Unemployment from 7.6% to 8.1% in one month

I was thinking of putting a poll up on guessing today's unemployment numbers earlier, but if I had, no one would have gotten it right because I wouldn't have gone high enough.

From the Bureau of Labor Statistics the number of unemployment actively looking for work, 5,645,000. 2.6 million of those people lost their job in the last 4 months.

The number of people who could only find part-time work is now 1,764,000.

So why is it the Government won't even acknowledge they offshore outsource jobs using taxpayer money. That's right, both Federal and State governments ship work overseas. This is especially true in state social services.

Also, the United States brings in about 1.5 million temporary foreign guest workers.

Does it make any sense whatsoever to bring in labor or offshore outsource with these kind of unemployment rates and no occupational area left unscathed?

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Did you notice the revisions from past months?

December was revised from -577,000 to -681,000.
January was revised from -598,000 to -655,000.
Plus, when December was first reported it was -525,000. That's a huge miss.

Which begs the question of how far off the February numbers are?

games people play

I did not, thanks for pointing that out. This is unreal and the projected 10% for 2009, 2010 looks like it's going to be low...

We need a super aggressive jobs program and one thing I notice not mentioned is keeping jobs in the U.S.

The minute anything about putting one's domestic labor force first the pundit zombies scream "protectionism".

Well, since when does increasing a middle class group, stable income, mean bad news for a national economy or even hurt a global economy. one just grew the consumer base in that process, so I suspect these screaming walking dead
are completely opposite in their assumptions of what does what.

The problem is that the most straightforward ...

... protectionism is shifting from an Importer's Exchange Rate to an Exporter's Exchange Rate ... but then we might have to cut out some hundred or two of our 700+ overseas bases, and that just "can't be contemplated" (by, that is, the Outsourced-Military / Industrial Complex, since "servicing" those bases is guaranteed profit in the bank for organizations like KBR).

outsourcing innovation, investment, education

That's what is happening in a host of sectors, from Medicine to research to tech to even teachers. While one can deal with the great privatization of the military, that is important but it's not going to stop the destruction of the United States and working America.

I was more referring to the fact that ...

... there are large streams of money creating vested money interests that run precisely and 180 degrees counter to the public interest in cutting down on the size and expense of our massive overseas base network.

Bloody hell, much of it was established in order to contain the Soviet Union.

John Ratzenberger on Protectionism

Protectionist is not a bad word.  You have a family with a couple of kids running around--you protect your family. You love the kids on the street and you think the world of the other families and you think they're great people. But I'm not going to sacrifice my own children because it benefits somebody else on the street. I protect my family. We protect our neighborhood. Our neighborhoods protect our cities. On and on, stretch that out: we should protect our country.

 

 

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Moral hazards would not exist in a system designed to eliminate fraud.

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Maximum jobs, not maximum profits.

U6 at 14.8% up from 13.9% ...

... that's more than 1 in 7 American willing to work who is unemployed or underemployed.

hey Bruce

Long time no comment from...

Unbelievable isn't it? The world has changed in a matter of a few months. I watch TV and wonder who the hell they are talking to. It's like the ads cannot keep up...
we have brokerages talking about "diversification" and continual selling of $50k cars on those ads....

It's like multiple realities that are colliding and they do not match or sync and television is like from a time machine things are changing so dramatically.

Then, TV talking idiot heads are so amusing...

I saw multiple programs today claim low wages was "good" because it kept the United States "competitive" when they cannot even grasp no one can even afford rent on minimum wage or compete against a lower national GDP/PPP ratios like China, Vietnam, India etc. have in terms of wages.

No matter what....they cannot seem to get it together that income, wages, middle class is the economy and that's the key to this entire mess....

and when one collapses the middle class, one collapses the economy.

I'm sure next week I will write some Manifesto rant on how high wages are a damn good thing and if corporations had a clue they would realize that and so on. ;)

Yes, if they cannot get first and foremost a massive, aggressive, U.S. citizen, perm resident, work done in the United States government program together immediately we're in huge trouble.

I also think they should enlist every VC out there, guarantee their money and demand they invest in U.S. businesses, require the hiring of U.S. workers, business is done in the United States.

An army of VCs, evaluating business plans and people and get innovation out of this moving right now.

It appears we need a hell of a paradigm shift to get out of this mess and instead they just seem insistent to hold on to their toxic derivatives.

The unemployment projects were 10% by the end of 2009 but the rate it's going, I think it's going to exceed that very soon.....

The return of the ghost of Henry Ford

He may have been anti-union for the longest time, but at least he knew that for new technology, the best customer is the guy who built the machine.
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Moral hazards would not exist in a system designed to eliminate fraud.

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Maximum jobs, not maximum profits.

The VC's Really Blow

"and when one collapses the middle class, one collapses the economy."

Rob, The VCs (has anyone really checked out/connected the dots as to who exactly is running the Obie Economic Advisory Board?) have every intention of exterminating the middle class, whom they don't want anywhere near the finer things in life that require the use of dwindling precious natural resources? (oil, my friends, is still the gold standard for energy - problem is, billions of people in the third world want some of that, too. Does Africa and S. America really have an infinite supply of natural minerals to create all these costly solar panels and electric car batteries and energy efficient building materials that is dubiously supposed to feul a Green Energy Economic boom?)

Middle class workers with college degrees threatens these so-called vcs who describe themselves and their pals as 'innovators' who have, over the years, funded so many dogs of start ups staffed by their clubby former investment bankers pals to run them so that they all could blow through stock options like Bolivian Marching Powder, making them instant millionaires. These innovators, btw, have not innovated anything of note (other than insipid social networking sw) which is another reason to cite for tech companies not hiring. These brainiacs have nothing for people to work on.

Bartleby the Slacker

Great name, consider joining us.

Yes, I know but I also know that VCs also have great experience evaluating business plans that might succeed as well as putting startups together.

I would say give them serious incentives as well as oversight. My conditions were all hires must be U.S. citizens, all work must be done in the U.S., then business plans must be viable, people credible. I would say to quit the "soup can label" credential demands these guys usually have (i.e. must have a at least a MS from Stanford, etc.) but work to basically fund a host of startups, new innovations, new small businesses.

the key is to have the business models and plans, the ability to executive be viable and frankly our government seemingly isn't so great at that.

We do have things like NASA, DARPA that are huge successes but we need either privatization spin off of some of the patent pools plus an environment, which is purely U.S. citizens to generate more.

Throw out an idea or two, sounds like you know the VC beast!