A Jobs Report That Might Never Come - Before Nov. 6 At Least

With unemployment being one of the top issues in this election, the October jobs report scheduled for Friday could have an impact on the election - likely a negative one for Obama. This from Hot Air:

{D]uring yesterday’s This Week on ABC. George Stephanopoulos asked former Obama administration economist Austan Goolsbee about the political impact of the jobs report coming up this Friday, just four days before most voters cast their ballots. Goolsbee notes that only “unbelievable outliers … crack through the shell” of the electorate’s consciousness for a single-month’s report. Goolsbee then admits that last month’s jobs report was “artificially too optimistic” — an “unbelievable outlier,” in other words.

So why admit that now? Well, that “unbelievable outlier” is likely to get corrected in this month’s household survey, and that will drive the jobless rate up. . . .

Not so fast. According to the WSJ, the Dept. of Labor is considering putting off the jobs report until after the election because of the superstorm currently bearing down on the East Coast. This in fact might be legitimate, but why do I feel that, if it is anywhere near a close call, the decision will be to put it off until after the election. Hey, maybe it will come out on the same day the State Dept's investigation into the Benghazi scandal is published. And that may come on the same day the MSM starts to pay attention to what is unarguably one of the worst scandals in our nation's history.

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If The Economy Is Getting Better, Than Why . . .

If the economy is getting better, then why did new home sales in the United States hit a brand new all-time record low during 2011?

If the economy is getting better, then why are there 6 million less jobs in America today than there were before the recession started?

If the economy is getting better, then why is the average duration of unemployment in this country close to an all-time record high?

If the economy is getting better, then why has the number of homeless female veterans more than doubled?

If the economy is getting better, then why has the number of Americans on food stamps increased by 3 million since this time last year and by more than 14 million since Barack Obama entered the White House?

If the economy is getting better, then why has the number of children living in poverty in America risen for four years in a row?

If the economy is getting better, then why is the percentage of Americans living in "extreme poverty" at an all-time high?

If the economy is getting better, then why is the Federal Housing Administration on the verge of a financial collapse?

If the economy is getting better, then why do only 23 percent of American companies plan to hire more employees in 2012?

If the economy is getting better, then why has the number of self-employed Americans fallen by more than 2 million since 2006?

If the economy is getting better, then why did an all-time record low percentage of U.S. teens have a job last summer?

If the economy is getting better, then why does median household income keep declining? Overall, median household income in the United States has declined by a total of 6.8% since December 2007 once you account for inflation.

If the economy is getting better, then why has the number of Americans living below the poverty line increased by 10 million since 2006?

If the economy is getting better, then why is the average age of a vehicle in America now sitting at an all-time high?

If the economy is getting better, then why are 18 percent of all homes in the state of Florida currently sitting vacant?

If the economy is getting better, then why are 19 percent of all American men between the ages of 25 and 34 living with their parents?

If the economy is getting better, then why does the number of "long-term unemployed workers" stay so high? When Barack Obama first took office, the number of "long-term unemployed workers" in the United States was approximately 2.6 million. Today, that number is sitting at 5.6 million.

From The Economic Collapse via Rhymes With Right.  Do visit both sites for additional analysis.

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Smoke, Mirrors, Reality & Unemployment

We are nearing a record in unemployment - though one would not know that from listening to the left touting 9.7% coupled with a monthly gain of 162,000 jobs as good news. But pull back the curtain and the news is dark indeed. This from an ETFGuide article at Yahoo Finance:

. . . For the third straight month, the seasonally adjusted U-3 unemployment numbers remained the same - 9.7%.

The Labor Department said employers added 162,000 jobs in March, the most since the recession began but below analyst's expectations of 200,000. This number includes the 48,000 temporary workers hired for the U.S. Census.

According to estimates by ADP, a payroll company, the private sector lost 23,000 jobs in March. This estimate does not include government employees. . . .

. . . [T]he real unemployment rate, even by the standards of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, is much higher. The U-6 unemployment number, as the real data is called, is at 17.5%, within 0.5% of its all-time high. This figure includes discouraged workers who've stopped looking, marginally attached workers, and workers that are forced to work part-time because full-time jobs are not available.

The post 2007 recession has eliminated 8.4 million jobs and rendered 15.7 million American's jobless. . . .

Before chiming in, consider what it will take to simply get back to a normal unemployment rate of 5%. This is mindboggling.

The current labor force of 154 million will increase by about 1.8 million over each of the next five years because of 'newbies' entering the job market. By 2014, the labor force will be around 163 million. A 5% U-3 (not U-6) unemployment rate would equate to 8.15 million workers without a job.

7.55 million jobs will have to be created to reduce the number of job-less workers from today's 15.7 million to 8.15 million. To accomplish this, there would have to be 125,833 jobs created each and every month over the next five years with no jobs lost.

The average monthly job growth over the past 10 years has been about 50,000. The average monthly job growth over the past 20 years has been about 90,000. Keep in mind that the 1990 - 2010 timeframe hosted the biggest bull market and economic expansion in history. Do you see a 1990s and early 2000s bull market around you? . . .

Read the entire article. And of course, Obama is not done warring on the economy yet, nor promoting market distortions. And the rising cost of energy hangs over our economy like the sword of Damoclese. There is no chance for a recovery under Obama. To the contrary, we will, I think, be lucky if things just don't get any worse between now and 2012. We are, as Instapundit noted, at a point where, should Obama duplicate the collosal incompetence of Jimmy Carter, it would be a best-case scenario.

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