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Hmm, interesting:
| quote: | Friday, June 09, 2006
The Rising Jobs Openings Rate
Jerry Bowyer claims:
| quote: | | Before the president’s tax cut of 2003, there were slightly more than 2.5 million unfilled jobs in the country. Now there are over 5 million ... Commentators have consistently underrated the dynamic effect of marginal and investment tax cuts. This has caused them to miss the fact that since 2003, millions of people have entered the work force. |
Notice something – his own chart drawn from JOLTS (Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey) says this figure is 4.1 million, which my math teacher said was LESS than 5 million. Also, job openings typically rise during recoveries – and this recovery was bound to happen even with the 2003 tax cut. Also realize that the labor force typically rising over time. While the labor force participation rate was around 67% before Bush took office, it seems stuck at around 66% now.
I have provided a graph of the Job Openings Rate, defined as the number of openings divided by employment plus job openings. The first reporting of this rate was during the last month of Clinton’s term in office (I bet the rightwing just hates that). The rate fell during the recession and has only partially recovered.
The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey is fairly new but the Beveridge curve concept has been around for quite some time.
http://angrybear.blogspot.com/uploa...s/a1-768388.JPG |
Does 2001 and 2002 exist in a vacuum for this Administration and its minions of supporters? Why do all figures that supposedly support this Administrations wreckless and fiscally irresponsible policies seemingly always begin in 2003?
Shocking, truly.
Some other things to consider:
| quote: | 1. Profits are up, but the wages and incomes of average Americans are down.
* Inflation-adjusted hourly and weekly wages are below where they were at the start of the recovery in November 2001. Yet, productivity—the growth of the economic pie—is up by 14.7%.1 (Figure A)
* Wage growth has been shortchanged because 46% of the growth of total income in the corporate sector has been distributed as corporate profits, far more than the 20% in previous periods.2
* Consequently, median household income (inflation-adjusted) has fallen five years in a row and was 4% lower in 2004 than in 1999, falling from $46,129 to $44,389.3
2. More and more people are deeper and deeper in debt.
* The indebtedness of U.S. households, after adjusting for inflation, has risen 42.0% over the last five years. 4
* The level of debt as a percent of after-tax income is the highest ever measured in our history. Mortgage and consumer debt is now 120% of after-tax income, more than twice the level of 30 years ago.5
* The debt-service ratio (the percent of after-tax income that goes to pay off debts) is at an all-time high of 13.9%.6
* The personal savings rate is negative for the first time since the Depression.7
3. Job creation has not kept up with population growth, and the employment rate has fallen sharply.
* The United States has only 1.9% more jobs today than in March 2001 (the start of the last recession). Private sector jobs are up only 1.5%. At this stage of previous business cycles, jobs had grown by an average of 8.8% and never less than 6.0%.8
* The unemployment rate is relatively low at 4.6%. But the percent of the population that has a job has never recovered since the recession and is still 1.3% lower than in March 2001. If the employment rate had returned to pre-recession levels, almost 4 million more people would be employed.9
* More than 3 million manufacturing jobs have been lost since 2000.10
4. Poverty is on the rise.
* The poverty rate rose from 11.3% in 2000 to 12.7% in 2004.11
* The number of people living in poverty has increased by 5.4 million since 2000.12
* More children are living in poverty: the child poverty rate increased from 16.2% in 2000 to 17.8% in 2004.13
5. Rising health care costs are eroding families' already declining income.
* Households are spending more on health care. Family health costs rose 43-45% for married couples with children, single mothers, and young singles from 2000 to 2003.14
* Employers are cutting back on health insurance. Last year, the percent of people with employer-provided health insurance fell for the fourth year in a row. Nearly 3.7 million fewer people had employer-provided insurance in 2004 than in 2000. Taking population growth into account, 11 million more people would have had employer-provided health insurance in 2004 if the coverage rate had remained at the 2000 level.15
SOURCES
1. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Employment Statistics Survey. 2006 http://www.bls.gov/ces/home.htm. BLS, Labor Productivity and Costs. 2006. http://www.bls.gov/lpc/home.htm. Productivity is non-farm business output per hour.
2. Bureau of Economic Analysis. 2006. NIPA Table 1.14. http://www.bea.gov/bea/dn/nipaweb/index.asp.
3. U.S. Census Bureau. Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States. 2004. http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/income.html.
4. Federal Reserve. 2006. Flow of Funds Accounts, balance sheet tables: total household liabilities. http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/. Deflated using CPI-U from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
5. For disposable income: Bureau of Economic Analysis, NIPA Table 2.1. 2006. For mortgage and consumer debt: Federal Reserve Flow of Funds Accounts, balance sheet tables. 2006. http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/.
6. Federal Reserve. 2006. http://www.federalreserve.gov/relea...bt/default.htm.
7. Bureau of Economic Analysis. 2006. NIPA Table 2.1. http://www.bea.gov/bea/dn/nipaweb/index.asp.
8. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Employment Statistics Survey. 2006. (total nonfarm employees and total private employees data.) See also Price, Lee. 2005. The Boom That Wasn't. EPI Briefing Paper #168. http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/bp168.
9. Analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data. See also Bernstein, Jared and Lee Price. 2005. An Off-Kilter Expansion. EPI Briefing Paper #164. http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/bp164.
10. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Employment Statistics Survey. 2006. http://www.bls.gov/ces/home.htm. See also Bivens, Josh. 2005. "Trade deficits and manufacturing employment." Economic Snapshot. Nov. 20. http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/webf...shots_20051130.
11. U.S. Census Bureau. Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2004. http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/income.html.
12. U.S. Census Bureau. Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2004. http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/income.html.
13. U.S. Census Bureau. Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2004. http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/income.html.
14. Mishel, Lawrence et al. 2004. Less Cash in Their Pockets. EPI Briefing Paper #154. http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/bp154.
15. Mishel, Lawrence et al. 2004. Less Cash in Their Pockets. EPI Briefing Paper #154. http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/bp154. |
and
| quote: | The unemployment rate of 4.7% in April remains slightly above the rate at the peak of the last business cycle (4.3 % in March 2001).
But the unemployment rate presents too optimistic a picture of labor market slack. Since persons not looking for work are excluded from this measure, when potential workers give up looking for work and leave the job market, the unemployment rate does not fully reflect labor market slack.
Employment rates (the share of the adult population employed) are more revealing of the job market tautness. This rate is down 1.3 percentage points of its value at the last business cycle peak in March of 2001. Notably, the employment rate is even more depressed-down 1.9 percentage points-for college graduates, a group whose job prospects are presumably not limited because of any changes in skills required in the job market.
One reason for the cyclical decline in the employment rate is the historically low rate of job creation over the recovery, even in recent months. According to research by EPI, were job creation occurring at a similar rate as the last recovery, employment growth would be about 300,000 jobs per month as opposed to the current underlying trend of about 200,000 jobs per month (though last month's job gains were an off-trend 138,000).
Finally, as shown in the first Snapshot of this series, real earnings have been falling in recent quarters, strong evidence that we have not yet achieved a full-employment job market. In the latter 1990s, as the unemployment rate headed for 4%, real earnings grew quickly (median weekly earnings, full-time workers, were up 7%, 1995-2000). These wage trends are the most compelling argument against the White House's claim that the job market is truly tight in historical terms.
http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/webf...pshots_20060511 |
And finally:
| quote: | Figure B shows the trend in real median earnings of full-time workers since 2001. Median earnings, representing the paychecks of the typical working person, have stagnated or declined since 2002, and by the end of the period are little changed from where they began, despite four years of recovery and strong productivity growth.
The gap between the per capita income growth and median earnings is a stark reminder of the unbalanced nature of the current recovery, one that contradicts the White House's rhetoric regarding the success of their policy agenda.
http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/webf...pshots_20060503 |
Ahh yes, the comfort of that lovely trickle-down theory in its entirety.
___________________
Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...
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