U.S. Adds 146,000 Jobs; Jobless Rate Falls to 7.7%

Tell that to the 5 million or so who have given up looking for work.

 

It is not good news. It is not because many people have found permanant work. It is mostly because many, many people have stopped looking for work yet again. This is bad news to be sure.

 

Without the 540,000 that quit looking for work last month, the unemployment rate would have gone up.

The formula used to determine unemployment is a joke.

 

A sad joke, at that.

 

Except that there are still plus or minus 5 million people who cannot find work and have given up on it for the time being. If things are so good, why is it that Congress had to pass another extension of the Unemployment Act?

http://www.ows.doleta.gov/unemploy/supp_act.asp

 

The addition of 146,000 jobs last month is good news. It's still less than 1/2 the number of jobs that the Reagan recovery was producing per month in his 4th year of holding office.

 

73% of New Jobs Created in Last 5 Months Are in Government

(CNSNews.com) - Seventy-three percent of the new civilian jobs created in the United States over the last five months are in government, according to official data published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

CONTINUE . . .

 

Oh, no, that can't be true. How many times did we hear Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan claim that "government doesn't create jobs" during the election?

I see a citation about Reagan. Yes, the job creation during the recovery in his administration was higher, but it was also very heavily dependent on government jobs, and there were a similar number of people who just gave up looking for work during that time. Unfortunately, most of that progress was wiped out during Bush's term.

 

Um, if they are "civilian" jobs, how can they be "government" jobs? I don't understand.

 

I don't think Romney and Ryan would want to admit that increasing the size of government would in turn create more government jobs during a campaign.

They were cast as conservatives in the theatrical production of the "national election" at the time.

 

Even the Pentagon has civilians drawing government paychecks.

 

So they aren't really "civilian" in the sense of "private sector". Thanks.

 

You are incorrect, as usual.

 

Of course government can produce jobs...in government.

Paid how? Taxes.

Everyone's wallet gets a little lighter every time a job is added in government.

Government can't produce jobs that produce anything. They just cost the taxpayers more money.

 

None of this is true.

 

So true. How do we pay for a government worker plus their health care and retirement? In college back in the 60's we did a breakdown on a worker and taking into account that they lived 20 years after retirement. That total cost is what it cost for a government, it blew our minds.

 

It's not true as Jack Matthews has written it, but Reagan's defense build up certainly led to job creation. I worked on defense contracts for the SDI program for 8 years. True, the jobs were at corporations but they never would have been created without government spending via a defense department government contract.