical laissez-faire approaches. Out of this crisis, two movements emerged, both of which would eventually shape the course of the twentieth century and beyond. The first, and the one that became dominant in the aftermath of the crisis, was the conjuncture of embedded liberalism. The crisis indicated that capitalism wrecked too much damage on the lives of ordinary citizens. People (white workers and families, especially) warranted social protection from the volatilities and brutalities of capitalism. The state's public function was expanded to include the provision of a more substantive social safety net, a web of protections for people and a web of constraints on markets. The second response was the invention of neoliberalism. Deeply skeptical of the common-good principles that undergirded the emerging social welfare state, neoliberals began organizing on the ground to develop a "new" liberal govemmentality, one rooted less in laissez-faire principles and more in the generalization of competition and enterprise. They worked to envision a new society premised on a new social ontology, that is, on new truths about the state, the market, and human beings. Crucially, neoliberals also began building infrastructures and institutions for disseminating their new' knowledges and theories (i.e., the Neoliberal Thought Collective), as well as organizing politically to build mass support for new policies (i.e., working to unite anti-communists, Christian conservatives, and free marketers in common cause against the welfare state). When cracks in embedded liberalism began to surface -- which is bound to happen with any moving political equilibrium -- neoliberals were there with new stories and solutions, ready to make the world anew.

We are currently living through the crisis of neoliberalism. As I write this book, Donald Trump has recently secured the U.S. presidency, prevailing in the national election over his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton. Throughout the election, I couldn't help but think back to the crisis of liberalism and the two responses that emerged. Similarly, after the Great Recession of 2008, we've saw two responses emerge to challenge our unworkable status quo, which dispossesses so many people of vital resources for individual and collective life. On the one hand, we witnessed the rise of Occupy Wall Street. While many continue to critique the movement for its lack of leadership and a coherent political vision, Occupy was connected to burgeoning movements across the globe, and our current political horizons have been undoubtedly shaped by the movement's success at repositioning class and economic inequality within our political horizon. On the other hand, we saw' the rise of the Tea Party, a right-wing response to the crisis. While the Tea Party was critical of status-quo neoliberalism -- especially its cosmopolitanism and embrace of globalization and diversity, which was perfectly embodied by Obama's election and presidency -- it was not exactly anti-neoliberal. Rather, it was anti-left neoliberalism-, it represented a more authoritarian, right [wing] version of neoliberalism.

Within the context of the 2016 election, Clinton embodied the neoliberal center that could no longer hold. Inequality. Suffering. Collapsing infrastructures. Perpetual war. Anger. Disaffected consent. There were just too many fissures and fault lines in the glossy, cosmopolitan world of left neoliberalism and marketized equality. Indeed, while Clinton ran on status-quo stories of good governance and neoliberal feminism, confident that demographics and diversity would be enough to win the election, Trump effectively tapped into the unfolding conjunctural crisis by exacerbating the cracks in the system of marketized equality, channeling political anger into his celebrity brand that had been built on saying "f*** you" to the culture of left neoliberalism (corporate diversity, political correctness, etc.) In fact, much like Clinton's challenger in the Democratic primary, Benie Sanders, Trump was a crisis candidate.

Both Sanders and Trump were embedded in the emerging left and right responses to neoliberalism's crisis. Specifically, Sanders' energetic campaign -- which was undoubtedly enabled by the rise of the Occupy movement -- proposed a decidedly more "commongood" path. Higher wages for working people. Taxes on the rich, specifically the captains of the creditocracy.

Universal health care. Free higher education. Fair trade. The repeal of Citizens United. Trump offered a different response to the crisis. Like Sanders, he railed against global trade deals like NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). However, Trump's victory was fueled by right neoliberalism's culture of cruelty. While Sanders tapped into and mobilized desires for a more egalitarian and democratic future, Trump's promise was nostalgic, making America "great again" -- putting the nation back on "top of the world," and implying a time when women were "in their place" as male property, and minorities and immigrants were controlled by the state.

Thus, what distinguished Trump's campaign from more traditional Republican campaigns was that it actively and explicitly pitted one group's equality (white men) against everyone else's (immigrants, women, Muslims, minorities, etc.). As Catherine Rottenberg suggests, Trump offered voters a choice between a multiracial society (where folks are increasingly disadvantaged and dispossessed) and white supremacy (where white people would be back on top). However, "[w]hat he neglected to state," Rottenberg writes,

is that neoliberalism flourishes in societies where the playing field is already stacked against various segments of society, and that it needs only a relatively small select group of capital-enhancing subjects, while everyone else is ultimately dispensable. 1

In other words, Trump supporters may not have explicitly voted for neoliberalism, but that's what they got. In fact, as Rottenberg argues, they got a version of right neoliberalism "on steroids" -- a mix of blatant plutocracy and authoritarianism that has many concerned about the rise of U.S. fascism.

We can't know what would have happened had Sanders run against Trump, but we can think seriously about Trump, right and left neoliberalism, and the crisis of neoliberal hegemony. In other words, we can think about where and how we go from here. As I suggested in the previous chapter, if we want to construct a new world, we are going to have to abandon the entangled politics of both right and left neoliberalism; we have to reject the hegemonic frontiers of both disposability and marketized equality. After all, as political philosopher Nancy Fraser argues, what was rejected in the election of 2016 was progressive, left neoliberalism.

While the rise of hyper-right neoliberalism is certainly nothing to celebrate, it does present an opportunity for breaking with neoliberal hegemony. We have to proceed, as Gary Younge reminds us, with the realization that people "have not rejected the chance of a better world. They have not yet been offered one."'

Mark Fisher, the author of Capitalist Realism, put it this way:

The long, dark night of the end of history has to be grasped as an enormous opportunity. The very oppressive pervasiveness of capitalist realism means that even glimmers of alternative political and economic possibilities can have a disproportionately great effect. The tiniest event can tear a hole in the grey curtain of reaction which has marked the horizons of possibility under capitalist realism. From a situation in which nothing can happen, suddenly anything is possible again.4

I think that, for the first time in the history of U.S. capitalism, the vast majority of people might sense the lie of liberal, capitalist democracy. They feel anxious, unfree, disaffected. Fantasies of the good life have been shattered beyond repair for most people. Trump and this hopefully brief triumph of right neoliberalism will soon lay this bare for everyone to see. Now, with Trump, it is absolutely clear: the rich rule the world; we are all disposable; this is no democracy. The question becomes: How will we show up for history? Will there be new stories, ideas, visions, and fantasies to attach to? How can we productively and meaningful intervene in the crisis of neoliberalism? How can we "tear a hole in the grey curtain" and open up better worlds? How can we put what we've learned to use and begin to imagine and build a world beyond living in competition? I hope our critical journey through the neoliberal conjuncture has enabled you to begin to answer these questions.

More specifically, in recent decades, especially since the end of the Cold War, our common-good sensibilities have been channeled into neoliberal platforms for social change and privatized action, funneling our political energies into brand culture and marketized struggles for equality (e.g., charter schools, NGOs and non-profits, neoliberal antiracism and feminism). As a result, despite our collective anger and disaffected consent, we find ourselves stuck in capitalist realism with no real alternative. Like the neoliberal care of the self, we are trapped in a privatized mode of politics that relies on cruel optimism; we are attached, it seems, to politics that inspire and motivate us to action, while keeping us living in competition.

To disrupt the game, we need to construct common political horizons against neoliberal hegemony. We need to use our common stories and common reason to build common movements against precarity -- for within neoliberalism, precarity is what ultimately has the potential to thread all of our lives together. Put differently, the ultimate fault line in the neoliberal conjiuicture is the way it subjects us all to precarity and the biopolitics of disposability, thereby creating conditions of possibility for new coalitions across race, gender, citizenship, sexuality, and class. Recognizing this potential for coalition in the face of precarization is the most pressing task facing those who are yearning for a new world. The question is: How do we get there? How do we realize these coalitional potentialities and materialize common horizons?

HOW WE GET THERE

Ultimately, mapping the neoliberal conjuncture through everyday life in enterprise culture has not only provided some direction in terms of what we need; it has also cultivated concrete and practical intellectual resources for political interv ention and social interconnection -- a critical toolbox for living in common. More specifically, this book has sought to provide resources for thinking and acting against the four Ds: resources for engaging in counter-conduct, modes of living that refuse, on one hand, to conduct one's life according to the norm of enterprise, and on the other, to relate to others through the norm of competition. Indeed, we need new ways of relating, interacting, and living as friends, lovers, workers, vulnerable bodies, and democratic people if we are to write new stories, invent new govemmentalities, and build coalitions for new worlds.

Against Disimagination: Educated Hope and Affirmative Speculation

We need to stop turning inward, retreating into ourselves, and taking personal responsibility for our lives (a task which is ultimately impossible). Enough with the disimagination machine! Let's start looking outward, not inward -- to the broader structures that undergird our lives. Of course, we need to take care of ourselves; we must survive. But I firmly believe that we can do this in ways both big and small, that transform neoliberal culture and its status-quo stories.

Here's the thing I tell my students all the time. You cannot escape neoliberalism. It is the air we breathe, the water in which we swim. No job, practice of social activism, program of self-care, or relationship will be totally free from neoliberal impingements and logics. There is no pure "outside" to get to or work from -- that's just the nature of the neoliberalism's totalizing cultural power. But let's not forget that neoliberalism's totalizing cultural power is also a source of weakness. Potential for resistance is everywhere, scattered throughout our everyday lives in enterprise culture. Our critical toolbox can help us identify these potentialities and navigate and engage our conjuncture in ways that tear open up those new worlds we desire.

In other words, our critical perspective can help us move through the world with what Henry Giroux calls educated hope. Educated hope means holding in tension the material realities of power and the contingency of history. This orientation of educated hope knows very well what we're up against. However, in the face of seemingly totalizing power, it also knows that neoliberalism can never become total because the future is open. Educated hope is what allows us to see the fault lines, fissures, and potentialities of the present and emboldens us to think and work from that sliver of social space where we do have political agency and freedom to construct a new world. Educated hope is what undoes the power of capitalist realism. It enables affirmative speculation (such as discussed in Chapter 5), which does not try to hold the future to neoliberal horizons (that's cruel optimism!), but instead to affirm our commonalities and the potentialities for the new worlds they signal. Affirmative speculation demands a different sort of risk calculation and management. It senses how little we have to lose and how much we have to gain from knocking the hustle of our lives.

Against De-democratization: Organizing and Collective Coverning

We can think of educated hope and affirmative speculation as practices of what Wendy Brown calls "bare democracy" -- the basic idea that ordinary' people like you and me should govern our lives in common, that we should critique and try to change our world, especially the exploitative and oppressive structures of power that maintain social hierarchies and diminish lives. Neoliberal culture works to stomp out capacities for bare democracy by transforming democratic desires and feelings into meritocratic desires and feelings. In neoliberal culture, utopian sensibilities are directed away from the promise of collective utopian sensibilities are directed away from the promise of collective governing to competing for equality.

We have to get back that democractic feeling! As Jeremy Gilbert taught us, disaffected consent is a post-democratic orientation. We don't like our world, but we don't think we can do anything about it. So, how do we get back that democratic feeling? How do we transform our disaffected consent into something new? As I suggested in the last chapter, we organize. Organizing is simply about people coming together around a common horizon and working collectively to materialize it. In this way, organizing is based on the idea of radical democracy, not liberal democracy. While the latter is based on formal and abstract rights guaranteed by the state, radical democracy insists that people should directly make the decisions that impact their lives, security, and well-being. Radical democracy is a practice of collective governing: it is about us hashing out, together in communities, what matters, and working in common to build a world based on these new sensibilities.

The work of organizing is messy, often unsatisfying, and sometimes even scary. Organizing based on affirmative speculation and coalition-building, furthermore, will have to be experimental and uncertain. As Lauren Berlant suggests, it means "embracing the discomfort of affective experience in a truly open social life that no

one has ever experienced." Organizing through and for the common "requires more adaptable infrastructures. Keep forcing the existing infrastructures to do what they don't know how to do. Make new ways to be local together, where local doesn't require a physical neighborhood." 5 What Berlant is saying is that the work of bare democracy requires unlearning, and detaching from, our current stories and infrastructures in order to see and make things work differently. Organizing for a new world is not easy -- and there are no guarantees -- but it is the only way out of capitalist realism.

Against Disposability: Radical Equality

Getting back democratic feeling will at once require and help us lo move beyond the biopolitics of disposability and entrenched systems of inequality. On one hand, organizing will never be enough if it is not animated by bare democracy, a sensibility that each of us is equally important when it comes to the project of determining our lives in common. Our bodies, our hurts, our dreams, and our desires matter regardless of our race, gender, sexuality, or citizenship, and regardless of how r much capital (economic, social, or cultural) we have. Simply put, in a radical democracy, no one is disposable. This bare-democratic sense of equality must be foundational to organizing and coalition-building. Otherwise, we will always and inevitably fall back into a world of inequality.

On the other hand, organizing and collective governing will deepen and enhance our sensibilities and capacities for radical equality. In this context, the kind of self-enclosed individualism that empowers and underwrites the biopolitics of disposability melts away, as we realize the interconnectedness of our lives and just how amazing it feels to

fail, we affirm our capacities for freedom, political intervention, social interconnection, and collective social doing.

Against Dispossession: Shared Security and Common Wealth

Thinking and acting against the biopolitics of disposability goes hand-in-hand with thinking and acting against dispossession. Ultimately, when we really understand and feel ourselves in relationships of interconnection with others, we want for them as we want for ourselves. Our lives and sensibilities of what is good and just are rooted in radical equality, not possessive or self-appreciating individualism. Because we desire social security and protection, we also know others desire and deserve the same.

However, to really think and act against dispossession means not only advocating for shared security and social protection, but also for a new society that is built on the egalitarian production and distribution of social wealth that we all produce. In this sense, we can take Marx's critique of capitalism -- that wealth is produced collectively but appropriated individually -- to heart. Capitalism was built on the idea that one class -- the owners of the means of production -- could exploit and profit from the collective labors of everyone else (those who do not own and thus have to work), albeit in very different ways depending on race, gender, or citizenship. This meant that, for workers of all stripes, their lives existed not for themselves, but for others (the appropriating class), and that regardless of what we own as consumers, we are not really free or equal in that bare-democratic sense of the word.

If we want to be really free, we need to construct new material and affective social infrastructures for our common wealth. In these new infrastructures, wealth must not be reduced to economic value; it must be rooted in social value. Here, the production of wealth does not exist as a separate sphere from the reproduction of our lives. In other words, new infrastructures, based on the idea of common wealth, will not be set up to exploit our labor, dispossess our communities, or to divide our lives. Rather, they will work to provide collective social resources and care so that we may all be free to pursue happiness, create beautiful and/or useful things, and to realize our potential within a social world of living in common. Crucially, to create the conditions for these new, democratic forms of freedom rooted in radical equality, we need to find ways to refuse and exit the financial networks of Empire and the dispossessions of creditocracy, building new systems that invite everyone to participate in the ongoing production of new worlds and the sharing of the wealth that we produce in common.

It's not up to me to tell you exactly where to look, but I assure you that potentialities for these new worlds are everywhere around you.

[Oct 30, 2018] Anyone working at IBM after 1993 should have had no expectation of a lifetime career

Under neoliberlaism the idea of loyalty between a corporation and an employee makes no more sense than loyalty between a motel and its guests.
Notable quotes:
"... Any expectation of "loyalty", that two-way relationship of employee/company from an earlier time, was wishful thinking ..."
"... With all the automation going on around the world, these business leaders better worry about people not having money to buy their goods and services plus what are they going to do with the surplus of labor ..."
"... This is the nail in the coffin. As an IT manager responsible for selecting and purchasing software, I will never again recommend IBM products ..."
"... The way I saw it, every time I received a paycheck from IBM in exchange for two weeks' work, we were (almost) even. I did not owe them anything else and they did not owe me anything. The way I saw it, every time I received a paycheck from IBM in exchange for two weeks' work, we were (almost) even. I did not owe them anything else and they did not owe me anything. The idea of loyalty between a corporation and an at-will employee makes no more sense than loyalty between a motel and its guests. ..."
"... The annual unemployment rate topped 8% in 1975 and would reach nearly 10% in 1982. The economy seemed trapped in the new nightmare of stagflation," so called because it combined low economic growth and high unemployment ("stagnation") with high rates of inflation. And the prime rate hit 20% by 1980. ..."
Oct 30, 2018 | features.propublica.org
Jeff Russell , Thursday, March 22, 2018 4:31 PM
I started at IBM 3 days out of college in 1979 and retired in 2017. I was satisfied with my choice and never felt mistreated because I had no expectation of lifetime employment, especially after the pivotal period in the 1990's when IBM almost went out of business. The company survived that period by dramatically restructuring both manufacturing costs and sales expense including the firing of tens of thousands of employees. These actions were well documented in the business news of the time, the obvious alternative was bankruptcy.

I told the authors that anyone working at IBM after 1993 should have had no expectation of a lifetime career. Downsizing, outsourcing, movement of work around the globe was already commonplace at all such international companies. Any expectation of "loyalty", that two-way relationship of employee/company from an earlier time, was wishful thinking .

I was always prepared to be sent packing, without cause, at any time and always had my resume up-to-date. I stayed because of interesting work, respectful supervisors, and adequate compensation.

The "resource action" that forced my decision to retire was no surprise, the company that hired me had been gone for decades.

DDRLSGC Jeff Russell , in reply to" aria-label="in reply to"> •
With all the automation going on around the world, these business leaders better worry about people not having money to buy their goods and services plus what are they going to do with the surplus of labor
John Kauai Jeff Russell , in reply to" aria-label="in reply to"> •
I had, more or less, the same experience at Cisco. They paid me to quit. Luckily, I was ready for it.

The article mentions IBMs 3 failures. So who was it that was responsible for not anticipating the transitions? It is hard enough doing what you already know. Perhaps companies should be spending more on figuring out "what's next" and not continually playing catch-up by dumping the older workers for the new.

MichiganRefugee , Friday, March 23, 2018 9:52 AM
I was laid off by IBM after 29 years and 4 months. I had received a division award in previous year, and my last PBC appraisal was 2+ (high performer.) The company I left was not the company I started with. Top management--starting with Gerstner--has steadily made IBM a less desirable place to work. They now treat employees as interchangeable assets and nothing more. I cannot/would not recommend IBM as an employer to any young programmer.
George Purcell , Friday, March 23, 2018 7:41 AM
Truly awesome work. I do want to add one thing, however--the entire rhetoric about "too many old white guys" that has become so common absolutely contributes to the notion that this sort of behavior is not just acceptable but in some twisted way admirable as well.
Bob Fritz , Thursday, March 22, 2018 7:35 PM
I read the article and all the comments.

Is anyone surprised that so many young people don't think capitalism is a good system any more?

I ran a high technology electronic systems company for years. We ran it "the old way." If you worked hard, and tried, we would bend over backwards to keep you. If technology or business conditions eliminated your job, we would try to train you for a new one. Our people were loyal, not like IBMers today. I honestly think that's the best way to be profitable.

People afraid of being unjustly RIFFed will always lack vitality.

petervonstackelberg , Thursday, March 22, 2018 2:00 PM
I'm glad someone is finally paying attention to age discrimination. IBM apparently is just one of many organizations that discriminate.

I'm in the middle of my own fight with the State University of New York (SUNY) over age discrimination. I was terminated by a one of the technical colleges in the SUNY System. The EEOC/New York State Division of Human Rights (NYDHR) found that "PROBABLE CAUSE (NYDHR's emphasis) exists to believe that the Respondent (Alfred State College - SUNY) has engaged in or is engaging in the unlawful discriminatory practice complained of." Investigators for NYDHR interviewed several witnesses, who testified that representatives of the college made statements such as "we need new faces", "three old men" attending a meeting, an older faculty member described as an "albatross", and "we ought to get rid of the old white guys". Witnesses said these statements were made by the Vice President of Academic Affairs and a dean at the college.

davosil , Sunday, March 25, 2018 5:00 PM
This saga at IBM is simply a microcosm of our overall economy. Older workers get ousted in favor of younger, cheaper workers; way too many jobs get outsourced; and so many workers today [young and old] can barely land a full-time job.
This is the behavior that our system incentivises (and gets away with) in this post Reagan Revolution era where deregulation is lauded and unions have been undermined & demonized. We need to seriously re-work 'work', and in order to do this we need to purge Republicans at every level, as they CLEARLY only serve corporate bottom-lines - not workers - by championing tax codes that reward outsourcing, fight a livable minimum wage, eliminate pensions, bust unions, fight pay equity for women & family leave, stack the Supreme Court with radical ideologues who blatantly rule for corporations over people all the time, etc. etc. ~35 years of basically uninterrupted Conservative economic policy & ideology has proven disastrous for workers and our quality of life. As goes your middle class, so goes your country.
ThinkingAloud , Friday, March 23, 2018 7:18 AM
The last five words are chilling... This is an award-winning piece....
RetiredIBM.manager , Thursday, March 22, 2018 7:39 PM
I am a retired IBM manager having had to execute many of these resource reduction programs.. too many.. as a matter of fact. ProPUBLICA....You nailed it!
David , Thursday, March 22, 2018 3:22 PM
IBM has always treated its customer-facing roles like Disney -- as cast members who need to match a part in a play. In the 60s and 70s, it was the white-shirt, blue-suit white men whom IBM leaders thought looked like mainframe salesmen. Now, rather than actually build a credible cloud to compete with Amazon and Microsoft, IBM changes the cast to look like cloud salespeople. (I work for Microsoft. Commenting for myself alone.)
CRAW David ,

Now IBM still treats their employees like Disney - by replacing them with H-1B workers.

MHV IBMer , Friday, March 23, 2018 10:35 PM
I am a survivor, the rare employee who has been at IBM for over 35 years. I have seen many, many layoff programs over 20 years now. I have seen tens of thousands people let go from the Hudson Valley of N.Y. Those of us who have survived, know and lived through what this article so accurately described. I currently work with 3 laid off/retired and rehired contractors. I have seen age discrimination daily for over 15 years. It is not only limited to layoffs, it is rampant throughout the company. Promotions, bonuses, transfers for opportunities, good reviews, etc... are gone if you are over 45. I have seen people under 30 given promotions to levels that many people worked 25 years for. IBM knows that these younger employees see how they treat us so they think they can buy them off. Come to think of it, I guess they actually are! They are ageist, there is no doubt, it is about time everyone knew. Excellent article.
Goldie Romero , Friday, March 23, 2018 2:31 PM
Nice article, but seriously this is old news. IBM has been at this for ...oh twenty years or more.
I don't really have a problem with it in terms of a corporation trying to make money. But I do have a problem with how IBM also likes to avoid layoffs by giving folks over 40 intentionally poor reviews, essentially trying to drive people out. Just have the guts to tell people, we don't need you anymore, bye. But to string people along as the overseas workers come in...c'mon just be honest with your workers.
High tech over 40 is not easy...I suggest folks prep for a career change before 50. Then you can have the last laugh on a company like IBM.
jblog , Friday, March 23, 2018 10:37 AM
From pages 190-191 of my novel, Ordinary Man (Amazon):

Throughout it all, layoffs became common, impacting mostly older employees with many years of service. These job cuts were dribbled out in small numbers to conceal them from the outside world, but employees could plainly see what was going on.

The laid off employees were supplanted by offshoring work to low-costs countries and hiring younger employees, often only on temporary contracts that offered low pay and no benefits – a process pejoratively referred to by veteran employees as "downsourcing." The recruitment of these younger workers was done under the guise of bringing in fresh skills, but while many of the new hires brought new abilities and vitality, they lacked the knowledge and perspective that comes with experience.

Frequently, an older more experienced worker would be asked to help educate newer employees, only to be terminated shortly after completing the task. And the new hires weren't fooled by what they witnessed and experienced at OpenSwitch, perceiving very quickly that the company had no real interest in investing in them for the long term. To the contrary, the objective was clearly to grind as much work out of them as possible, without offering any hope of increased reward or opportunity.

Most of the young recruits left after only a year or two – which, again, was part of the true agenda at the company. Senior management viewed employees not as talent, but simply as cost, and didn't want anyone sticking around long enough to move up the pay scale.

turquoisewaters , Thursday, March 22, 2018 10:19 PM
This is why you need unions.
Aaron Stackpole , Thursday, March 22, 2018 5:23 PM
This is the nail in the coffin. As an IT manager responsible for selecting and purchasing software, I will never again recommend IBM products. I love AIX and have worked with a lot if IBM products but not anymore. Good luck with the millennials though...
awb22 , Thursday, March 22, 2018 12:14 PM
The same thing has been going on at other companies, since the end of WWII. It's unethical, whether the illegality can be proven or not.

In the RTP area, where I live, I know many, many current and former employees. Times have changed, but the distinction between right and wrong hasn't.

Dave Allen , Thursday, March 22, 2018 1:07 PM
I worked for four major corporations (HP, Intel, Control Data Corporation, and Micron Semiconductor) before I was hired by IBM as a rare (at that time) experienced new hire.

Even though I ended up working for IBM for 21 years, and retired in 2013, because of my experiences at those other companies, I never considered IBM my "family."

The way I saw it, every time I received a paycheck from IBM in exchange for two weeks' work, we were (almost) even. I did not owe them anything else and they did not owe me anything. The way I saw it, every time I received a paycheck from IBM in exchange for two weeks' work, we were (almost) even. I did not owe them anything else and they did not owe me anything. The idea of loyalty between a corporation and an at-will employee makes no more sense than loyalty between a motel and its guests.

It is a business arrangement, not a love affair. Every individual needs to continually assess their skills and their value to their employer. If they are not commensurate, it is the employee's responsibility to either acquire new skills or seek a new employer.

Your employer will not hesitate to lay you off if your skills are no longer needed, or if they can hire someone who can do your job just as well for less pay. That is free enterprise, and it works for people willing to take advantage of it.

sometimestheyaresomewhatright Dave Allen , in reply to" aria-label="in reply to"> •
I basically agree. But why should it be OK for a company to fire you just to replace you with a younger you? If all that they accomplish is lowering their health care costs (which is what this is really about). If the company is paying about the same for the same work, why is firing older workers for being older OK?
Dave Allen sometimestheyaresomewhatright , in reply to" aria-label="in reply to"> •
Good question. The point I was trying to make is that people need to watch out for themselves and not expect their employer to do what is "best" for the employee. I think that is true whatever age the employee happens to be.

Whether employers should be able to discriminate against (treat differently) their employees based on age, gender, race, religion, etc. is a political question. Morally, I don't think they should discriminate. Politically, I think it is a slippery slope when the government starts imposing regulations on free enterprise. Government almost always creates more problems than they fix.

DDRLSGC Dave Allen , in reply to" aria-label="in reply to"> •
Sorry, but when you deregulate the free enterprise, it created more problems than it fixes and that is a fact that has been proven for the last 38 years.
Danllo DDRLSGC , in reply to" aria-label="in reply to"> •
That's just plain false. Deregulation creates competiiton. Competition for talented and skilled workers creates opportunities for those that wish to be employed and for those that wish to start new ventures. For example, when Ma Bell was regulated and had a monopoly on telecommunications there was no innovation in the telecom inudstry. However, when it was deregulated, cell phones, internet, etc exploded ... creating billionaires and millionaires while also improving the quality of life.
DDRLSGC Danllo , in reply to" aria-label="in reply to"> •
No, it happens to be true. When Reagan deregulate the economy, a lot of those corporate raiders just took over the companies, sold off the assets, and pocketed the money. What quality of life? Half of American lived near the poverty level and the wages for the workers have been stagnant for the last 38 years compared to a well-regulated economy in places like Germany and the Scandinavian countries where the workers have good wages and a far better standard of living than in the USA. Why do you think the Norwegians told Trump that they will not be immigrating to the USA anytime soon?
NotSure DDRLSGC , in reply to" aria-label="in reply to"> •
What were the economic conditions before Regan? It was a nightmare before Regan.

The annual unemployment rate topped 8% in 1975 and would reach nearly 10% in 1982. The economy seemed trapped in the new nightmare of stagflation," so called because it combined low economic growth and high unemployment ("stagnation") with high rates of inflation. And the prime rate hit 20% by 1980.
DDRLSGC NotSure , in reply to" aria-label="in reply to"> •
At least we had a manufacturing base in the USA, strong regulations of corporations, corporate scandals were far and few, businesses did not go under so quickly, prices of goods and services did not go through the roof, people had pensions and could reasonably live off them, and recessions did not last so long or go so deep until Reagan came into office. In Under Reagan, the jobs were allowed to be send overseas, unions were busted up, pensions were reduced or eliminated, wages except those of the CEOs were staganent, and the economic conditions under Bush, Senior and Bush, Jr. were no better except that Bush, Jr, was the first president to have a net minus below zero growth, so every time we get a Republican Administration, the economy really turns into a nightmare. That is a fact.

You have the Republicans in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin using Reaganomics and they are economic disaster areas.

DDRLSGC NotSure , in reply to" aria-label="in reply to"> •
You had an industrial base in the USA, lots of banks and savings and loans to choose from, lots of mom and pop stores, strong government regulation of the economy, able to live off your pensions, strong unions and employment laws along with the court system to back you up against corporate malfeasance. All that was gone when Reagan and the two Bushes came into office.
james Foster , Thursday, March 29, 2018 8:37 PM
Amazingly accurate article. The once great IBM now a dishonest and unscrupulous corporation concerned more about earnings per share than employees, customers, or social responsibility. In Global Services most likely 75% or more jobs are no longer in the US - can't believe a word coming out of Armonk.
Philip Meyer james Foster , in reply to" aria-label="in reply to"> •
I'm not sure there was ever a paradise in employment. Yeah, you can say there was more job stability 50 or 60 years ago, but that applied to a much smaller workforce than today (mostly white men). It is a drag, but there are also lot more of us old farts than there used to be and we live a lot longer in retirement as well. I don't see any magic bullet fix either.
George A , Tuesday, March 27, 2018 6:12 PM
Warning to Google/Facebook/Apple etc. All you young people will get old. It's inevitable. Do you think those companies will take care of you?
econdataus , Sunday, March 25, 2018 3:01 PM
Great article. What's especially infuriating is that the industry continues to claim that there is a shortage of STEM workers. For example, google "claim of 1.4 million computer science jobs with only 400,000 computer science graduates to fill them". If companies would openly say, "we have plenty of young STEM workers and prefer them to most older STEM workers", we could at least start addressing the problem. But they continue to promote the lie of there being a STEM shortage. They just want as big a labor pool as possible, unemployed workers be damned.
Buzz , Friday, March 23, 2018 12:00 PM
I've worked there 17 years and have worried about being layed off for about 11 of them. Moral is in the toilet. Bonuses for the rank and file are in the under 1% range while the CEO gets millions. Pay raises have been non existent or well under inflation for years. Adjusting for inflation, I make $6K less than I did my first day. My group is a handful of people as at least 1/2 have quit or retired. To support our customers, we used to have several people, now we have one or two and if someone is sick or on vacation, our support structure is to hope nothing breaks. We can't keep millennials because of pay, benefits and the expectation of being available 24/7 because we're shorthanded. As the unemployment rate drops, more leave to find a different job, leaving the old people as they are less willing to start over with pay, vacation, moving, selling a house, pulling kids from school, etc. The younger people are generally less likely to be willing to work as needed on off hours or to pull work from a busier colleague. I honestly have no idea what the plan is when the people who know what they are doing start to retire, we are way top heavy with 30-40 year guys who are on their way out, very few of the 10-20 year guys due to hiring freezes and we can't keep new people past 2-3 years. It's like our support business model is designed to fail.
OrangeGina , Friday, March 23, 2018 11:41 AM
Make no mistake. The three and four letter acronyms and other mushy corporate speak may differ from firm to firm, but this is going on in every large tech company old enough to have a large population of workers over 50. I hope others will now be exposed.
JeffMo , Friday, March 23, 2018 10:23 AM
This article hits the nail right on the head, as I come up on my 1 year anniversary from being....ahem....'retired' from 23 years at IBM....and I'll be damned if I give them the satisfaction of thinking this was like a 'death' to me. It was the greatest thing that could have ever happened. Ginny and the board should be ashamed of themselves, but they won't be.
Frankie , Friday, March 23, 2018 1:00 AM
Starting around age 40 you start to see age discrimination. I think this is largely due to economics, like increased vacation times, higher wages, but most of all the perception that older workers will run up the medical costs. You can pass all the age related discrimination laws you want, but look how ineffective that has been.

If you contrast this with the German workforce, you see that they have more older workers with the skills and younger workers without are having a difficult time getting in. So what's the difference? There are laws about how many vacation weeks that are given and there is a national medical system that everyone pays, so discrimination isn't seen in the same light.

The US is the only hold out maybe with South Africa that doesn't have a good national medical insurance program for everyone. Not only do we pay more than the rest of the world, but we also have discrimination because of it.

Rick Gundlach , Thursday, March 22, 2018 11:38 PM
This is very good, and this is IBM. I know. I was plaintiff in Gundlach v. IBM Japan, 983 F.Supp.2d 389, which involved their violating Japanese labor law when I worked in Japan. The New York federal judge purposely ignored key points of Japanese labor law, and also refused to apply Title VII and Age Discrimination in Employment to the parent company in Westchester County. It is a huge, self-described "global" company with little demonstrated loyalty to America and Americans. Pennsylvania is suing them for $170 million on a botched upgrade of the state's unemployment system.
Jeff , Thursday, March 22, 2018 2:05 PM
In early 2013 I was given a 3 PBC rating for my 2012 performance, the main reason cited by my manager being that my team lead thought I "seemed distracted". Five months later I was included in a "resource action", and was gone by July. I was 20 months shy of 55. Younger coworkers were retained. That was about two years after the product I worked on for over a decade was off-shored.

Through a fluke of someone from the old, disbanded team remembering me, I was rehired two years later - ironically in a customer support position for the very product I helped develop.

While I appreciated my years of service, previous salary, and previous benefits being reinstated, a couple years into it I realized I just wasn't cut out for the demands of the job - especially the significant 24x7 pager duty. Last June I received email describing a "Transition to Retirement" plan I was eligible for, took it, and my last day will be June 30. I still dislike the job, but that plan reclassified me as part time, thus ending pager duty for me. The job still sucks, but at least I no longer have to despair over numerous week long 24x7 stints throughout the year.

A significant disappointment occurred a couple weeks ago. I was discussing healthcare options with another person leaving the company who hadn't been resource-actioned as I had, and learned the hard way I lost over $30,000 in some sort of future medical benefit account the company had established and funded at some point. I'm not sure I was ever even aware of it. That would have funded several years of healthcare insurance during the 8 years until I'm eligible for Medicare. I wouldn't be surprised if their not having to give me that had something to do with my seeming "distracted" to them. <rolls eyes="">

What's really painful is the history of that former account can still be viewed at Fidelity, where it associates my departure date in 2013 with my having "forfeited" that money. Um, no. I did not forfeit that money, nor would I have. I had absolutely no choice in the matter. I find the use of the word 'forfeited' to describe what happened as both disingenuous and offensive. That said, I don't know whether's that's IBM's or Fidelity's terminology, though.

Herb Jeff , in reply to" aria-label="in reply to"> •
Jeff, You should call Fidelity. I recently received a letter from the US Department of Labor that they discovered that IBM was "holding" funds that belonged to me that I was never told about. This might be similar or same story .

[Jan 30, 2018] Perfect worker on the cheap by Dan Crawford

Jan 29, 2018 | angrybearblog.com

Via Bloomberg Obsession for the Perfect Worker Fading in Tight U.S. Job Market points to an issue in hiring that has been discussed here at AB:

This is a problem because, at 4.1 percent last month, U.S. unemployment is at the lowest level since 2000 and companies from Dallas to Denver are struggling to find the right workers. In some cases this is constraining growth, the Federal Reserve reported last week.

Corporate America's search for an exact match is "the number-one problem with hiring in our country," said Daniel Morgan, a recruiter in Birmingham, Alabama, who owns an Express Employment Professionals franchise. "Most companies get caught up on precise experience to a specific job," he said, adding: "Companies fail to see a person for their abilities and transferable skills."

U.S. employers got used to abundant and cheap labor following the 2007-2009 recession. Unemployment peaked at 10 percent in October 2009, and didn't return to the lows of the previous business cycle until last year. Firms still remain reluctant to boost pay or train employees with less-than-perfect credentials, though recruiters say that may have to change amid a jobless rate that's set to dip further.

Bill H , January 29, 2018 9:53 am

The way the article is cut off with the wage gains chart makes it seem that the article is on the Dean Baker theme of "pay higher wages and they will come," in which he argues that there is no shortage because you can hire workers away from your competitor, thereby merely moving the deficit from one place to another without eliminating it and unintentionally suggesting that there is actually is a shortage after all.

Immediately after that chart, however, the article segues into a pretty intelligent discussion of employers learning to ascertain "how can your experience be used in my application," making it unclear why the wage chart is even there.

The "lack of trained workers" complaint has long annoyed me, with its implication that it is the public sector's responsibility to train workers for the private sector. Why? If a company needs welders, why should that company not train its own welders?

J.Goodwin , January 29, 2018 11:39 am

Last week we were reviewing a job description we were preparing for a role in Canada. It was basically a super senior description, they wanted everything, specific experience, higher education, what amounts to a black belt project management certification but also accounting and finance background.

At the bottom it says 5 years experience.

I almost fell off my chair. That's an indicator of the pay band they were trying to fill at (let's say 3, and the description was written like a 10-15 years 6).

I tried to explain it to the person who wrote it and I said hey if we put this out there, we will get no hits. There is no one with this experience who will take what you are offering. I'm afraid we're going to end up with another home country expat instead. They're often not up the same standard you could get with a local if you reasonably scoped the job and gave a fair offer.

I think companies have forgotten how to compete for employees, and the recruiters are completely out of touch. Or maybe they are aware of the conditions and HR just won't sign on to fair value.

Mona Williams , January 29, 2018 1:09 pm

Before I retired 12 years ago, on-the-job training was much more common. Borders Books (remember them?) trained me for a week with pay for just a temporary Christmas-season job. Employers have gotten spoiled, and I hope they will figure this out. Some of the training programs I hear about just make me sigh. Nobody can afford to be trained while not being paid.

axt113 , January 29, 2018 1:26 pm

My Wife works as a junior recruiter, the problem she says is with the employers, they want a particular set of traits, and if there is even a slight deviation they balk

She says that one recent employer she worked with wanted so many particulars for not enough pay that even well experienced and well educated candidates she could find were either unwilling to accept the offer, or were missing one or two traits that made them unacceptable to the company.

rps , January 29, 2018 3:58 pm

This is exciting news for many of us who've been waiting for the pendulum to swing in favor of potential employees after a decade of reading employers help wanted Santa wish list criteria for a minimum wage job of 40+ hours. I'd argue the unemployment rate is not 4.1%; rather, I know of many intelligent/educated/experienced versatile people who've been cut out of the job market and/or chose not to work for breadcrumbs.

HR's 6 second resume review rule of potential candidates was a massive failure by eliminating candidates whose skills, experience and critical thinking abilities could've cultivated innovation across many disciplines. Instead companies looked for drone replacement at slave wages. HR's narrow candidate searches often focused on resume typos or perceived grammatical errors (highly unlikely HR recruiters have an English Ph.D), thus trashing the resume. Perhaps, HR will be refitted with critical thinking people who see a candidate's potential beyond the forgotten comma or period.

[Dec 15, 2017] Neoliberalism undermines workers health not only via the financial consequences of un/under employment and low wages, but also through chronic exposure to stress due to insecurity

Neoliberalism as "Die-now economics." "Embodiment into lower class" or "the representation as a member the lower class" if often fatal and upper mobility mobility is artificially limited (despite all MSM hype it is lower then in Europe). So just being a member of lower class noticeably and negatively affects your life expectancy and other social metrics. Job insecurity is the hazard reserved for lower and lower middle classes destructivly effect both physical and mental health. Too much stress is not good for humans. Neoliberalism with its manta of competition uber alles and atomization of the workforce is a real killer. also the fact that such article was published and the comments below is a clear sign that the days of neoliberalism are numbered. It should go.
Notable quotes:
"... In our new book , we draw on an extensive body of scientific literature to assess the health effects of three decades of neoliberal policies. Focusing on the social determinants of health -- the conditions of life and work that make it relatively easy for some people to lead long and healthy lives, while it is all but impossible for others -- we show that there are four interconnected neoliberal epidemics: austerity, obesity, stress, and inequality. They are neoliberal because they are associated with or worsened by neoliberal policies. ..."
"... Neoliberalism operates through labor markets to undermine health not only by way of the financial consequences of unemployment, inadequate employment, or low wages, as important as these are, but also through chronic exposure to stress that 'gets under your skin' by way of multiple mechanisms. Quite simply, the effects of chronic insecurity wear people out over the life course in biologically measurable ways . ..."
"... Oh, and "beyond class" because for social beings embodiment involves "social production; social consumption; and social reproduction." In the most reductive definition of class -- the one I used in my crude 1% + 10% + 90% formulation -- class is determined by wage work (or not), hence is a part of production (of capital), not social consumption (eating, etc.) or social reproduction (children, families, household work ). So, even if class in our political economy is the driver, it's not everything. ..."
"... "Neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It maintains that "the market" delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning. ..."
"... Attempts to limit competition are treated as inimical to liberty. Tax and regulation should be minimised, public services should be privatised. The organisation of labour and collective bargaining by trade unions are portrayed as market distortions that impede the formation of a natural hierarchy of winners and losers. Inequality is recast as virtuous: a reward for utility and a generator of wealth, which trickles down to enrich everyone. Efforts to create a more equal society are both counterproductive and morally corrosive. The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve." ..."
"... As opposed to being champions of "self-actualization/identity" and "absolute relativism", I always got the impression that they were both offering stark warnings about diving too deeply into the self, vis-a-vis, identity. As if, they both understood the terrifying world that it could/would create, devoid of common cause, community, and ultimately empathy. A world where "we" are not possible because we have all become "I". ..."
"... Wonks like Yglesias love to mock working class concerns as "economic anxiety," which is at once belittling (it's all about f-e-e-e-lings ..."
"... "we have measurable health outcomes from political choices" So True!!! ..."
Dec 12, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

...Neoliberal epidemics are particular pathways of embodiment. From Ted Schrecker and Clare Bambra in The Conversation :

In our new book , we draw on an extensive body of scientific literature to assess the health effects of three decades of neoliberal policies. Focusing on the social determinants of health -- the conditions of life and work that make it relatively easy for some people to lead long and healthy lives, while it is all but impossible for others -- we show that there are four interconnected neoliberal epidemics: austerity, obesity, stress, and inequality. They are neoliberal because they are associated with or worsened by neoliberal policies. They are epidemics because they are observable on such an international scale and have been transmitted so quickly across time and space that if they were biological contagions they would be seen as of epidemic proportions.

(The Case-Deaton study provides an obvious fifth: Deaths of despair. There are doubtless others.) Case in point for one of the unluckier members of the 90%:

On the morning of 25 August 2014 a young New Jersey woman, Maria Fernandes, died from inhaling gasoline fumes as she slept in her 13-year-old car. She often slept in the car while shuttling between her three, low-wage jobs in food service; she kept a can of gasoline in the car because she often slept with the engine running, and was worried about running out of gasoline. Apparently, the can accidentally tipped over and the vapours from spilled gasoline cost her life. Ms Fernandes was one of the more obvious casualties of the zero-hours culture of stress and insecurity that pervades the contemporary labour market under neoliberalism.

And Schrecker and Bambra conclude:

Neoliberalism operates through labor markets to undermine health not only by way of the financial consequences of unemployment, inadequate employment, or low wages, as important as these are, but also through chronic exposure to stress that 'gets under your skin' by way of multiple mechanisms. Quite simply, the effects of chronic insecurity wear people out over the life course in biologically measurable ways .

... ... ...

Oh, and "beyond class" because for social beings embodiment involves "social production; social consumption; and social reproduction." In the most reductive definition of class -- the one I used in my crude 1% + 10% + 90% formulation -- class is determined by wage work (or not), hence is a part of production (of capital), not social consumption (eating, etc.) or social reproduction (children, families, household work ). So, even if class in our political economy is the driver, it's not everything.

nonclassical , December 11, 2017 at 8:30 pm

L.S. reminiscent of Ernst Becker's, "The Structure of Evil" – "Escape from Evil"? (..not to indicate good vs. evil dichotomy) A great amount of perspective must be agreed upon to achieve "change" intoned. Divide and conquer are complicit, as noted .otherwise (and as indicated by U.S. economic history) change arrives only when all have lost all and can therefore agree begin again.

There is however, Naomi Klein perspective, "Shock Doctrine", whereby influence contributes to destabilization, plan in hand leading to agenda driven ("neoliberal"=market fundamentalism) outcome, not at all spontaneous in nature:

"Neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It maintains that "the market" delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning.

Attempts to limit competition are treated as inimical to liberty. Tax and regulation should be minimised, public services should be privatised. The organisation of labour and collective bargaining by trade unions are portrayed as market distortions that impede the formation of a natural hierarchy of winners and losers. Inequality is recast as virtuous: a reward for utility and a generator of wealth, which trickles down to enrich everyone. Efforts to create a more equal society are both counterproductive and morally corrosive. The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve."

Amfortas the Hippie , December 11, 2017 at 4:20 pm

Well done, as usual.

On Case-Deason: Sounds like home. I keep the scanner on(local news) ems and fire only since 2006(sheriff got a homeland security grant). The incidence of suicide, overdose and "intoxication psychosis" are markedly increased in the last 10+ years out here in the wilderness(5K folks in whole county, last I looked). Our local economy went into near depression after the late 90's farm bill killed the peanut program then 911 meant no hunting season that year(and it's been noticeably less busy ever since) then drought and the real estate crash(we had 30 some realtors at peak..old family land being sold off, mostly). So the local Bourgeoisie have had less money to spend, which "trickles down" onto the rest of us.:less construction, less eating out even at the cheap places, less buying of gas, and on and on means fewer employees are needed, thus fewer jobs. To boot, there is a habit among many employers out here of not paying attention to labor laws(it is Texas ) the last minwage rise took 2 years to filter out here, and one must scrutinize one's pay stub to ensure that the boss isn't getting squirrelly with overtime and witholding.
Geography plays into all this, too 100 miles to any largish city.

... ... ...

Rosario , December 11, 2017 at 10:55 pm

I'm not well versed in Foucault or Lacan but I've read some of both and in reading between the lines of their writing (the phantom philosophy?) I saw a very different message than that often delivered by post-modern theorists.

As opposed to being champions of "self-actualization/identity" and "absolute relativism", I always got the impression that they were both offering stark warnings about diving too deeply into the self, vis-a-vis, identity. As if, they both understood the terrifying world that it could/would create, devoid of common cause, community, and ultimately empathy. A world where "we" are not possible because we have all become "I".

Considering what both their philosophies claimed, if identity is a lie, and the subject is always generated relative to the other, then how the hell can there be any security or well being in self-actualization? It is like trying to hit a target that does not exist.

All potentially oppressive cultural categorizations are examples of this (black, latino, gay, trans, etc.). If the identity is a moving target, both to the oppressor and the oppressed, then how can it ever be a singular source of political action? You can't hit what isn't there. This is not to say that these groups (in whatever determined category) are not oppressed, just that formulating political action based strictly on the identity (often as an essential category) is impossible because it does not actually exist materially. It is an amalgamation of subjects who's subjectivity is always relative to some other whether ally or oppressor. Only the manifestations of oppression on bodies (as brought up in Lambert's post) can be utilized as metrics for political action.

... ... ...

Lambert Strether Post author , December 11, 2017 at 11:20 pm

I thought of a couple of other advantages of the "embodiment" paradigm:

Better Framing . Wonks like Yglesias love to mock working class concerns as "economic anxiety," which is at once belittling (it's all about f-e-e-e-lings *) and disempowering (solutions are individual, like therapy or drugs). Embodiment by contrast insists that neoliberalism (the neoliberal labor market (class warfare)) has real, material, physiological effects that can be measured and tracked, as with any epidemic.

... ... ...

oaf , December 12, 2017 at 7:11 am

"we have measurable health outcomes from political choices" So True!!!

Thank you for posting this.

[Dec 13, 2017] Stress of long-term unemployment takes a toll on thousands of Jerseyans who are out of work by Leslie Kwoh

Notable quotes:
"... Leslie Kwoh may be reached at [email protected] or (973) 392-4147. ..."
Jun 13, 2010 | www.nj.com

At 5:30 every morning, Tony Gwiazdowski rolls out of bed, brews a pot of coffee and carefully arranges his laptop, cell phone and notepad like silverware across the kitchen table.

And then he waits.

Gwiazdowski, 57, has been waiting for 16 months. Since losing his job as a transportation sales manager in February 2009, he wakes each morning to the sobering reminder that, yes, he is still unemployed. So he pushes aside the fatigue, throws on some clothes and sends out another flurry of resumes and cheery cover letters.

But most days go by without a single phone call. And around sundown, when he hears his neighbors returning home from work, Gwiazdowski -- the former mayor of Hillsborough -- can't help but allow himself one tiny sigh of resignation.

"You sit there and you wonder, 'What am I doing wrong?'" said Gwiazdowski, who finds companionship in his 2-year-old golden retriever, Charlie, until his wife returns from work.

"The worst moment is at the end of the day when it's 4:30 and you did everything you could, and the phone hasn't rung, the e-mails haven't come through."

Gwiazdowski is one of a growing number of chronically unemployed workers in New Jersey and across the country who are struggling to get through what is becoming one long, jobless nightmare -- even as the rest of the economy has begun to show signs of recovery.

Nationwide, 46 percent of the unemployed -- 6.7 million Americans -- have been without work for at least half a year, by far the highest percentage recorded since the U.S. Labor Department began tracking the data in 1948.

In New Jersey, nearly 40 percent of the 416,000 unemployed workers last year fit that profile, up from about 20 percent in previous years, according to the department, which provides only annual breakdowns for individual states. Most of them were unemployed for more than a year.

But the repercussions of chronic unemployment go beyond the loss of a paycheck or the realization that one might never find the same kind of job again. For many, the sinking feeling of joblessness -- with no end in sight -- can take a psychological toll, experts say.

Across the state, mental health crisis units saw a 20 percent increase in demand last year as more residents reported suffering from unemployment-related stress, according to the New Jersey Association of Mental Health Agencies.

"The longer the unemployment continues, the more impact it will have on their personal lives and mental health," said Shauna Moses, the association's associate executive director. "There's stress in the marriage, with the kids, other family members, with friends."

And while a few continue to cling to optimism, even the toughest admit there are moments of despair: Fear of never finding work, envy of employed friends and embarassment at having to tell acquaintances that, nope, still no luck.

"When they say, 'Hi Mayor,' I don't tell a lot of people I'm out of work -- I say I'm semi-retired," said Gwiazdowski, who maxed out on unemployment benefits several months ago.

"They might think, 'Gee, what's wrong with him? Why can't he get a job?' It's a long story and maybe people really don't care and now they want to get away from you."


SECOND TIME AROUND

Lynn Kafalas has been there before, too. After losing her computer training job in 2000, the East Hanover resident took four agonizing years to find new work -- by then, she had refashioned herself into a web designer.

That not-too-distant experience is why Kafalas, 52, who was laid off again eight months ago, grows uneasier with each passing day. Already, some of her old demons have returned, like loneliness, self-doubt and, worst of all, insomnia. At night, her mind races to dissect the latest interview: What went wrong? What else should she be doing? And why won't even Barnes & Noble hire her?

"It's like putting a stopper on my life -- I can't move on," said Kafalas, who has given up karate lessons, vacations and regular outings with friends. "Everything is about the interviews."

And while most of her friends have been supportive, a few have hinted to her that she is doing something wrong, or not doing enough. The remarks always hit Kafalas with a pang.

In a recent study, researchers at Rutgers University found that the chronically unemployed are prone to high levels of stress, anxiety, depression, loneliness and even substance abuse, which take a toll on their self-esteem and personal relationships.

"They're the forgotten group," said Carl Van Horn, director of the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers, and a co-author of the report. "And the longer you are unemployed, the less likely you are to get a job."

Of the 900 unemployed workers first interviewed last August for the study, only one in 10 landed full-time work by March of this year, and only half of those lucky few expressed satisfaction with their new jobs. Another one in 10 simply gave up searching.

Among those who were still unemployed, many struggled to make ends meet by borrowing from friends or family, turning to government food stamps and forgoing health care, according to the study.

More than half said they avoided all social contact, while slightly less than half said they had lost touch with close friends. Six in 10 said they had problems sleeping.

Kafalas says she deals with her chronic insomnia by hitting the gym for two hours almost every evening, lifting weights and pounding the treadmill until she feels tired enough to fall asleep.

"Sometimes I forget what day it is. Is it Tuesday? And then I'll think of what TV show ran the night before," she said. "Waiting is the toughest part."


AGE A FACTOR

Generally, the likelihood of long-term unemployment increases with age, experts say. A report by the National Employment Law Project this month found that nearly half of those who were unemployed for six months or longer were at least 45 years old. Those between 16 and 24 made up just 14 percent.

Tell that to Adam Blank, 24, who has been living with his girlfriend and her parents at their Martinsville home since losing his sales job at Best Buy a year and half ago.

Blank, who graduated from Rutgers with a major in communications, says he feels like a burden sometimes, especially since his girlfriend, Tracy Rosen, 24, works full-time at a local nonprofit. He shows her family gratitude with small chores, like taking out the garbage, washing dishes, sweeping floors and doing laundry.

Still, he often feels inadequate.

"All I'm doing on an almost daily basis is sitting around the house trying to keep myself from going stir-crazy," said Blank, who dreams of starting a social media company.

When he is feeling particularly low, Blank said he turns to a tactic employed by prisoners of war in Vietnam: "They used to build dream houses in their head to help keep their sanity. It's really just imagining a place I can call my own."


LESSONS LEARNED

Meanwhile, Gwiazdowski, ever the optimist, says unemployment has taught him a few things.

He has learned, for example, how to quickly assess an interviewer's age and play up or down his work experience accordingly -- he doesn't want to appear "threatening" to a potential employer who is younger. He has learned that by occasionally deleting and reuploading his resume to job sites, his entry appears fresh.

"It's almost like a game," he said, laughing. "You are desperate, but you can't show it."

But there are days when he just can't find any humor in his predicament -- like when he finishes a great interview but receives no offer, or when he hears a fellow job seeker finally found work and feels a slight twinge of jealousy.

"That's what I'm missing -- putting on that shirt and tie in the morning and going to work," he said.

The memory of getting dressed for work is still so vivid, Gwiazdowski says, that he has to believe another job is just around the corner.

"You always have to hope that that morning when you get up, it's going to be the day," he said.

"Today is going to be the day that something is going to happen."

Leslie Kwoh may be reached at [email protected] or (973) 392-4147.

DrBuzzard Jun 13, 2010

I collect from the state of iowa, was on tier I and when the gov't recessed without passing extension, iowa stopped paying tier I claims that were already open, i was scheduled to be on tier I until july 15th, and its gone now, as a surprise, when i tried to claim my week this week i was notified. SURPRISE, talk about stress.

berganliz Jun 13, 2010

This is terrible....just wait until RIF'd teachers hit the unemployment offices....but then, this is what NJ wanted...fired teachers who are to blame for the worst recession our country has seen in 150 years...thanks GWB.....thanks Donald Rumsfeld......thanks Dick Cheney....thanks Karl "Miss Piggy" Rove...and thank you Mr. Big Boy himself...Gov Krispy Kreame!

rp121 Jun 13, 2010

For readers who care about this nation's unemployed- Call your Senators to pass HR 4213, the "Extenders" bill. Unfortunately, it does not add UI benefits weeks, however it DOES continue the emergency federal tiers of UI. If it does not pass this week many of us are cut off at 26 wks. No tier 1, 2 -nothing.

[Dec 13, 2017] Unemployment health hazard and stress

The longer you are unemployed, the more you are effected by those factors.
Notable quotes:
"... The good news is that only a relatively small number of people are seriously affected by the stress of unemployment to the extent they need medical assistance. Most people don't get to the serious levels of stress, and much as they loathe being unemployed, they suffer few, and minor, ill effects. ..."
"... Worries about income, domestic problems, whatever, the list is as long as humanity. The result of stress is a strain on the nervous system, and these create the physical effects of the situation over time. The chemistry of stress is complex, but it can be rough on the hormonal system. ..."
"... Not at all surprisingly, people under stress experience strong emotions. It's a perfectly natural response to what can be quite intolerable emotional strains. It's fair to say that even normal situations are felt much more severely by people already under stress. Things that wouldn't normally even be issues become problems, and problems become serious problems. Relationships can suffer badly in these circumstances, and that, inevitably, produces further crises. Unfortunately for those affected, these are by now, at this stage, real crises. ..."
"... Some people are stubborn enough and tough enough mentally to control their emotions ruthlessly, and they do better under these conditions. Even that comes at a cost, and although under control, the stress remains a problem. ..."
"... One of the reasons anger management is now a growth industry is because of the growing need for assistance with severe stress over the last decade. This is a common situation, and help is available. ..."
"... Depression is universally hated by anyone who's ever had it. ..."
"... Very important: Do not, under any circumstances, try to use drugs or alcohol as a quick fix. They make it worse, over time, because they actually add stress. Some drugs can make things a lot worse, instantly, too, particularly the modern made-in-a-bathtub variety. They'll also destroy your liver, which doesn't help much, either. ..."
"... You don't have to live in a gym to get enough exercise for basic fitness. A few laps of the pool, a good walk, some basic aerobic exercises, you're talking about 30-45 minutes a day. It's not hard. ..."
Dec 13, 2017 | www.cvtips.com

It's almost impossible to describe the various psychological impacts, because there are so many. There are sometimes serious consequences, including suicide, and, some would say worse, chronic depression.

There's not really a single cause and effect. It's a compound effect, and unemployment, by adding stress, affects people, often badly.

The world doesn't need any more untrained psychologists, and we're not pretending to give medical advice. That's for professionals. Everybody is different, and their problems are different. What we can do is give you an outline of the common problems, and what you can do about them.

The good news is that only a relatively small number of people are seriously affected by the stress of unemployment to the extent they need medical assistance. Most people don't get to the serious levels of stress, and much as they loathe being unemployed, they suffer few, and minor, ill effects.

For others, there are a series of issues, and the big three are:

Stress

Stress is Stage One. It's a natural result of the situation. Worries about income, domestic problems, whatever, the list is as long as humanity. The result of stress is a strain on the nervous system, and these create the physical effects of the situation over time. The chemistry of stress is complex, but it can be rough on the hormonal system.

Over an extended period, the body's natural hormonal balances are affected, and this can lead to problems. These are actually physical issues, but the effects are mental, and the first obvious effects are, naturally, emotional.

Anger, and other negative emotions

Not at all surprisingly, people under stress experience strong emotions. It's a perfectly natural response to what can be quite intolerable emotional strains. It's fair to say that even normal situations are felt much more severely by people already under stress. Things that wouldn't normally even be issues become problems, and problems become serious problems. Relationships can suffer badly in these circumstances, and that, inevitably, produces further crises. Unfortunately for those affected, these are by now, at this stage, real crises.

If the actual situation was already bad, this mental state makes it a lot worse. Constant aggravation doesn't help people to keep a sense of perspective. Clear thinking isn't easy when under constant stress.

Some people are stubborn enough and tough enough mentally to control their emotions ruthlessly, and they do better under these conditions. Even that comes at a cost, and although under control, the stress remains a problem.

One of the reasons anger management is now a growth industry is because of the growing need for assistance with severe stress over the last decade. This is a common situation, and help is available.

If you have reservations about seeking help, bear in mind it can't possibly be any worse than the problem.

Depression

Depression is universally hated by anyone who's ever had it. This is the next stage, and it's caused by hormonal imbalances which affect serotonin. It's actually a physical problem, but it has mental effects which are sometimes devastating, and potentially life threatening.

The common symptoms are:

It's a disgusting experience. No level of obscenity could possibly describe it. Depression is misery on a level people wouldn't conceive in a nightmare. At this stage the patient needs help, and getting it is actually relatively easy. It's convincing the person they need to do something about it that's difficult. Again, the mental state is working against the person. Even admitting there's a problem is hard for many people in this condition.

Generally speaking, a person who is trusted is the best person to tell anyone experiencing the onset of depression to seek help. Important: If you're experiencing any of those symptoms:

Very important: Do not, under any circumstances, try to use drugs or alcohol as a quick fix. They make it worse, over time, because they actually add stress. Some drugs can make things a lot worse, instantly, too, particularly the modern made-in-a-bathtub variety. They'll also destroy your liver, which doesn't help much, either.

Alcohol, in particular, makes depression much worse. Alcohol is a depressant, itself, and it's also a nasty chemical mix with all those stress hormones.

If you've ever had alcohol problems, or seen someone with alcohol wrecking their lives, depression makes things about a million times worse.

Just don't do it. Steer clear of any so-called stimulants, because they don't mix with antidepressants, either.

Unemployment and staying healthy

The above is what you need to know about the risks of unemployment to your health and mental well being.

These situations are avoidable.

Your best defense against the mental stresses and strains of unemployment, and their related problems is staying healthy.

We can promise you that is nothing less than the truth. The healthier you are, the better your defenses against stress, and the more strength you have to cope with situations.

Basic health is actually pretty easy to achieve:

Diet

Eat real food, not junk, and make sure you're getting enough food. Your body can't work with resources it doesn't have. Good food is a real asset, and you'll find you don't get tired as easily. You need the energy reserves.

Give yourself a good selection of food that you like, that's also worth eating.

The good news is that plain food is also reasonably cheap, and you can eat as much as you need. Basic meals are easy enough to prepare, and as long as you're getting all the protein veg and minerals you need, you're pretty much covered.

You can also use a multivitamin cap, or broad spectrum supplements, to make sure you're getting all your trace elements. Also make sure you're getting the benefits of your food by taking acidophilus or eating yogurt regularly.

Exercise

You don't have to live in a gym to get enough exercise for basic fitness. A few laps of the pool, a good walk, some basic aerobic exercises, you're talking about 30-45 minutes a day. It's not hard.

Don't just sit and suffer

If anything's wrong, check it out when it starts, not six months later. Most medical conditions become serious when they're allowed to get worse.

For unemployed people the added risk is also that they may prevent you getting that job, or going for interviews. If something's causing you problems, get rid of it.

Nobody who's been through the blender of unemployment thinks it's fun.

Anyone who's really done it tough will tell you one thing:

Don't be a victim. Beat the problem, and you'll really appreciate the feeling.

[Nov 22, 2017] Unemployment is Miserable and Doesn't Spawn an Upsurge in Personal Creativity

Notable quotes:
"... By Bill Mitchell, Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity at the University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia. Originally published at billy blog ..."
"... The overwhelming importance of having a job for happiness is evident throughout the analysis, and holds across all of the world's regions. ..."
"... The pattern of human concerns ..."
"... The pattern of human concerns ..."
"... Journal of Happiness Studies ..."
"... The results show the differences between having a job and being unemployed are "very large indeed" on the three well-being measures (life evaluation, positive and negative affective states). ..."
"... Psychological Bulletin ..."
"... 1. "unemployment tends to make people more emotionally unstable than they were previous to unemployment". ..."
"... 2. The unemployed experience feelings of "personal threat"; "fear"; "sense of proportion is shattered"; loss of "common sense of values"; "prestige lost in own eyes and as he imagines, in the eyes of his fellow men"; "feelings of inferiority"; loss of "self-confidence" and a general loss of "morale". ..."
"... in the light of the structure of our society where the job one holds is the prime indicator of status and prestige. ..."
"... Psychological Bulletin ..."
"... Related studies found that the "unemployed become so apathetic that they rarely read anything". Other activities, such as attending movies etc were seen as being motivated by the need to "kill time" – "a minimal indication of the increased desire for such attendance". ..."
"... In spite of hopeless attempts the unemployed continually look for work, often going back again and again to their last place of work. Other writers reiterate this point. ..."
"... The non-pecuniary effects of not having a job are significant in terms of lost status, social alienation, abandonment of daily structure etc, and that has not changed much over history. ..."
"... I think what is missing from this article is the term "identity." If you meet new people, often the conversation starts with what you do for a living. Your identity, in part, is what you do. You can call yourself a plumber, a writer, a banker, a consultant, a reporter but the point is this is part of your identity. When you lose your job long term, your identity here loses one of its main anchor points. ..."
"... This is a crucial point that UBI advocates often ignore. There is a deeply entrenched cultural bias towards associating our work status with our general status and prestige and feelings of these standings. ..."
"... When unemployed, the stress of worry about money may suppress the creative juices. Speaking from experience. People may well 'keep looking for jobs' because they know ultimately they need a job with steady income. The great experience of some freelancers notwithstanding, not all are cut out for it. ..."
"... When considering the world's population as a whole, people with a job evaluate the quality of their lives much more favorably than those who are unemployed. ..."
"... Data like that provided by Mitchell is important to demolishing the horrid "economic anxiety" frame much beloved by liberals, especially wonkish Democrats.* It's not (a) just feelings , to be solved by scented candles or training (the liberal version of rugged individualism) and (b) the effects are real and measurable. It's not surprising, when you think about it, that the working class is about work . ..."
Nov 22, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Posted on November 21, 2017 by Yves Smith Yves here. Reader UserFriendly sent this post with the message, "I can confirm this." I can too. And before you try to attribute our reactions to being Americans, note that the study very clearly points out that its finding have been confirmed in "all of the world's regions".

By Bill Mitchell, Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity at the University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia. Originally published at billy blog

Here is a summary of another interesting study I read last week (published March 30, 2017) – Happiness at Work – from academic researchers Jan‐Emmanuel De Neve and George Ward. It explores the relationship between happiness and labour force status, including whether an individual is employed or not and the types of jobs they are doing. The results reinforce a long literature, which emphatically concludes that people are devastated when they lose their jobs and do not adapt to unemployment as its duration increases. The unemployed are miserable and remain so even as they become entrenched in long-term unemployment. Further, they do not seem to sense (or exploit) a freedom to release some inner sense of creativity and purpose. The overwhelming proportion continually seek work – and relate their social status and life happiness to gaining a job, rather than living without a job on income support. The overwhelming conclusion is that "work makes up such an important part of our lives" and that result is robust across different countries and cultures. Being employed leads to much higher evaluations of the quality of life relative to being unemployed. And, nothing much has changed in this regard over the last 80 or so years. These results were well-known in the 1930s, for example. They have a strong bearing on the debate between income guarantees versus employment guarantees. The UBI proponents have produced no robust literature to refute these long-held findings.

While the 'Happiness Study' notes that "the relationship between happiness and employment is a complex and dynamic interaction that runs in both directions" the authors are unequivocal:

The overwhelming importance of having a job for happiness is evident throughout the analysis, and holds across all of the world's regions. When considering the world's population as a whole, people with a job evaluate the quality of their lives much more favorably than those who are unemployed. The importance of having a job extends far beyond the salary attached to it, with non-pecuniary aspects of employment such as social status, social relations, daily structure, and goals all exerting a strong influence on people's happiness.

And, the inverse:

The importance of employment for people's subjective wellbeing shines a spotlight on the misery and unhappiness associated with being unemployed.

There is a burgeoning literature on 'happiness', which the authors aim to contribute to.

They define happiness as "subjective well-being", which is "measured along multiple dimensions":

life evaluation (by way of the Cantril "ladder of life"), positive and negative affect to measure respondents' experienced positive and negative wellbeing, as well as the more domain-specific items of job satisfaction and employee engagement. We find that these diverse measures of subjective wellbeing correlate strongly with each other

Cantril's 'Ladder of Life Scale' (or "Cantril Ladder") is used by polling organisations to assess well-being. It was developed by social researcher Hadley Cantril (1965) and documented in his book The pattern of human concerns .

You can learn more about the use of the 'Cantril Ladder' HERE .

As we read, the "Cantril Self-Anchoring Scale consists of the following":

Please imagine a ladder with steps numbered from zero at the bottom to 10 at the top. The top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. On which step of the ladder would you say you personally feel you stand at this time? (ladder-present) On which step do you think you will stand about five years from now? (ladder-future)

[Reference: Cantril, H. (1965) The pattern of human concerns , New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press.]

Christian Bjørnskov's 2010 article – How Comparable are the Gallup World Poll Life Satisfaction Data? – also describes how it works.

[Reference: Bjørnskov, C. (2010) 'How Comparable are the Gallup World Poll Life Satisfaction Data?', Journal of Happiness Studies , 11 (1), 41-60.]

The Cantril scale is usually reported as values between 0 and 10.

The authors in the happiness study use poll data from 150 nations which they say "is representative of 98% of the world's population". This survey data is available on a mostly annual basis since 2006.

The following graph (Figure 1 from the Study) shows "the self-reported wellbeing of individuals around the world according to whether or not they are employed."

The "bars measure the subjective wellbeing of individuals of working age" by employment status .

The results show the differences between having a job and being unemployed are "very large indeed" on the three well-being measures (life evaluation, positive and negative affective states).

People employed "evaluate the quality of their lives around 0.6 points higher on average as compared to the unemployed on a scale from 0 to 10."

The authors also conduct more sophisticated (and searching) statistical analysis (multivariate regression) which control for a range of characteristics (gender, age, education, marital status, composition of household) as well as to "account for the many political, economic, and cultural differences between countries as well as year-to-year variation".

The conclusion they reach is simple:

the unemployed evaluate the overall state of their lives less highly on the Cantril ladder and experience more negative emotions in their day-to-day lives as well as fewer positive ones. These are among the most widely accepted and replicated findings in the science of happiness Here, income is being held constant along with a number of other relevant covariates, showing that these unemployment effects go well beyond the income loss associated with losing one's job.

These results are not surprising. The earliest study of this sort of outcome was from the famous study published by Philip Eisenberg and Paul Lazersfeld in 1938. [Reference: Eisenberg, P. and Lazarsfeld, P. (1938) 'The psychological effects of unemployment', Psychological Bulletin , 35(6), 358-390.]

They explore four dimensions of unemployment:

I. The Effects of Unemployment on Personality.

II. Socio-Political Attitudes Affected by Unemployment.

III. Differing Attitudes Produced by Unemployment and Related Factors.

IV. The Effects of Unemployment on Children and Youth.

On the first dimension, they conclude that:

1. "unemployment tends to make people more emotionally unstable than they were previous to unemployment".

2. The unemployed experience feelings of "personal threat"; "fear"; "sense of proportion is shattered"; loss of "common sense of values"; "prestige lost in own eyes and as he imagines, in the eyes of his fellow men"; "feelings of inferiority"; loss of "self-confidence" and a general loss of "morale".

Devastation, in other words. They were not surprised because they note that:

in the light of the structure of our society where the job one holds is the prime indicator of status and prestige.

This is a crucial point that UBI advocates often ignore. There is a deeply entrenched cultural bias towards associating our work status with our general status and prestige and feelings of these standings. That hasn't changed since Eisenberg and Lazersfeld wrote up the findings of their study in 1938.

It might change over time but that will take a long process of re-education and cultural shift. Trying to dump a set of new cultural values that only a small minority might currently hold to onto a society that clearly still values work is only going to create major social tensions. Eisenberg and Lazarsfeld also considered an earlier 1937 study by Cantril who explored whether "the unemployed tend to evolve more imaginative schemes than the employed".

[Reference: Cantril, H. (1934) 'The Social Psychology of Everyday Life', Psychological Bulletin , 31, 297-330.]

The proposition was (is) that once unemployed, do people then explore new options that were not possible while working, which deliver them with the satisfaction that they lose when they become jobless. The specific question asked in the research was: "Have there been any changes of interests and habits among the unemployed?" Related studies found that the "unemployed become so apathetic that they rarely read anything". Other activities, such as attending movies etc were seen as being motivated by the need to "kill time" – "a minimal indication of the increased desire for such attendance".

On the third dimension, Eisenberg and Lazersfeld examine the questions – "Are there unemployed who don't want to work? Is the relief situation likely to increase this number?", which are still a central issue today – the bludger being subsidized by income support.

They concluded that:

the number is few. In spite of hopeless attempts the unemployed continually look for work, often going back again and again to their last place of work. Other writers reiterate this point.

So for decades, researchers in this area, as opposed to bloggers who wax lyrical on their own opinions, have known that the importance of work in our lives goes well beyond the income we earn. The non-pecuniary effects of not having a job are significant in terms of lost status, social alienation, abandonment of daily structure etc, and that has not changed much over history. The happiness paper did explore "how short-lived is the misery associated with being out of work" in the current cultural settings.

The proposition examined was that:

If the pain is only fleeting and people quickly get used to being unemployed, then we might see joblessness as less of a key public policy priority in terms of happiness.

They conclude that:

a number of studies have demonstrated that people do not adapt much, if at all, to being unemployed there is a large initial shock to becoming unemployed, and then as people stay unemployed over time their levels of life satisfaction remain low . several studies have shown that even once a person becomes re-employed, the prior experience of unemployment leaves a mark on his or her happiness.

So there is no sudden or even medium-term realisation that being jobless endows the individual with a new sense of freedom to become their creative selves, freed from the yoke of work. To bloom into musicians, artists, or whatever.

The reality is that there is an on-going malaise – a deeply entrenched sense of failure is overwhelming, which stifles happiness and creativity, even after the individual is able to return to work.

This negativity, borne heavily by the individual, however, also impacts on society in general.

The paper recognises that:

A further canonical finding in the literature on unemployment and subjective wellbeing is that there are so-called "spillover" effects.

High levels of unemployment "increase fear and heighten the sense of job insecurity". Who will lose their job next type questions?

The researchers found in their data that the higher is the unemployment rate the greater the anxiety among those who remain employed.

Conclusion

The overwhelming conclusion is that "work makes up such an important part of our lives" and that result is robust across different countries and cultures.

Being employed leads to much higher evaluations of the quality of life relative to being unemployed.

The unemployed are miserable and remain so even as they become entrenched in long-term unemployment. They do not seem to sense (or exploit) a freedom to release some inner sense of creativity and purpose.

The overwhelming proportion continually seek work – and relate their social status and life happiness to gaining a job, rather than living without a job on income support.

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) allows us to understand that it is the government that chooses the unemployment rate – it is a political choice.

For currency-issuing governments it means their deficits are too low relative to the spending and saving decisions of the non-government sector.

For Eurozone-type nations, it means that in surrendering their currencies and adopting a foreign currency, they are unable to guarantee sufficient work in the face of negative shifts in non-government spending. Again, a political choice.

The Job Guarantee can be used as a vehicle to not only ensure their are sufficient jobs available at all times but also to start a process of wiping out the worst jobs in the non-government sector.

That can be done by using the JG wage to ensure low-paid private employers have to restructure their workplaces and pay higher wages and achieve higher productivity in order to attract labour from the Job Guarantee pool.

The Series So Far

This is a further part of a series I am writing as background to my next book with Joan Muysken analysing the Future of Work . More instalments will come as the research process unfolds.

The series so far:

  1. When Austrians ate dogs .
  2. Employment as a human right .
  3. The rise of the "private government .
  4. The evolution of full employment legislation in the US .
  5. Automation and full employment – back to the 1960s .
  6. Countering the march of the robots narrative .
  7. Unemployment is miserable and does not spawn an upsurge in personal creativity .

The blogs in these series should be considered working notes rather than self-contained topics. Ultimately, they will be edited into the final manuscript of my next book due in 2018. The book will likely be published by Edward Elgar (UK).

That is enough for today!

divadab , November 21, 2017 at 6:11 am

Perhaps I'm utterly depressed but I haven't had a job job for over 5 years. Plenty of work, however, more than I can handle and it requires priorisation. But I am deliberately not part of the organized herd. I stay away from big cities – it's scary how managed the herd is in large groups – and I suppose that unemployment for a herd animal is rather distressing as it is effectively being kicked out of the herd.

Anyway my advice, worth what you pay for it but let he who has ears, etc. – is to go local, very local, grow your own food, be part of a community, manage your own work, and renounce the energy feast herd dynamics. "Unemployment", like "recession", is a mechanism of control. Not very practical advice for most, I realize, trapped in the herd as they are in car payments and mortgages, but perhaps aspirational?

The Rev Kev , November 21, 2017 at 6:35 am

I think what is missing from this article is the term "identity." If you meet new people, often the conversation starts with what you do for a living. Your identity, in part, is what you do. You can call yourself a plumber, a writer, a banker, a consultant, a reporter but the point is this is part of your identity. When you lose your job long term, your identity here loses one of its main anchor points.

Worse, there is a deliberate stigma attached with being long term unemployed. In that article you have seen the word bludger being used. In parts of the US I have read of the shame of 'living off the county'. And yes, I have been there, seen that, and got the t-shirt. It's going to be interesting as mechanization and computers turn large portions of the population from workers to 'gig' workers. Expect mass demoralization.

nonclassical , November 21, 2017 at 10:24 am

yes the lives many of us have lived, no longer exist though we appear not notice, as we "can" live in many of same "ways" ..rather well known psychologist defined some 40 years ago, best to "drop through cracks"

jrs , November 21, 2017 at 12:13 pm

Well, you also lose money, maybe you become homeless etc. as you have nowhere else to turn (if there are kids involved to support it gets even scarier though there are some programs). Or maybe you become dependent on another person(s) to support you which is of course degrading as you know you must rely on them to live, whether it's a spouse or lover when you want to work and bring in money, or mom and dads basement, or the kindest friend ever who lets you sleep on their couch. I mean these are the things that really matter.

Privileged people whose main worry in unemployment would be losing identity, wow out of touch much? Who cares about some identity for parties, but the ability to have a stable decent life (gig work hardly counts) is what is needed.

sgt_doom , November 21, 2017 at 2:20 pm

I believe your comment sums up the situation the best -- and most realistically.

jgordon , November 21, 2017 at 7:08 pm

I normally wouldn't comment like this, but you have brought up some extremely important points about identity that I would like to address.

Recently I had the most intense mushroom experience of my entire life–so intense that my identity had been completely stripped and I was left in a formless state, at the level of seeing my bare, unvarnished animal neural circuitry in operation. Suddenly with a flash of inspiration I realized that the identity of everyone, all of us, is inextricably tied up in what we do and what we do for other people.

Following from that, I understood that if we passively rely on others for survival, whether it be relying on friends, family, or government, then we do not have an identity or reason for existing. And the inner self, the animal core of who we are, will realise this lack of identity (even if the concious mind denies it), and will continually generate feelings of profound depression and intense nihilism that will inevitably destroy us if the root cause is not addressed.

Before this experience I was somewhat ambivalent about my politics, but immediately after I knew that the political right was correct on everything important, from attitudes on sex to economic philosophy. People need a core of cultural stability and hard work to grow and become actualized. The alternative is rudderless dissatisfaction and envy that leads nowhere.

On the topic of giving "out of kindnes and goodwill", giving without demanding anything in return is a form of abuse, as it deprives those who receive our feel-good generosity the motivation to form a coherent identity. If the parents of a basement-dweller were truly good people, instead of supporting said dweller they'd drag her out by the ear and make her grow food in the yard or some such. Likewise, those who have supported you without also giving concrete demands and expecations in return have been unkind, and for your own good I hope that you will immediately remove yourself from their support. On the other hand, if you have been thoughtlessly giving because it warms the cockles of your heart, then stop it now. You are ruining other people this way, and if your voting habits are informed by this kind of malevolence I'd encourage you to change those as well.

Anyway the original poster is right about everything. Working and having a purpose in life is an entirely different animal from making money and being "successful" in the government-sponsored commercial economy. Society and government deliberately try to conflate the two for various reasons, primarily graft of labor and genius, but that is only a deliberate mis-framing that needlessly harms people when the mainstream economic system is in catastrophic decline, as ours is today. You should try to clear up this misconception within yourself as a way of getting better.

Well, I hope this message can give you a few different thoughts and help you find your way out of the existential angst you're caught in. Don't wallow in helplessness. Think of something useful to do, anything, whether it earns you money or not, and go out and start doing it. You'll be surprised at how much better you feel about yourself in no time.

skippy , November 22, 2017 at 12:45 am

The problem is you said – I – had an extreme experience [burning bush], the truth was reviled to – I – and I alone during this extreme chemically altered state. Which by the way just happens to conform to a heap of environmental biases I collected. This is why sound methodology demands peer review. disheveled some people think Mister Toads Wild ride at Disneyland on psychotropics is an excellent adventure too.

Jeremy Grimm , November 21, 2017 at 12:33 pm

I think your observation about the importance of work to identity is most perceptive. This post makes too little distinction between work and a job and glosses over the place of work in defining who we are to ourselves and to others. I recall the scene in the movie "About a Boy" when the hero meets someone he cares about and she asks him what he does for a living.

I believe there's another aspect of work -- related to identity -- missing in the analysis of this post. Work can offer a sense of mission -- of acting as part of an effort toward a larger goal no individual could achieve alone. However you may regard the value in putting man on the moon there is no mistaking the sense of mission deeply felt by the engineers and technicians working on the project. What jobs today can claim service to a mission someone might value?

Henry Moon Pie , November 21, 2017 at 7:00 am

Agreed on your points. Wage slavery is nothing to aspire to. Self-determination within a context of an interdependent community is a much better way to live. We do our thing in the city, however.

ambrit , November 21, 2017 at 8:29 am

Finding that "interdependent community" is the hard part. My experience has been that this endeavour is almost chance based; Serendipity if you will.
Here Down South, the churches still seem to have a stranglehold on small and mid scale social organization. One of the big effects of 'churching' is the requirement that the individual gave up personal critical thinking. Thus, the status quo is reinforced. One big happy 'Holy Circlejerk.'

UserFriendly , November 21, 2017 at 10:10 am

from the article

This is a crucial point that UBI advocates often ignore. There is a deeply entrenched cultural bias towards associating our work status with our general status and prestige and feelings of these standings.

That hasn't changed since Eisenberg and Lazersfeld wrote up the findings of their study in 1938. It might change over time but that will take a long process of re-education and cultural shift. Trying to dump a set of new cultural values that only a small minority might currently hold to onto a society that clearly still values work is only going to create major social tensions.

FelicityT , November 21, 2017 at 3:07 pm

I would agree about the entenched cultural norms, etc. But not the pessimism and timeline for change. An individual can communicate a complex idea to millions in seconds, things move fast these days.

For me, it seems that what we (we being UBI/radical change proponents) are lacking is a compelling easily accessible story. Not just regarding UBI (as that is but one part of the trully revolutionary transformations that must occur) but encompassing everything.

We have countless think pieces, bits of academic writing, books, etc that focus on individual pieces and changes in isolation. But we've largely abandoned the all-encompassing narrative, which at their heart is precisely what religion offers and why it can be so seductive, successful, and resilient for so long.

The status quo has this type of story, it's not all that compelling but given the fact that it is the status quo and has inertia and tradition on its side (along with the news media, political, entertainment, etc) it doesn't have to be.

We need to abandon the single narrow issue activism that has become so prominent over the years and get back to engaging with issues as unseparable and intimately interconnected.

Tinkering around the edges will do nothing, a new political religion is what is required.

Yves Smith Post author , November 21, 2017 at 4:23 pm

Sorry, I disagree vehemently. Deeply held cultural attitudes are very slow to change and the study found that work being critical to happiness examined a large number of societies.

Look at feminism. I was a half-generation after the time when women were starting to get a shot at real jobs. IIRC, the first class that accepted women at Harvard Law School was in the 1950 and at Harvard Business School, 1965. And the number of first attendees was puny. The 1965 class at HBS had 10 8 women out of a graduating class of over 800; my class in 1981 had only 11% women.

In the 1980s, you saw a shift from the belief that women could do what men could do to promotion of the idea that women could/should be feminine as well as successful. This looked like seriously mixed messages, in that IMHO the earlier tendency to de-emphasize gender roles in the workplace looked like a positive development.

Women make less than 80% of what men do in the US. Even female doctors in the same specialities make 80% of their male peers.

The Speenhamland in the UK had what amounted to an income guarantee from the 1790s to 1832. Most people didn't want to be on it and preferred to work. Two generations and being on the support of local governments was still seen as carrying a stigma.

More generally, social animals have strongly ingrained tendencies to resent situations they see as unfair. Having someone who is capable of working not work elicits resentment from many, which is why most people don't want to be in that position. You aren't going to change that.

And people need a sense of purpose. There are tons of cases of rich heirs falling into drug addiction or alcoholism and despair because they have no sense of purpose in life. Work provides that, even if it's mundane work to support a family. That is one of the great dissservices the Democrats have done to the citizenry at large: sneering at ordinary work when blue-collar men were the anchors of families and able to take pride in that.

FelicityT , November 21, 2017 at 5:11 pm

So a few points.

Regarding the large number of societies, we often like to think we're more different than we actually are focusing on a few glaringly obvious differences and generalizing from there. Even going back a few hundred years when ideas travelled slower we were still (especially the "west" though the "east" wasn't all that much more different either) quite similar. So I'm less inclined to see the large number of societies as evidence.

Generally on societal changes and movements: The issue here is that the leadership has not changed, they may soften some edges here or there (only to resharpen them again when we're looking elsewhere) but their underlying ideologies are largely unchanged. A good mass of any population will go along to survive, whether they agree or not (and we find increasing evidence that many do not agree, though certainly that they do not agree on a single alternative).

It may be impossible to implement such changes in who controls the levers of power in a democratic fashion but it also may be immoral not implement such changes. Of course this is also clearly a similar path to that walked by many a demonized (in most cases rightfully so) dictator and despot. 'Tread carefully' are wise words to keep in mind.

Today we have a situation which reflects your example re: social animals and resentment of unfairness: the elite (who falls into this category is of course debatable, some individuals moreso than others). But they have intelligently, for their benefit, redirected that resentment towards those that have little. Is there really any logical connection between not engaging in wage labor (note: NOT equivalent to not working) and unfairness? Or is it a myth crafted by those who currently benefit the most?

That resentment is also precisely why it is key that a Basic income be universal with no means testing, everyone gets the same.

I think we should not extrapolate too much from the relatively small segment of the population falling into the the inherited money category. Correlation is not causation and all that.

It also seems that so often individuals jump to the hollywood crafted image of the layabout stoner sitting on the couch giggling at cartoons (or something similarly negative) when the concept of less wage labor is brought up. A reduction of wage labor does not equate to lack of work being done, it simply means doing much of that work for different reasons and rewards and incentives.

As I said in the Links thread today, we produce too much, we consume too much, we grow too much. More wage labor overall as a requirement for survival is certainly not the solution to any real problem that we face, its a massively inefficient use of resources and a massive strain on the ecosystems.

Yves Smith Post author , November 21, 2017 at 8:34 pm

I am really gobsmacked at the sense of entitlement on display here. Why are people entitled to an income with no work? Being an adult means toil: cleaning up after yourself, cleaning up after your kids if you have them, if you are subsistence farmer, tending your crops and livestock, if you are a modern society denizen, paying your bills and your taxes on time. The idea that people are entitled to a life of leisure is bollocks. Yet you promote that.

Society means we have obligations to each other. That means work. In rejecting work you reject society.

And the touting of "creativity" is a top 10% trope that Thomas Frank called out in Listen, Liberal. It's a way of devaluing what the bottom 90% do.

WobblyTelomeres , November 21, 2017 at 8:53 pm

My argument with the article is that, to me, it smacks of Taylorism. A follow-on study would analyze how many hours a laborer must work before the acquired sense of purpose and dignity and associated happiness began to decline. Would it be 30 hours a week of backbreaking labor before dignity found itself eroded? 40? 50? 60? When does the worker break? Just how far can we push the mule before it collapses?

The author alludes to this: "The overwhelming proportion relate their social status and life happiness to gaining a job"

Work equals happiness. Got it.

But, as a former robotics instructor, and as one who watches the industry (and former students), I see an automated future as damn near inevitable. Massive job displacement is coming, life as a minimum wage burger flipper will cease, with no future employment prospects short of government intervention (WPA and CCC for all, I say). I'm not a Luddite, obviously, but there are going to be a lot of people, billions, worldwide, with no prospect of employment. Saying, "You're lazy and entitled" is a bit presumptuous, Yves. Not everyone has your ability, not everyone has my ability. When the burger flipping jobs are gone, where do they go? When roombas mop the floors, where do the floor moppers go?

flora , November 21, 2017 at 9:38 pm

"WPA and CCC for all, I say. "

+1

We could use a new Civilian Conservation Corps and and a Works Progress Administration. There's lots of work that needs doing that isn't getting done by private corporations.

nihil obstet , November 21, 2017 at 10:05 pm

The outrage at non-work wealth and income would be more convincing if it were aimed also at owners of capital. About 30% of national income is passive -- interest, rents, dividends. Why are the owners of capital "entitled to an income with no work?" It's all about the morality that underlies the returns to capital while sugaring over a devaluation of labor. As a moral issue, everyone should share the returns on capital or we should tax away the interest, rents, and dividends. If it's an economic issue, berating people for their beliefs isn't a reason.

WobblyTelomeres , November 21, 2017 at 10:14 pm

Why are the owners of capital "entitled to an income with no work?"

THIS!!!! So much, THIS!!!! But, what else is a Wobbly to say, eh?

Yves Smith Post author , November 22, 2017 at 2:27 am

The overwhelming majority do work. The top 0.1% is almost entirely private equity managers who are able to classify labor income as capital gains through the carried interest loophole. Go look at the Forbes 400.

The 1% are mainly CEOs, plus elite professionals, like partners at top law and consulting firms and specialty surgeons (heart, brain, oncology). The CEOs similarly should be seen as getting labor income but have a lot of stock incentive pay (that is how they get seriously rich) which again gets capital gains treatment.

You are mistaking clever taking advantage of the tax code for where the income actually comes from. Even the kids of rich people are under pressure to act like entrepreneurs from their families and peers. Look at Paris Hilton and Ivanka as examples. They both could have sat back and enjoyed their inheritance, but both went and launched businesses. I'm not saying the kids of the rich succeed, or would have succeed to the extent they do without parental string-pulling, but the point is very few hand their fortune over to a money manager and go sailing or play the cello.

IsotopeC14 , November 22, 2017 at 2:58 am

Isn't the brother of the infamous Koch duo doing exactly that? Actually, if all the .001%ers were like him, we'd all be better off

IsotopeC14 , November 22, 2017 at 1:34 am

What's your take on Rutger Bergman's ted talk? i think most jobs aren't real jobs at all, like marketing and ceo's. why can't we do 20 hour work weeks so we don't have huge amounts of unemployment? Note, I was "unemployed" for years since "markets" decide not to fund science in the US. Yay Germany At least I was fortunate enough to not be forced to work at Walmart or McDonalds like the majority of people with absolutely no life choices. Ah the sweet coercion of capitalism.

flora , November 21, 2017 at 9:09 pm

Your hopes for a UBI are undone by some of the real world observations I've made over many years, with regard to how a guaranteed income increase, of any measure, for a whole population of an area, affects prices. Shorter: income going up means prices are raised by merchants to capture the new income.

Your assumption that any UBI would not be instantly captured by raised prices is naive, at best. It's also naive to assume companies would continue to pay wages at the same level to people still employed, instead of reducing wages and letting UBI fill in the rest. Some corporations already underpay their workers, then encourage the workers to apply for food stamps and other public supports to make up for the reduced wage.

The point of the paper is the importance of paid employment to a person's sense of well being. I agree with the paper.

Andrew Dodds , November 22, 2017 at 2:48 am

For the vast majority, a UBI would be income-neutral – it would have to be, to avoid massive inflation. So people would receive a UBI, but pay more tax to compensate. The effect on prices would be zero.

The advantage of a UBI is mostly felt at the lower end, where insecure/seasonal work does now pay. At the moment, a person who went from farm labourer to Christmas work to summer resort work in the UK would certainly be working hard, but also relentlessly hounded by the DWP over universal credit. A UBI would make this sort of lifestyle possible.

jsn , November 21, 2017 at 11:28 am

Davidab, Good for you, but your perspicacity is not scalable. People are social animals and your attitude toward "the herd", at least as expressed here, is that of a predator, even if your taste doesn't run toward predation. Social solutions will necessarily be scalable or they won't be solutions for long.

Lambert Strether , November 22, 2017 at 1:44 am

> the organized herd a herd animal trapped in the herd

I don't think throwing 80% to 90% of the population into the "prey" bucket is especially perspicacious politically (except, of course, for predators or parasites). I also don't think it's especially perspicacious morally. You write:

Not very practical advice for most, I realize, trapped in the herd as they are in car payments and mortgages, but perhaps aspirational?

Let me translate that: "Trapped in the herd as many are to support spouses and children." In other words, taking the cares of the world on themselves in order to care for others.

BJ , November 21, 2017 at 6:37 am

Unemployed stay at home dad here. My children are now old enough to no longer need a stay at home dad. Things I have done: picked up two musical instruments and last year dug a natural swimming pond by hand. Further, one would need to refute all the increased happiness in retirement (NBER). Why social security but not UBI? I get being part of the precariat is painful and this is a reality for most the unemployed no matter where you live in the world. A UBI is unworkable because it will never be large enough to make people's lives unprecarious. Having said that, I am almost positive if you gave every unemployed person 24 k a year and health benefits, there would be a mass of non working happy creative folks.

divadab , November 21, 2017 at 7:41 am

UBI seems to me to encourage non-virtuous behavior – sloth, irresponsibility, fecklessness, and spendthriftness. I like the Finnish model – unemployment insurance is not limited – except if you refuse work provided by the local job center. Lots of work is not being done all over America – we could guarantee honest work to all with some imagination. Start with not spraying roundup and rather using human labor to control weeds and invasive species.

I do agree that universal health insurance is necessary and sadly Obamacare is not that.

ambrit , November 21, 2017 at 8:34 am

The crux of this problem is the definition used for "non-virtuous behaviour." A new CCC is a good place to start though. (Your Tax Dollars At Work! [For some definition of tax dollars.]) As for BJ above, I would suppose that child rearing was his "employment" for years. good so far, but his follow-up is untypical. The 'Empty Nester' mother is a well known meme.

a different chris , November 21, 2017 at 9:19 am

Spendthriftness on 24K a year? Seriously? If we are disgorging unprofessional opinions, I will add my own: sloth and irresponsibility are more signs of depression rather than freedom from having to work. In fact, I believe (and I think much of the stuff here) supports the idea that people want to be seen as useful in some way. Doesn't include me! :) .. unfortunately, I have the charmingly named "dependents" so there you have it.

BJ , November 21, 2017 at 11:18 am

I lived 6 years as a grad student on 24k a year and would say it was easy. Only thing I would have to had worried about was awful health insurance. A two household each with 24k would be even easier, especially if you could do it in a low cost area. So I am not sure what you mean by spendthrift. But again it will never happen, so we will be stuck with what we have or most likely an even more sinister system. I guess I am advocating for a JG with unlimited number of home makers per household.

roadrider , November 21, 2017 at 9:23 am

except if you refuse work provided by the local job center

And who's to say that the local "job center" has work that would be appropriate for every person's specific talents and interests? This is no better than saying that you should be willing to go work for some minimum-wage retail job with unpredictable scheduling and other forms of employer abuses after you lose a high-paying job requiring special talents. I have to call bullshit on this model. I went through a two-year stretch if unemployment in no small part because the vast majority of the available jobs for my skill set were associated with the MIC, surveillance state or the parasitic FIRE sector. I was able to do this because I had saved up enough FY money and had no debts or family to support.

I can also attest to the negative aspects of unemployment that the post describes. Its all true and I can't really say that I'e recovered even now, 2.5 years after finding another suitable job.

Jesper , November 21, 2017 at 10:55 am

The job center in the neighbouring Sweden had the same function. Had is the important word. My guess is that the last time someone lost their unemployment insurance payout due to not accepting a job was in the early 1980s. Prior to that companies might, maybe, possibly have considered hiring someone assigned to them – full employment forced companies to accept what was offered. Companies did not like the situation and the situation has since changed.

Now, when full employment is a thing of the past, the way to lose unemployment insurance payouts is by not applying to enough jobs. An easily gamed system by people not wanting to work: just apply to completely unsuitable positions and the number of applications will be high. Many companies are therefore overwhelmed by applications and are therefore often forced to hire more people in HR to filter out the unsuitable candidates.
People in HR tend not to know much about qualifications and or personalities for the job so they tend to filter out too many. We're all familiar with the skills-shortage .
Next step of this is that the companies who do want to hire have to use recruitment agencies. Basically outsourcing the HR to another company whose people are working on commission. Recruiters sometimes know how to find 'talent', often they are the same kind of people with the same skills and backgrounds as people working in HR.

To even get to the hiring manager a candidate has to go through two almost identical and often meaningless interviews. Recruiter and then HR. Good for the GDP I suppose, not sure if it is good for anything else.

But back on topic again, there is a second way of losing unemployment insurance payout: Time. Once the period covered has passed there is no more payouts of insurance. After that it it is time to live on savings, then sell all assets, and then once that is done finally go to the welfare office and prove that savings are gone and all assets are sold and maybe welfare might be paid out. People on welfare in Sweden are poor and the indignities they are being put through are many. Forget about hobbies and forget about volunteering as the money for either of those activities simply aren't available. Am I surprised by a report saying unemployed in Sweden are unhappy? Nope.

nonclassical , November 21, 2017 at 10:42 am

meanwhile NYTimes testimonials Friday, show average family of 4 healthprofit costs (tripled, due to trump demise ACA) to be $30,000. per year, with around $10,000. deductible end of any semblance of affordable access, "murKa"

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/16/us/politics/obamacare-premiums-middle-class.html

Jeremy Grimm , November 21, 2017 at 1:53 pm

What do you mean by virtuous behavior?

Where does a character like Bertie Wooster in "Jeeves" fit in your notions of virtuous behavior? Would you consider him more virtuous working in the management of a firm, controlling the lives and labor of others -- and humorously helped by his his brilliant valet, Jeeves, getting him out of trouble?

For contrast -- in class and social status -- take a beer-soaked trailer trash gentleman of leisure -- and for sake of argument blessed with less than average intelligence -- where would you put him to work where you'd feel pleased with his product or his service? Would you feel better about this fellow enjoying a six-pack after working 8 hours a day 5 days a week virtuously digging and then filling a hole in the ground while carefully watched and goaded by an overseer? [Actually -- how different is that from "using human labor to control weeds and invasive species"? I take it you're a fan of chain-gangs and making the poor pick up trash on the highways?]

What about some of our engineers and scientists virtuously serving the MIC? Is their behavior virtuous because they're not guilty of sloth, irresponsibility [in executing their work], fecklessness, and spendthriftness? On this last quality how do you feel about our government who pay the salaries for all these jobs building better ways to kill and maim?

Bill Smith , November 21, 2017 at 8:01 am

How big is the swimming pool and how long did it take? Where did you put the dirt?

BJ , November 21, 2017 at 11:07 am

It is a design by David Pagan Butler. It is his plunge pool design, deepend is 14 by 8 by 7 deep. I used the dirt to make swales around some trees. Win win all around.

tegnost , November 21, 2017 at 9:32 am

curious to know whether you are married to someone with a job?

BJ , November 21, 2017 at 11:25 am

The answer is yes my spouse works. So I do have a schedule of waking up to make her lunch everyday, meeting her at lunch to walk, and making dinner when she gets home, but we do all those things on her days off so .

But again we would need to explain away, why people who are retired are happier? Just because they think they payed into social security? Try explaining to someone on the SS dole how the government spends money into existence and is not paid by taxes or that the government never saved their tax money, so there are not entitled to this money.

David Kane Miller , November 21, 2017 at 6:55 am

I hated working for other people and doing what they wanted. I began to feel some happiness when I had a half acre on which I could create my own projects. Things improved even more when I could assure myself of some small guaranteed income by claiming Social Security at age 62. To arise in the morning when I feel rested, with interesting projects like gardens, fences, small buildings ahead and work at my own pace is the essence of delight for me. I've been following your arguments against UBI for years and disagree vehemently.

a different chris , November 21, 2017 at 9:23 am

I feel I would behave the same as you, if I had the chance. *But* no statements about human beings are absolute, and because UBI would work for either of us does not mean it would work for the majority. Nothing devised by man is perfect.

Mel , November 21, 2017 at 9:42 am

It's not you; it's not me. It's those deplorable people.

tegnost , November 21, 2017 at 9:37 am

first you had to buy the half acre in a suitable location, then you had to work many years to qualify for social security, the availability of which you paid for and feel you deserve. You also have to buy stuff for fences gardens and small buildings. At most that rhymes with a ubi but is significantly different in it's make up.

Lambert Strether , November 22, 2017 at 1:56 am

> when I had a half acre on which I could create my own projects

That is, when you acquired the half acre, which not everyone can do. It seems to me there's a good deal of projecting going on with this thread from people who are, in essence, statistical outliers. But Mitchell summarizes the literature:

So for decades, researchers in this area, as opposed to bloggers who wax lyrical on their own opinions, have known that the importance of work in our lives goes well beyond the income we earn.

If the solution that works for you is going to scale, that implies that millions more will have to own land. If UBI depends on that, how does that happen? (Of course, in a post-collapse scenario, the land might be taken , but that same scenario makes the existence of institutions required to convey the UBI highly unlikely. )

Carla , November 21, 2017 at 7:16 am

Very glad to hear that Bill Mitchell is working on the "Future of Work" book, and to have this post, and the links to the other segments. Thank you, Yves!

Andrew , November 21, 2017 at 7:25 am

I don't agree with this statement. Never will. I'm the complete opposite. Give me more leisure time and you'll find me painting, writing, playing instruments and doing things that I enjoy. I recall back to when I was a student, I relished in the free time I got (believe me University gave me a lot of free time) between lectures, meaning I could enjoy this time pursuing creative activities. Sure I might be different than most people but I know countless people who are the same.

My own opinion is that root problem lies in the pathology of the working mentality, that 'work' and having a 'job' is so engrained into our society and mindset that once you give most people the time to enjoy other things, they simply can't. They don't know what to do with themselves and they eventually become unhappy, watching daytime TV sat on the sofa.

I recall back to a conversation with my mother about my father, she said to me, 'I don't know how your father is going to cope once he retires and has nothing to do' and it's that very example of where work for so many people becomes so engrained in their mindset, that they are almost scared of having 'nothing to do' as they say. It's a shame, it's this systemic working mentality that has led to this mindset. I'm glad I'm the opposite of this and proud by mother brought me up to be this way. Work, and job are not in my vocabulary. I work to live, not live to work.

I_Agree , November 21, 2017 at 11:26 am

I agree with Andrew. I think this data on the negative effects says more about how being employed fundamentally breaks the human psyche and turns them into chattel, incapable of thinking for themselves and destroying their natural creativity. The more a human is molded into a "good worker" the less they become a full fledged human being. The happiest people are those that have never placed importance on work, that have always lived by the maxim "work to live, not live to work". From my own experience every assertion in this article is the opposite of reality. It is working that makes me apathethic, uncreative, and miserable. The constant knowing that you're wasting your life, day after day, engaged in an activity merely to build revenue streams for the rich, instead of doing things that help society or that please you on a personal level, is what I find misery inducing.

nycTerrierist , November 21, 2017 at 12:18 pm

I agree. If financial insecurity is removed from the equation -- free time can be used creatively for self-actualization, whatever form that may take: cultivating the arts, hobbies, community activities, worthy causes and projects. The ideology wafting from Mitchell's post smells to me like a rationale for wage slavery (market driven living, neo-liberalism, etc.)

jrs , November 21, 2017 at 12:48 pm

Besides how are people supposed to spend their time "exploring other opportunities" when unemployed anyway? To collect unemployment which isn't exactly paying that much anyway, they have to show they are applying to jobs. To go to the movies the example given costs money, which one may tend to be short on when unemployed. They probably are looking for work regardless (for the income). There may still be some free time. But they could go back to school? Uh in case one just woke up from a rock they were under for 100 years, that costs money, which one may tend to be short on when unemployed, plus there is no guarantee the new career will pan out either, no guarantee someone is just chomping at the bit to hire a newly trained 50 year old or something. I have always taken classes when unemployed, and paid for it and it's not cheap.

Yes to use one's time wisely in unemployment in the existing system requires a kind of deep psychological maturity that few have, a kind of Surrender To Fate, to the uncertainty of whether one will have an income again or not (either that or a sugar daddy or a trust fund). Because it's not easy to deal with that uncertainty. And uncertainty is the name of the game in unemployment, that and not having an income may be the pain in it's entirety.

FelicityT , November 21, 2017 at 3:18 pm

Sadly this breaking down into a "good worker" begins for most shortly after they begin school. This type of education harms society in a myriad of ways including instilling a dislike of learning, deference to authority (no matter how irrational and unjust), and a destruction of a child's natural curiosity.

Yves Smith Post author , November 21, 2017 at 5:21 pm

I don't buy your premise that people are "creative". The overwhelming majority do not have creative projects they'd be pursuing if they had leisure and income. Go look at retirees, ones that have just retired, are healthy, and have money.

Yves Smith Post author , November 21, 2017 at 4:29 pm

You are really misconstruing what the studies have found and misapplied it to your situation. Leisure time when you have a job or a role (being a student) is not at all the same as having time when you are unemployed, with or without a social safety net.

Summer , November 21, 2017 at 6:25 pm
jrs , November 21, 2017 at 6:37 pm

one often has a role when unemployed: finding work. But it's not a very fulfilling one! But if one is trying to find work, it's not exactly the absence of a role either even if it still leaves significantly more free time than otherwise, maybe winning the lottery is the absence of a role.

But then it's also not like we give people a UBI even for a few years (at any time in adult life) to get an education. Only if they take out a student loan approaching the size of a mortgage or have parents willing to pony up are they allowed that (to pay not just for the education but to live because having a roof over one's head etc. is never free, a UBI via debt it might be called).

Lambert Strether , November 22, 2017 at 2:00 am

> Give me more leisure time and you'll find me painting, writing, playing instruments and doing things that I enjoy.
Nothing to breed resentment of "the creative class" here! Blowback from Speenhamland brought on the workhouses, so be careful what you wish for.

Jesper , November 21, 2017 at 7:47 am

Again the UBI vs JG debate .

UBI won't happen and JG has been tried (and failed).

The argument that JG would allow the public sector to hire more people is demeaning to people already employed in the public sector and demonstrably false – people are hired into the public sector without there being a JG. It is most certainly possible to be against a JG while wanting more people working in the public sector.

The way forward is to have a government acting for people instead of for corporations. Increase the amount of paid vacations, reduce the pension age and stop with the Soviet style worship of work: While some people are apparently proud of their friends and relatives who died while at work it is also possible to feel sad about that.

diptherio , November 21, 2017 at 10:00 am

JG has been tried (and failed).

When and where? The NCCC seemed to work pretty good here in the Western US.

Jesper , November 21, 2017 at 10:27 am

The JG was tried in Communist countries in Europe, Asia and Americas. The arguments then and there were the same as here and now, made by the same type of social 'scientists' (economists).

Would a JG be different here and now as the Republicans and Democrats are representing the best interests of the people? Or are they representing the same kind of interests as the Communist parties did?

Yves Smith Post author , November 21, 2017 at 4:39 pm

Data, please. The USSR fell because it was spending on its military to keep up with the US, a much larger economy. Countering your assertion we have this:

tegnost , November 21, 2017 at 10:00 am

As long as people argue that "it's not fair" to fix the inequality issue and employ things like debt jubilee or student loan forgiveness, or if we fix the ridiculous cost of health care what will all those insurance agents do then we will wind up with the real kind of class warfare, rather than the current punching from the top down, the punching will come from the bottom, because the situation is not fair now, it's just TINA according to those who profit from it. In my own life there is a balance of creativity and work, and I find work enables my creativity by putting some pressure on my time, i.e., I get up earlier, I practice at 8:30 am instead of sleeping til 10 and winding up with S.A..D., I go to bed rather than watch tv or drink to excess.. in other words i have some kind of weird schedule, I have days off sort of When I've been unemployed I feel the way s described in the article. I find the arguments in favor of ubi tend to come from people who already have assets, or jobs, or family who they take care of which is actually a job although uncommonly described as such. The only truth I see in real life is that the unemployed I am intimately familiar with first are mentally oppressed by the notion that to repair their situation will require they work every waking hour at substandard wages for the rest of their life and that is a major barrier to getting started, and that is a policy choice the gov't and elite classes purposefully made which created the precariat and will be their undoing if they are unable to see this.

tegnost , November 21, 2017 at 10:15 am

Hey look, even the msm is looking at it
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/is-uprising-the-only-way-out-of-gross-inequality-maybe-so/

j84ustin , November 21, 2017 at 10:08 am

As someone who works in the public sector I never quite thought of it like that, thanks.

hunkerdown , November 21, 2017 at 7:53 am

Disappointing that there's no analysis in this context of less employment, as in shorter work weeks and/or days, as opposed to merely all or none.

nonclassical , November 21, 2017 at 10:45 am

see – hear

(but no possibility without healthcare access, rather than healthtprofit)

Vatch , November 21, 2017 at 11:31 am

Interesting point. I read a science fiction story in which the protagonist arrives for work at his full time job at 10:00 AM, and he's finished for the day at 4:00 PM. I can't remember the name of the story or novel, unfortunately.

jrs , November 21, 2017 at 1:04 pm

Agreed. And they already have it in places like Denmark. Why don't we talk about that? It actually exists unlike utopian schemes for either total UBI or total work guarantee (government job creation is not utopian, but imagining it will employ everyone is, and I would like the UBI to be more widely tried, but in this country we are nowhere close). Funny how utopia becomes more interesting to people than actual existing arrangements, even though of course those could be improved on too.

The Danish work arrangement is less than a 40 hour week, and mothers especially often work part-time but both sexes can. It's here in this country where work is either impossibly grueling or you are not working. No other choice. In countries with more flexible work arrangements more women actually work, but it's flexible and flexible for men who choose to do the parenting as well. I'm not saying this should be for parents only of course.

Lambert Strether , November 22, 2017 at 2:02 am

Because the JG sets the baseline for employment, which private companies must meet, the JG (unlike the UBI) can do this.

Otis B Driftwood , November 21, 2017 at 7:58 am

My own situation is that I am unhappy in my well-paying job and would like nothing more than to devote myself to other interests. I'm thirty years on in a relationship with someone who grew up in bad financial circumstances and panics whenever I talk about leaving my job. I tell her that we have 2 years of living expenses in the bank but I can't guarantee making the same amount of money if I do leave my job. She has a job that she loves and is important and pays barely 1/2 of my own income. So she worries about her future with me. She worries about losing her home. I suppose that makes me the definition of a wage slave. And it makes for an increasingly unhappy marriage. I admire those who have faced similar circumstances and found a way through this. Sorry to vent, but this topic and the comments hit a nerve with me and I'm still trying to figure this out.

ambrit , November 21, 2017 at 8:38 am

Otis; We are presently going through a period where that "two year cushion" has evaporated, for various reasons. We are seeing our way through this, straight into penury and privation. Take nothing for granted in todays' economy.

jrs , November 21, 2017 at 1:11 pm

yes find the lower paying job that you like more first. If you just quit for nothing in the hopes of finding one it might not happen. Of course unemployment also happens sometimes, whether we want it or not.

bronco , November 21, 2017 at 12:47 pm

The newer generations are worse when it comes to lifestyle. Those of that are older can at least remember a time without cellphones internet streaming services leasing a new car every 2 years etc.

What about the young? My niece and her husband should be all set , his mom sunk money into a home on the condition she moved into a mother in law apartment. So far so good right? 2 years in they are imploding even with the free child care she provides. Combined their wireless bill a month is over $300. The sit on the couch side by side and stream netflix shows to dueling iphones in front of a 65 inch tv that is not even turned on. Wearing headphones in silence.

Both driving new vehicles , both have gym memberships they don't use . They buy lattes 3 or 4 times a day which is probably another 500 a month.

My uncle passed away recently and my niece asked if she was in the will. It was literally her only communication on the subject. They are going under and could easily trim a few thousand a month from the budget but simply won't. No one in the family is going to lift a finger for them at this point they burned every possible bridge already. I have seen people living in cars plenty lately but I think these will be the first I see to living in brand new cars .

Somewhere along the line they got the impression that the american dream was a leased car a starbucks in one hand and an iphone in the other .

Confront them with the concept of living within a paycheck and they react like a patient hearing he has 3 months to live.

Lambert Strether , November 22, 2017 at 2:03 am

Ah. Reagan's "welfare queens" updated. Kids these days!

JBird , November 22, 2017 at 3:00 am

Yeah being poor, never mind growing up poor, just well and truly sucks and it can really @@@@ you up. Gives people all sorts of issues. I'm rather like her, but I have had the joy of multi-hour commutes to unexciting soul crushing work. Happy, happy, joy, joy! However don't forget that with the current political economy things are likely to go bad in all sorts of ways. This whole site is devoted to that. My suggestion is to keep the job unless you have something lined up. Not being able to rent has it own stresses too. Take my word for it.

Thuto , November 21, 2017 at 8:00 am

I may be engaging in semantics but I think conflating work and jobs makes this article a bit of a mixed bag. I know plenty of people who are terribly unhappy in their jobs, but nonetheless extract a sense of wellbeing from having a stable source of INCOME to pay their bills (anecdotally speaking, acute stress from recent job losses is closely linked to uncertainty about how bills are going to be paid, that's why those with a safety net of accumulated savings report less stress than those without). Loss of status, social standing and identity and the chronic stress borne from these become evident much later I.e. when the unemployment is prolonged, accompanied of course by the still unresolved top-of-mind concern of "how to pay the bills".

As such, acute stress for the recently unemployed is driven by financial/income uncertainty (I.e. how am I going to pay the bills) whereas chronic stress from prolonged unemployment brings into play the more identity driven aspects like loss of social standing and status. For policy interventions to have any effects, policy makers would have to delineate the primary drivers of stress (or lack of wellbeing as the author calls it) during the various phases of the unemployment lifecycle. An Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) like we have here in South Africa appears to address the early stages of unemployment, and the accompanying acute stress, quite well by providing the income guarantee (for six months) that cushions the shock of losing a job. What's still missing of course are interventions that promote the quick return to employment for those on UIF, so maybe a middle of the road solution between UBI and a jobs guarantee scheme is how policy makers should be framing this, instead of the binary either/or we currently have.

TroyMcClure , November 21, 2017 at 9:19 am

Lots' of people think they're unhappy with their jobs. Let them sit unemployed for 9 months and ask them if they want that job back. The usual parade of anecdata is on display here in the comments. Mitchell's real data and analysis in the article above still stand.

Thuto , November 21, 2017 at 10:06 am

If you'd read through my comment, and not rushed through it with a view of dishing out a flippant response, you'd have seen that nowhere do I question the validity of his data, I merely question how the argument is presented in some areas (NC discourages unquestioning deference to the views of experts no??). By the way, anecdotes do add to richer understanding of a nuanced and layered topic (as this one is) so your dismissal of them in your haste to invalidate people's observations is hardly helpful.

jrs , November 21, 2017 at 1:15 pm

Yes people many not like their jobs but prefer the security of having them to not. Yes even if the boss sexually harasses one (as we are seeing is very common). Yes even if there is other workplace abuse. Yes even when it causes depression or PTSD (but if one stays with such a job long term it ruins the self confidence that is one prerequisite to get another job!). Yes even if one is in therapy because of job stress, sexual harassment or you name it. The job allows the having health insurance, allows the therapy, allows the complaining about the job in therapy to make it through another week.

Lambert Strether , November 22, 2017 at 2:04 am

> The usual parade of anecdata is on display here in the comments. Mitchell's real data and analysis in the article above still stand.

Ding ding ding!

Democrita , November 21, 2017 at 8:13 am

When unemployed, the stress of worry about money may suppress the creative juices. Speaking from experience. People may well 'keep looking for jobs' because they know ultimately they need a job with steady income. The great experience of some freelancers notwithstanding, not all are cut out for it.

I would love to see some more about happiness or its lack in retirement–referenced by stay-at-home dad BJ , above.

I wonder, too, about the impact of *how* one loses one's job. Getting laid off vs fired vs quitting vs involuntary retirement vs voluntary, etc feel very different. Speaking from experience on that, too. I will search on these points and post anything of interest.

jrs , November 21, 2017 at 1:40 pm

There are also other things that are degrading about the very process of being unemployed not mentioned here. What about the constant rejection that it can entail? One is unemployed and looking for work, one sends out resumes, many of them will never be answered, that's rejection. Then if one is lucky they get interviews, many will never lead to jobs, yet more rejection. Does the process of constant rejection itself have a negative effect on a human being whether it's looking for jobs or dates or whatever? Isn't it learned helplessness to if one keeps trying for something and keeps failing. Isn't that itself demoralizing entirely independent of any doubtful innate demoralizing quality of leisure.

freedeomny , November 21, 2017 at 10:23 am

I am not so sure if I agree with this article. I think it really depends on whether or not you have income to support yourself, hate or love your job, and the amount of outside interests you have, among other things. Almost everyone I know who lives in the NYC area and commutes into the city .doesn't like their job and finds the whole situation "soul-crushing".

Those that live in Manhattan proper are (feel) a bit better off. I for one stopped working somewhat voluntarily last year. I write somewhat because I began to dislike my job so much that it was interfering with my state of well being, however, if I had been allowed to work remotely I probably would have stuck it out for another couple of years.

I am close enough to 62 that I can make do before SS kicks in although I have completely changed my lifestyle – i.e. I've given up a materialistic lifestyle and live very frugally.

Additionally I saved for many years once I decided to embark on this path. I do not find myself depressed at all and the path this year has been very enriching and exciting (and scary) as I reflect on what I want for the future. I'm pretty sure I will end up moving and buying a property so that I can become as self sufficient as possible. Also, I probably will get a job down the line – but if I can't get one because I am deemed too old that will be ok as well. The biggest unknown for me is how much health insurance will cost in the future .

Yves Smith Post author , November 21, 2017 at 5:15 pm

The article made clear that the studies included "unemployed but with income" from government support. It is amazing the degree to which readers ignore that and want to make the findings about "unemployed with no income".

JBird , November 22, 2017 at 3:30 am

That's because we Americans all have work=good=worthy=blessed by God while workless=scum=worthless=accursed by God engraved into our collective soul. Our politics, our beliefs, are just overlays to that.

Even when we agree that the whole situation just crushes people into paste, and for which they have no defense regardless of how hard they work, how carefully they plan, or what they do, that underlay makes use feel that this is their/our fault. Any suggestions that at least some support can be decoupled from work, and that maybe work, and how much you earn, should not determine their value, brings the atavistic fear of being the "undeserving poor," parasites and therefore reprobated scum.

So we don't hear what you are saying without extra effort because it's bypassing our conscious thoughts.

Jamie , November 21, 2017 at 10:43 am

Add my voice to those above who feel that forced labor is the bane of existence, not the wellspring. All this study says to me is that refusing to employ someone in capitalist society does not make them happy. It makes them outcasts.

So, I say yes to a JG, because anyone who wants work should be offered work. But at the same time, a proper JG is not forced labor. And the only way to ensure that it is not forced labor, is to decouple basic needs from wage slavery.

Left in Wisconsin , November 21, 2017 at 12:02 pm

I am critical of those who distinguish between the job and the income. Of course the income is critical to the dignity of the job. For many jobs, it is the primary source of that dignity. The notion that all jobs should provide some intrinsic dignity unrelated to the income, or that people whose dignity is primarily based on the income they earn rather than the work they do are deluded, is to buy in to the propaganda of "passion" being a requirement for your work and to really be blind to what is required to make a society function. Someone has to change the diapers, and wipe the butts of old people. (yes, I've done both.) It doesn't require passion and any sense of satisfaction is gone by about the second day. But if you could make a middle class living doing it, there would be a lot fewer unhappy people in the world.

It is well known that auto factory jobs were not perceived as good jobs until the UAW was able to make them middle class jobs. The nature of the actual work itself hasn't changed all that much over the years – mostly it is still very repetitive work that requires little specialized training, even if the machine technology is much improved. Indeed, I would guess that more intrinsic satisfaction came from bashing metal than pushing buttons on a CNC machine, and so the jobs may even be less self-actualizing than they used to be.

The capitalist myth is that the private sector economy generates all the wealth and the public sector is a claim on that wealth. Yet human development proves to us that this is not true – a substantial portion of "human capital" is developed outside the paid economy, government investment in R&D generates productivity growth, etc. And MMT demonstrates that we do not require private sector savings to fund public investment.

We are still a ways from having the math to demonstrate that government investment in caring and nurturing is always socially productive – first we need productivity numbers that reflect more than just private sector "product." But I think we are moving in that direction. Rather than prioritize a minimum wage JG of make-work, we should first simply pay people good wages to raise their own children or look after their elderly and disabled relatives. The MMT JG, as I understand it, would still require people to leave their kids with others to look after them in order to perform some minimum wage task. That is just dumb.

jrs , November 21, 2017 at 1:31 pm

Maybe it's dumb, it's certainly dumb in a system like the U.S. where work is brutal and often low paid and paid childcare is not well remunerated either. But caretakers also working seems to work in countries with greater income equality, good job protections, flexible work arrangements, and a decent amount of paid parental leave – yea Denmark, they think their children should be raised by professionals, but also work-life balance is still pretty good.

Whiskey Bob , November 21, 2017 at 1:34 pm

My take is that capitalism has made the benefits and malus of having a job so ingrained into culture and so reinforced. Having a job is so closely linked to happiness because it gives you the money needed to pursue it.

A job affords you the ability to pursue whatever goals you want within a capitalist framework. "Everything" costs money and so having a job gives you the money to pay for those costs and go on to fulfill your pursuit of happiness.

Analyzing whether people are happy or not under these conditions seem apparent that it is going to lead to results heavily biased towards finding happiness through employment.

The unemployed are often living off someone else's income and feel like an undeserving parasite. Adults are generally ingrained with the culture that they have to grow up and be independent and be able to provide for a new family that they will start up. Becoming unemployed is like being emasculated and infantile, the opposite of what is expected of adults.

There's also that not having a job is increasingly being punished especially in the case of America. American wages have stayed either largely static or have worsened, making being unemployed that much more of a burden on family or friends. Unemployment has been demonized by Reaganism and has become systematically punishable for the long term unemployed. If you are unemployed for too long, you start losing government support. This compounds the frantic rush to get out of unemployment once unemployed.

There is little luxury to enjoy while unemployed. Life while unemployed is a frustrating and often disappointing hell of constant job applications and having many of them lead to nothing. The people providing support often start to become less so over time and become more convinced of laziness or some kind of lack of character or willpower or education or ability or whatever. Any sense of systemic failure is transplanted into a sense of personal failure, especially under neoliberalism.

I am not so sure about the case of Europe and otherwise. I am sure that the third world often has little or no social safety nets so having work (in exploitative conditions in many cases) is a must for survival.

Anyways, I wonder about the exact methodologies of these studies and I think they often take the current feelings about unemployment and then attempt to extrapolate talking points for UBI/JG from them. Yes, UBI wouldn't change culture overnight and it would take a very, very long time for people to let down their guard and adjust if UBI is to be implemented in a manner that would warrant trust. This article seems to understand the potential for that, but decides against it being a significant factor due to the studies emphasizing the malus of unemployment.

I wonder how different the results would be if there were studies that asked people how they would feel if they were unemployed under a UBI system versus the current system. I know a good number of young people (mostly under 30) who would love to drop out and just play video games all day. Though the significance of such a drastic demographic shift would probably lead to great political consequences. It would probably prove the anti-UBI crowd right in that under a capitalist framework, the capitalists and the employed wouldn't tolerate the unemployed and would seek to turn them into an underclass.

Personally I think a combination of UBI and JG should be pursued. JG would work better within the current capitalist framework. I don't think it is without its pitfalls due to similar possible issues (with the similar policy of full employment) either under Keynesianism (e.g. Milton Friedman sees it as inefficient) or in the USSR (e.g. bullshit jobs). There is the possibility of UBI having benefits (not having the unemployed be a burden but a subsidized contributer to the economy) so I personally don't think it should be fully disregarded until it is understood better. I would like it if there were better scientific studies to expand upon the implications of UBI and better measure if it would work or not. The upcoming studies testing an actual UBI system should help to end the debates once and for all.

redleg , November 21, 2017 at 2:28 pm

My $0.02: I have a creative pursuit (no money) and a engineering/physical science technical career (income!). I am proficient in and passionate about both. Over the last few years, the technical career became tenuous due to consolidation of regional consulting firms (endemic to this era)- wages flat to declining, higher work stress, less time off, conversation to contact employment, etc.- which has resulted in two layoffs.

During the time of tenuous employment, my art took on a darker tone. During unemployment the art stopped altogether.

I'm recently re-employed in a field that I'm not proficient. Both the peter principle and imposter syndrome apply. My art has resumed, but the topics are singular about despair and work, to the point that I feel like I'm constantly reworking the same one piece over and over again. And the quality has plummeted too.

In some fields (e.g. engineering), being a wage slave is the only realistic option due to the dominance of a small number of large firms. The big players crowd out independents and free lancers, while pressuring their own employees through just-high-enough wages and limiting time off. Engineering services is a relationship- based field, and the big boys (and they are nearly all boys) have vastly bigger networks to draw work from than a small firm unless that small firm has a big contact to feed them work (until they get gobbled up). The big firms also have more areas of expertise which limits how useful a boutique firm is to a client pool, except under very narrow circumstances. And if you are an introvert like most engineering people, there's no way to compete with big firms and their marketing staff to expand a network enough to compete.

In that way, consulting is a lot like art. To make a living at it you need either contacts or a sponsor. Or an inheritance.

ChrisPacific , November 21, 2017 at 5:30 pm

I would be interested to know what the definition of unemployment was for the purpose of this study (I couldn't find it in the supplied links). If it's simply "people who don't have a job," for example, then it would include the likes of the idle rich, retirees, wards of the state, and so on. Binary statements like this one do make it sound like the broad definition is the one in use:

When considering the world's population as a whole, people with a job evaluate the quality of their lives much more favorably than those who are unemployed.

The conclusion seems at odds with results I've seen for some of those groups – for example, I thought it was fairly well accepted that retirees who are supported by a government plan that is sufficient for them to live on were generally at least as happy as they had been during their working life.

If, on the other hand, the study uses a narrow definition (e.g. people who are of working age, want a job or need one to support themselves financially, but can't find one) then the conclusion seems a lot more reasonable. But that's a heavily loaded definition in economic and cultural terms. In that case, the conclusion (people are happier if they have a job) only holds true in the current prevailing model of society. It doesn't rule out the possibility of structuring society or the economy differently in such a way that people can be non-working and happy. The existence of one such population already (retirees) strongly suggests that outcomes like this are possible. A UBI would be an example of just such a restructuring of society, and therefore I don't think that this study and its result are necessarily a valid argument against it.

nihil obstet , November 21, 2017 at 6:07 pm

Which makes a person happier -- being considered worthless by one's society or valuable? How many studies do we need to answer that question? Apparently, a lot, because studies like this one keep on going. The underlying assumption is that jobs make one valuable. So if you don't have a job you're worthless. Now, who's happier on the whole, people with jobs or the unemployed? That's surely good for a few more studies. Did you know that members of socially devalued groups (minorities, non-heteros, and the like) have higher rates of dysfunction, rather like the unemployed? Hmm, I wonder if there's maybe a similar principle at work. And my solution is not to turn all the people of color white nor to change all the women to men nor to "cure" gays. Well, maybe a few more conclusive studies of this kind will convince me that we must all be the same, toeing the line for those whom it has pleased God to dictate our values to us.

I am convinced that we shouldn't outlaw jobs, because I believe the tons of stories about happy people in their jobs However, I also believe we shouldn't force everyone into jobs, because I know tons of stories about happy people without jobs. You know, the stories that the JG people explain away: parents caring for their children (JG -- "oh, we'll make that a job!"), volunteers working on local planning issues (JG -- "oh, we'll make that a job, too. In fact, we'll make everything worth doing a job. The important thing is to be able to force people to work schedules and bosses, because otherwise, they'll all lie around doing nothing and be miserable"), the retired (JG -- "that's not really the same, but they'd be better off staying in a job"). And this is all before we get to those who can't really hold a job because of disability or geography or other responsibilities.

I support the JG over the current situation, but as to what we should be working for, the more I read the JG arguments, the more paternalistic and just plain narrow minded judgmental they seem.

Summer , November 21, 2017 at 6:52 pm

If someone else gives you a sense of purpose and takes it away what was the purpose?

Lambert Strether , November 22, 2017 at 1:24 am

Data like that provided by Mitchell is important to demolishing the horrid "economic anxiety" frame much beloved by liberals, especially wonkish Democrats.* It's not (a) just feelings , to be solved by scented candles or training (the liberal version of rugged individualism) and (b) the effects are real and measurable. It's not surprising, when you think about it, that the working class is about work .

* To put this another way, anybody who has really suffered the crawling inwardness of anxiety, in the clinical sense, knows that it affects every aspect of one's being. Anxiety is not something deplorables deploy as cover for less than creditable motives.

[Sep 11, 2017] The only countervailing force, unions, were deliberately destroyed. Neoliberalism needs to atomize work force to function properly and destroys any solidarity among workers. Unions are anathema for neoliberalism, because they prevent isolation and suppression of workers.

Highly recommended!
Apr 15, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
Denis Drew , April 15, 2017 at 06:58 AM
What's missing in each and every case above -- at least in the USA! -- is countervailing power. 6% labor union density in private business is equivalent to 20/10 blood pressure in the human body: it starves every other healthy process.

It is not just labor market bargaining power that has gone missing, it is not only the lost political muscle for the average person (equal campaign financing, almost all the votes), it is also the lack of machinery to deal with day-to-day outrages on a day-to-day basis (that's called lobbying).

Late dean of the Washington press corps David Broder told a young reporter that when he came to DC fifty years ago (then), all the lobbyists were union. Big pharma's biggest rip-offs, for profit school scams, all the stuff you hear about for one day on the news but no action is ever taken -- that's because there is no (LABOR UNION) mechanism to stay on top of all (or any) of it (LOBBYISTS).

cm -> Denis Drew ... , April 15, 2017 at 12:16 PM
It is a chicken and egg problem. Before large scale automation and globalization, unions "negotiated" themselves their power, which was based on employers having much fewer other choices. Any union power that was ever legislated was legislated as a *result* of union leverage, not to enable the latter (and most of what was legislated amounts to limiting employer interference with unions).

It is a basic feature of human individual and group relations that when you are needed you will be treated well, and when you are not needed you will be treated badly (or at best you will be ignored if that's less effort overall). And by needed I mean needed as a specific individual or narrowly described group.

What automation and globalization have done is created a glut of labor - specifically an oversupply of most skill sets relative to all the work that has to be done according to socially mediated decision processes (a different set of work than what "everybody" would like to happen as long as they don't have to pay for it, taking away from other necessary or desired expenditure of money, effort, or other resources).

Maybe when the boomers age out and become physically too old to work, the balance will tip again.

Peter K. -> cm... , April 15, 2017 at 12:18 PM
"What automation and globalization have done is created a glut of labor - "

No it's been policy and politics. Automation and globalization are red herrings. They've been used to enrich the rich and stick it to everyone else.

They don't have to be used that way.

There is nothing natural or inherent about it. It's all politics and class war and the wrong side is winning.

cm -> Peter K.... , April 15, 2017 at 01:32 PM
OK - they have *enabled* it. The agency is always on the human side. But at the same time, you cannot wish or postulate away human greed.
cm -> Peter K.... , April 15, 2017 at 01:44 PM
Same thing with the internet - it has been hailed as a democratizing force, but instead it has mostly (though not wholly) amplified the existing power differentials and motivation structures.

Anecdotally, a lot of companies and institutions are either restricting internal internet access or disconnecting parts of their organizations from the internet altogether, and disabling I/O channels like USB sticks, encrypting disks, locking out "untrusted" boot methods, etc. The official narrative is security and preventing leaks of confidential information, but the latter is clearly also aimed in part at whistleblowers disclosing illegal or unethical practices. Of course that a number of employees illegitimately "steal" data for personal and not to uncover injustices doesn't really help.

Denis Drew -> cm... , April 15, 2017 at 03:19 PM
Surely there is a huge difference between the labor market here and the labor market in continental Europe -- though labor there faces the same squeezing forces it faces here. Think of German auto assembly line workers making $60 an hour counting benefits.

Think Teamster Union UPS drivers -- and pity the poor, lately hired (if they are even hired) Amazon drivers -- maybe renting vans.

The Teamsters have the only example here of what is standard in continental Europe: centralized bargaining (aka sector wide labor agreements): the Master National Freight Agreement: wherein everybody doing the same job in the same locale (entire nation for long distance truckers) works under one common contract (in French Canada too).

Imagine centralized bargaining for airlines. A few years ago Northwest squeezed a billion dollars in give backs out of its pilots -- next year gave a billion dollars in bonuses to a thousand execs. Couldn't happen under centralized bargaining -- wouldn't even give the company any competitive advantage.

libezkova -> Denis Drew ... , April 15, 2017 at 04:14 PM
"What's missing in each and every case above -- at least in the USA! -- is countervailing power."

It was deliberately destroyed. Neoliberalism needs to "atomize" work force to function properly and destroys any solidarity among workers. Unions are anathema for neoliberalism, because they prevent isolation and suppression of workers.

Amazon and Uber are good examples. Both should be prosecuted under RICO act. Wall-Mart in nor far from them.

Rising fatalities from heart disease and stroke, diabetes, drug overdoses, accidents and other conditions caused the lower life expectancy revealed in a report by the National Center for Health Statistics .

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db267.htm

http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2017/03/paul-krugman-the-scammers-the-scammed-and-americas-fate.html#comment-6a00d83451b33869e201b7c8e3c7c6970b

== quote ==
Anne Case and Angus Deaton garnered national headlines in 2015 when they reported that the death rate of midlife non-Hispanic white Americans had risen steadily since 1999 in contrast with the death rates of blacks, Hispanics and Europeans. Their new study extends the data by two years and shows that whatever is driving the mortality spike is not easing up.
... ... ..

Offering what they call a tentative but "plausible" explanation, they write that less-educated white Americans who struggle in the job market in early adulthood are likely to experience a "cumulative disadvantage" over time, with health and personal problems that often lead to drug overdoses, alcohol-related liver disease and suicide.

== end of quote ==

Greed is toxic. As anger tends to accumulate, and then explode, at some point neoliberals might be up to a huge surprise. Trump was the first swan.

Everybody bet on Hillary victory. And then...

[Jul 12, 2017] Ever more official lies from the US government by Paul Craig Roberts

Notable quotes:
"... John Williams counts the long term discouraged workers (discouraged for more than one year) who formerly (before "reforms") were counted officially. When the long term discouraged are counted, the US unemployment rate is in the 22-23 percent range. This is born out by the clear fact that the labor force participation rate has been falling throughout the alleded "recovery." Normally, labor force participation rates rise during economic recoveries. ..."
"... It is an extraordinary thing that although the US government itself reports that if even a small part of discouraged workers are countered as unemployed the unemployment rate is 8.6%, the presstitute financial media, a collection of professional liars, still reports, in the face of the government's admission, that the unemployment rate as 4.4%. ..."
Jul 12, 2017 | www.unz.com

The "recovery" is more than a mystery. It is a miracle. It exists only on fake news paper.

According to CNN, an unreliable source for sure, Jennifer Tescher, president and CEO of the Center for Financial Services Innovation, reports that about half of Americans report that their living expenses are equal to or exceed their incomes. Among those aged 18 to 25 burdened by student loans, 54% say their debts are equal to or exceed their incomes. This means that half of the US population has ZERO discretionary income. So what is driving the recovery?

Nothing. For half or more of the US population there is no discretionary income there with which to drive the economy.

The older part of the population has no discretionary income either. For a decade there has been essentially zero interest on the savings of the elderly, and if you believe John Williams of shadowstats.com, which I do, the real interest rates have been zero and even negative as inflation is measured in a way designed to prevent Social Security cost of living adjustments.

In other words, the American economy has been living on the shrinkage of the savings and living standards of its population.

Last Friday's employment report is just another lie from the government. The report says that the unemployment rate is 4.4% and that June employment increased by 222,000 jobs. A rosy picture. But as I have just demonstrated, there are no fundamentals to support it. It is just another US government lie like Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, Assad's use of chemical weapons against his own people, Russian invasion of Ukraine, and so forth and so on.

The rosy unemployment picture is totally contrived. The unemployment rate is 4.4% because discouraged workers who have not searched for a job in the past four weeks are not counted as unemployed.

The BLS has a second measure of unemployment, known as U6, which is seldom reported by the presstitute financial media. According to this official measure the US unemployment rate is about double the reported rate.

Why? the U6 rate counts discouraged workers who have been discouraged for less than one year.

John Williams counts the long term discouraged workers (discouraged for more than one year) who formerly (before "reforms") were counted officially. When the long term discouraged are counted, the US unemployment rate is in the 22-23 percent range. This is born out by the clear fact that the labor force participation rate has been falling throughout the alleded "recovery." Normally, labor force participation rates rise during economic recoveries.

It is very easy for the government to report a low jobless rate when the government studiously avoids counting the unemployed.

It is an extraordinary thing that although the US government itself reports that if even a small part of discouraged workers are countered as unemployed the unemployment rate is 8.6%, the presstitute financial media, a collection of professional liars, still reports, in the face of the government's admission, that the unemployment rate as 4.4%.

Now, let's do what I have done month after month year after year. Let's look at the jobs that the BLS alleges are being created. Remember, most of these alleged jobs are the product of the birth/death model that adds by assumption alone about 100,000 jobs per month. In other words, these jobs come out of a model, not from reality.

Where are these reported jobs? They are where they always are in lowly paid domestic services. Health care and social assistance, about half of which is "ambulatory health care services," provided 59,000 jobs. Leisure and hospitality provided 36,000 jobs of which 29,300 consist of waitresses and bartenders. Local government rose by 35,000. Manufacturing, once the backbone of the US economy, provided a measly 1,000 jobs.

As I have emphasized for a decade or two, the US is devolving into a third world workforce where the only employment available is in lowly paid domestic service jobs that cannot be offshored and that do not pay enough to provide an independent existance. This is why 50% of 25-year olds live at home with their parents and why there are more Americans aged 24-34 living with parents than living indepenently.

This is not the economic profile of a "superpower" that the idiot neoconservatives claim the US to be. The American economy that offshoring corporations and financialization have created is incapable of supporting the enormous US debt burden. It is only a matter of time and circumstance.

I doubt that the United States can continue in the ranks of a first world economy. Americans have sat there sucking their thumbs while their "leaders" destroyed them.

(Republished from PaulCraigRoberts.org by permission of author or representative)

[Mar 31, 2017] http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2017/03/weekly-initial-unemployment-claims_30.html

Mar 31, 2017 | www.calculatedriskblog.com

"Weekly Initial Unemployment Claims decrease to 258,000"

by Bill McBride...3/30/2017...08:40:00 AM

The DOL reported:

..... In the week ending March 25, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 258,000, a decrease of 3,000 from the previous week's unrevised level of 261,000. The 4-week moving average was 254,250, an increase of 7,750 from the previous week's unrevised average of 246,500.

The previous week was revised up.

...This was above the consensus forecast.

The low level of claims suggests relatively few layoffs."
Reply Thursday, March 30, 2017 at 05:40 PM libezkova said in reply to im1dc... This "seasonally adjusted" magic is more like another flavor of statistical fraud... Because assumptions behind those adjustments are so wrong they are not even discussed.

Also McJobs and Walmart jobs -- anything paying below subsistence level are not actually jobs.

It's more like slavery. That's another nail in the coffin of "free market" ideology. What is so free in a person taking job in Wal Mart? Or any other McJob? That's neo-feudalism with Wal Mart as a huge feudal landlord and mass of desperate, hungry peasants.


Please note that around $100K jobs in the USA are needed just to accommodate growing workforce.

http://www.economicpopulist.org/content/how-many-jobs-are-needed-keep-population-growth

== quote ==

How Many Jobs Are Needed to Keep Up with Population Growth?

Submitted by Robert Oak on September 8, 2012 - 6:45pm

The press quotes all sorts of figures for the number of monthly job gains needed to keep up with population growth. We see numbers like 80,000, 100,000, 125,000 and 175,000 thrown around like statistical snow as the number of jobs needed each month just to keep up. What's the right one? How many jobs are needed each month just to keep up with population growth?

The actual monthly amount can be calculated and the Atlanta Fed even did us a huge favor by publishing an interactive monthly jobs calculator so you can go check for yourself. This month shows we need 104,116 payroll jobs to maintain the same unemployment rate of 8.1% with all of the other same terrible conditions the state of employment is in.
Reply Thursday, March 30, 2017 at 08:06 PM

[Dec 21, 2016] The widespread belief of neoliberals that they are entitled to a good hand in the market economy casino. This is reflected in the more or less universal belief of the affluent that

Krugman is a neoliberal stooge. Since when Social Security is an entitlement program. If you start contributing at 25 and retire at 67 (40 years of monthly contributions), you actually get less then you contribute, unless you live more then 80 years. It just protects you from "free market casino".
Notable quotes:
"... A "contribution" theory of what a proper distribution of income might be can only be made coherent if there are constant returns to scale in the scarce, priced, owned factors of production. Only then can you divide the pile of resources by giving to each the marginal societal product of their work and of the resources that they own. ..."
"... n a world--like the one we live in--of mammoth increasing returns to unowned knowledge and to networks, no individual and no community is especially valuable. Those who receive good livings are those who are lucky -- as Carrier's workers in Indiana have been lucky in living near Carrier's initial location. It's not that their contribution to society is large or that their luck is replicable: if it were, they would not care (much) about the departure of Carrier because there would be another productive network that they could fit into a slot in. ..."
"... If not about people, what is an economy about? ..."
"... I hadn't realized that Democrats now view Social Security and Medicare as "government handouts". ..."
"... Some Democrats like Krugman are Social Darwinists. ..."
"... PK is an ignorant vicious SOB. Many of those "dependent hillbillies" PK despises paid SS and Medicare taxes for many decades, most I know have never been on foos stamps, and if they are on disability it is because they did honest hard work, something PK knows nothing about. What an ignorant jerk. ..."
"... What is a very highly subsidized industry that benefits Delong and Krugman? Higher education. Damn welfare queens! :) ..."
"... No Krugman is echoing the tribalism of Johnny Bakho. These people won't move or educate themselves or "skill up" so they deserve what they get. Social darwinism. ..."
"... People like Bakho are probably anti-union as well. They're seen as relics of an earlier age and economically "uncompetitve." See Fred Dobbs below. That's the dog whistle about the "rust belt." ..."
"... Paul Krugman's reputation, formerly that of a a noted economic, succumbed after a brief struggle to Trump Derangement Syndrome. Friends said Mr Krugman's condition had been further aggravated by cognitive dissonance from a severely challenged worldview. ..."
"... He is survived by the New York Times, also said to be in failing health. ..."
"... For a long time DeLong was mocking the notion of "economic anxiety" amongst the voters. Does this blog post mean he's rethinking that idea? ..."
"... The GOP has a long history of benefitting from the disconnect where a lot of their voters are convinced that when government money goes to others (sometimes even within their own white congregations), then it is not deserved. ..."
Dec 21, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com

anne : December 18, 2016 at 05:13 AM , 2016 at 05:13 AM

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/12/17/what-do-trump-voters-want/

December 17, 2016

What Do Trump Voters Want?
By Paul Krugman

Brad DeLong has an interesting meditation * on markets and political demands - inspired by a note from Noah Smith ** - that offers food for thought. I wonder, however, if Brad's discussion is too abstract; and I also wonder whether it fully recognizes the disconnect between what Trump voters think they want and reality. So, an entry of my own.

What Brad is getting at is the widespread belief by, well, almost everyone that they are entitled to - have earned - whatever good hand they have been dealt by the market economy. This is reflected in the more or less universal belief of the affluent that they deserve what they have; you could see this in the rage of rentiers at low interest rates, because it's the Federal Reserve's job to reward savers, right? In this terrible political year, the story was in part one of people in Appalachia angrily demanding a return of the good jobs they used to have mining coal - even though the world doesn't want more coal given fracking, and it can get the coal it still wants from strip mines and mountaintop removal, which don't employ many people.

And what Brad is saying, I think, is that what those longing for the return to coal want is those jobs they deserve, where they earn their money - not government handouts, no sir.

A fact-constrained candidate wouldn't have been able to promise such people what they want; Trump, of course, had no problem.

But is that really all there is? Working-class Trump voters do, in fact, receive a lot of government handouts - they're almost totally dependent on Social Security for retirement, Medicare for health care when old, are quite dependent on food stamps, and many have recently received coverage from Obamacare. Quite a few receive disability payments too. They don't want those benefits to go away. But they managed to convince themselves (with a lot of help from Fox News etc) that they aren't really beneficiaries of government programs, or that they're not getting the "good welfare", which only goes to Those People.

And you can really see this in the regional patterns. California is an affluent state, a heavy net contributor to the federal budget; it went 2-1 Clinton. West Virginia is poor and a huge net recipient of federal aid; it went 2 1/2-1 Trump.

I don't think any kind of economic analysis can explain this. It has to be about culture and, as always, race.

* http://www.bradford-delong.com/2016/12/is-the-problem-one-of-insufficient-market-wages-inadequate-social-insurance-polanyian-disruption-of-patterns-of-life-.html

** https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-12-16/four-ways-to-help-the-midwest

anne -> anne... , December 18, 2016 at 05:18 AM
http://www.bradford-delong.com/2016/12/is-the-problem-one-of-insufficient-market-wages-inadequate-social-insurance-polanyian-disruption-of-patterns-of-life-.html

December 17, 2016

Regional Policy and Distributional Policy in a World Where People Want to Ignore the Value and Contribution of Knowledge- and Network-Based Increasing Returns

Pascal Lamy: "When the wise man points at the moon, the fool looks at the finger..."

Perhaps in the end the problem is that people want to pretend that they are filling a valuable role in the societal division of labor, and are receiving no more than they earn--than they contribute.

But that is not the case. The value--the societal dividend--is in the accumulated knowledge of humanity and in the painfully constructed networks that make up our value chains.

A "contribution" theory of what a proper distribution of income might be can only be made coherent if there are constant returns to scale in the scarce, priced, owned factors of production. Only then can you divide the pile of resources by giving to each the marginal societal product of their work and of the resources that they own.

That, however, is not the world we live in.

In a world--like the one we live in--of mammoth increasing returns to unowned knowledge and to networks, no individual and no community is especially valuable. Those who receive good livings are those who are lucky -- as Carrier's workers in Indiana have been lucky in living near Carrier's initial location. It's not that their contribution to society is large or that their luck is replicable: if it were, they would not care (much) about the departure of Carrier because there would be another productive network that they could fit into a slot in.

All of this "what you deserve" language is tied up with some vague idea that you deserve what you contribute--that what your work adds to the pool of society's resources is what you deserve.

This illusion is punctured by any recognition that there is a large societal dividend to be distributed, and that the government can distribute it by supplementing (inadequate) market wages determined by your (low) societal marginal product, or by explicitly providing income support or services unconnected with work via social insurance. Instead, the government is supposed to, somehow, via clever redistribution, rearrange the pattern of market power in the economy so that the increasing-returns knowledge- and network-based societal dividend is predistributed in a relatively egalitarian way so that everybody can pretend that their income is just "to each according to his work", and that they are not heirs and heiresses coupon clipping off of the societal capital of our predecessors' accumulated knowledge and networks.

On top of this we add: Polanyian disruption of patterns of life--local communities, income levels, industrial specialization--that you believed you had a right to obtain or maintain, and a right to believe that you deserve. But in a market capitalist society, nobody has a right to the preservation of their local communities, to their income levels, or to an occupation in their industrial specialization. In a market capitalist society, those survive only if they pass a market profitability test. And so the only rights that matter are those property rights that at the moment carry with them market power--the combination of the (almost inevitably low) marginal societal products of your skills and the resources you own, plus the (sometimes high) market power that those resources grant to you.

This wish to believe that you are not a moocher is what keeps people from seeing issues of distribution and allocation clearly--and generates hostility to social insurance and to wage supplement policies, for they rip the veil off of the idea that you deserve to be highly paid because you are worth it. You aren't.

And this ties itself up with regional issues: regional decline can come very quickly whenever a region finds that its key industries have, for whatever reason, lost the market power that diverted its previously substantial share of the knowledge- and network-based societal dividend into the coffers of its firms. The resources cannot be simply redeployed in other industries unless those two have market power to control the direction of a share of the knowledge- and network-based societal dividend. And so communities decline and die. And the social contract--which was supposed to have given you a right to a healthy community--is broken.

As I have said before, humans are, at a very deep and basic level, gift-exchange animals. We create and reinforce our social bonds by establishing patterns of "owing" other people and by "being owed". We want to enter into reciprocal gift-exchange relationships. We create and reinforce social bonds by giving each other presents. We like to give. We like to receive. We like neither to feel like cheaters nor to feel cheated. We like, instead, to feel embedded in networks of mutual reciprocal obligation. We don't like being too much on the downside of the gift exchange: to have received much more than we have given in return makes us feel very small. We don't like being too much on the upside of the gift exchange either: to give and give and give and never receive makes us feel like suckers.

We want to be neither cheaters nor saps....

ken melvin -> anne... , December 18, 2016 at 05:32 AM
If not about people, what is an economy about?
Observer -> anne... , December 18, 2016 at 05:59 AM
I hadn't realized that Democrats now view Social Security and Medicare as "government handouts".
Peter K. -> Observer... , December 18, 2016 at 09:25 AM
Some Democrats like Krugman are Social Darwinists. They're the "center-left" versus Bernie Sanders's leftwing supporters.
Tom aka Rusty -> anne... , December 18, 2016 at 06:06 AM
PK is an ignorant vicious SOB. Many of those "dependent hillbillies" PK despises paid SS and Medicare taxes for many decades, most I know have never been on foos stamps, and if they are on disability it is because they did honest hard work, something PK knows nothing about. What an ignorant jerk.
Tom aka Rusty -> Tom aka Rusty... , December 18, 2016 at 06:31 AM
What is a very highly subsidized industry that benefits Delong and Krugman? Higher education. Damn welfare queens! :)
RC AKA Darryl, Ron -> Tom aka Rusty... , December 18, 2016 at 06:37 AM
Not LOL worthy, but still a good solid :<)
anne -> Tom aka Rusty... , December 18, 2016 at 06:53 AM

Education from elementary through college and professional levels is of course publicly supported in every reasonably advanced country in the world.

EMichael -> Tom aka Rusty... , December 18, 2016 at 07:18 AM
What is a very highly subsidized industry that benefits Rusty?

Healthcare.

Damn welfare queen!

Peter K. -> EMichael... , December 18, 2016 at 09:33 AM
Or Krugman's textbook industry.
BenIsNotYoda -> Tom aka Rusty... , December 18, 2016 at 10:49 AM
PK's rhetoric, together with shills like pgl and emichael, has deteriorated quite a bit. Nicely done Rusty.
anne -> Tom aka Rusty... , December 18, 2016 at 06:34 AM
"dependent hillbillies"

[ This is a false quote. A writer should never be falsely quoted. There is no such expression used in this or any other essay by Paul Krugman. ]

pgl -> anne... , December 18, 2016 at 09:34 AM
It must be really cold where Rusty lives and he woke up in one foul mood.
DeDude -> Tom aka Rusty... , December 18, 2016 at 08:58 AM
Exactly the same could be said about many of those inner city minorities that the "dependent hillbillies" look down on as "welfare queens". That may be one of the reasons they take special issues with "food stamps", because in contrast to the hillbillies, inner city poor people cannot grow their own food. What Krugman is pointing out is the hypocrisy of their tribalism - and also the idiocy, because the dismantling of society would ultimately hurt the morons that voted GOP into power this round.
Peter K. -> DeDude... , December 18, 2016 at 09:31 AM
"What Krugman is pointing out is the hypocrisy of their tribalism "

No Krugman is echoing the tribalism of Johnny Bakho. These people won't move or educate themselves or "skill up" so they deserve what they get. Social darwinism.

Peter K. -> Peter K.... , December 18, 2016 at 09:58 AM
People like Bakho are probably anti-union as well. They're seen as relics of an earlier age and economically "uncompetitve." See Fred Dobbs below. That's the dog whistle about the "rust belt."
Julio -> Tom aka Rusty... , December 18, 2016 at 10:53 AM
His tone is supercilious and offensive. But your argument is that they are not "dependent" because they earned every benefit they get from the government. I think his point is that "dependent" is not offensive -- the term jus reflects how we all depend on government services. DeLong makes the point much better in the article quoted by anne above.
Observer -> anne... , December 18, 2016 at 06:07 AM
In Memorium

Paul Krugman's reputation, formerly that of a a noted economic, succumbed after a brief struggle to Trump Derangement Syndrome. Friends said Mr Krugman's condition had been further aggravated by cognitive dissonance from a severely challenged worldview.

He is survived by the New York Times, also said to be in failing health.

RC AKA Darryl, Ron -> Observer... , December 18, 2016 at 06:38 AM
:<)
kthomas -> anne... , December 18, 2016 at 06:52 AM
Judith Miller. Dowd. Doh!at. Broder. Brooks.

BS

anne -> anne... , December 18, 2016 at 06:55 AM
The New York Times is easily the finest newspaper in the world, is broadly recognized as such and is of course flourishing. Such an institution will always have sections or editors and writers of relative strength but these relative strengths change over time as the newspaper continually changes.
Observer -> anne... , December 18, 2016 at 07:36 AM
Flourishing?

NYT Co. to revamp HQ, vacate eight floors in consolidation

"In an SEC filing, New York Times Co. discloses a staff communication it provided today to employees about a revamp of its headquarters -- including consolidating floors.

The company will vacate at least eight floors, consolidating workspaces and allowing for "significant" rental income, the memo says."

http://seekingalpha.com/news/3231232-nyt-co-revamp-hq-vacate-eight-floors-consolidation

anne -> Dan Kervick... , December 18, 2016 at 07:17 AM
Brad DeLong's piece was thoughtful.

[ Importantly so, worth a couple of close readings. ]

Peter K. -> Dan Kervick... , December 18, 2016 at 09:30 AM
For a long time DeLong was mocking the notion of "economic anxiety" amongst the voters. Does this blog post mean he's rethinking that idea?
Peter K. -> Peter K.... , December 18, 2016 at 09:57 AM
Technocratic Democrats like DeLong and Krugman (or neoliberal centrists) are notoriously against economic democracy and unions and the like.

Maybe that's a factor here.

Dan Kervick -> Peter K.... , December 18, 2016 at 01:13 PM
I think he and others have finally reached a point where denial is not an option.
DeDude -> anne... , December 18, 2016 at 08:37 AM
The GOP has a long history of benefitting from the disconnect where a lot of their voters are convinced that when government money goes to others (sometimes even within their own white congregations), then it is not deserved. But if that same government money goes to themselves (or their real close relatives), then it is a hard earned and well-deserved payback for their sacrifices and tax payments. So the GOP leadership has always called it "saving social security" and "cracking down on fraud" rather than admitting to their attempts to dismantle those programs. The Dems better be on the ball and call it what it is. If you want to save those programs you just have to prevent rich people from wiggling out of paying for them (don't repeal the Obamacare medicare taxes on the rich).
rjs -> anne... , December 18, 2016 at 10:12 AM
What Do Trump Voters Want? for starters, they'd probably want people like Krugman to stop looking down their noses at them like they're lepers..
DeDude -> rjs ... , December 18, 2016 at 01:49 PM
Can we at least call those with the pointy white hats, despicable?
rjs -> DeDude... , December 18, 2016 at 02:29 PM

depends on how many of those people who voted for Obama in 2012 you figure to have joined the pointy white hat club since...


http://peakwatch.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83452403c69e201bb0960723f970d-pi

DeDude -> rjs ... , December 18, 2016 at 03:45 PM
Would they not be despicable regardless of what kind of wood they previously enjoyed burning?
RC AKA Darryl, Ron : , December 18, 2016 at 06:15 AM
Excellent post election commentary from Bloom County (comic).

http://www.gocomics.com/bloom-county/2016/11/27

David : , December 18, 2016 at 07:16 AM
On the Pk piece. I think it is really about human dignity, and the need for it. There were a lot of factors in this horrific election, but just as urban blacks need to be spared police brutality, rural whites need a dignified path in their lives. Everyone, united, deserves such a path.

This is a real challenge for economists; how do we rebuild the rust belt (which applies to areas beyond the literal rust belt).

If we do not, we risk Trump 2.0, which could be very scary indeed.

EMichael -> David... , December 18, 2016 at 07:36 AM
I agree to a point, but what the piece is about is that in search of a solution to the problems of the rustbelt (whatever the definition is),people voted for Trump who had absolutely no plan to solve such a problem, other than going back to the future and redoing Nafta and getting rid of regulations.

Meanwhile, that vote also meant that the safety net that helps all Americans in trouble was being placed in severe risk.

Those voters were fixed on his rhetoric and right arm extended while his left hand was grabbing them by the (in deference to Anne I will not say the words, but Trump himself has said one of them and the other is the male version).

Peter K. -> EMichael... , December 18, 2016 at 08:48 AM
"I agree to a point,"

Really? You didn't seem to before. You'd say what Duy or Noah Smith or DeLong were mulling about was off-limits. You'd ban them from the comment section if you could. "This is a real challenge for economists; how do we rebuild the rust belt (which applies to areas beyond the literal rust belt).

If we do not, we risk Trump 2.0, which could be very scary indeed." I don't see why this is such a controversial point for centrist like Krugman. How do we appeal to the white working class without contradicting our principles?

By promoting policies that raise living standards. By delivering, which mean left-wing policies not centrist tinkering. It's the Clinton vs. Sanders primary. Hillary could have nominated Elizabeth Warren as her VP candidate but her corporate masters wouldn't let her.

sglover -> EMichael... , December 18, 2016 at 06:08 PM
"Meanwhile, that vote also meant that the safety net that helps all Americans in trouble was being placed in severe risk."

That safety net is an improvement over 1930. But it's been fraying so badly over the last 20-30 years that it's almost lost all meaning. It's something people turn to before total destitution, but for rebuilding a life? A sick joke, filled with petty hassles and frustrations.

And the fraying has been a solidly bipartisan project. Who can forget welfare "reform"?

So maybe the yokels you're blaming for the 10,000-th time might not buy your logic or your intentions.

Fred C. Dobbs -> David... , December 18, 2016 at 08:07 AM
In the rustbelt, Dems are accustomed to
dealing with their supporters who are
union members. (Why the auto industry
was bailed out, dontchaknow.)

That obviously doesn't work so well
any more. In that region, recovery
was 'less than robust', no?

In New England, where unions are much
less of a factor, recovery has been
relatively successful. Dems remain
pretty strong here.

Why can't the rustbelt be more
like the northeast?

The ongoing new industrial revolution
would seem to have much to do
with such matters.

Peter K. -> Fred C. Dobbs... , December 18, 2016 at 08:49 AM
"In New England, where unions are much less of a factor, recovery has been relatively successful. Dems remain pretty strong here."

Is that accurate?

Fred C. Dobbs -> Peter K.... , December 18, 2016 at 09:30 AM
unions don't have much to celebrate (in MA) http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/08/29/labor-day-but-there-little-for-labor-celebrate/e4MOhMsc5lf6rJkZdCPbKM/story.html?event=event25
via @BostonGlobe - August 2014

... At the height of their influence in the 1950s, labor unions could claim to represent about 1 of every 3 American workers. Today, it's 1 in 9 - and falling.

Some have seen the shrinking size and waning influence of labor unions as a sign that the US economy is growing more flexible and dynamic, but there's mounting evidence that it is also contributing to slow wage growth and the rise in inequality. ...


(Union membership) NY 24.7%, MA 12.4%, SC 2.1%

... Are unions faring any better here in Massachusetts?

While Massachusetts's unions are stronger than average, it's not among the most heavily unionized states. That honor goes to New York, where 1 in every 4 workers belongs to a union. After New York, there are 11 other states with higher union membership rates then Massachusetts.

Here too, though, the decline in union membership over time has been steep.

(From 1983 to 2013) US -42%, MA -44%

Fred C. Dobbs -> Peter K.... , December 18, 2016 at 09:44 AM
Union Members Summary - BLS - Jan 2016 https://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm

... In 2015, 30 states and the District of Columbia had union membership rates below
that of the U.S. average, 11.1 percent, and 20 states had rates above it. All states
in the East South Central and West South Central divisions had union membership rates
below the national average, and all states in the Middle Atlantic and Pacific divisions
had rates above it. Union membership rates increased over the year in 24 states and
the District of Columbia, declined in 23 states, and were unchanged in 3 states.
(See table 5.)

Five states had union membership rates below 5.0 percent in 2015: South Carolina
(2.1 percent), North Carolina (3.0 percent), Utah (3.9 percent), Georgia (4.0 percent),
and Texas (4.5 percent).

Two states had union membership rates over 20.0 percent in
2015: New York (24.7 percent) and Hawaii (20.4 percent).

State union membership levels depend on both the employment level and the union
membership rate. The largest numbers of union members lived in California (2.5 million)
and New York (2.0 million).

Roughly half of the 14.8 million union members in the
U.S. lived in just seven states (California, 2.5 million; New York, 2.0 million;
Illinois, 0.8 million; Pennsylvania, 0.7 million; and Michigan, Ohio, and New Jersey,
0.6 million each), though these states accounted for only about one-third of wage and
salary employment nationally.

(It appears that New England union participation
lags in the northeast, and also in the rest of
the US not in the Red Zone.)

Table 5. Union affiliation of employed wage and salary workers by state https://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.t05.htm

Peter K. -> Fred C. Dobbs... , December 18, 2016 at 09:56 AM
"In New England, where unions are much
less of a factor, recovery has been
relatively successful. Dems remain
pretty strong here."

I'm questionning the causation. B/c New England has fewer unions, they're doing better?

My bet is that most of these centrists like Krugman don't like unions and think they're ancient relics which hurt the economies "competitiveness."

Fred C. Dobbs -> Peter K.... , December 18, 2016 at 10:12 AM
I have noted before that New England
is doing better 'than average' (IMO)
because of high-tech industry & education.

Not necessarily because of a lack of
unionization, which is prevalent here
in public education & among service
workers. Note that in higher ed,
much here is private.

Private industry here traditionally
is not heavily unionized, although
that is probably not the case
among defense corps.

Fred C. Dobbs -> Peter K.... , December 18, 2016 at 10:21 AM
As to causation, I think the
implication is that 'Dems dealing
with unions' has not been working
all that well, recovery-wise,
particularly in the rust belt.

That must have as much to do with
industrial management as it does
with labor, and the ubiquitous
on-going industrial revolution.

Fred C. Dobbs -> Fred C. Dobbs... , December 18, 2016 at 10:24 AM
It may well be that in the
rust belt, corps are doing
reasonably well, but not as
much with labor. That is an
industrial revolution problem.
sglover -> Fred C. Dobbs... , December 18, 2016 at 06:10 PM
"In the rustbelt, Dems are accustomed to dealing with their supporters who are union members. (Why the auto industry was bailed out, dontchaknow.)"

Uh huh. Sure.

Know how many times HRC visited UAW groups during her "campaign" in Michigan?

Zero.

Those autoworkers are real ingrates.

DeDude -> David... , December 18, 2016 at 09:35 AM
Everybody needs, and desperately crave, self-confidence and dignity. In white rural culture that has always been connected to the old settler mentality and values of personal "freedom" and "independence". It is unfortunate that this freedom/independence mythology has been what attracted all the immigrants from Europe over here. So it is as strongly engrained (both in culture and individual values) as it is outdated and counterproductive in the world of the future. I am not sure that society can help a community where people find themselves humiliated by being helped (especially by bad government). Maybe somehow try to get them to think of the government help as an earned benefit?
Fred C. Dobbs -> DeDude... , December 18, 2016 at 10:22 AM
Ok, that seems very quaint.

[Sep 14, 2015] Conceptual pitfalls and monetary policy errors VOX, CEPR's Policy Portal by Andrew Levin

September 11, 2015 | voxeu.org

The conventional unemployment rate (U3) is now close to assessments of its longer-run normal level, but other dimensions of labour market slack remain elevated:

Thus, the 'true' unemployment rate – including hidden unemployment and underemployment –currently stands at around 7¼%, and the total magnitude of the US employment gap is equivalent to around 3½ million full-time jobs.

In particular, recent analysis indicates that the potential labour force is expanding by about 50,000 individuals per month due to demographic factors. Thus, if non-farm payrolls continue rising steadily by about 200,000 jobs per month (the average pace over the past six months), then the employment gap will diminish next year and be eliminated in mid-2017. By contrast, a tightening of monetary conditions would cause the economic recovery to decelerate and the pace of payroll growth might well drop below 100,000 jobs per month, in which case the employment gap would barely shrink at all.

The contours of the inflation outlook

The FOMC has established an inflation goal of 2%, as measured by the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index. Its recent communications have stated that the tightening process will commence once the FOMC is "reasonably confident" that inflation will move back to the 2% objective over the medium term.

Figure 1. The recent evolution of core PCE inflation

Note: In this figure, the core PCE inflation rate is given by the four-quarter average change in the PCE price index excluding food and energy, and the FOMC's outlook is given by the midpoint of the central tendency of core PCE inflation projections, as published in the FOMC Summary of Economic Projections (SEP) at each specified date.

For example, in early 2013, when core PCE inflation was running at about 1½%, FOMC participants generally anticipated that it would rise to nearly 2% over the course of 2014 and 2015, whereas in fact it has declined to around 1.2%. Indeed, its underlying trend has been drifting steadily downward since the onset of the last recession.

Moreover, as shown in my recent joint work with Danny Blanchflower, the wage curve exhibits some flattening at high levels of labour market slack, which explains why nominal wage growth has remained subdued over the past few years even as the employment gap has declined from its post-recession peak (see Figure 2). This empirical pattern also implies that the pace of nominal wage growth is likely to pick up somewhat over coming quarters as the employment gap declines further.

Figure 2. The wage curve

Note: In this figure, each dot denotes the pace of nominal wage growth (as measured by the 12-month change in the average hourly earnings of production and non-supervisory workers) and the average level of the employment gap (including hidden unemployment and underemployment) for each calendar year from 1985 to 2014 and for August 2015 (the latest BLS employment report).

Gauging the stance of monetary policy

Fed officials have recently characterised the current stance of monetary policy as "extremely accommodative." Such characterisations may be helpful in motivating the onset of "policy normalisation" but seem inconsistent with professional forecasters' assessments of the equilibrium real interest rate and with the implications of simple benchmark rules.

The distance between the current federal funds rate and its longer-run normal level depends crucially on the magnitude of the equilibrium real interest rate.

Over the past few years professional forecasters have made substantial downward revisions to their assessments of the 'new normal' level of interest rates.

Such revisions presumably reflect the downgrading of the outlook for potential output growth as well as prospects for headwinds to aggregate demand persisting well into the future.

In June 2012, then-Vice Chair Yellen noted that "simple rules provide a useful starting point for determining appropriate policy" while emphasising that such rules cannot be followed mechanically. That speech considered the Taylor (1993) rule along with an alternative rule analysed by Taylor (1999) that Yellen described as "more consistent with the FOMC's commitment to follow a balanced approach." Thus, it is instructive to evaluate each of these simple rules using the current core PCE inflation rate (which is 1.2%), the CBO's current assessment of the output gap (3.1%), and professional forecasters' consensus estimate of the equilibrium real interest rate (r* = 0.75).

Neither of these two benchmarks calls for a tighter stance of policy. Indeed, the 'balanced approach' rule preferred by Yellen (2012) indicates that macroeconomic conditions will not warrant the initiation of monetary policy tightening until sometime next year.

Assessing the balance of risks

Over the past 18 months, FOMC statements have regularly characterised the balance of risks to the economic outlook as "nearly balanced." Of course, that assessment has recently come into question due to a bout of financial market volatility in conjunction with shifting prospects for major foreign economies (most notably China).

Regardless of how financial markets may evolve in the near term, however, it seems clear that the balance of risks remains far from symmetric. If the US economy were to encounter a severe adverse shock within the next few years (whether economic, financial, or geopolitical in nature), would the FOMC have sufficient capacity to mitigate the negative consequences for economic activity and stem a downward drift of inflation?

For example, if safe-haven flows caused a steep drop in Treasury yields along with a sharp widening of risk spreads, would a new round of QE still be feasible or effective? Alternatively, would the Federal Reserve implement measures to push short-term nominal rates below zero, as some other central banks have done recently?

In the absence of satisfactory answers to such questions, it is essential for the FOMC to maintain a highly accommodative stance of monetary policy as long as needed to ensure that labour market slack is fully eliminated and that inflation moves back upward to its 2% goal. Such a strategy will help strengthen the resilience of the US economy in facing any adverse shocks that may lie ahead.

Concluding remarks

The FOMC's near-term strategy has become so opaque that even the most seasoned analysts can only guess what policy decisions may be forthcoming at its upcoming meetings. Moreover, the FOMC has provided no information at all (apart from the phrase "likely to be gradual") about how its policy stance will be adjusted over time in response to evolving macroeconomic conditions.

Unfortunately, such opacity is likely to exacerbate economic and financial uncertainty and hinder the effectiveness of monetary policy in fostering the goals of maximum employment and price stability. Therefore, it is imperative for the FOMC to formulate a systematic monetary policy strategy and to explain that strategy clearly in its public communications.

References

Economist's View Fed Watch Employment Report Keeps Policymakers on Their Toes

"To put this into some context, consider what it is we are measuring: The change in monthly hires minus fires. A monthly change in a labor force of more than 150 million people. That turns out to be a tiny net number relative to the entire pool -- about one tenth of one percent."
Tim Duy:
Employment Report Keeps Policymakers on Their Toes. by Tim Duy: Just about everyone (myself included) who ventured a payrolls forecast was crushed by the scant December gain of just 74k. How much should you adjust your outlook on the basis of just this one number? Not much, if at all. It is important to watch for trends in the data, and always keep Barry Ritholtz's warning in the back of your mind:
...we know from each month's revisions that the initial read is off, often by a substantial amount. It's a noisy series, subject to many errors and subsequent corrections.
To put this into some context, consider what it is we are measuring: The change in monthly hires minus fires. A monthly change in a labor force of more than 150 million people. That turns out to be a tiny net number relative to the entire pool -- about one tenth of one percent.
This is why I continually suggest ignoring any given month, and paying attention to the overall trend. That is the most useful aspect of the monthly NFP data...if you focus on the monthly numbers, you will be given so many false signals and head fakes that you cannot possibly trade on this information in an intelligent manner.
Indeed, the December number was mitigated by an upward revision to November, leaving the growth pattern looking very familiar:

EMPc011214

One interpretation of the December outcome was that it was largely weather related. One would think, however, that such an event would have a forecastable negative impact on payrolls. Regardless, the bigger message is that the monthly change in payrolls is a volatile series, and one should be wary of putting too much emphasis on either small or large gains.
Perhaps the real story then is that another existing trend in the data, the downward pressure on the unemployment rate from a falling labor force participation rate, continues unabated:

EMPa011214

Moreover, the pace of improvement in alternative measures of labor utilization is not accelerating and arguably appears to be slowing as might be expected if the formally cyclically unemployed increasingly become structurally unemployed:

EMPb011214

Altogether, I think the report can be neatly summed up as 1.) indicative of a more modest improvement in activity than suggested by actual and estimated GDP numbers for the final half of 2013 and 2.) suggestive of structural change in labor markets.
The employment report generally complicates monetary policymaking. Not the nonfarm payrolls numbers so much; that number will largely be written off as anomalous in the context of the overall trend. Indeed, this was the first word from Fed officials. St. Louis Federal Reserve President James Bullard, via the Wall Street Journal:
"I would be disinclined to react to one month's number. I think it's important to get future jobs reports and see if new trends are developing," said Mr. Bullard at a press briefing following remarks here to local business leaders.
Richmond Federal Reserve President Jeffrey Lacker offered similar sentiments:
"As a general principle, it's wise not to overreact to one month's employment report," Lacker said. "Employment has been growing along a pretty steady trend this year. It takes a lot more than one labor-market report to be convincing that the trend has shifted, and in my experience one employment report rarely has an effect by itself on monetary policy."
I think the Fed is generally committed to winding down asset purchases this year, and will not want to be overly sensitive to just one report (that said, they will be overly sensitive to one number if it fits their preferred policy path). Only a more significant change in the overall tenor of the data will alter the pace of tapering.
The drop in the unemployment rate, however, is something more of a challenge. The Evans rule simply isn't looking quite so clever anymore:

EMPd011214

Monetary officials generally believed not only that 6.5% unemployment was far in the future, but also that policy would become much more obvious as we approached that target because inflation pressures would be evident. Neither has been true. Not only has unemployment fallen more quickly than anticipated, but inflation remains stubbornly low. With regards to the former, officials increasingly see the decline in labor force participation as largely structural and outside the purview of monetary policy. Bullard, via the article quoted earlier:
Mr. Bullard signaled he wasn't particularly alarmed by a decline in labor force participation, saying it appears at the right level given current demographics.
And, via a nice Wall Street Journal interview with San Francisco President John Williams by Jon Hilsenrath:
We're still working hard on this issue of employment-to-population. Everybody is struggling with the puzzle of why the employment-to-population ratio has stayed low. To what extent are movements in labor force participation structural or cyclical? And to what extent can monetary policy have an influence on those developments? I think the majority of the decline in the participation rate is due to structural factors related to the aging of the population and people going into disability. Very few people come back into the labor force from that. I do think part of it is cyclical. The data in the next year or so are going to inform us better about what is the trend.
With each passing month policymakers are increasingly comfortable taking the unemployment rate at face value. That means they increasingly expect the inflation numbers to pick up. Back to Williams:
As the unemployment rate continues to come down, utilization continues to go up, as the economy continues to improve, I would expect the underlying inflation rate to track back towards 2%.
But he clearly recognizes the potential for inflation to remain low:
The second question is why is inflation so low? To what extent does it reflect just some transitory influences, such as health care costs, and to what extent is it really reflecting a persistent ongoing inflation trend that is too low? And again how can monetary policy affect that? We're in this world where inflation doesn't move around a lot around 2%. It has become hard to model and to know exactly what are the factors causing inflation to be too low and which are the ones that are going to help bring it back to 2%. That gets to the downside risk question. If inflation does stay stubbornly low, that obviously is an argument for more monetary accommodation than otherwise.
Likewise, Bullard shares these concerns:
Mr. Bullard said he continues to watch inflation closely, saying it should rise as the economy picks up and the jobless rate continues to fall. But the central banker added he wants to actually see that rise come to fruition as the Fed assesses further tapering of its bond-buying.
"If inflation stepped lower in a clear way, I think that would give me some pause," Mr. Bullard said. "I'm looking for signs inflation is going to come back."
So where does this leave us? First of all, I think the Evans rule is already for all intents and purposes defunct. The unemployment rate is just a hair away from 6.5%, and the Fed has no intention of considering raising rates anytime soon. Second, there probably isn't a replacement for the Evans rule in the works. Bullard:
He expects the Fed for now to hold its threshold for unemployment at 6.5%. The Fed has said it won't increase interest rates until the jobless rate falls below that level so long as inflation stays contained.
"Moving (thresholds) around too much is likely to damage our credibility," Mr. Bullard said
And Williams on not setting a lower bound for inflation:
My view is the current [Fed policy] statement does a good job of capturing the fact that once unemployment gets below 6.5%, then obviously we'll be taking seriously what is happening in inflation, we will be looking at what is happening with employment and growth and everything, and then we'll be judging what is the appropriate stance of policy. It just gets very complicated quickly when you start adding more and more clauses about what conditions would you or would you not raise interest rates. Unfortunately, that is the game we're playing … the FOMC statement has gotten awfully long. It has gotten awfully complicated. The statement is probably better used to try to emphasize the key points as opposed to trying to explain everything in our thinking.
My sense is that they thought the Evans rule was clever and simple, but it turns out that fixed numerical objectives are not quite so simple. Well, multiple numerical objectives are not quite so simple. The ironic outcome to the Evans rule experiment is that policy communication would arguably have been smoother if the Fed simply emphasized an inflation target. Policymakers could have been agnostic on the reasons for the declines in labor force participation; it was irrelevant given the path of inflation. Perhaps the focus on the unemployment rate was something of an unnecessary complication that now needlessly leaves the impression that policy will soon turn more hawkish than is the case.
Thus, the third takeaway is that policy is now largely about inflation (although arguably it always is always about inflation). Ann Saphir and Jonathon Spicer at Reuters:
Stubbornly weak inflation is shaping up as the wild card for U.S. monetary policy makers this year, with top Federal Reserve officials stumped by why it has lingered so low for so long and at odds as to what to do about it.
As the Fed wrestled through last year with deciding when to start trimming its massive bond-buying stimulus, the bulk of attention was focused on the unemployment rate, which until recently has been slow to fall following its spike up to 10 percent during the recession.
By last month, policy makers had grown confident enough in the job market to dial back on the program. Figures released Friday showed the jobless rate fell to a five-year low of 6.7 percent in December, despite the smallest monthly job gains in three years. With much of the hiring slowdown attributed to bad weather, however, many analysts say the Fed will stay on track with plans to end bond buying by late this year.
But there is a hitch: inflation has been drifting down for much of the last two years, measuring a feeble 1.1 percent in November by the Fed's preferred gauge.
As long as inflation reverts to target slowly (with a caveat to be noted below), the Fed will not be quick to hike rates. But the Fed will be increasingly nervous that a sudden burst of inflation means they are behind the curve. Williams:
Whether we cut purchases by 10 billion a month or not, we still have a very accommodative stance of policy and that is going to stay with us for quite some time. That is where I worry. If the economy really picks up or inflation or risks to financial stability really do start to emerge in a serious way, we need to be able to move policy back to normal, or adjust policy appropriately, in a timely manner. It's always a difficult issue. This time it is just a much greater risk because we're in a much more accommodative stance of policy.
I think it will be the sensitivity to positive inflation surprises that has the potential to add a hawkish tenor to policymaking. Without those surprises, policy will continue along current expectations. There is a caveat - note that Williams essentially admits that the possibility and willingness to use monetary policy to address financial stability. Triple mandate. Watch for it.
Bottom Line: I don't see much in the employment report to indicate any fundamental change to existing trends. Nor do I anticipate any change in policy. Tapering is likely to continue at its modest pace. As expected, the Evans rule is defunct, and it doesn't seem like policymakers are inclined to replace it with another set of fixed numerical guidelines. The primary driver of policy is now the pace of incoming data relative to the inflation outlook. Financial stability is probably something like a third-order concern at this point, at least as far as monetary policy is concerned. But that could change.
bakho said...

The problem with the Evans rule is using U3 rather than U6.

U3 provides are poor measure of full employment. It is too rosy.
We need wage inflation to recover demand. An inflation target of 2 percent is too low.

kharris said in reply to bakho...

This is where a tolerance for human suffering comes in handy. The U6 rate is the right one, on the assumption that there is a good bit of cyclical unemployment that is masked in the U3 rate. If, however, you believe hysteresis is at work turning cyclical unemployment into structural unemployment, then as time passes, the argument for easy monetary policy diminishes. "Sure wish we had done a better job boosting employment when unemployed workers were still employable. We didn't, and they are no longer employable, so our job here is done."

Yellen's first speech as a confirmed soon-to-be Fed chair focused on boosting employment. Maybe she will have ideas of her own about the right pace of tapering. Inflation surely offers flexibility, but ya gotta have hope for boosting employment through asset purchases, and most folks don't have much of that.

Reply Monday, January 13, 2014 at 08:51 AM cm said in reply to kharris...

I don't believe it. Dotcom has shown that all kinds of interesting characters were employable when work had to be done "here and now" or money would have been left on the table. The only thing that will lead employers to "compromise" and look out side Mr/Ms Right is urgent demand for labor, more than can be easily filled with first choice candidates. It's like when you need immediate medical/dental attention and none of the doctors you know or your friends recommend have appointments - then you will go to somebody else who you don't know. If it's not so urgent, maybe you take an appointment next month.

[Nov 23, 2009] Reader Emails on Birth/Death Model and Unemployment Rate

I have gotten many question about revisions to the Reader Emails on Birth/Death Model and Unemployment Rate.

In case you missed it the BLS has admitted that its Birth/Death Model has overestimated jobs by about 800,000. The New York Times talked about this in Jobs Vanish.

The Labor Department said that it planned to revise the job figures by subtracting more than 800,000 jobs that it had wrongly estimated were filled by workers.

The so-called "benchmark revision" that was announced today will not formally be incorporated into the job figures until February, and could be revised. But the figures indicate that last March the government overestimated the total number of jobs by 824,000, or 0.6 percent. Its overestimate of private-sector employment was even greater - 855,000 jobs, or 0.8 percent.

The culprit is probably the much maligned birth-death model, although Victoria Battista, an economist at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, said the bureau was looking into other possible issues, such as changing response rates to the questionnaire sent out by the bureau to employers each month.

That model adds in jobs assumed to have been created by employers who are too new to have been added to the survey, and subtracts jobs from employers assumed to have failed and therefore not responded to the bureau's survey.

I have been complaining for years that the Birth/Death model was on Mars.

I include in every monthly jobs post a statement similar to this one: "At this point in the cycle birth death numbers should have been massively contracting for months. The BLS is going to keep adding jobs through the entire recession in a complete display of incompetence."

At least they finally understand there is a problem, years after it was obvious to anyone using some semblance of common sense.

Birth Death Model Revisions 2009

click on chart for sharper image

Given those fantasyland projections I have serious doubts that 800,000 take aways is enough.

Short Comings In BLS Birth Death Model

Inquiring minds are reading Recession shows shortcomings in U.S. economic data.

The U.S. government is having a tough time guesstimating how many small businesses failed in this recession, casting doubt on the reliability of vital data on employment and economic growth.

The formula the U.S. Labor Department designed to help it deliver timely, thorough monthly employment reports broke down in the heat of the financial crisis, miscounting the number of jobs by an estimated 824,000 in the year through March.

That model appears to have misjudged how many companies went out of business during the recession, meaning the labor market was even weaker than initially thought when President Barack Obama took office in January. More recent figures may still be underestimating job losses now, but it will be many months before the Labor Department is certain.

One characteristic of this recession is that it has hit small businesses especially hard, driving down demand and choking off vital sources of credit at the same time.

Jan Hatzius, an economist at Goldman Sachs in New York, thinks that is distorting not only the employment data, but also figures for retail sales, durable goods and even the biggest economic indicator of all -- gross domestic product.

Indeed, 43,546 businesses filed for bankruptcy in 2008, the highest tally since 1998, and the pace has picked up this year, according to data from the American Bankruptcy Institute.

In the second quarter of 2009, the most recent data available, 16,014 businesses filed for bankruptcy, up from 14,319 in the previous three-month period and the highest mark in 16 years.

The Labor Department simply can't catch all those failures fast enough to compile its monthly employment reports, which are normally released on the first Friday after the end of the month. So it must make an educated guess.

Each month, the department surveys about 160,000 firms to get a sense of how many jobs were added or cut. It also uses the "birth-death" model to try to estimate out how many companies opened or closed.

Once a year, the department looks at unemployment insurance tax records to get a more accurate picture of how many people were employed, and matches that up with its own data. Each February, it tries to reconcile these differences by releasing a "benchmark revision".

Normally, the discrepancy is modest. This coming February, it is likely to be about 824,000, according to the Labor Department's preliminary estimate last month. That would mean instead of about 7.2 million jobs lost since the start of the recession in December 2007, there were more like 8 million.

"Preliminary research indicated that a big portion of that was a result of a breakdown in the birth-death model," said Chris Manning, the department's benchmark branch chief.

Somehow throughout this entire recession, the BLS model showed that more jobs were being created by new businesses (birth) than those lost by businesses going out of businesses. When you think about all the small 1-2 person businesses in real estate that folded shop I just do not buy the BLS's data.

They are revising it, but I do not think by enough.

Reader Question On The Unemployment Rate

Kevin (and many others have asked) "What exactly do you think is going to happen to all these missed unemployed people? Is the unemployment rate going to spike in January, or does it get added in gradually?"

In terms of the unemployment rate, what happens is nothing. The unemployment rate is measured by the Household Survey not the Establishment Survey. The Birth/Death Revisions are to the Establishment Survey.

So while there will be dramatic revisions to the Establishment Survey in terms of jobs lost in the January report (published on the first Friday in February), it will not affect the unemployment rate.

Given how screwed up the Establishment Survey is (not that I have any love affair with the Household Survey), when the economy does turn it will likely show up in the Household Survey first. This is what happened at the end of the last recession and it will likely happen again.

There has to be a better way than either of these methods.

Manning said his department was still trying to figure out what went awry this time. One possibility is that the model was not sensitive enough to the credit crunch, which choked off borrowing and pushed many companies into bankruptcy.

"We're researching ways to better understand the limitations of the model, in particular when it comes to responding to economic shocks," he said.

Manning said his department was still trying to figure out what went awry this time. One possibility is that the model was not sensitive enough to the credit crunch, which choked off borrowing and pushed many companies into bankruptcy.

"We're researching ways to better understand the limitations of the model, in particular when it comes to responding to economic shocks," he said.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Pseudonymous:

"That's one of the best firsts in history. I love this. 800,000 jobs falsely added. So where does that put the unemployment rate? is my burning question.

I do love their little deceptive touches. I love how they're going to do the revisions in February, so that nothing will disturb the nation's psychological security - for example, a sudden revising upward of the unemployment rate above 11%.

The recovery is a combination of reflation, Fed leverage, massive government spending, Wall Street corruption feeling sated and happy about itself again, and a blanket of renewed false optimism spread tightly across the face of proletarian America.

We'll save the revisions for later.

brianinboise:

"Pseudonymous, Mish addresses your question in the latter part of his post:
Kevin (and many others have asked)

"What exactly do you think is going to happen to all these missed unemployed people? Is the unemployment rate going to spike in January, or does it get added in gradually?"

In terms of the unemployment rate, what happens is nothing. The unemployment rate is measured by the Household Survey not the Establishment Survey. The Birth/Death Revisions are to the Establishment Survey.

So while there will be dramatic revisions to the Establishment Survey in terms of jobs lost in the January report (published on the first Friday in February), it will not affect the unemployment rate.

Shake:

"Forget about the unemployment numbers. All one needs to look at is total employment as a percentage of the population. That number has been going down for 10 years.

James Cole:

"Recent news stories have claimed that as the year comes to an end, around 1 million unemployed will have used up all available benefits. As a nice coincidence, their benefits ending will begin to take hold just as Banks and Wall-Street firms begin to payout year end bonuses. Figures vary, but all told it is going to be way up into the tens of billions. It should make for an nice holiday contrast. The bailed out bankers and wall-street crowd will cash in fortunes enough to last any normal person half a life time or more. That this is only possible due to Taxpayer payouts to the financial services industry shouldn't spoil the gusto of the banker's and street firm's holiday festivities.
Lets all wish them well in spending their riches. New homes, new cars, new mistresses, luxury clothes and vacations should be a noticeable boost to a sagging consumer economy. The Fed has done it's work well, and there are the payouts to prove it.

jkiss:

"Mish

If you add up the household survey job losses this recession (B2) you get just over 9M as of Oct. HS is very volatile, but if you look at trailing 3-month avg numbers you get a pretty smooth and IMO accurate story of what is happening to headline jobs (you could plot and post this). HS shows that real job losses began in dec 06, a year before the recession supposedly began.

Oct was particularly troubling because it shot back up to over 500k, completely reversing the Jun-Jul low numbers. Not a good sign.

I downloaded the spreadsheet with future job loss guesstimates... consider 400k balance of this year, 200k avg 2010, 0 in 2011, and then just enough to maintain status quo (100k) for four years. Where, exactly, are the new jobs coming from? Boomers will let the SUV's slip from their cold, dead hands before letting loose of their jobs...

GT :

"So the NYT has written about the US government's penchant for lying in its stats?

Next thing the NYT will show that it's catching up by promulgating the idea - 10 years after sentient beings knew it - that Greenspan was a hack moron who failed as a consultant and HAD to suckle at teh tax teat to avoid dying of starvation?

Or they might reveal that Keynes studied economics for precisely ONE term (note: not a semester - a TERM... shorter) and got his job through nepotism.

For the record, I first wrote about the CES birth-death model back in 2001 (sadly the archive of the place I was at is now no longer online).

To give a favour, here's something from DECEMBER 2004 which is still online (at http://www.marketmentat.com/markets/oz/jobs-report-even-worse-than-it-looked/)...

"The CES net birth death model – which I prefer to call the "fictional job creation" model – added 54,000 phantom jobs, which (as luck would have it) offset the 54,000 downward revision to September and October!!!

So, there's been a 54,000 "reduction of history", offset by 54,000 phantoms. Without those phantoms, the job situation in the US looks dire; and phantoms don't spend anything – not even on hedonically adjusted stuff."


There is nothing new under the sun - just as the central planners of the old Soviet Union used to regularly lie to their proles, so too the ponerocracy of the US does likewise, while shovelling money to their cronies in ways that would make an African dictator blush.

Fortunately (for the brown bits of the world) the US is now last century's story, much as England was waning in the first third of the 20th century and Rome was on the skids after it started clipping its coin.

Cheerio


[Nov 21, 2009] Birth Death Model Outpaced By Business Failures By Barry Ritholtz

November 21st, 2009 | The Big Picture

"Our conclusion is that if small firms aren't captured well in the advance GDP data, the economy may be growing less quickly than suggested by the recent official data."

-Jan Hatzius, Goldman Sachs economist

This certainly comes as no surprise to us:

"The U.S. government is having a tough time guesstimating how many small businesses failed in this recession, casting doubt on the reliability of vital data on employment and economic growth.

The formula the U.S. Labor Department designed to help it deliver timely, thorough monthly employment reports broke down in the heat of the financial crisis, miscounting the number of jobs by an estimated 824,000 in the year through March.

The most likely culprit is the so-called "birth-death" model, which the Labor Department uses to estimate how many companies were created or destroyed.

That model appears to have misjudged how many companies went out of business during the recession, meaning the labor market was even weaker than initially thought when President Barack Obama took office in January. More recent figures may still be underestimating job losses now, but it will be many months before the Labor Department is certain . . .

Government data has difficulty gauging the health of smaller firms because there are simply too many of them, leaving officials to rely on surveys and models that are hit and miss."

Let's put some numbers to this: In 2008, 43,546 businesses filed for bankruptcy; Even more are filing in 2009 - Q2 of 2009, the most recent data available, saw 16,014 bankruptcy filings - on pace to run 33% more than the prior year.

BLS simply does not catch all of these failures in the monthly NFP reports.

The next BLS B/D adjustment will be in February 2010, when they qill like add another 800,000 to a million lost jobs to the prior years . . .

Source:
Recession shows shortcomings in U.S. economic data
Thu Nov 19, 2009
Emily Kaiser and Nancy Waitz
Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/article/GCA-Economy/idUSTRE5AI56420091119

[Oct 4, 2009] Birth Death Adjustment Coming Under Fire By Barry Ritholtz

October 4th, 2009 | The Big Picture

One of our favorite bugaboos is finally getting its due: The horrifically misleading Birth Death adjustment.

It is finally being recognized in the mainstream as the massive data distorter that it is. The latest BLS analysis and data revision shows that during 2008, the Birth Death adjustment caused NFP payrolls to be significantly under reported.

NYT's Floyd Norris:

"It now appears that during the first half of 2008, when the recession was getting under way, job losses averaged 146,000 per month. That is nearly three times the average of 49,000 jobs shown in the initial estimates.

How did the government get it so wrong?

The official job numbers are based on a monthly survey of employers, augmented by something called the "birth-death model," which factors in jobs assumed to have been created by employers who are too new to have been included in the survey, and subtracts jobs from employers assumed to have failed and therefore not responded to the latest survey." (emphasis added)

Triple the job losses than reported, and right at a crucial part of the economic cycle! Is it any wonder policy response from central bankers and pols was so off? At the most crucial time, they failed to see the oncoming headlights, because they were lost in a fog of data so massaged as to have it completely and totally misrepresent reality.

About time this nionsense was recognized for the bullshit it is. We need to have BLS needs to toss out the 2003 modification to the B/D. We should get back to actually counting, rather than imagining, jobs.

As noted in Bailout Nation, this fundamental reliance on garbage data led to one of the world's greatest economic catastrophes of all time.

Reality matters.

Previously:
NFP: Birth/Death Adjustments (December 6th, 2007)
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2007/12/nfp-birthdeath-adjustments/

Overstated Job Growth, Understated Inflation (January 4th, 2008)
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2008/01/overstated-job-growth-understated-inflation/

Source:
The Jobs News Gets Worse
FLOYD NORRIS
NYT, October 3, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/weekinreview/04norris.html

Historical Net Birth/Death Adjustments
http://www.bls.gov/ces/cesbdhst.htm

CES Net Birth/Death Model
Current Employment Statistics – CES (National)
http://www.bls.gov/web/cesbd.htm

  1. Greg0658 Says:
    October 4th, 2009 at 9:26 am

    BR @ top "We should get back to actually counting, rather than imagining, jobs"

    I'm just about sure the banks super-computerized infrastructure does (or could/should). That would be very valuable right. But we don't share value, people pay for it. Government included. Get your own info. So what does that realization bring. Maybe banks should be DISallowed to trade in markets .. ie insider information paid for by all of us.

Unemployment Report Distortions by Chris Martenson

August 7, 2009

The release of the July unemployment report was filled with a wide array of distortions and inexplicable results (especially from the Birth-Death model), which have undoubtedly resulted in a better-than-warranted reported gain. In this post we'll explore these oddities in some detail.

The news:

U.S. economy sheds fewer jobs than expected

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. employers cut 247,000 jobs in July, far less than expected and the least in any month since last August, according to a government report on Friday that provided the clearest evidence yet that the economy was turning around.

With fewer workers being laid off, the unemployment rate eased to 9.4 percent in July from 9.5 percent the prior month, the Labor Department said, the first time the jobless rate had fallen since April 2008.

Wait, how can you lose jobs and have the rate of unemployment fall? This doesn't make sense, because it is the equivalent of saying, "I spent more than I earned and my savings went up." The key here is understanding the ways in which the government measures unemployment.

First, job gains/losses are measured by a sampling of businesses (called the "establishment" data). This gives us the headline number of 247,000 jobs lost. Second, the rate of unemployment comes from a completely different sample, this one of households, which gives us the 9.4% rate of unemployment.

As always, the devil is in the details. Without the Birth-Death model providing the largest addition of jobs in its entire series for July, the 247,000 jobs lost number would have been higher.

The table below shows the contributions or subtraction of jobs provided by the Birth-Death model in each month of July since its creation. This July sports the highest addition ever:

Normally, July and January are "true-up" months, where all the past overstatements of the Birth-Death model are cleaned up.

Does it make sense to you that this July, out of all months, the Birth-Death model should be showing the largest monthly gain in the series? It makes sense to me that July 2006 could have squeaked out a positive, since that was at the tail end of a strong period of growth. But July 2009? No, not even in the slighest.

If the B-D model had turned in a far more normal looking -60k to -80k result, then the number of reported lost jobs would have been in the range of 350,000 job losses, not the 237,000 reported.

However, I would have expected the fact that the B-D model has added 879,000 this year since the last true-up in January, during the worst period of economic growth since the Great Depression, to have been a strong indication that this July would have resulted in one of the largest negative July adjustments on record. Instead we got the strongest positive one!!

This is simply so far out of the bounds of "reasonable" that I am almost out of words.

But it gets worse.

In the table below showing the Household data (source), we can see that the way in which the rate of unemployment dropped from 9.5% to 9.4% was almost entirely due to the fact that 637,000 people were dropped from the labor force - not from an increase in employment.

If we left these 637,000 people in the labor force, then the rate of unemployment would have increased from 9.5% to 9.8%. What's the difference between unemployment slipping to 9.4% rather than increasing to 9.8%?

All the difference in the world when you have a major initiative underway:

[Note: I am not displaying any sort of partisan or political bias in posting this news item - I am devoutly non-partisan and my track record spanning administrations will bear this out.]

Obama Setting Out to Put Brighter Face on Economy

August 4, 2009

WASHINGTON - The White House is making a major push this week to persuade Americans that President Obama's policies are helping bring the nation out of recession. But a four-letter word - jobs - may well get in the way.

With poll numbers showing that support for Mr. Obama's handling of the economy has declined, the president and other top administration officials - Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke - will hit the road on Wednesday in a coordinated show of force.

They will try to make the case, as the president said Saturday in his weekly address, that "in the last few months, the economy has done measurably better than expected."

They have some statistics to back them up.

If you are wondering about the political pressure that propels the BLS (et al.) to produce misleading but favorable economic statistics, you need look no further than this article. Obama, like every president before him, has a strong desire to use his station to inject optimism into the economy. That's hard to do when the statistics are dismal, so every effort is made to have them be brighter and more favorable than they really are. Same as it ever was.

Bad statistics can be good for politicians, but not so much for sound decisions.

Do we have the "clearest evidence yet that the economy is turning around," as the original article claimed above, or do we have evidence of something else, like, perhaps, statistical trickery?

[May 17, 2008] Data To Die For

May 9, 2008

How can we realistically trust the data that come out of the various US departments anymore? Even given the benefit of the doubt, i.e. assuming model massage was originally established to provide a clearer picture of the US economy, the ultimate result now looks more like an elaborate GIGO * contraption designed by Rube Goldberg.

Case in point: the Net Birth/Death model of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. During the most severe downturn in the real estate and homebuilding sector since the Great Depression, the model keeps creating phantom construction jobs (see chart below, click to enlarge).


Not only did the model spew out a total of 98,000 net additional construction jobs in the 12 months to April 2008, it produced more such jobs in April 2008 than the same month last year (45,000 vs. 37,000, or +21%). In other words, new construction businesses that were established in that period supposedly created many more jobs than those lost from businesses shutting down.

The first casualty of war is the truth - Aeschylus. Problem is, who's the enemy?


_____________________
*Garbage in, garbage out

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