I am not insulting you as a person. You are one of maybe three people here who lean left that I do not have on ignore. I enjoy your commentary. But regarding the true economic status of the country, you have shown yourself to be able to grasp a bit more than the average Joe, but you are frequently surprised when data is pointed out to you that reveals the true nature of the varying statistics you read in the news. That tells me you're not really well-versed in the economy. So if that comes off as insulting, then I'm sorry. But it's truth. Something tells me you're not all that insulted, though. You are correct, a shrinking of government jobs is a good thing. That is, perhaps, the only thing that is positive in this report. But the numbers are still - even as bad as they are - manipulated in a direction to make them look more positive than they actually are. The true numbers are much, much worse. And that is why there can be no recovery until they get better. It all starts here, with jobs. The rest is fluff.
IMHO, that is the only chart I'm willing to pay atttention to any longer. Since the unemployed can drop off the ledger after x weeks, the labor participation rate makes far more sense. Of course, I'm sure all of those "commission only" or part time work might make it's way onto that chart as well, but I'll accept that as part of an imperfect system. In any event, it should be crystal clear to anybody with a functioning brain, that the growth in government over the past decade was a stop gap measure to mitigate the effects of a dwindling private sector and the after effects of "offshoring". Of course, the housing bubble did provide that short term burst of plentiful jobs, but at a massive cost to future employment and long term prospects for the construction/real estate trade.
while Bush was in the office the chart kept going down. past 2008 dive off the cliff is due solely to 2008 crisis while Bush was still in office. I just can't see how you can blame this whole chart on Obama. If there is no turnaround happening soon then you can blame that part of the chart on Obama. I would say 2002-2010 belongs to Bush, 94-02 belongs to Clinton, 2011-forward to Obama as far as blame assignment goes.
http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_18454969 Cisco cutting jobs. Bloomberg says it might be as much as 10,000.
Wages are sticky. Prices aren't. Labor makes the same wage they did 10 years ago, yet prices are dramatically higher, across the board. Paychecks don't go as far, production declines, which explains the terrible employment and GDP numbers. The other side to that coin is deleveraging. Pre '08 saw a massive consumption binge driven via credit expansion. Americans racked up their credit cards and borrowed against their home equity to buy useless shit. Now, consumers must pay off their credit cards and HELOC's. Paying back huge debt forces austerity on personal income. And higher prices means current incomes don't go as far as they used too! That double-whammy goes a long way to explain why growth and jobs are nowhere to be found. Demand is dead. In order to get out of this recession, the economy must restructure. Public sector wages, pensions, entitlements and Corporate Welfare (read: Defense) are a huge deadweight on the economy and are simply unaffordable. 40% of every program and departmental budget is funded through debt. Every public sector worker, benefit plan, entitlement program and department needs to take a 40% haircut, immediately. Done. Then Government must stand aside, and allow the ocean of cheap money that's arresting growth, drain from the marketplace. In the process, most Democratic states will go bankrupt, as well as pensioneers, bankers, insurers and everyone indexed and leveraged in the market at todays prices. The bright side to all this: only then will prices recalibrate and find their natural bottom. It's at that point, the purchasing power of the gainfully employed will skyrocket, asset accumulation will return in force, as will investment (as all bankrupts and question marks have been cleared out), which radically spurs employment and job creation. That's the only way out of this. We are modeling Japans failure. They too, refused to let prices return to mean to shield politically-connected bankers from insolvency. The result was a crushing 20 years of deflation in a healthy global economy that essentially propped them up. America will not enjoy the same success. Nor will Europe. We're >50% of global GDP. No one Country, or group of Countries, can absorb anywhere near the imports necessary to "prop" our economies. Exporting our way out of this is a pipe-dream. It's propaganda sold by Keynesians and Central Bankers to rationalize endless quantitative easing. AS IF that will solve our employment and demand problems.... No, but it goes a long way to bailing out and shoring up insolvent Bankers, who, just by happenstance, own the Federal Reserve System and whose alumni run the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve. Same with Japan. It's all Nepotism. Corporations bought off Government and now pull the strings. That's why we haven't seen any real growth or innovation in 10 years, or more. The Government is run for the benefit of a handful of industries who bought off Congress: Defense, Bankers and Fortune 100 outsourcers. And here we are. Bubble economics. DC is incredibly corrupt. And the voting American public are, for the most part, incredibly ignorant. And incredibly naive. A nation run by idiots and thieves. Is it any wonder we find ourselves where we are?
you said: "For all those continuing to blame Bush, please take a note as to where on the chart the torch was passed" as I pointed you need to add ~2 years to the torch passing date to assign blame properly. To sum: Your claim is without merit.
To sum: I'm not claiming anything. But since you brought it up, where is the economics rule that says you need to add about 2 years to assign blame properly? "past 2008 dive off the cliff is due solely to 2008 crisis while Bush was still in office." You have any scientific fact to back that up? To sum: You seem to be purely anecdotal.