Among the issues most commonly discussed are individuality, the rights of the individual, the limits of legitimate government, morality, history, economics, government policy, science, business, education, health care, energy, and man-made global warming evaluations. My posts are aimed at intelligent and rational individuals, whose comments are very welcome.

"No matter how vast your knowledge or how modest, it is your own mind that has to acquire it." Ayn Rand

"Observe that the 'haves' are those who have freedom, and that it is freedom that the 'have-nots' have not." Ayn Rand

"The virtue involved in helping those one loves is not 'selflessness' or 'sacrifice', but integrity." Ayn Rand

For "a human being, the question 'to be or not to be,' is the question 'to think or not to think.'" Ayn Rand

15 July 2012

The Missing Jobs in June 2012 are Unchanged from June 2010

This is the monthly update on the real unemployment situation in the USA based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics June 2012 Household Survey Jobs Data.  The data I will use will not be seasonally adjusted, so we will need to compare June of this year with the unemployment of June 2010 and June 2011 to see if any jobs recovery has occurred.  We will also calculate the number of missing jobs based upon the percentage of the jobs wanted in January 2000 relative to the working age civilian population available for work.  This excludes people in jail or in institutions for those in ill health.


The recent history of missing jobs is given in the following chart:


The number of missing jobs in June 2012 is slightly lower than the number of missing jobs in June 2011, but it is slightly higher than the number of missing jobs in June 2010.  Just as with every other month so far this year, if we compare the number of missing jobs to the same month a year and two years earlier, we find that essentially nothing has changed.

In contrast, the usual unemployment rate of June 2010 was 9.62%.  It fell to 9.32% by June 2011 and still further to the June 2012 rate of 8.43%.  But, this number means little due to the ever-increasing number of discouraged job seekers.  The number of the reported unemployed fell from June 2010 to June 2011 and again to June 2012.  The number of people employed also grew from June to June to June in that time.  However, the population of working age civilians also grew, so that the 12.80% of missing jobs in June 2010 had actually increased by June 2011 to 13.30%, before falling in June 2012 to almost the same percentage as in June 2010 at 12.74%.  A 0.06% decrease in the number of missing jobs in the last two years is no job recovery at all.  This has been the story consistently for the last two and half years.

The policies of the Obama administration are so wrongheaded that they have done great damage to the private sector economy and kept companies from hiring.  Government can do little to effectively increase hiring, but it is excellently capable of destroying jobs and keeping new jobs from being created.  Obama and his Democratic Socialist Party leadership have been working overtime finding ways to make the future ever more uncertain for business and in making labor so expensive that business cannot afford to hire.

John C. Goodman, CEO of the National Center for Policy Analysis, recently testified in the House of Representatives that ObamaUncaringTax will increase the cost of an employee by $6/hour.  The EPA is causing sizable increases in our electricity costs and a decrease in electricity reliability, which will cause great harm to many businesses and will reduce the money individuals can spend on other goods and services.  Many state governments are contributing to this problem with their mandates that green energy replace fossil fuels in the electricity supply of their state.  Despite a huge supply of oil and gas in the United States, the Obama administration has done everything it can to prevent the development of new fields on federal land and offshore.  The Dodd-Frank law has created great uncertainty and it has kept financial institutions from loaning to small businesses.  Obama and his union henchmen have interfered with employer-employee relations to the detriment of business.  The looming taxes of the ObamaUncaringTax will take a huge toll, which include a tax surcharge on individuals with higher incomes and on corporations, in addition to the penalty taxes.  This punitive taxation of higher income individuals is not enough for Obama and he wants to eliminate their low percentage decrease part of the Bush tax cuts.  All this is happening in the face of the start of the Baby Boomer retirements and the continued collapse of the housing market.

Of course business is not hiring enough people to get Americans back to work with a jobs recovery to this never-ending recession.  With Obama destroying the business climate, nothing will change and nothing will change Obama.  He is a dyed-in-the-wool socialist.  He is fundamentally anti-business, with the exception of those who generously support his campaign fund.  Even then many of those companies have found him unbelievably treacherous.  The only hope for our economy and for Americans who want to be able to earn a living is the replacement of Obama with Romney.

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