Payrolls popped by 272K in May — linkedin.com Yippee! They are part-time jobs. There was a significant decrease in full-time jobs and the unemployment rate rose to highest in over two years. (The photo above of the Now Hiring at Pizza Hut sign is from the actual LinkedIn story. I like it. Very appropriate.) It would be helpful to get some context around this 272,000 number, beyond just “Payrolls popped.” Nice alliteration though. Who says there’s no value in a liberal arts degree? Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Unemployment
I Don’t Think the Jobs Report Was Good
I don’t think the jobs report was good. I don’t think the economy is good. I just read a series of comments on the story linked above and commenters were euphoric. Why do we see one sunny report after another on jobs, unemployment and the economy while Forbes reports that 40% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, and 29% are doing even worse, i.e., their income doesn’t cover their expenses? Why has the sentiment on LinkedIn been so dismal? The jobs numbers are illusory. The jobs are all part time. Last month’s jobs were all part time. Full-time employment actually went down. We’ve added 6.2 million jobs since May 2022 and full-time employment has gone up by only 263,000. Number of jobs “created” has gone up much faster than number of people employed, I suspect because a single person working multiple jobs counts as multiple jobs. The unemployment numbers… Read more →
If Your House Burns Down and You Rebuild It, Did You “Create” a New House?
Over 13 million new jobs created.More Americans are working than ever.Record number of small business applications. Bidenomics is growing our economy. — Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) June 28, 2023 I love these Biden tweets on job “creation.” ChatGPT tells me that the COVID-19 pandemic caused the loss of more than 22 million jobs in the United States. The 13 million jobs that Biden “created” are those lost jobs coming back. But he’s still 9 million short. What happened to those people? The unemployment rate is low, which suggests that people have left the labor force for some reason. If COVID didn’t kill them all, then they may have retired, given up (not everyone wants to work at fast-food restaurants), or cobbled together a welfare package they can live on. The labor force participation rate (shown below) has never come back to pre-pandemic level, and people who have left the labor force… Read more →
See You in Hell
[See You in Hell is a feature by our guest blogger, Satan — PE] Greetings mortals — I saw a post on LinkedIn from a woman who just lost her job at Google. There are lots of layoffs happening in the US economy. Joe Biden says the American economy is “stronger than hell” but I can assure you that the economy in Hell is much stronger than the Biden economy in the US. No layoffs here, ever. The LinkedIn poster said, “I feel God’s grace in this transition and know He has greater things ahead.” I can’t help noticing that people who believe that God is going to make good things happen in their life have a lot of bad things happen in their life. Check back in when you lose a limb, honey. See you in Hell . . . Read more →
What the State of the Union Didn’t Say
The president entered office with a 1.4% inflation rate and spiked it to 7%. 30-year mortgages of 2.7% soared to 6.5% in less than two years. Eggs are $7 a dozen. A thin steak is $15 a pound. A sheet of plywood is $95. Gas averaged $2.39 a gallon when the president took office and even after draining the Strategic Petroleum Reserve it is still $3.50 a gallon. In my state, California, gas has recently been over $5 a gallon. The price of natural gas has tripled in less than a year. In two years over 5 million foreign nationals poured into the United States—all illegally across a nonexistent border. The president said that he “lowered” inflation, energy prices and interest rates after sending them to astronomical levels and then seeing them momentarily taper off a bit. Like Nero bragging about rebuilding Circus Maximus after burning it down. He omitted… Read more →
Accountability Without Consequences
‘I was too ambitious’: Spotify CEO announces layoffs among 6% of employees as tech job cuts continue — msn.com Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said that the decision to restructure Spotify is an “effort to drive more efficiency, control costs, and speed up decision-making,” adding that he takes “full accountability for the moves that got us here today.” I love it — and when I say I love it, I mean I don’t love it — when someone says they take “full accountability” for some disaster, knowing perfectly well that there won’t be any personal consequences. There’s no accountability without consequences. Had he said “I’m forfeiting my salary for the year and donating it to the employees who lost their jobs,” now that’s something I could respect. Popular Bookstores, Including Barnes & Noble, Are Closing Locations, Starting Feb. 11 — bestlifeonline.com JCPenney Is Closing Even More Locations, Starting Next Month —… Read more →
All is Well! All is Well!
Microsoft to Lay Off 10,000 Workers as It Looks to Trim Costs — msn.com Google to lay off 12,000 employees, the latest tech giant to cut thousands of jobs — usatoday.com Regal Cinemas is closing 39 more movie theaters. See the list — cnn.com Another day, another round of layoffs and closures, another sunshine up the butthole economic report from the Biden administration: We’re not in a recession! Employment numbers are great! Someone is lying to me and I don’t think it’s Microsoft, Google and Regal Cinemas. Read more →
Fast Food Robots
How robots are helping address the fast-food labor shortage https://t.co/xh8Ghv9rZX — Paul Epps (@paulepps) January 21, 2023 There’s not really a fast food labor shortage. It’s created by the fact that unemployment benefits and ObamaCare subsidies can total up to $120,000 per year for a family of four. Not bad! If you can make six figures for doing nothing, you wanna go be a fry cook? The robots address the fact that the absurdly high numbers that people want to make for minimum-wage work is well beyond the value that minimum-wage workers add to the bottom line. The real minimum wage is always zero. Read more →
Unemployment Stays Unbelievably Low
Bed Bath & Beyond to Close Three More Stores in Los Angeles, Orange Counties https://t.co/ELCIzMhY3Q — Paul Epps (@paulepps) January 14, 2023 The company is closing about 150 stores overall, plus layoffs in corporate and supply chain. You can swap new company names (Coinbase, Goldman Sachs, etc.) into these layoffs and closing stores stories every day and still get sunny government economic reports based on nothing I can see except unbelievably low unemployment numbers. And when I say “unbelievably low,” I mean literally not believable (see here and here). Read more →
Another Explanation for Low Unemployment Numbers
People who are not employed but not looking for employment are not considered unemployed and are not included in calculating the unemployment rate. I’ve theorized that one reason for the artificially low unemployment rate is people dropping out of the workforce, although I couldn’t explain why so many people were dropping out of the workforce. But now I think I can explain it. The Committee to Unleash Prosperity, an economist-founded nonprofit, analyzed how unemployment benefits and ObamaCare subsidies in each state stacked up against employed people’s compensation. The writers of the report found that these two benefits alone could total up to $120,000 per year for a family of four. In 14 states — including North Dakota, Oregon, Colorado, Montana, and Minnesota — unemployment benefits and ObamaCare subsidies were found to be the equivalent to a head of household earning $80,000 in salary. In other words, a spouse would have… Read more →
The Employment Numbers WERE Wrong. Implications for Elections?
It looks like I was right about the employment numbers not making sense, which is maybe not such a good thing, in that everyone could see the same things I saw and yet I didn’t notice anyone (including “reporters”) asking “Why am I being told things that do not match up with reality?” Thank god I’ve been assured by powerful people that there is no possible way our government could propagate these same kinds of mistakes (lies?) with regard to election results. Read more →
Unemployment Numbers Don’t Make Sense
From a Daily Wire newsletter: Tech giant Meta is laying off 13 percent of its workforce across all of its companies: Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, etc. That amounts to around 11,000 jobs — the biggest tech layoff of the year. That’s an especially high number when you remember that since its founding 18 years ago, Facebook has never had to cut back its workforce. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared to address the layoffs in a leaked video Wednesday afternoon, saying, “I want to say up front that I take full responsibility for this decision…It was one of the hardest calls I’ve had to make in the 18 years of running the company.” And… the company has signaled investors to expect further bad news in the fourth quarter. This comes after Meta announced a second straight quarter of declining revenue in October. Everywhere you look, big tech is struggling. Last week,… Read more →
Inflation Numbers and Unemployment Numbers
Latest inflation report came out today (BLS is the Bureau of Labor Statistics): Annual inflation via BLS just out: 42.9% airline fares33.1% utility gas30.5% eggs18.2% gasoline17.2% chicken15.7% coffee15.2% milk14.7% bread10.1% furniture9.2% vegetables8.2% all items8.2% fruit8.1% ham7.6% women apparel7.2% used cars6.7% rent3.7% men apparel — Ryan Struyk (@ryanstruyk) October 13, 2022 Core inflation excludes energy and food, so we get to say that inflation is at 8.2%, which is still the highest in 40 years, but most of the items on that list are energy and food, and many are a lot higher than 8.2%, so the 8.2% number doesn’t do justice to the enormity of current inflation. Biden economic adviser Jared Bernstein said this: What the president said was that a recession is far from inevitable and I think what he was referring to there is the strength of our job market. Look, you just don’t have a recession when… Read more →
Fact Checking the Fact Checkers
PolitiFact has a article headlined “Donald Trump’s NRA speech, fact-checked”. Here’s a sample: “African-American unemployment has reached another all-time, in history, record low … And the same thing with Hispanic American unemployment, which is also at the lowest level in history — unemployment, lowest level in history. And women’s unemployment — women, many women — is at the lowest level in almost 20 years. Think of that.” The “fact check” starts out like this: As far as the numbers go, Trump is correct. It then goes on for another five paragraphs to say that Barack Obama deserves “at least as much” credit as Trump for low unemployment. That’s a fact check?! Trump didn’t even say anything about who deserves the credit, although the listener is invited to make a favorable inference. Had he added “. . . and I deserve all the credit,” it would be fair in that case… Read more →
The Country is Turning Into One Big Junior Prom
Former Fox News anchor says Trump once tried to kiss her https://t.co/G3YakLpyaC pic.twitter.com/ZYVm4AqIvQ — Hollywood Reporter (@THR) December 9, 2017 That’s interesting. Have any other men tried to kiss her? Or is that the whole list? Why does anyone need to know about this? I’ve tried to kiss women. I hope Al Franken is saving a place for us in the unemployment line. There seem to be an awful lot of apparently adult women who should not be allowed to leave home without a chaperone . . . Read more →
Where Are the Additional Women in Technology Supposed to Come From?
The jobs report for May contained discouraging news: continuing low labor-force participation, now below 63 percent overall. About 20 million men between the prime working ages of 20 and 65 had no paid work in 2015, and seven million men have stopped looking altogether. In the meantime, the jobs most in demand — like nursing and nurse assistants, home health care aides, occupational therapists or physical therapists — sit open. The health care sector had the largest gap between vacancies and hires of any sector in April, for example. — The New York Times We hear a lot about a shortage of women in technology jobs but we don’t hear about a shortage of men in traditionally female jobs. It’s really two sides of the same problem. Unless a lot of women suddenly appear out of nowhere, the only way to get more women into professions where they’re currently under-represented… Read more →
The Honest Politician
“You want a simple plan to reduce the national unemployment rate? GET A JOB!” Read more →
Tax Rate Hike and Increased Unemployment Payments on the Same Day
According to this White House press release, the federal government is ringing in the new year by simultaneously raising tax rates (i.e., penalizing people for working) and extending payments to two million people who do not work (i.e., rewarding people for playing Xbox). Has this ever happened before at any time in the history of the U.S. (or anywhere else in the world for that matter)? — Philip Greenspun Read more →
“Creating Jobs” and Other Fallacies
Almost everything appertaining to the circumstances of a nation, has been absorbed and confounded under the general and mysterious word government. Though it avoids taking to its account the errors it commits, and the mischiefs it occasions, it fails not to arrogate to itself whatever has the appearance of prosperity. It robs industry of its honours, by pedantically making itself the cause of its effects; and purloins from the general character of man, the merits that appertain to him as a social being. — Thomas Paine, Rights of Man (1792) My fellow Americans — I’m hearing in the pre-debate analysis that voters are looking for the candidate who’ll help them have a better life. Speaking as someone who was there at the beginning, I can tell you that helping you have a better life was not America’s original value proposition. Everyone was welcome to come here and try to make… Read more →
How to Lose Your Job : A Fictional Memoir (Part I)
Because of the huge productivity differences between good programmers and bad programmers — 10x? 28x? More? — my biggest leverage point as a development manager is my ability to hire people. At my last job, we had an HR Director named Lucy. In every one of our annual Employee Satisfaction Surveys, Lucy’s group had the lowest scores in the entire organization. Nobody liked or respected her. She was, however, close with the CEO, which made that irrelevant. Lucy’s friend Kathy Slauson runs the Slauson and Slauson recruiting agency, so that’s where we got our programming candidates, who were mostly terrible. The Slauson agency doesn’t specialize in IT candidates, although they do have a “technical recruiter,” who unfortunately knows nothing about technology. They don’t bring candidates in for in-person interviews. They take whatever candidates give them in the form of a résumé and they pass the résumés along to clients like… Read more →