"there is so much going on ... I just don't have enough time to cover it all,"
No, you don't. No one individual does.
But you manage to cover an amazing amount of ground here. Plus you respond to individual comments, including mine before I even registered, when I was just an "Anonymous Drive By."
My thanks to you (and the No. 2 around here, Michael Collins) for all the hard work you do.
In a world in which all the modern communications available cannot force the many willfully blind among us to see -- and admit to seeing -- what's plainly in front of them; at a time where educated people who know better will cover their eyes and allow themselves to be ignorant and mislead, this site is a godsend and an oasis.
I salute you, "Robert Oak", whoever and wherever you are.
Thanks for a great rundown of the employment report. The media always misses the message that 120,000 and more jobs each month need to be created to keep up with new entrants to the workforce.
That's a critical question to answer. I don't know why but I have a notion as to how they get away with it. Because of the barrier of money and media access, ideology can be vetted by those with the money and who own the media. As a result, we get candidates like Obama and McCain who BOTH interrupt their campaigns to come to DC and endorse the bailout, the object of great public ire. It can't hurt them because they're both in agreement. Who else could we vote for at that point? They'd never disagree because they were properly vetted by the money sources, those who had their fortunes riding the bailout.
Why doe they do nothing? Because the can and, imho, because that's their job. Other times their job is to do something. But in the case of action or inaction, their actions are not going to be in our interests, nor should we expect them to behave in that way.
I just don't have enough time to cover it all, but I'll still say, offshore outsourcing to China, India, bringing in foreigners, squeezing Americans from all ends, including financial support and entry/access into higher education, is the biggest problem we have.
Then, I agree, we have these major disasters, so major we're writing about them, even though EP is an economics site, these things do affect the U.S. at the economic level, plus it's so tough to get accurate information....
so, yeah, SS is under attack, workers are under attack, we have a Corporate lobbyist riddled government, including Obama, even worse on the GOP side and no end in site, if anything the corruption is 10 times worse than before the original "crisis".
employment, especially, swings wildly, so statisticians use seasonal adjustments.
The birth/death model is not seasonally adjusted, it's added before that adjustment is done.
So, my point here is that not seasonally adjusted, payroll job increases were actually 925,000 and I got that number straight from the BLS, you can access their NSA, or not seasonally adjusted data.
My point here is you cannot add and subtract NSA data from SA data because it's statistically invalid.
So, you cannot subtract off the birth/death jobs added to the 216,000 for that is mixing seasonally adjusted payroll to the not seasonally adjusted birth/death model jobs.
You'd have to use the NSA or not seasonally adjusted payroll number, which is 925,000, subtract off the birth/death model of 117,000 to get to 808,000 payroll jobs
but then apply the seasonal adjustment model, which is called X-12, to get the real seasonal adjustment without the birth/death model guesstimate.
I frankly suspect the birth/death model overstates jobs and a good reason why is the use of past events to predict futures ones, in statistics.
i.e. if 50 people cross the road at 11am every Saturday for 20 years, it's a good bet that 50 people will cross the road next Saturday...
but if you do not take into account that 50 people were just relocated to China because walking there is "cheaper" (read corporate herd behavior), then your prediction for next Saturday will be overstated.
There is a great Atlanta Fed post, click here for it, overviewing new reports showing a slow down of new businesses and especially the employment growth rates of new businesses past 2008.
Going through BLS reports is truly an exercise in Where's Waldo.
One thing that really bothers me is how accurate is the monthly change in civilian, non-institutional population. All things are derived from that number.
3M was once a fine company of engineers, problem solvers, and innovators. Now this CEO feels free to make such statements. The first time a corporation leaves the USA for real, workers as well as legal address, there should be a special tax, "the 3M tax," that adds 100% to any imports from 3M or anyone else that pulls this stunt.
As for Zug, Switzerland and the Bahamas, I'm sure that Gates might offer a few ideas ... Robert, not Bill;)
I wonder if the German people hear this type of nonsense out of their CEO's. If they don't, I wonder why?
This article flows nicely and then, all of a sudden, crashes you to shore with a big thud. It's hard to imagine the entitlement that these "leaders" posses.
There was a shot of the reactor and you could see scaffolding etc. But that report disappeared. How can that explosion happen without major structural damage? I'll say this for the nuclear power industry. They may not be able to build a plant in the USA but they can certainly lock down the news.
we hope then more unnerving news comes along. The Gulf oil spill was months of national agony. Japan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, the Mideast revolutions(good thing) and oil prices are skyrocketing. A new bottom for the housing market. I hope the economy can continue to create 200,000 jobs a month in the face of these headwinds. I'm leery that job creation will falter again this year.
With gas prices the Social Security tax cut has saved people some amount of pain. Sort of a one year fuel allowance. Guess it wasn't all bad. The wealthy class will take more then that from your SS Trust fund so don't feel guilty about it.
Yes, I'd love to see anything you'd like to do on this. In my piece I linked to what the Legislative Budget Board in TX has estimated for the coming two fiscal years--both direct layoffs and then follow-on effects that ripple through the state economy. They are scary numbers.
This would be catastrophic to the party of Harding, Blackwell, and Taft. Their goal is to demand 1/2 day Saturday every week and a maximum compensation at 50% of the current level. The Ohio Republicans are on the road to perdition, without a Garmin.
I'm working on more details in a new post and I'm putting up, front and center the "official" unemployed count. Those reports of offshore outsourcing, bring in guest workers, refusing to hire anyone who actually needs a job, i.e. unemployed and all of the rest of it has not gone away with two months of better reports.
That said, these last two months of reports are better news!
While things are better than two years ago, the unemployed are not out of the woods yet.
Actually I believe most of the long term unemployed are just about where they were two years ago, with fair-poor job prospects in most cases.
What they have in 2011 that they didn't in 2009 are continuing bills and no more unemployment. The last thing they need or the country needs is this happy talk about how things are turning the corner. The stock market has largely returned to where it was. Employment has not and God knows when it will.
Why are all our leaders looking for an excuse to do nothing? They know a majority of people can't hold out 2-3-4-5 years until they get a decent paying fulltime job. And yes, it will take 5 years and more for that to happen.
So what's the plan? Can they really not have a plan at all?
I've been wondering how potentially fairly steep public layoffs might effect the employment picture this year and next. I've put a short piece out on this, would like your thoughts (either here or there) on this:
The "nuclear waste" in spent fuel rods retains 99% of its energy content, it is really potent, unburned fuel. Why not burn it up first in Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactors that utilize a single fuel cycle and extract the remaining energy before disposal? This would reduce the volume of waste needing to be disposed of by 99% while extracting 200% more usable energy from the same material while at the same time reducing the toxicity of the reduced waste by orders of magnitude.
Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactors (MSR/LFTR) technology has been sitting on the shelf for 55 years and could be commercialized relatively quickly. While it will not be 100% safe these reactors are inherently safer because they cannot melt down (the fuel is already in a molten state) and are self regulating, (if the overheat the overheating itself shuts the reactor down, the fuel drains and is passively cooled. They can burn away 99% of existing waste from spent fuel rods without reprocessing. They require a fraction of the fuel and produce a fraction of the waste.
The nuclear industry's business model is dependent on fuel sales and reprocessing spent fuel. Profits are earned when the same product is sold then reprocessed and resold again and again. Each time through the loop the material becomes more toxic. Reactor technology that requires multiple fuel cycles no matter how inefficient and dangerous increases industry profits. They will sell reactors at a loss just to get the fuel contract.
Single fuel cycle reactors are rightly seen as disruptive to their business model which is founded on inefficient multiple fuel cycle reactors that only extract 1% of the energy content in each fuel cycle. Reprocessing isn't some magical process that adds energy to the spent fuel. It is a process that allows the spent fuel to be prepared for another cycle through the reactor where another 1% of its energy content can be extracted. Each time the fuel is cycled through a reactor profits are earn by transporting, selling, reprocessing and reselling the same fuel product, again and again. The inefficiency of this system is staggering and so are the profits.
I needed this.
"there is so much going on ... I just don't have enough time to cover it all,"
No, you don't. No one individual does.
But you manage to cover an amazing amount of ground here. Plus you respond to individual comments, including mine before I even registered, when I was just an "Anonymous Drive By."
My thanks to you (and the No. 2 around here, Michael Collins) for all the hard work you do.
In a world in which all the modern communications available cannot force the many willfully blind among us to see -- and admit to seeing -- what's plainly in front of them; at a time where educated people who know better will cover their eyes and allow themselves to be ignorant and mislead, this site is a godsend and an oasis.
I salute you, "Robert Oak", whoever and wherever you are.
Thanks for a great rundown of the employment report. The media always misses the message that 120,000 and more jobs each month need to be created to keep up with new entrants to the workforce.
That's a critical question to answer. I don't know why but I have a notion as to how they get away with it. Because of the barrier of money and media access, ideology can be vetted by those with the money and who own the media. As a result, we get candidates like Obama and McCain who BOTH interrupt their campaigns to come to DC and endorse the bailout, the object of great public ire. It can't hurt them because they're both in agreement. Who else could we vote for at that point? They'd never disagree because they were properly vetted by the money sources, those who had their fortunes riding the bailout.
Why doe they do nothing? Because the can and, imho, because that's their job. Other times their job is to do something. But in the case of action or inaction, their actions are not going to be in our interests, nor should we expect them to behave in that way.
The very best to you in the job quest!
I just don't have enough time to cover it all, but I'll still say, offshore outsourcing to China, India, bringing in foreigners, squeezing Americans from all ends, including financial support and entry/access into higher education, is the biggest problem we have.
Then, I agree, we have these major disasters, so major we're writing about them, even though EP is an economics site, these things do affect the U.S. at the economic level, plus it's so tough to get accurate information....
so, yeah, SS is under attack, workers are under attack, we have a Corporate lobbyist riddled government, including Obama, even worse on the GOP side and no end in site, if anything the corruption is 10 times worse than before the original "crisis".
employment, especially, swings wildly, so statisticians use seasonal adjustments.
The birth/death model is not seasonally adjusted, it's added before that adjustment is done.
So, my point here is that not seasonally adjusted, payroll job increases were actually 925,000 and I got that number straight from the BLS, you can access their NSA, or not seasonally adjusted data.
My point here is you cannot add and subtract NSA data from SA data because it's statistically invalid.
So, you cannot subtract off the birth/death jobs added to the 216,000 for that is mixing seasonally adjusted payroll to the not seasonally adjusted birth/death model jobs.
You'd have to use the NSA or not seasonally adjusted payroll number, which is 925,000, subtract off the birth/death model of 117,000 to get to 808,000 payroll jobs
but then apply the seasonal adjustment model, which is called X-12, to get the real seasonal adjustment without the birth/death model guesstimate.
I frankly suspect the birth/death model overstates jobs and a good reason why is the use of past events to predict futures ones, in statistics.
i.e. if 50 people cross the road at 11am every Saturday for 20 years, it's a good bet that 50 people will cross the road next Saturday...
but if you do not take into account that 50 people were just relocated to China because walking there is "cheaper" (read corporate herd behavior), then your prediction for next Saturday will be overstated.
There is a great Atlanta Fed post, click here for it, overviewing new reports showing a slow down of new businesses and especially the employment growth rates of new businesses past 2008.
Going through BLS reports is truly an exercise in Where's Waldo.
One thing that really bothers me is how accurate is the monthly change in civilian, non-institutional population. All things are derived from that number.
Robert,
Nice drill-down, but your last comment leaves me puzzled. Can you explain how you arrive at 925,000 payrolls added from the data provided?
Also, are you saying that real job growth was under 100,000 because the birth death model added jobs did not exist?
Thanks
3M was once a fine company of engineers, problem solvers, and innovators. Now this CEO feels free to make such statements. The first time a corporation leaves the USA for real, workers as well as legal address, there should be a special tax, "the 3M tax," that adds 100% to any imports from 3M or anyone else that pulls this stunt.
As for Zug, Switzerland and the Bahamas, I'm sure that Gates might offer a few ideas ... Robert, not Bill;)
I wonder if the German people hear this type of nonsense out of their CEO's. If they don't, I wonder why?
This article flows nicely and then, all of a sudden, crashes you to shore with a big thud. It's hard to imagine the entitlement that these "leaders" posses.
Paul, can you give some links for the lead time for Thorium reactors? I've come across different estimates, some way out there.
The idea of leaving a time bomb 10,000 years out that nobody will know about probably is simply offensive. There's no way to assure it.
Where's Einstein when we need him?;)
There was a shot of the reactor and you could see scaffolding etc. But that report disappeared. How can that explosion happen without major structural damage? I'll say this for the nuclear power industry. They may not be able to build a plant in the USA but they can certainly lock down the news.
The BLS spelled out that local government has lost 416,000 jobs since 09/08.
here.
But projections for 2011/2012, if I can get a national tally, I can apply some multipliers.
we hope then more unnerving news comes along. The Gulf oil spill was months of national agony. Japan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, the Mideast revolutions(good thing) and oil prices are skyrocketing. A new bottom for the housing market. I hope the economy can continue to create 200,000 jobs a month in the face of these headwinds. I'm leery that job creation will falter again this year.
With gas prices the Social Security tax cut has saved people some amount of pain. Sort of a one year fuel allowance. Guess it wasn't all bad. The wealthy class will take more then that from your SS Trust fund so don't feel guilty about it.
Yes, I'd love to see anything you'd like to do on this. In my piece I linked to what the Legislative Budget Board in TX has estimated for the coming two fiscal years--both direct layoffs and then follow-on effects that ripple through the state economy. They are scary numbers.
This would be catastrophic to the party of Harding, Blackwell, and Taft. Their goal is to demand 1/2 day Saturday every week and a maximum compensation at 50% of the current level. The Ohio Republicans are on the road to perdition, without a Garmin.
I'm working on more details in a new post and I'm putting up, front and center the "official" unemployed count. Those reports of offshore outsourcing, bring in guest workers, refusing to hire anyone who actually needs a job, i.e. unemployed and all of the rest of it has not gone away with two months of better reports.
That said, these last two months of reports are better news!
While things are better than two years ago, the unemployed are not out of the woods yet.
Actually I believe most of the long term unemployed are just about where they were two years ago, with fair-poor job prospects in most cases.
What they have in 2011 that they didn't in 2009 are continuing bills and no more unemployment. The last thing they need or the country needs is this happy talk about how things are turning the corner. The stock market has largely returned to where it was. Employment has not and God knows when it will.
Why are all our leaders looking for an excuse to do nothing? They know a majority of people can't hold out 2-3-4-5 years until they get a decent paying fulltime job. And yes, it will take 5 years and more for that to happen.
So what's the plan? Can they really not have a plan at all?
What we can do is get the raw public sector job loss numbers for 2011, the estimate, or even the tally.
Then, what I can do, if this is of interest, is run some multipliers on the indirect effects.
The biggest factor, beyond home devaluations is tax revenues is income tax, so less people working, less revenues.
You know, you can join EP, request and author account and cross post, the rules on it are in the user guide.
Hi Robert,
I've been wondering how potentially fairly steep public layoffs might effect the employment picture this year and next. I've put a short piece out on this, would like your thoughts (either here or there) on this:
http://amovingworld.blogspot.com/2011/04/private-sector-job-growth-in-ma...
The "nuclear waste" in spent fuel rods retains 99% of its energy content, it is really potent, unburned fuel. Why not burn it up first in Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactors that utilize a single fuel cycle and extract the remaining energy before disposal? This would reduce the volume of waste needing to be disposed of by 99% while extracting 200% more usable energy from the same material while at the same time reducing the toxicity of the reduced waste by orders of magnitude.
Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactors (MSR/LFTR) technology has been sitting on the shelf for 55 years and could be commercialized relatively quickly. While it will not be 100% safe these reactors are inherently safer because they cannot melt down (the fuel is already in a molten state) and are self regulating, (if the overheat the overheating itself shuts the reactor down, the fuel drains and is passively cooled. They can burn away 99% of existing waste from spent fuel rods without reprocessing. They require a fraction of the fuel and produce a fraction of the waste.
The nuclear industry's business model is dependent on fuel sales and reprocessing spent fuel. Profits are earned when the same product is sold then reprocessed and resold again and again. Each time through the loop the material becomes more toxic. Reactor technology that requires multiple fuel cycles no matter how inefficient and dangerous increases industry profits. They will sell reactors at a loss just to get the fuel contract.
Single fuel cycle reactors are rightly seen as disruptive to their business model which is founded on inefficient multiple fuel cycle reactors that only extract 1% of the energy content in each fuel cycle. Reprocessing isn't some magical process that adds energy to the spent fuel. It is a process that allows the spent fuel to be prepared for another cycle through the reactor where another 1% of its energy content can be extracted. Each time the fuel is cycled through a reactor profits are earn by transporting, selling, reprocessing and reselling the same fuel product, again and again. The inefficiency of this system is staggering and so are the profits.
IF WE HAD GOVERMENT THAT DID NOT SPEND MORE THAN THEY HAD WE WOULD NOT HAVE A HOLE TO FILL WITH MORE TAX DOLLARS.
IT IS TIME TO QUIT THE SPENDING
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