Tag Archives: jobs

Some Labor Day Questions

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First published in 2015, I’ve updated it for today.  In an ideal world, I’ll be able to update it again next year, with a yet more optimistic tone.

The Wall Street Journal asked some questions on Labor Day 2012, and supplied some answers.  Here are some of those questions and answers, which remain as valid this Labor Day.

  • Q: How are America’s workers doing? Not good. Over the past decade, over the ups and downs of the economy, taking inflation into account, the compensation of the typical worker — wages and benefits—basically haven’t risen at all. … The Labor Department recently said that 6.1 million workers in 2009-2011 have lost jobs that they’d had for at least three years. Of those, 45% hadn’t found work as of January 2012. … Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Friday that unemployment is still two percentage points higher than normal….
  • Q: Things ARE getting better, though. The US economy is creating jobs, right? Back in December 2007 when the recession began, there were about two jobless workers for every job opening.  When the economy touched bottom in mid-2009, there were more than six unemployed for every job.  At last count, the BLS says there were 3.4 jobless for every opening.
  • Q: How much of this elevated unemployment is because the unemployed just don’t have the skills that employers are looking for right now?  …the bulk of the evidence is a lot of the unemployment really is the old-fashioned kind: the kind that would go away if the economy was growing at a stronger pace. Mr. Bernanke said as much at the [2012] Jackson Hole conference….

In 2019, the jobs situation was drastically improved.  The overall unemployment rate was at an historic low, and there were more job openings than there were folks to fill them.  The black unemployment rate was at a record low.  The Hispanic unemployment rate was at a near record low.  The women unemployment rate was at a near record low.  Wages, both real and nominal, were growing.

I add a couple of questions for this year.

  • Q: What about the COVID-19 virus situation? It hit us hard last winter, when we knew nothing about it, and much of the data we did have had been falsified, with other, critical, data withheld from us by foreign entities for critical weeks. However, the initial spike has collapsed, and the latest, end-of-summer surge is waning. The fatality rate, given an infection, is a small fraction of 1% for most age groups and in the 3%-5% range for those in their 60s and older. Vaccines are on the horizon, and mitigating treatment techniques and drugs are in effect that greatly lessen the severity of most infections and shorten significantly hospital stays, and decrease drastically mortality rates for those hospitalized. It also turns out that children are the least harmed by this virus, neither likely to pass infections among each other nor to adults; schools can re-open for critically important face-to-face teaching and learning, and many of them are. Associated resurgences of infection are turning out to be minor.
  • Q: But what about the economy? This was a politically-forced, not an economically-induced, shutdown of our economy, and so it can be re-opened just as politically or by simple business decision to do so. And it is, in broad swaths of our economy. GDP is on a sharp rise, the unemployment rate is around 8.4%, which is well below the Panic of 2008 rate, and the current rate is falling. The employment participation rate is rising again. Businesses are reopening, furloughed employees are being recalled.

In sum, our exceptional American economy is coming back.

Happy Labor Day.

An Urging

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New York State’s governor, Andrew Cuomo (D), has taken to asking those who’ve left the State to return—especially the rich and especially to New York City.

New York City’s mayor, Bill de Blasio (D), has taken a more blasé attitude. He’s in the What, Me Worry? camp; folks will come back. Even the rich.

I have to ask, though.

Why would anyone want to return to New York City? De Blasio has made the place unlivable, and the Internet has made the place unnecessary.

Student Debt

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In an article about Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden’s plan for reducing student loan-centered debt, The Wall Street Journal asked

What do you think would be an effective way to reduce student loan debt in the US?

Getting government out of the way of the economy so graduates can get jobs and pay their debts is the first and most critical step.

For the future, we need to require colleges and universities to publish the median and mean first-five-year annual incomes for their various majors.

In addition, we need to require colleges and universities, either individually or as consortia, to be the sole lenders of last resort to their students

We also need to remove government altogether from the student loan industry, as lender, as loan guarantor, and from any other role.

Finally, the only legitimate way for graduates to reduce their student loans short of repayment is through ordinary bankruptcy. We need to force our government to eliminate its ban on bankruptcy discharge of student debt.

Biden’s “plan” unfairly singles out private colleges/universities by not having their students’ debts ameliorated, a deliberate attempt to punish them; he’ll only mitigate the student debts for graduates of public schools and those who were cheated (under his definition of cheating) by for-profit schools.

Even worse, by making it so students don’t have to repay all of their debt through his forgiveness bit, Biden will greatly diminish, if not destroy, the student loan market, shifting the whole thing onto the backs of taxpayers, unless the methods outlined above are enacted.

Maybe Not So Much

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Some economic news from the end of last week:

The latest jobless claims figures from the Labor Department, which cover the week ending August 1, show that more than 1.18 million workers sought aid last week….
Economists surveyed by Refinitiv expected 1.41 million new claims.

And

Continuing claims, the number of people receiving benefits after an initial week of aid fell by 844,000 to 16.1 million.

The data coincide with the expiration of the $600/week Wuhan Virus-related payments added to ordinary unemployment payments, so that’s not a driver of this sharp labor improvement; although the impending end of the addendum could have had some impact. The overall improvement in our economy is the driver.

This weakens the case Progressive-Democrats are making to continue paying folks to not work, and it emphasizes their blatant obstruction to getting any sort of relief into our economy.

The biggest relief, of course, would be for the Federal government as a whole to get out of the way of our recovery, to let businesses reopen unfettered. Progressive-Democrats, though, and too many Republicans are continuing to insist on interfering.

Pen and Phone

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The editors at The Wall Street Journal expressed worry about President Donald Trump’s use of his “pen and phone” over the weekend to render the Congressional Progressive-Democrats’ obstructionism regarding Wuhan Virus relief for Americans irrelevant. They think he’s aping too closely ex-President Barack Obama’s (D) pen and phone.

It’s true that Trump is using his pen and phone. The differences between his actions and Obama’s, though, are two: Trump is undoing Obama’s pen and phone actions, not creating new things—with this exception, which is the other critical difference: Obama’s actions were largely illegal, struck down on legal challenge; Trump’s have proven legal, in the main, upheld on legal challenge.

The editors are worried about this use in particular:

Mr Trump’s FEMA order is a bad legal precedent that a President Kamala Harris could cite if a GOP Congress blocked her agenda on, say, climate change.

This is mistaken. For one thing, not doing a useful thing because a bad person (of either party) might misuse it later is simply foolish. If the thing is useful, it’s usefully done. Full stop.

For another thing, Obama already set the general precedent—Congress not performing to his satisfaction was his rationale for his own pen and phone use.

Finally, the question of precedent enabling a President Harris to use FEMA funds on her global warming agenda—to take a particular example—is plain wrong. Harris needs no precedent to use FEMA funds for her agenda; she’d do that anyway. And set her own precedent, without a care.

RTWT, though. Aside from this last item, it’s a generally soundly reasoned piece.