And black unemployment is at an all time record low of 5.9%.
^ This is VERY cool!
quote:
BREAKING NEWS: Black Unemployment Rate At All-Time Low
What's really amazing is not only did the rate plunge to 5.9% from 6.6% in a single month, 76,000 [black Americans] joined the labor force (the only racial group that increased last month) - really great news. #Winning
U.S. Economy Adds 223,000 Jobs in May, Unemployment Falls to 3.8% By Richard D. Baris - June 1, 2018
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) said U.S. economy added a stronger than expected 223,000 in May and the unemployment rate ticked down to 3.8%, the lowest level since April 2000. It’s also a match for the lowest rate in half a century.
Worth noting, the unemployment rate for Hispanics and African Americans are both just 0.1% off their all-time lows.
[snip]
Employment continued to trend up in several industries that trended down under the previous administration, including construction (+25,000), manufacturing (+18,000) and mining (+6,000). The higher-paying jobs are continuing to put pressure on wages.
Construction has added a whopping 286,000 jobs over the past 12 months. Manufacturing has added 259,000 jobs over the year, a complete reversal from a negative trend. Mining has added 91,000 jobs over the year, also a complete reversal from the all-time low in October 2016.
He is a friend of mine and Al Lighton. We simply can not understand his unbridled love for the last pResident and the utter hatred of President Trump. He is not our only friend that feels similarly and I am at a loss.
They are not unintelligent people. There is a difference between disdain of a person's political beliefs and action, and wishing them dead. I despised what the last pResident did and stood for, but never wished his demise. I don't get it.
TDS, plain and simple. Hatred simply because they're TOLD they should hate, by the media, and by the last group in power (Dems).
Dems have no reasoning for their hatred. No facts to back anything up. No justification. It's a simple case of "because we said so, how dare you question The Truth?".
Intelligence (or lack thereof) has nothing to do with it here. It's simply a matter of drive - drive to seek truth, to seek fact, and to make one's own decisions about true reality. More a factor of lazy, than of intelligence.
Record high unemployment for black Americans. Don't recall hispanic, but high, along with everyone else.
A very common mantra is "poor & minorities hit the worst". It's common because it's true.
Example, the Buffalo Bills want a new stadium. Never mind the billion dollars from the taxpayers for the last renovation. That was the old owner, and the NFL wants a dome, for the 8-12 games that they play each year. ( could be more, I was listening to local sports talk on the subject )
The billionaires who own the team aren't going to waste their money on a new stadium, that would be a losing deal. So the taxpayers get the shaft. Even folk who pay nothing overtly for income & property taxes, will have their rent & costs go up to pay more to afford a gazillion dollars dome. A few might even go to a game.
But for most, including me, it's just taking money from the poor so rich guys can make more money.
Nancy Pelosi wants to rule Congress again to end the Bush tax cuts. ( she doesn't remember who the President is, often ) Raise taxes on rich people? No! She is against that. Or maybe not. But absolutely raise taxes on the small business that don't bribe Her! Who then cut payroll and raise prices to pay Nancy's rich donors. Poorest hit worst.
Every time food costs more, gasoline, power, all the stuff that's a huge percentage of poor people's bills, and a tiny percentage of Nancy's & other rich folk's, the poor are hit harder.
Usually the statements surrounding that truth are flat out lies, but it's true that rich politicians hurt poor people most. Always have. Always will. It is simple math.
Astounding! Keep in mind that this is happening with some big things working against the economy. 1) The Fed is finally raising interest rates, after years of keeping them at record lows due to a poor recovery. 2) The Dems doing anything and everything in their power to "resist". 3) The endless Mueller investigations, and all sorts of wild accusations of Trump. 4) A media that has gone full blown TDS. 5) Trumps own decision to take on the long term problems of unfair trade. While I fully agree with the long term goals on this, it is predictably causing huge volatility in the markets/economy. I really give Trump credit for his willingness... No. His enthusiasm in taking on this long term problem that will be the cause of much uncertainty and trepidation in the short term. 6) Lets not forget the threats from NOKO as they are becoming the worlds latest nuclear infant tyrant.
Not exactly sailing with the wind at your stern! Trump has certainly shot for some very ambitious goals, and done remarkably well at achieving most of them. Still not a fan of much of what he does, but the man does have a way of getting results!
The unemployment rate for everyone has been falling steadily since 2010. When Trump took office in 2016 the unemployment rate for blacks had already fallen from 16.9 percent to 8.9 percent. Currently that number is down to 5.9 percent.
So when Trump says Dems did nothing for you but get your vote, he relies on people forgetting that the bulk of the hard work pulling the US out of the 2008 recession was at the very least a bipartisan effort.
It should be noted that all minorites, whites included, share the same general unemployment curve (of course because most of the work Americans do is not really race specific) so why would Trump give the shout out to blacks and hispanics specifically? Probably because he needs their midterm votes after irritating them so much in the last 2 years.
H0gwash, do you not find it significant that unemployment rates for blacks are at historic lows?
Of course unemployment is only a single metric that needs to be looked at. Under BO we saw the unemployment rate dropping while labor participation was also dropping. Unemployment was a broken metric during that period of time. We were being told that GDP growth of under 2% was going to be the new normal for the foreseeable future. What we are seeing now is a completely different situation for the economy. GDP is growing at rates we were told couldn't be achieved. BO said Trump couldn't do this because he didn't have a magic wand. Interest rates were held at historic low levels for the entire BO Presidency. This was to protect the fragile economy during those years. Again, I really have to stress that not BO, not Hillary, not the MSM said that the economy was ready for a period of boom. In fact, all of these sources said to accept the "new normal" that we had been seeing. We were basically told that Trump was in a fantasy world, claiming he would make America great again. We were told that Trump had no plan to make this happen.
The simple reality is that Trump is doing exactly what the left said couldn't be done. Not by Trump. Not by BO. Not by Hillary. This is despite a real effort by many to prevent this from happening. Labor participation is back on track, a real sign that unemployment numbers are more realistic than we have seen for years. It's backed by GDP. It's backed by the fact that the Fed is raising interest rates to normal levels. This has all happened in less than a year and a half. This also flies in the face of left wing economists such as Krugman claiming the economy under Trump would be a disaster. Do you really think that Trump is not making America great again?
To put it a different way, taking the black unemployment rate from recession highs of 16.9% to around 8.9% is not a bad thing at all. It's in the ball park of what has been status quo for a long time. It was a level that BO seemed to be happy with as an achievement, and didn't see room for improvement. Trump had a vision to crush that, and he has.
There's still a lot I don't like about Trump, but I have to give him credit for doing what he said on the economy. For doing what others said couldn't be done. Dumb luck? I really don't think so. Not by a long shot.
I like low unemployment. If I have to work, everybody else better be working dammit! I am just irked by Trump taking credit for it all when clearly his economic policies have yet to take effect.
The whoosh of people buying things is cool, but I worry about the deficit growth as the tax cut is not expected to pay for itself. A wall would only exacerbate that problem and have little real benefit if Trump could not get Mexico to pay for it. It seems that money will have to come from Medicare cuts.
Where do you see yuuge GDP gains? I don't seem much change in numbers, only in enthusiasm so far.
Ignore the "Unemployment" figure unless there is more data to back it up. It is possible, and in fact happens, that the "Published" Unemployment number can go down, while it's actually a worse time to get a job.
You want to go play with the reports pages at the Labor Dept. website. It helps to have an understanding of basic statistics, but if a number goes up every year, you maybe got a trend.
Remember, there are many reasons not to be in the labor force. Retired, stay at home mom/dad, medically unable, think it's easier to be on the dole than work, ( and often it pays better, if all you can get is part time fast food work ) and the real big one not mentioned, ......
No longer on unemployment. When you go off unemployment insurance, most people quit going to the State Labor dept. When you aren't in the system anymore, they assume you aren't looking for work. And then drop you off the statistics for unemployed & looking.
For the last year of the Bush regime, and the first 6-7 years of the Obama regime, those numbers trended up, so the employment was actually getting worse while they told you it was getting better.
So the 4.8% number is... more or less bull. If you take it alone, which is what the administrations ( D or R ) prefer you do. Much easier to give a single number and claim you are awesome than to give a odd ratio and admit you suck.
I'll let you make charts and look at lists. Far better you see for yourself than take my word for it. After all, I'm no expert.
Look at the numbers over time.
Here is one... I don't know how to show it here, but...
Scroll down to Unemployment. go to the line "Labor Force Statistics including the National Unemployment Rate" and click on the Top Picks.
Scroll down near the bottom to " Alternative measure of labor underutilization U-6 - LNS13327709" and select. Then press "retrieve data" button. This gives you the numbers for several years and you can chart, plot, or just swear, to your heart's content. ( I like to do simple graphs but YMMV )
If those numbers, the "U-6" goes up, employment is tanking. If they go up at the same time the "unemployment" number goes down, then it's still a losing game. The proper analysis to get the "real" numbers to show if things are better or worse is WAY more complex than this, but it's the best rule of thumb. ( keep in mind they keep changing how they label things to make it harder to follow for laymen... Or maybe to improve how they work. Your guess )
First glance? Seems like things are actually getting better.
Or... If you are REALLY lazy, just listen for one number on the news. How many people got jobs that month. If it's more than roughly 200,000, It is good. Less, Bad. we need about 185,000-250,000 new jobs every month to be at break even with births/deaths/immigration/retirement/etc.
Or, if businesses are complaining that it's getting hard to get new workers and they have to raise wages, That's a sign of lower unemployment. See Chic-fil-a raising wages.
Ignore those complaints from Silicon Valley, or Disney, businesses that are hiring cheaper labor from China & India and firing Americans to save money in the Tech fields like Animation ( CGI ) and software development. The BIG contributors to Congress, like Microsoft, Google, Facebook, etc. Think of them as the spiritual heirs to the Robber Barons of Old. Maybe I'm wrong, but they sure seem evil to me.
Or I could just be torqued about the latest update.
I am just irked by Trump taking credit for it all when clearly his economic policies have yet to take effect.
Yeah. Barry did the same thing. You are correct to be irked. Heck, irked is how I feel about Trump politicians almost all the time! Only decorum, and legal liability, keeps me from screaming "hang em all!" every day.
But it's not so much the policies kicking in that makes changes.
The economy started improving before Trump even took the oath. The prospect of 4 years without Hillary made a LOT of people happy and they started investing & buying based on that alone. After all, She promised to Kill Coal, and make energy more expensive to continue the Obama path to raising the Oceans. ( or whatever Godlike thing he'd promised )
The biggest drag on the economy is energy costs. Which went down nicely, last year. This year we have Saudi Arabia battling Iran with OPEC and Russia wanting more expensive oil, to keep Putin in power... and China wanting cheap power, to continue to grow and avoid a counter revolution.
You may have noticed China is currently in Arrest Everyone mode and getting desperate to keep a lid on freedoms, especially the internet and access to information.
I like low unemployment. If I have to work, everybody else better be working dammit! I am just irked by Trump taking credit for it all when clearly his economic policies have yet to take effect.
The whoosh of people buying things is cool, but I worry about the deficit growth as the tax cut is not expected to pay for itself. A wall would only exacerbate that problem and have little real benefit if Trump could not get Mexico to pay for it. It seems that money will have to come from Medicare cuts.
Where do you see yuuge GDP gains? I don't seem much change in numbers, only in enthusiasm so far.
The lack of control of spending is one of the "hang em high" things I am very unhappy about.
I'm also ready to fire all of Congress. The last legal budget in the U.S. was signed by G.W.Bush. ( and Obama voted for it ) Obama never signed a budget. He did submit a few, but Harry Reid never allowed them to come to a vote, or they voted them down. Every dime spent since 2009 has been in emergency continuing resolutions. (CRs)
Why is that important? None of the Congressmen has had to justify the budget to his employers, ( us ) since there isn't one. Budgets get published. CR's get slid under the table. And under Barry the Weasel, the Media didn't report diddle on how much was spent, unless it was to fry the Republicans for reducing some increase.
Trump has promised that he signed the last CR a very short while back. I'll believe it when I see it. He might make a real show over the illegality of the spending, and get some action. Good luck.
Myself, I'd declare that since Congress hasn't done their jobs for a decade, that we are reverting to the 2008 budget, and Congress's funding and pay will be withheld until the budget is passed, or July 4th, whichever comes first. Then use Congress's money to build a wall, preferably around the Capitol. Or use it to run the military.
I suspect that the country now actually takes enough in taxes, a record amount, that the 2008 budget would be far less than we take in.
Every program that Obama started would get no money. They would have to lay off over a million Federal employees. None of Trump's stuff would get funding either.
Washington D.C. would BURN. The White house would be surrounded by torch bearing crowds of Federal Workers. Imagine the death toll.
I don't want to sound like the unemployment rate is not a worthwhile statistic. It is, but it also has real weaknesses. It's only a single data point in a complicated issue. Unfortunately, it was pretty much a broken data point for a while due to how the data is compiled. It's probably pretty poorly named to be honest, but it's what we've got, and is widely watched. It was broken with people who were simply dropping out of the job market for pretty much the entire BO administration. This is easily seen in the Labor Participation rate.
You can see that the trend has suddenly reversed. Exactly when the unemployment rate becomes not broken is difficult for me to say. I think as long as people who are looking for jobs, but dropping out of the labor force, it's broken. Given that, I would say it was broken at least to the bottom of the drop in labor participation. Does that mean it's suddenly fixed? I'm really not sure. This is new to me in my lifetime. What I do know is that it's dangerous to hang your hat on a single metric when looking at a complicated system. There are many metrics that turned right after Trump won the election. More have gotten better during his short time in office.
Of course it can be equally difficult to correctly credit why things in the economy change. I see little that was external to our country that can be credited for our turn around. So was it Trump? Was it BO's policies finally getting into high gear? Was it something else? Black and white answers are difficult to come by. One thing is clear though. Trump went full force in changing the economic policies that BO had put in place, and doing it his way. There are more examples of this than I could begin to list. Given the very real effort to reverse the previous economic policies put in place under BO, sit seems very unlikely that those policies are worthy of credit for the economic changes. BO said himself, and I agree with him on this point, that if he couldn't turn the economy around in his first term in office, he didn't deserve a second term. Well, the electorate didn't take that advice to heart and gave him double that time. We didn't see the positive change happen. Suddenly we get Trump, with real action to change the policies of the past 8 years, and we see positive change in the economy. You can attribute that to chance if you like. I would like to hear what has randomly helped the economy if that's the case. Personally, I see this as the difference between someone who has never run a business, or even contemplated that, vs. a very accomplished business person.
I wish I had more time to put into this right now. Happily, I have to get ready to go to my nephew's wedding. It's sure to be a fun weekend. I hope your's is too!
Isn’t it interesting that the economy tanked when BO got the nomination and surged when HC lost the election?
To be fair, the economy tanked prior to BO. It should have been primed for a strong recovery. What we mostly saw was stagnation.
Why it tanked is worthy of an entire discussion. IMO it has far more to do with issues other than Presidential economic policies. I'm off to do better things today.
It's interesting to note that black unemployment spiked to well over 15% (the rate more than doubled, it appears) shortly after 0bama's inauguration, and didn't drop under 15% until the end of his first term.
It's also interesting to note that the black unemployment rate was not significantly better at the end of 0bama's tenure than it was at the beginning.
Compare the number at the 1.5-year mark of 0bama's tenure to that of Trump's; pretty remarkable, I'd say.
It sounds paranoid to state that the Democrats deliberately sabotaged the economy with high taxes and insane regulations the last years of the Bush regime. True, though. "It's the economy, stupid" Much easier to win & switch parties when times are bad.