Science Theory Unbound by Test -- The Story of the Man-Made Global Warming Hypothesis

In 1988, James Hansen of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, announced that NASA climate models indicated a tendency for heatwave drought situations in the Southeast and the Midwest USA in the late 1980s and the 1990s.  This prediction proved wrong.

Also in 1988, James Hansen, testified to our Congress that the Washington, D.C. area would go from 35 days a year warmer the 90F to 85 days a year in the next 50 to 60 years.  He also said the ocean will rise between one and six feet.  We are 32 years into that 50 to 60 years and so far the average number of days warmer than 90F has decreased.  According to NOAA, the rise in sea level from 1988 to 2020 was 9.81 cm or 3.86 inches. Once again, 32 years into that 50 to 60 year prediction, the rise of sea level is running way behind the low end of the prediction.

About the same time, James Hansen, told a reporter the West Side Highway running along the Hudson River on Manhattan Island would be underwater in 20 years.  The windows of Manhattan Buildings would all have tape across them due to the high winds.  I have been in Manhattan a number of times since the start of 2020.  Neither of these predictions have come to fruition.  

In June 2008, Hansen claimed there would be no Artic sea ice in the summer in 5 to 10 years.  Al Gore, not to be outdone, predicted that the entire North polar ice cap would be gone in 5 years. U.S. Navy scientists predicted the Artic could lose its summer sea ice in 2016.  In 2020 there was still considerable summer sea ice at the seasonal minimum, as there has been every year since 2008.  

In 2009, Prince Charles said we had 8 years to save the world.  Damn, we lost the world in 2017.

In 2014, the French Foreign Minister, Laurent Fabius, said we had 500 days to avoid climate chaos.

Joe "The Great Idiot" Biden, Hanoi John Kerry, the stark raving mad 8 years to doomsday AOC, and the entire Elite of the Democratic Socialist Party claim that man-made global warming is an "existential" threat to planet Earth.  Where Trump may have exaggerated his Inaugeration crowd, Biden told us the massive lie that there is an existential threat to the Earth due to our use of carbon fuels.  This existential threat requires him to drag us back into the Paris Climate Accord, though it is an unratified treaty.  Of course, these politicians are just shills and mooks who have zero understanding of the science of radiative heat transfer.

Supposedly, the principal claim that the catastrophic man-made global warming hypothesis is true is the claim that its effects have been modeled correctly in their many global climate computer models.  They recently claimed these models are good at predicting the surface temperature, but the science the models are supposed to represent makes predictions of the atmospheric temperature throughout the atmosphere, not just at the surface.  What is more, the surface temperature record has been strongly biased upward in recent times and downward in the past, making it a very unreliable temperature record.  The atmospheric temperature record is much more a global record and has not been manipulated and affected by urban heat island effects in the way the surface temperature record has been.  So once again, let us present this comparison of the model temperature predictions for the atmosphere and actual temperature measurements of the atmospheric temperature:

The supposedly science-based global computer models predict much greater temperature increases than have been found in the measurements.  The scientific method demands that we declare the hypothesis of  catastrophic man-made global warming a failed hypothesis due its long history of failed predictions.  In other words, the continued belief in catastrophic man-made global warming is anti-science because it has ignored a basic requirement of the scientific method.

Why are its advocates claiming this anti-science belief is justification for putting more than 10,000 Keystone XL Pipeline workers into the already massive pool of the unemployed?  Why are they denying the livelihoods of some already who earn a living extracting oil and gas from federal lands and offshore fields and many in the future whose oil and gas jobs will not be created as a result?  Why are they damaging the earnings of the many people who provide goods and services to these carbon fuel industries and their employees?  Why are they forcing transportation costs for all Americans to rise greatly?  Why are they causing the energy costs to run our businesses and to operate our homes to increase drastically?  Why are they pushing a future of electricity brown-outs and black-outs upon us?  Why are they advocating spreading solar panels and wind generators over huge acreages of the nation?  Why do they now no longer care how many birds and bats are killed by wind generators?  Why do they want to saddle us with electric vehicles with their massive purchase cost, limited range, inconvenient recharging requirements, and massive repair costs?  Why do they not care about the massive damage to our future economy and the many jobs which will be lost, the many jobs that will not be created, and the many advances in other areas of human endeavor that will never come about because of a very harmful energy policy?

The answer is the desire for the Great Reset.  These advocates want what the World Economic Forum is advocating, which is an end to capitalism, an end to personal property, an end to individual rights, and a complete dependence upon government controlled by a socialist Elite.  Biden plagiarized his Build Back Better campaign slogan from the World Economic Forum for a reason.  Biden is not a creative man.  He has never created or built anything.  His specialty is the destruction of things built and created by others.  Even in his speeches and writings, he has a long history as a plagiarist.  So, it is entirely to be expected that the kind of people who are behind the World Economic Forum have made him their point man, albeit with many socialist managers, for exercising the program of the World Economic Forum upon the USA.  This program is absolutely evil and absolutely un-American.  Carrying it through is massively unconstitutional.  It will be extremely deleterious to the Welfare of the People of the USA.  Yet, it is moving forward rapidly under the Biden Regime.

Comments on Random Subjects

Iran spends about $1 billion a year to fund terrorism, making it the number 1 funding source for terrorists.

In October, there were only 3% of Americans who did not have a job and wanted a job.  This is the lowest percentage since this statistic has been determined starting in 1994.

PG&E has cut off power in large areas of California due to high winds and claims that the damage of falling trees and limbs to their power lines and equipment can start fires.  A good part of this problem is because PG&E has put so much money into other tasks dictated by the socialist government of California instead of removing trees from the vicinity of their power lines and updating their essential distribution equipment.

Wind and solar power account for about 17.9% of all electric power generation in California now. Wind generators, which operate in the wind speed range from 6 or 7 mph to about 55 mph.  A wind speed of about 30 mph is usually the optimum power generation wind speed.  The high winds that are driving the California wildfires are also causing shut-downs of wind generators or causing them to operate at higher than optimum power generation speeds.  This may well be causing the wind generator portion of the California electricity supply to be under-performing.  To be sure, under-performing wind generation is a common problem with this intermittent, unreliable power source.

Comments on Medicare-for-All

Elizabeth Warren's plan to nationalize the health care system in the USA has a price tag of $52 trillion according to her no-doubt reliable cost accounting.  She has claimed repeatedly that billionaires will pay all the taxes to pay for it.  The middle class will pay nothing, so she says.

The total wealth of American billionaires is estimated to be about $2.4 trillion.  If every last penny of that wealth were confiscated by Warren's socialist government, the tax on the billionaires would cover about 4.6% of cost of the first 10 years of her Medicare-for-All program.  Now, mind you, who is then going to pay that same 4.6% of more of the next 10 year period of her Medicare-for-All?  When those American billionaires sell off all their assets to pay their confiscatory taxes, will those who buy up the assets manage them as well and generate as many jobs and as much GDP growth?

Other portions of the costs are to be paid by having the states transfer their Medicaid payments to the federal government.  Companies will have to turn over what they are paying into employee health plans to the federal government.  Companies will lose the ability to tune their health insurance costs to their industry, location, and profitability.  Many more companies will fail without this flexibility, causing a loss of jobs and a loss of GDP growth.  Still, these sums will fall far short of providing the $52 trillion costs of Warren's plan.  Who do you think is going to make up the huge difference?

Both Warren and Sanders plans will shut down the private health insurance markets.  This means they will put 2 million Americans in that industry out of work.  Do either of their plans cost estimates include putting these 2 million Americans on unemployment insurance payouts and other welfare programs?  When 2 million Americans lose their jobs, how many will become alcoholics or other drug users?  How many will commit suicide in their despair and depression?  Have we learned nothing from the human disaster that occurred in part as Obama acted to destroy the coal mining industry and the jobs of those who transported coal, burned coal in power plants, and ran the retail and services industries of the towns that depended upon coal production?

Medicare-for-all will result in lower quality medical care for everyone.  Innovation, medical care giver training and intelligence, equipment, and facilities will all deteriorate more and more over time.  Bureaucrats will be in charge of deciding who will live and who will die.  And every American will lose the sole ownership of their minds and bodies.  When someone else gets to dictate how you will act to maintain your own mind and body, then you have lost your most critical property right.  You are no longer sovereign.  You are a slave.

Private Sector? Obama The Great Don't Need No Stinking Private Sector

Obama claimed that the American economy was surging into the future.  He said that 11 million jobs had been created since he became president and that the unemployment rate was the lowest in a very long time.  So how many Americans are employed full-time after six years of his regime?

Is Obama for real?  Is this the record he is claiming is so great and has established a record employment condition in America?  And surely by now most Americans know that the unemployment number is hardly meaningful, given that it is low because so many Americans have given up on finding a job.  The percentage of Americans working full-time is at a record low of 47.7%.  Median household income has fallen in each and every year of the Obama presidency from 2009 - 2012.  There was a small increase in median household income in 2013, but median income is still well below what it was prior to the Obama regime.  As of 2013, median household wealth was only 60% of what it had been in 2007.  This is the Obama legacy.

Obama claimed that energy independence is near.  He deserves credit for this in that he did not succeed in applying the brakes on fossil fuel energy development enough to prevent the private sector from this great achievement.  He did his best to prevent it, but he failed.  We are supposed to give him credit for this failure.

Obama said, "Let's put more money back in the pockets of the middle class."  I say let us leave more money in everyone's pockets and not take it in the first place!  Sending our money to Washington and allowing politicians and bureaucrats to decide who will get a fraction of that money back is hardly the way to improve the lives of most Americans.  It sure does improve the life of politicians and bureaucrats though.  It improves the lives of some special interests who have great influence in Washington also, but this is at the expense of most Americans.

Obama called for equal pay for equal work.  We really need to have government bureaucrats examining every business and determining what the work that contributes to the bottom line is and who is contributing what to that.  I can only imagine such a bureaucrat coming to my laboratory and trying to make this assessment in a rational way.  One brief visit and he will know exactly what each of my employees is worth.  Hot diggity damn.  It is so easy.  Bureaucrats must be the best managers anywhere.  They are truly a miracle.  Oh, and if women are to be paid equally to men, are short people to be paid equally to tall people also?  Are unpleasant people to be paid equally to pleasant people?  Are good analytical report writers to be paid as little as bad report writers?  Is the bureaucrat to make an accurate assessment of each employee's ability to sell our analytical services to a potential client when they call?  Mind you, this bureaucrat is probably not going to take up residence for weeks as required to do this, assuming he has the business and scientific background to do this in any amount of time.  Well, the fact that he works for government probably precludes any likelihood that he has such abilities.

Obama says that employees should have fair wages and be paid well for overtime work.  Somehow he forgot to mention that employers should have fair income and overtime.  Employees should have  paid days off he says, but he says nothing about paid days off for those who risk their investments to create jobs for those employees.  Somehow it is simply assumed that employers can both provide jobs and take on almost any costs related to employing people.  The politician decrees that which will provide him more votes and the employer must deliver.  Or, the employer shuts down his business, which is exactly why every year for the last six years more businesses have gone out of business than were started up.  Not so many people want to start businesses in this environment either.  This is a very important part of Obama's record on the state of the economy.

Obama wants to provide daycare tax credits.  Never mind the national debt and the deficit.  Never mind the fact that with so few people working full-time, many parents are home and able to care for their own children, except they have little income.  Never mind that the burden of paying for the costs of this "free" daycare benefit will fall upon the record small fraction of the people who are employed full-time.  Never mind that once government pays for daycare, it will likely want to regulate and control it even more.  Of course Obama wants to move daycare services out of the private sector into the government sector.  And we can be sure he wants it unionized.

Obama wants more Americans in unions.  Of course, union leaders provide the Democrat Socialist Party with a very large fraction of their campaign contributions.  Americans have plenty of opportunity to choose to be union members now, but in the private sector they have chosen to leave the unions in droves over the years.  But, that free vote by Americans must be overcome by the Great Socialist Leader.

Obama wants to upgrade skills with 2 years of free community college.  Community colleges are nearly free now.  They are also very much like grades 13 and 14 in a government-run education system which is not providing a very good education.  The inflow of money from the federal government for this additional subsidy will surely mean more control of education by the federal government.  This is what we need, more government indoctrination of youth about how many victims we have in our society and how big government is the means to the end of their victimization as it attacks any group that is perceived as better off than some other group.

As tradition demands, the socialist called for more job training on top of the many tens of largely spectacularly unsuccessful training programs created over the years.  Obama wants companies to train employees more and to offer paid apprenticeships at the higher minimum wage he is advocating.  Obama has no concerns whatsoever for the cost of labor to businesses.  In his world, organizations just naturally operate at a deficit forever.  Never mind that the businesses in the private sector cannot do that.

Obama claimed great success in helping veterans get jobs.  The fact that veteran unemployment is much higher than the general unemployment rate was not noted.

Obama does not want a single pipeline, but he wants more infrastructure spending.  How about allowing many pipelines to be built, not just one?  Obama and the Democrats generally have been slowing down pipelines all over the country.  The Bakken shale oil and the Marcellus Shale Oil and Gas formations are supplying more fuel than they are able to transport out through pipelines.

Obama wants more trade authority, but his own party is the primary opposition to new trade agreements.

Obama wants a Precision Medicine Initiative, but I thought he would have already eliminated disease all around the world as he pledged to do in his acceptance speech of the first Democrat Party nomination to run for the presidency.  Apparently, Obama the Great Healer has not yet carried out this pledge.

Obama claimed we are a nation of laws.  He said there is one set of rules for all.  Somehow, he is not one of "the all," given his obvious violations of the ObamaCare and immigration laws.  He is an exempted individual.  The rest of us must surrender our individuality and be blanketed with smothering laws and regulations in his worldview.  But he is the exception, because he swore he do his best to improve America when he became President.  I thought he swore to uphold and defend the Constitution, which is the People's mandate for a very limited government that implicitly recognizes that there are only a few things government can do without infringing upon our individual rights and those individual goals for our personal happiness.  But no, Obama thinks that it is best for America that he ignore the Constitution's limits on his power, on the scope of government power generally, and on the separation of powers.

He claims he wants a free and open Internet, despite his Federal Communications Commission making untiring efforts to gain more control over the Internet.

Obama say that Americans do not mind paying our fair share of taxes.  We need to eliminate loopholes by keeping companies from investing abroad and rewarding those investing here he says.  Well, yes more government control over businesses and their foreign investments is really likely to simplify the tax laws and make them more friendly to business prosperity!  Never mind that much of the increased company investment in overseas operations is due to lower taxes there, less smothering regulations in many cases, no ObamaCare there, and the uncertainties to business investors of the arbitrary and capricious actions of a mad socialist in the White House.

Obama wants to tax accumulated wealth.  So, we are to increase the death tax.  Yes, no one should be able to pass the fruits of a lifetime of productive labor on to his children and grandchildren.  That is just too awful to imagine.  No, such successful businessmen should give up their wealth to politicians and bureaucrats who will, of course, spend that money more wisely than will the progeny of the wealth producer.  Obama is sure of this.  We are not to question this.  We are not to think that many a businessman not able to pass on his wealth will stop creating wealth at an earlier age.  We are not to understand that the individual right to the pursuit of happiness surely includes the right to the happiness of knowing that one has helped ease life for one's children and grandchildren.  Socialists cannot understand this.

Obama wants to eliminate worldwide poverty.  The only way we can help to do that is by creating the example of a nation that lives by the American Principle of limited government dedicated only to protecting the equal, sovereign individual rights to life, liberty, property (wealth), self-ownership (denied by ObamaCare), and the pursuit of personal happiness.  To the degree that nations do this, they prosper.

Obama claimed 14 of the 15 hottest years were in this century.  He had his NOAA and NASA GISS manufacture this data.  Even the manipulated and forged data does not show anything like the increase predicted by the climate computer models that are supposed to be the basis for the claim that mankind is threatened by catastrophic man-made global warming.  In fact, while the temperature is supposed to be rising rapidly, it is stagnant.  Flat.  Going nowhere.  Proving that the computer models based on what Obama has called the "settled science" are simply wrong.  So, the "settled science," we must conclude, is wrong.  So, the rational man does not have the concern Obama does about an impending climate catastrophe.  Unlike Obama, the rational man will not take harmful actions against fossil fuels, those same fuels that have brought us close to the energy independence that Obama claimed was a strong point in our economy in this very speech.

Obama will responsibly shut down Gitmo by sending more of the detainees back to Yemen, whose capital has just fallen to violent, Islam-spreading terrorists.

Similarly, the rest of Obama's claims of success in foreign policy and defense are just too ridiculously inflated to spend further time pricking them with needles.

Obama wants a nation with a hugely dominant and controlling government sector and a weak, groveling private sector.  He wants a nation in which no one has an individual nature.  He does not want individuals choosing their own values.  He does not want lone wolf individuals managing their own lives and pursuing their own happiness.  No, he wants politicians and bureaucrats to tell us what our values must be and to micromanage our lives.  He is sure that self-management is beyond our competence.  He is sure that he and his allied Progressive Elitists will do a better job of managing our lives than we ourselves will.  He is religiously sure of this, even though he does not know any of us.  Can you imagine the unreality that soaks the mind of someone who is sure he is smarter than anyone else and so smart that he can manage the lives of 312 million or so Americans, none of whom he even knows?

Senator Dick Durbin Says to Put Down Ayn Rand's Books

Senator Dick Durbin of the Democrat Socialist Party of the highly indebted state of Illinois, has told Senate Republicans to put down their Ayn Rand books and get to work on the socialist agenda, including perpetual unemployment insurance payouts.  He claims that if Republicans want to help the public, they should vote to take money by force from those who are working and give it to those who have largely stopped looking for work.  We know that many have stopped looking for work because Big Government has so degraded the economy with endless similar takings of income and wealth that private sector job creators have largely stopped creating jobs.  Labor force participation is the lowest it has been since that great failed Democrat Jimmy Carter was in the White House.  Durbin's solution is to take still more money by force from those who are working and give it to those who are not!

Durbin's solution is immoral, as Ayn Rand most ably made evident to rational thinkers who have read her books despite the vilification of collectivists.  Durbin's solution has been the modus operandi throughout this never-ending Great Socialist Recession, now starting its seventh year and likely to continue for at least one year after Obama has retired.  We can expect a 10-year recession due to such continuous nonsense as Durbin is backing.  So, any rational observer can clearly see that the Democrat Socialist Party solutions do not solve the problem, but instead are the problem.  It is always interesting to observe that extended attempts to ignore morality always end in disasters, such as this great American Lost Decade.  But then, as Ayn Rand said, one needs a moral code in order to assure one's survival and in order to flourish in life.  In other words, the practical man is a moral man and a moral man is a practical man.  Those who believe it is practical not to be moral are horribly mistaken.  So do read Ayn Rand.

Dick Durbin has never created more jobs than those of a small law practice in Springfield, Illinois, which he started after passing the bar in late 1969.  He mostly ran his private practice as a sideline while working for the Illinois legislature and running for offices in losing campaigns until he finally became a Representative in 1982.  One of his winning campaign issues was that he would solve unemployment problems.  He has yet to figure out how that is done.

It is a strange thing that so many people are now helpless to find work when most people were once capable of creating their own jobs in America.  Apparently for many Americans that enterprising spirit is dead.  Perhaps that is the main problem with employment today.

Does a loving Father tell his children that he does not care whether they learn to read and write or not?  Does he tell his children that they need not bother to learn to add, subtract, multiply, and divide numbers?  Does he tell them they are not to have chores to do, so that they will be happier?  Does he say that he does not care what they will do with their lives because he will always take good care of them?  No, he pushes his children to learn the skills they will need to take good care of themselves.  Yet Dick Durbin is telling us that we should not care about the effort our children make, we should without reservation promise to always care for them.  Well, as any good parent knows, you have to make demands of your children.  You have to raise them so that they will understand the need for work and the pleasures that being a competent worker provide.  If you are a loving parent, you push your children to become competent in managing their own lives and in choosing their own values.  You teach them the morals and the many skills they will need to live well.  You teach them that pride and happiness are well-earned when they abide by their morality and manage their lives well.

If this is the path we follow with those whom we love best, then how is it that anyone can entertain Dick Durbin's claims that it is better to treat your fellow Americans the way a poor parent would raise a spoiled brat with no hope of ever becoming a real adult?  How can it be wise to take the advice of such a fool then to put down Ayn Rand's books?

So, visit the Atlas Society and read about Ayn Rand's ideas if you have not.  Then buy her books and read them carefully.  Think deeply about all you know about life and evaluate her ideas as objectively as you can.  It is the practical and moral thing to do!  It will also be a most appropriate reply to the self-destructive and wrongheaded advice of Senator Dick Durbin.

Increasing Mobility of Low Income People to Higher Incomes

I am going to comment on an article by W. Bradford Wilcox posted at the American Enterprise Institute on income mobility in the United States.  He has presented some data of Harvard economist Raj Chetty, a principal investigator at the Equality of Opportunity Project, based on local variations of local income growth, the share of single mother households locally, and local government spending.  The mobility is question here was actually one with a very high bar.  A child born into a lowest quintile household has to be a highest quintile earner by age 30.  Most highest quintile earners are well into their careers and tend to be much older 30.

Wilcox has fit these data sets with linear functions.  The data are interesting, though the linear fits are problematic for two of his three plots of the data.  In light of the recent renewal of Obama's redistributionist efforts, only partially and even falsely carried out by ObamaVaporCare, this is a good time to talk about what really affects income mobility.

The first plot, which is reasonably fit with a linear function, is:

This is not surprising.  Where income growth is strong in America, labor is more valued and those who want to work hard have many opportunities to make money.  Of course Obama's anti-business policies, high energy costs, excessive regulations, and the costs of ObamaVaporCare decrease income growth and are therefore likely to decrease income mobility on the national scale.  Nonetheless, local government efforts to suppress the free market will still leave a strong imprint on local mobility variations.  There is no question that it is much easier to start a business in some areas than in others, as an example with important affects on mobility.

Another critical effect on income mobility is:

Clearly an increasing share of households run by a single mother has a very negative effect on income mobility for their children.  The linear fit here is nonsense.  The proper fit is with a hyperbolic curve, which indicates a much stronger impact of single mother households on income mobility than a linear effect.  It has long been understood that there was a strong effect, but this data makes it very clear how strong and dominant that effect is.  It is well-understood that entitlement programs tend to increase the number of single mother households, so most of Obama's likely efforts to decrease income inequality will likely make it worse.  One of the many impacts of his policies already has been to increase energy costs, which really hurts those with little income badly.  How local government welfare programs are run will have a big impact on the number of single mother households.  Generally, the more money spent on such programs, the more single mother households.

The third plot is:

The thought here was that local government spending supports education, so with better local education systems, income mobility would be increased.  There probably is some such effect in some school districts, but we also know that generally increased spending on schools does not really correlate well with greater learning.  In some school districts, the people do have a high regard for education, but in many other districts it is just another labor union entitlement program to gain the teachers union votes.  Many inner city school systems are well-funded, but horribly managed.  So it is not surprising that the data does not follow any definable dependence in this case.  The data more nearly resembles a hand print with the palm pressed firmly and the fingers splayed out and pressing lightly.  Indeed, the thumb is nearly straight up, indicating that one can get virtually any result from spending $2,000 per capita on income mobility.  Clearly, neither local government spending nor local education spending is the primary effect on income mobility.  This is not to say that real learning is not important.  That I am sure is a critical effect.  But, sad to say, real learning is not something Obama is interested in.

Income mobility depends upon the opportunity to earn a living, which is heavily dependent upon government policies not shutting down or over-regulating opportunities.  Because freedom of contract is heavily suppressed in the USA, many opportunities to earn are decreased.  One such egregious way to decrease opportunity to earn and to develop a career is to increase the minimum wage.  Doing so hurts the under-educated the most by keeping them from getting their first jobs.  This keeps them from acquiring skills and from establishing a record as a worthy employee.  It forces many to turn to crime.  The high costs of providing health insurance under ObamaCare and the minimum wage increases that took effect just before and during the start of the Great Socialist Recession have already had a disproportionate impact on ensuring the unemployment and part-time employment of those in the lowest quintile income households.  Obama has been no friend to the small businesses that often hire young people and give them their first opportunity to prove themselves.

It is another Obama farce to claim that he is going to do something to increase income mobility and to reduce income inequality.  As always, he will cause effects opposed to those he claims he will achieve.  Of course his main purpose in this income inequality rhetoric is to distract the American People from the disasters he has already caused in the economy and with our medical care.

If the Great Recession has Ended, Why Are Fewer Prime Working Age Men Employed?

We are constantly being told that the economy is getting better, albeit slowly.  I have pointed out many times that the employment participation rate has not improved throughout 2010, 2011, 2012, or 2013.  I have pointed out many times that the real, per capita GDP has not grown, though this is a far better measure of our real condition than the GDP or that fake real GDP according to the government.

Another of many indicators that there is no improvement is the terrible plight of employment among men of the prime working ages 25 -54 years old.  Unemployment among men of these ages has continued to climb at rates in excess of population growth since the government declared recession supposedly ended.

It sure is difficult for Obama and the government to call a spade a spade.  This is some recovery when 12% of men of the prime working ages are unemployed!

Still no Jobs Recovery

In September 2012, the employment to working age population percentage was a low 58.8%.

In September 2013, the employment to working age population percentage is a low 58.8%.

These are the non-seasonally adjusted Household Survey numbers from the BLS.

This is perfect stagnation, continuing the general stagnation in employment going back to 2010 in this never-ending Great Socialist Recession.  This will continue to be the story at least until some time in 2017, assuming that a Democrat is not elected into the presidency to replace Obama.  Even then, we have to hope his replacement will actually begin a program to reign in the growth of government and end many of the anti-business, anti-energy, and anti-medical care policies now in place.

Small Employment Improvement, But Lost Recession Jobs Still Not Replaced

The missing job situation in this recession and generally as a result of government malfeasance since 1990 is shown in the plot below:

The number of missing jobs is falling, though it does this every year at the this time in these non-seasonally adjusted numbers derived from the household survey data of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  If we compare the number of missing jobs relative to January 2000, for the last several July months, we find that the number is slightly lower at 20.747 million now than it was in July 2012 and July 2011, but it is slightly higher than in July 2010.  This leaves us far short of replacing the jobs lost in the never-ending Great Socialist Recession, so long owned and perpetuated by Obama.  Job growth is taking care of population growth, but it is not replacing the recession lost jobs.  This is truly a stagnant economy with no increase in our standard of living in sight.

Let us examine more of the employment numbers:

The number of employed people has increased recently and the number of missing jobs has improved as the percentage of employed work age people increased to 59.05%.  This is higher than the percent of employed people which was stuck in the 58 - 59% range for so long in this recession.  The real unemployment rate long stuck in the 13%-plus range is now down to 12.5%.

While many of the new jobs most recently may have been part-time jobs as reported, the average work week is still 34.4 hours, compared to 34.6 hours a week in July 2006 and July 2007.  This is only a 0.6% reduction in work hours compared to the two years prior to the recession. The effect of ObamaCare in converting full time jobs into part time jobs is large on current hiring, but it will have to go on for some time before the average work week is substantially shortened.  I expect that the effect will continue to convert full-time work into part-time work and will in time have a big impact on the average work week.

Given the number of jobs added from June to July in the seasonally unadjusted household survey, it will take 5.4 years to employ the same fraction of the population that was employed in December 2007 if the population increases at 1% a year.  This is a very optimistic projection based on a particularly large monthly increase of employed people of 272,000 and given that the economy is slowing once again.  Even with this unrealistic and optimistic projection, this Great Socialist Recession unemployment crisis will have lasted 11 years from its start in December 2007.  It will outlast Obama.

6 Aug 2013 Addition:

Since the Great Socialist Recession began in December 2007, the number of Americans 16 and older has increased by 13.889 million according to the BLS household survey data.  Yet, 1.988 million fewer Americans are employed now than in December 2007.  Obama's recovery claims are a complete distortion of reality. Yes, jobs are being added, but the rate of jobs added is lower than it was from 1993 to 2000, despite the opportunity to recover from a deep recession and the normal opportunities to employ a growing population of working age people.  Obama's socialist policies are doing exactly what such policies always do -- they are putting people out of work and lowering their standard of living.

Job Creation Remains Stagnated - 4.33 years of Stagnation

Almost all reports about the April unemployment numbers have been positive.  It is easy to see why people are grasping at straws given the bleak employment situation of the last four years and more.  But, a rational analysis of that situation shows it to continue in all due bleakness.  Let us observe the long term record of missing jobs based upon the percentage of the non-institutional working age population that chose and could find jobs in January 2000.  Jobs were plentiful and comparatively enticing then.  Now, not nearly so much.

The missing jobs record is shown below, based on the household survey without seasonal adjustment:

Given the record of false cost of living reporting by the government, I have been loathe to accept their seasonally adjusted employment figures for both lack of trust in their honesty and because in such extraordinary employment conditions over such a long time, it would be difficult to develop a good algorithm for the seasonal fluctuations.  So, we will need to compare April 2013 with April of 2012, 2011, and 2010 to see how the economy is doing in providing jobs.  There is only the very barest improvement since April 2012, but the number of missing jobs compared to April 2011 is virtually identical!  Worse yet, April 2010 had fewer missing jobs than the Aprils of 2011, 2012, and 2013!

This story of no improvement beyond just keeping pace with population growth, but not actually replacing the lost jobs of the deep government-induced credit collapse of 2008, has been the consistent story for 4 and one-third years now.  This has been a most extraordinary recession - - induced by government and maintained adamantly by government.

The employment record is given in detail in the table below:

Now let us compare the percentage of missing jobs, rather than the absolute number of missing jobs, for the months of April from 2010 through 2013.  Respectively, we see the real unemployment rate was 13.03%, 13.47%, 13.34%, and 13.14% for these April months.  This is pretty much as much stagnation as one can get.  Yes, the April jobs situation is not as bad as it was in March, but then in every one of the last four Aprils this has been true.  It is just part of the seasonal fluctuation in jobs.

There has been no headway in reducing the number of Americans who are working part-time for economic reasons.  In April 2012 there were 7,694,000 such unwilling part-time workers.  In April 2013, there are 7,709,000 such unhappy workers.  Far from a reduction in the high part-time work percentages created by the recession, there has actually been a small increase of 15,000 part-time workers.

In addition, there has been an increase in the number of persons working part-time for non-economic reasons, such as attending college.  These numbers have increased from 19.443 million in April 2012 to 19.829 million in April 2013.  This increase of 386,000 in part-time workers for non-economic reasons according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics classification does not necessarily mean that the reasons actually are non-economic.  In many cases, someone may be going to school rather than working because they otherwise think they cannot find a job.  Or, they may be taking care of a sick relative or children rather than paying someone else to do it, because they cannot get a good enough job to be able to pay someone else.

There is good reason to believe that the looming train-wreck of ObamaCare is discouraging small businesses from hiring full-time employees and in some cases from hiring part-time employees as well.  So, part-time work is increasing, while full-time work is in stagnation at decidedly recession levels.

This complete jobs stagnation record over such a long period is definitely the result and responsibility of the Obama regime.  The American private sector has to be knocked down continuously to keep it from recovering.  Obama and his socialist thugs are only too committed to doing exactly that.  One of their amazing feats has been to keep the American people completely distracted from the abysmal job creation record during the Obama administration time in power.  Gun control, immigration reform, and the micro-reduction in the rate of increase in government spending due to the sequester have been played magnificently as distractions from the wreckage of the American economy.

March Employment Situation Worsened

After a long period of almost total stagnation in the employment numbers, the March 2013 household survey numbers without seasonal adjustment show more missing jobs than was the case in each of the last three March months of 2012, 2011, and 2010!  Not only has there been no jobs recovery, but there is now a clear backward slide.  With Obama's European socialism economic policies, we are now seeing evidence of long-term European unemployment.  To be sure, the so-called unemployment rate fell from 8.08% in February to 7.65% in March, but this is only because the workforce participation rate fell to 63.07%, the lowest rate in the table below.  Americans are still dropping out of the labor force.  Apparently they are not feeling the Hope that Obama has so often claimed he was going to deliver to them.

Basically, the number of missing jobs is maintaining the pattern it has from the start of 2010.  There is no evidence of improvement.  Yes, the March data was a step back, but one month is of very limited import by itself.  What is important is that the pattern of total stagnation shows that Obama's anti-business policies have been very effective in preventing the economy from rebounding from the recession.  This is truly the never-ending Obama Recession.

The situation is really even worse than the missing jobs chart indicates.  More and more people are under-employed.

Many employers who had not been too worried about the implementation of ObamaCare are learning to worry about it.  Many had planned to have more part-time employees so they would not have to provide them expensive ObamaCare health insurance policies or pay tax penalties on them.  By now many have heard that the IRS is going to add up the hours of all employees and treat employers as though they have 50 employees or more if the equivalent hours of all employees equal or exceed those of 50 employees working the minimum 30 hours required to be on employer paid health insurance.  This has to have forced many employers to cut back on employees to get under the 50 employee limit or to not hire additional workers.  Many employers probably still do not know about this insidious IRS plan to sweep employers into ObamaCare.

In addition, employers are learning that the exchanges that were to provide them with some measure of health insurance options in 2014 will not now be implemented until 2015.  These employers will be forced to take a single plan, like it or not, in 2014.  They are also now hearing more and more about how much more expensive health insurance will be under ObamaCare.  All of these ObamaCare factors are very negative factors for job creation.

The ADP says for those companies with employees numbering from 50-499, the group most directly affected by the health care reform, a rather sharp slowing in job creation has occurred this year: 43,000 jobs created in January, 20,000 in February, and -5,000 in March.  Of course smaller companies do not have to provide health insurance or pay the penalty tax, but for those that do provide health insurance, ObamaCare is going to drive their costs way up.  The Society of Actuaries believes the cost will go up an average of 32% due to ObamaCare.  The costs for young workers, therefore for most new workers, will go up much more since they are expected to cover more of the costs for those in less good health, such as much older workers and the chronically ill.  Small growing companies will face much higher costs in their early years since they tend to hire more of the young workers whose health insurance used to cost much less than it will.  This will add to the woes of young people in finding their first jobs.

We may be looking back a year from now and be wishing for the jobs stagnation of the last 3.25 years.

Obama Jobs Recovery in 99 Years

Despite all of the whooping and hollering about the BLS February Unemployment Report and the claims of job recovery, there is no evidence of a meaningful jobs recovery.  None.  Absolutely none, unless your time horizon is 99 years and you have an unjustified belief that Obama will not continue to purposefully damage the economy.  The real unemployment rate is 13.92% in February, which is only down by 0.10% since February of 2012 and 0.41% since February of 2011.  To return to the unemployment of January 2000, before the government started extracting more and more out of the private sector on a wild spending spree, will take 99 years at the rate of improvement of the last year and 48 years at the rate of improvement of the last two years.  Note that the rate of improvement is actually slowing down.  The molasses once flowing at a typical late December rate is now flowing at a late January rate.

Because of the huge numbers of people who have left the labor force since January 2000 and especially since this recession began, the usual unemployment rate is quite meaningless.  It is presently 8.08%, though it is the seasonally adjusted rate which is usually given.  The BLS tells us that is 7.7% now.  The Wall St. Journal gives that nonsense the headline treatment.  But in January 2000, 64.49% of the working age non-institutionalized population over 16 was employed.  In January 2013, only 57.88% were employed.  Jobs have been created over the last four years despite Obama messing the economy up, but the population has also grown.  As a result, the number of missing jobs needed to return employment to 64.47% of the working age population for any month of the last year when compared to that same month one, two, three, or four years earlier is unchanged.  The missing job plot is shown below:

Comparing February 2013 with February 2010 or February 2012, we see that the number of missing jobs is very slightly higher.  It is very slightly lower compared to February 2011.  But overall, it is remarkably constant.  About the only month that is exceptional is October 2012, which is slightly better than any of the prior three October missing jobs numbers.  This might be due to an intentional effort on the part of the government to improve the job situation immediately before the 2012 election in November.

The complete job situation is spelled out in the table below:

It is interesting to examine the BLS chart on the number of non-farm employed persons.

Despite the passage of 5 years since the employment peak before the recession, we are not even close to having as many people employed now as then.  What is worse, the working age population has grown by about 11.2 million people since the peak in employment.  Many more people would be employed now than were in December 2007 were it not for a terrible combination of governmental incompetence and a willful determination to harm businesses.  Government has to work very hard to create a situation as effective in thwarting the desire and the ability of American businessmen to grow their businesses and the economy.  The federal government alone is extracting 25% of the GDP for its spending, which is up from an excessive 20% under Bush and Clinton.  In addition, Obama has laid many new operating expenses upon businesses with mandates, new expensive regulations, higher taxes, and ObamaCare.  These and his constant anti-business, collectivist rhetoric have made it unreasonable for many businesses to invest in added production and in hiring new employees.

It is very obvious that Obama and his backers do not care about the welfare of the American people.  When many cannot find decent jobs, they become more vulnerable to long-term unemployment, to under-employment, to addictions and health problems, and to lacking the means to retire in their old age.  The con artist is effective in pretending to care about some Americans, but you have to look at the result of his actions.  It is important not to allow him to misdirect our attention with his magic tricks.

There is at least one good piece of employment news as a result of the Obama Depression.  The number of government workers across the country has been falling.  That is fewer people creating bollixing laws and regulations and demanding very high salaries, rich working benefits, and unbelievable retirement benefits.  The two sharp upward spikes are due to the hiring of census workers for the 2000 and 2010 censuses.

In looking this data up, I came across myriad articles construing this data as that for only federal employees.  Therefore there were many claims that Obama was decreasing the size of the federal government or of public employment.  These included an article in Forbes magazine, a claim by Paul Krugman, and one by Media Matters.  Unbelievably, they either thought that there were 22 million federal employees or they were trying to give Obama credit for restraining the growth of local and state government employment in a most deceptive way.  I shudder to think how much damage 22 million federal employees would do.

The federal government actually takes years to release the information on the number of its employees.  It does not want us to know.  But I did find that in 2011, the total number of federal employees, including the armed forces, was 4.403 million, of whom about 2.76 million were civilian employees.  It is perfectly clear that the above charted data from the BLS surveys is for all government employees, most of whom are either local or state government employees.  The reduction in government workers seen here is due to the reduction of local and state employees as their tax revenues fell off.  Unlike the federal government, they cannot simply print money to pay their employees.

Obama's Job Destruction Plan Illustrated

We have long been seeing updates of the graph that Obama and his henchmen used to illustrate the effect of their jobs creation plan with comparison to the jobs recovery with no such plan.  The effect of his distributing huge sums of printed and borrowed money among his campaign contributors and such of his constituents as he expected had purchasable votes is clearly shown in this most recent update of that graph.  The actual unemployment (actually understated) through the recession is shown with the red dots and this far exceeds the anticipated unemployment rate if Obama did nothing.

Surely we should assume that the difference between the original projected unemployment rate and the actual unemployment rate is the result of Obama's policies.  In other words, instead of improving the jobs situation, those policies clearly worsened it during this Great Socialist Recession.  They worsened it far worse than this plot implies too, since the actual unemployment rate is really much higher than the stated rate as I have many times pointed out.  This is due to the many people who have given up hope of finding employment and stopped looking for it.  It is also due to the many people who have become comfortable on food stamps, extended unemployment benefits, and on Social Security disability payments under Obama's inducements to do so.

The More Flexible Obama EPA Post-Election Ambush

Obama has had several of the new rules promulgated by his radical EPA put on hold until after the election.  Apparently, missile defense shields are not the only topic on which he will have more flexibility after the election.  He is well aware that these rulings will cause the loss of many jobs and he does not want those job holders and their families to know this before the election.  This is especially a dirty trick on the poor and those on fixed incomes that the Democrat Party used to pretend to champion.  They are already spending about 24% of their very limited incomes on energy largely due to the out-of-control efforts of the EPA to raise energy prices for fossil fuels and to mandate the increased use of very expensive alternative energy sources.  With friends like these, the poor need no enemies.

Senator Jim Inhofe has had a report written by the minority staff of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works which was published in October and documents the long list of new rulings that EPA is going to slam the American economy with after the election when Obama will be more flexible.  The results of the EPA rulings on hold will be the virtual elimination of the use of our huge coal reserves which have provided Americans with the least expensive electricity and energy in general in the world.

This Obama administration is also intending to limit the use of oil, not just foreign oil, but also U.S. oil.  This is the real reason that Obama prevented the building of the Keystone XL pipeline which would have brought a much needed supply of Canadian oil from Alberta and American oil from the shale oil deposits of North Dakota to Cushing, Oklahoma and to the Gulf of Mexico oil refineries which have been getting less and less oil from mismanaged nationalized oil companies in Venezuela and Mexico.  Killing the Keystone XL pipeline cost us 20,000 jobs immediately and about 465,000 jobs total by 2035.  That dependable supply of oil would have increased jobs in the Bakken shale oil formation of North Dakota, increased refinery jobs, increased other chemical industry jobs, and provided lower cost oil, gasoline, plastics, and fertilizer to all of the economic activities dependent upon them.  Our exports of products would have been increased.

The Obama administration is planning to replace state regulation of tight shale oil formation fracturing with federal regulations so that oil and gas from our huge shale oil and gas formations can be reduced and made more expensive.  Oil companies have been using hydraulic fracturing since 1949 when it was pioneered in Duncan, Oklahoma.  Since then it has been used 1.5 million times without any proven case of water contamination, which has even been admitted by the radical EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson.  Yet, it is in the name that such contamination might happen that very expensive regulations are to be slapped onto frakking operations.  The real reason is to prevent the use of fossil fuels because the Democrat Party has bought into the nonsensical hypothesis of catastrophic man-made global warming and has little care about how many jobs are eliminated and how much the cost of living rises as they chase that chimera. 

The Obama administration has succeeded in reducing the production of natural gas on federal lands and in federal waters by 11% in 2011 compared to 2010.  They decreased oil production from these areas by 14%.  But oil and gas production on private land is regulated by the states and such states as Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Oklahoma, North Dakota, Texas, Louisiana, West Virginia, Ohio, and Michigan have been allowing oil and natural gas production to boom.  This has created a shale gas industry with 600,000 jobs, which is expected to grow to 870,000 by 2015.  By 2035, there may be 1.6 million jobs in the industry.  In 2010, this nascent industry was already adding $76.9 billion to the U.S. GDP.  If re-elected, Obama and his many henchmen are determined to keep this wondrous development for jobs and our standard of living from happening.

According to an April study released by the U.S. Geological Survey, North America has 26% of the world's recoverable conventional oil resources.  This excludes our rich shale oil, tight oil, and heavy oil resources, which are gigantic.  We have 30% of the world's technically recoverable conventional natural gas resources.  We have the largest coal reserves in the world.  The oil and gas industries are already adding nearly a billion dollars a day to the economy and this is all that has keep us from falling back into a state of contracting GDP.  American households have saved about $566 million a day in natural gas expenses due to the drop in natural gas prices due to hydraulic fracturing.  All of this the Obama team wants to make useless and take away from Americans because they are foolish enough to buy into the unproven, and indeed failed, claim that CO2 emissions by man are catastrophically warming the planet.

What are the slew of new regulations intended to strangle Americans use of energy?

Greenhouse Gas Regulations:  Intended to be worse than the Cap and Trade legislation that could not make even through the totally Democrat House and Senate of 2009 and 2010.  The rules will cost $300 to $400 billion a year.  Gasoline and home energy bills will go up greatly.  Energy use in power plants, schools, restaurants, hospitals, churches, and farms will all be regulated, though they will be phased in so the frog will not jump out of the pot.  The first restrictions implemented will kill most coal-fired electric power plants in keeping with Obama's promise to do that.  At least 175 coal-fired power plants are on the chopping block.  At least 37,000 farms and ranches will require greenhouse gas permits at an average cost of $23,000 a year.  This will cause the cost of meat and dairy prices to rise.

Ozone Rule:  The EPA places a low-ball cost on this rule of $90 billion a year.  Others say it will cost $1 trillion a year and obliterate 7.4 million jobs.  Why so much destruction?  Because 650 additional counties will likely be placed in the non-attainment category for ozone limits.  These counties will be prohibited from further development, so no new jobs can be created in them and existing plants will be forced to close.

Hydraulic Fracturing Regulations:  14 Obama administration agencies are trying to wrest control of hydraulic fracturing regulations from the states.  These include the EPA, the Energy Dept., the Bureau of Land Management, the Center for Disease Control, the Dept. of Agriculture, and the Securities and Exchange Commission.  The cost for new permits and well workovers to bring them into compliance will cost from $1.50 to $1.62 billion.  Added costs per well of $253,800 are estimated and bringing a well back into use to re-stimulate fracture will cost $233,100.  Obama has efforts underway to apply the Safe Drinking Water Act, Toxic Substances Control Act, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, the Clean Air Act, and the Effluent Limitations Guidelines to shale gas extraction and to coal-bed methane gas.

Florida Numeric Nutrient Criteria:  In 2009, the Obama EPA determined that it would set federal numeric nutrient water standards under the Clean Water Act for the state of Florida.  The standard the EPA said it was going to set in 2010 was widely criticized as infeasible both technologically and economically.  The state of Florida set its own standard and was upheld in doing so by a Florida administrative judge in June 2012.  The state submitted its standard to the EPA and the EPA had to approve it in 60 days or disapprove it in 90 days by law.  The EPA has done neither, once again demonstrating the lawlessness so common in the Obama administration.  It appears that the EPA is just waiting until after the election in the important state of Florida before asserting its arbitrary will.

EPA Control of Water Sites:  The EPA has proposed a new guidance document of April 2011 under the Clean Water Act that allows it to govern almost every body of water in the U.S., no matter how small.  This is based on their reinterpretation of recent Supreme Court decisions.  The EPA estimates that 17% of the non-jurisdictional determinations will be reversed under the new guidance.  This new guidance was unable to pass the heavily Democrat House and Senate when it came up for approval.  The new guidance would force state and local governments to perform many new duties many of them do not want to do.

Storm-Water Regulation:  As part of the Chesapeake Bay Settlement Agreement in 2009, the EPA announced setting new nationwide storm-water rules.  The proposed rule will establish a post-construction storm-water run-off standard and massive changes to storm-water systems.  Green infrastructure techniques such as green roofs, rain gardens, and permeable pavement will be required.  States, municipalities, and property owners will incur huge costs.  This may be the most expensive rule in the EPA's history.

Tier III Gasoline Regulations:  The current limit on sulfur in gasoline is 30 ppm and the new limit will become 10 ppm.  The initial cost to achieve this in refineries will be $10 billion and the annual cost thereafter will be $2.4 billion.  Gasoline cost may be increased by 9 cents a gallon.

Boiler Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT) Rule:  This rule would apply to about 200,000 boilers and their emissions of mercury, dioxin, particulate matter, hydrogen chloride, and carbon monoxide.  They burn natural gas, coal, fuel oil, biomass, refinery gas, or other gas to produce steam used to heat buildings, produce heat for manufacturing purposes, or to produce electricity.  The EPA claims the capital cost will be $9.5 billion, though IHS Global Insight did a study that concluded it will cost $20 billion.  The Small Business Administration says it will cause a major increase in regulatory costs for businesses, institutions, and municipalities.  The Department of Commerce says it would cause job losses of 40,000 to 60,000, which is much higher than EPA estimates.  The Senate Minority Report says it will reduce GDP by $1.2 billion and destroy nearly 800,000 jobs, but that combination of costs and jobs lost does not make sense to me.

The methodology for producing the requirements of this ruling is terrible.  The initial ruling had 5,800 comments citing technical and statutory errors.  21 governors and more than 100 Congressmen had objections.  EPA officials finally admitted they had failed to "calculate standards that fully reflected operational reality."  The most current version of the proposed standard says that a boiler already in existence must have an average emission limit achieved by the best performing 12% of boilers in the given boiler category.  A new boiler must have emissions equal to or better than the best existing boiler.  There is a terrible catch here as well.  The best is defined for each of the controlled substances.  The best fuel and design to reduce mercury emissions may be very different than the best to reduce particulate matter, for instance.  In fact, the best boiler for each of the six substances does not meet the new MACT standard for this reason.  The standard is not technologically and economically feasible.  What is more, four of the regulated substances meet the statutory requirements for health-based standards and were so treated in previous versions of boiler MACT rules.  The proposed rule now establishes no threshold beyond which the emissions are thought to have no significant consequences.  The EPA argues that they cannot set such a threshold, but this negates their argument that they can calculate the health benefits of their new proposed ruling.  Furthermore, the EPA misstated the health benefits by assuming that all particulates, no matter their composition, have the same harmful health consequences.  I have already discussed the issues relating to mercury emissions extensively here and here.

Cement MACT Rule:  This EPA rule is expected to shut down 18 cement plants and cost up to 80,000 jobs.  This will increase our importation of cement from China and increase the cement cost of construction of roads, bridges, and buildings by 22 to 36%.

316(b) Cooling Tower Rules:  Provides for stricter protection of fish in cooling tower reservoirs.  The costs are estimated to be between 384 and 460 million dollars a year.  The value of the benefit is thought to be $17 million.

Coal Ash Ruling:  The proposed EPA coal ash rule declaring coal ash a hazardous substance will cost from $79 to $110 billion over 20 years.  It will destroy between 184,000 and 316,000 jobs with especially bad consequences for Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, and Missouri.

Farm Dust Regulations:  The EPA is considering tightening its controls on farm dust under the National Ambient Air Quality Standards for coarse particulate matter (PM10).  The new standard may require farmers and ranchers to stop many common practices and activities.  Many businesses may have to decrease their output drastically and many may go out of operation.

Spill Prevention Control and Countermeasures Rule:  Farmers and ranchers will be required to develop and implement costly oil and gasoline spill prevention plans.

The overall impact of these EPA rulings on the economy and on employment will be huge.  If implemented at all in their present proposed or EPA-favored form, the economy will go into a recession of the GDP reduction kind.  There is a pattern of EPA lack of concern for any rational weighing of the value of health or environmental consequences with economic and human consequences.  Whether people are allowed to earn a living is of little concern to the EPA under Obama.  Being responsive to radical environmental groups and to global warming alarmist groups is their top priority, aside from Obama's re-election.  Since Obama will have much more flexibility after his last election, as he famously told the Russian Medvedev, many of these rulings by the out-of-control and radical EPA will haunt American consumers, workers, and producers under a second Obama term.

Historically Slow Jobs Recovery Trucks On Due to Determined Industry

The usually quoted unemployment rate went up from 7.8% to 7.9%, but this always quoted number is fairly meaningless in a very long recession, nearly never-ending recession. The unemployment rate went up because a few more people decided there might be hope of finding a job, so they renewed their effort to find a job.

American industry forced the economy slowly forward in October 2012 despite the full application of brakes by Obama and his henchmen.  Industry added 973,000 jobs in October, perhaps in anticipation of a win by Romney on 6 November.  If it was not that, then there are a lot of lunatics in American business, but history suggests otherwise.  Government added 20,000 jobs, despite all of Obama's moaning that government has been hurt most by the recession.  Government had hired madly in September.

Unincorporated self-employment in non-agricultural jobs fell by 172,000.  The decrease in unincorporated self-employed is almost certainly further indication that the huge rise in unincorporated self-employment over the last couple of years was an act of desperation on the part of Americans who could not find jobs otherwise.  Any self-respecting American creates his own job when he cannot get a job from someone else.  But in a bad, Obama economy with no capital to invest in your business, being self-employed is really rough.  Now that industry is hiring, these suffering Americans are shifting to the better jobs bigger companies can offer them.

Let us examine the household survey employment numbers:

The number of missing jobs is falling at a very slow rate.  In October 2010, the percentage of missing jobs was 13.73% and this October is down to 12.53%, or 1.20% over two years.  This is
an average rate of missing jobs recovery by the economy as abused by Obama of 0.60% a year.  At this rate, it will take us more than 14 more years to lower the missing job rate back to the 4.04% rate of January 2000.  Obama's new normal economy is one that takes a total of 18 years to recover from a recession.  His braked economy is actually mired in a GREAT DEPRESSION, that being the only historical precedent for an 18 year recovery period in American history.

One of Obama's favorite campaign claims is that he has created, note the hubris, 5,000,000 jobs.  Once again, employers did not do it.  No, the government did.  At least if it was good.  If it was bad, then businessmen did it.  This is a matter of big government definition.

Actually, there are 144,039,000 employed Americans now and there were 143,338,000 million employed in George W. Bush's last full month as President in December 2008.  So, there are only 701,000 more Americans employed now than at the start of the Obama presidency. This is only 14% of Obama's claim, but as he says, he cannot do 7th grade math.

Meanwhile there are 8,948,000 more working age civilians available for work now than there were in Bush's last month.  The added 701,000 jobs distributed among the 8,948,000 new potential workers is enough to provide a job for 7.83% of them.  Pathetic.  That is an employment rate which is lower even than Obama's super-high unemployment rate overall is.  But this is the new Obama Normal.

Explanation for the Huge Surge in Part-Time Jobs in September

It has been pointed out that in years past, employment of 18 to 25 year olds has fallen drastically in September as students returned to college and gave up their summer jobs.  Not this September.  Also not last September.

I suspect three things are going on here.  One is that these last two summers, many fewer students were able to find jobs in the summer, so the student drop in employment in September was much less due to them returning to college.  Another effect is that with college expenses having increased much more than family incomes have for many years and the actual loss of real family incomes over the last few years, many more students may have very part-time work-aid assignments at their colleges as part of their student-aid package.  Finally, in the past, the BLS was inclined to ignore these very part-time college jobs and not count these students as employed while in college.  What if they are now very assiduously counting these work aid students as part-time employed in the household survey?  This would account for the strange increase in employment of 18 - 25 year olds these last two Septembers and for the huge increase in part-time jobs precisely in the month of September.

This is a very natural way for the Obama administration to make use of the students to help save his re-election chances.  The Democrats have been very assiduous in courting students by forcing their parent's health insurance to allow them to be kept on their parent's policies until they are 26, by ever more heavily subsidizing their student loans, and by carefully indoctrinating them in the beliefs of the Progressive Elitists in dominant control of virtually every college campus.  These students are in turn generally very enthusiastic supporters.  The Democrats are child molesters, though in this case molesters of their underdeveloped minds.  They give a great deal of thought of how to take advantage of them, so it is a natural thing that they thought of using their work-aid as a means to bolster the employment numbers just prior to the election.

Update, Afternoon of 10 October 2012:

That was an interesting idea, but on looking deeper into the BLS numbers in Table A-8 and Table A-9 in the September employment report, it does not hold water.  Instead, we find something very different and still disturbing.  First let us look at the change in employed by age from Table A-9 in September compared to August using the Not Seasonally Adjusted Numbers:

16-17 years, -130,000
18-19 years, -455,000
20-24 years, +101,000
25-34 years, +291,000
35-44 years, +249,000
45-54 years, +238,000
55 & older, +483,000

College students are mostly 18 - 21, so it is fairly clear that there is a net decrease in employment in those ages, so the work-study part-time work is not the explanation.  The explanation is found in Table A-8, where we find that the major change in employment was in government workers.  Government workers increased by 934,000!!!!!  The more complete story in the Not Seasonally Adjusted numbers is:

Government workers, +934,000
Self-employed workers, unincorporated, +90,000
Agriculture and related industries, -53,000
Private households, +15,000
Other Industries, -221,000

So much as one would expect given the general sorry state of the economy, industry is shedding employees in large numbers and some of the unemployed are setting up their own micro-businesses.  What on Earth is going on with this massive hiring of government workers though?

Teachers are mostly government workers and they do massively become employed again in September after being off for the summer.  However, any seasonal adjustment should eliminate the annual effect of re-hiring teachers in September.  So, we can examine the seasonally adjusted number of government employees and should see this number wiped out to the degree that it is teachers.  It turns out that the seasonally adjusted number is only 106,000 lower!  Now this makes no sense, since there are clearly many times 106,000 teachers who go back to public school jobs in September.  Maybe if the adjustment was formulated over many years, the fact that more teachers may have found summer jobs in the past than could now might make for a smaller adjustment projected from the past onto the present.

The federal government has not been hiring massive numbers of new employees and the state and local governments are having trouble paying the employees they already have.  It would appear that there was no adequate seasonal adjustment for the annual return of government-employed teachers to public schools!  Whatever the case of the surge in the numbers of government workers, this is not an indication of any sort of recovery in the economy.  On the contrary, the numbers indicate a worsening of the economy with the loss of 221,000 more jobs in industry.  A gain of 934,000 government workers, even if actual, would not be indicative of an improving economy.

How could the BLS fail to make a seasonal adjustment on teachers that would not make their annual return to school look like a boom in hiring?  How convenient for Obama that in the last employment report prior to the election they did not make this annual correction?  All of those claims that the BLS is staffed with professional and incorruptible people are hard to support now.

Further Comments on the Dismal September Jobs Report

Here are some further comments on the September jobs report we should all be aware of:

• The increased employment of Americans only affected white Americans.  The employment rates for blacks, Hispanics, and teenagers were unchanged at their much higher rates.
• The long-term unemployed number changed little.  40.1% of the unemployed have been unemployed for more than 27 weeks.
• The number of people employed part-time for economic reasons increased by 600,000, which is equal to most of the 775,000 new jobs that were supposed to have been created in September according to the household survey!
• The establishment survey total non-farm payroll employment was up by only 114,000 in September, which is way below the anemic 2012 average of 146,000 per month and still more below the pitiful average per month in 2011 of 153,000.  It is important to note that 114,000 establishment jobs is far, far less than the household survey number of 775,000.
• Employment rose in health care, transportation, and warehousing.  The increase in transportation and warehousing at this time of year may be in anticipation of Christmas.
• Manufacturing employment dropped by 16,000 jobs.

There was a 206,000 person increase in the working age population available for work in September according to the household survey.  If the same fraction of these people were to become employed as were in January 2000, when jobs were plentiful, then 133,426 of them would have needed jobs in September.  Even to hold the sorry ground now in which a smaller fraction of the population is employed, 121,128 would have needed jobs.  Established non-farm businesses only provided 114,000 jobs, so this population growth was not even accommodated.

On the other hand, the household survey data says many more new jobs were created, so most of those additional jobs are self-employed or in the farm sector.  We also know most of those jobs are part-time jobs due to that 600,000 increase in part-time jobs.  My expectation is that many of these jobs are due to people who have been long out of work setting up their own business at home.  We know this to have been the case for a very large fraction of the new jobs created since the depths of the recession.  Desperate families may also have wives who are raising children setting up more businesses to earn a few dollars to pay for the rising cost of living and to supplement the falling incomes of husbands.  We know that women have been setting up their own small businesses in record numbers.

Median household income adjusted for the official, understated cost-of-living was down to $50,054 in 2011, or 8% less than in 2007.  Properly adjusted, household incomes were even more degraded.  This should drive people into the part-time workforce who would not normally be there.  So, while capitalized start-up businesses have been way down, home businesses with no real capital have been growing in numbers.  Unfortunately, most of them generate considerably less income than would a job at an established business.

It has been pointed out that in years past, employment of 18 to 25 year olds has fallen drastically in September as students returned to college and gave up their summer jobs.  Not this September.  Also not last September.  I suspect two things are going on here.  One is that these last two summers, many fewer students were able to find jobs in the summer, so the student drop in employment in September was much less due to them returning to college.  The other effect is that with college expenses having increased much more than family incomes have for many years and the actual loss of real family incomes over the last few years, many more students may have very part-time work-aid assignments at their colleges as part of their student-aid package.  In the past, the BLS was inclined to ignore these very part-time college jobs and not count these students as employed while in college.  What if they are now very assiduously counting these work aid students as part-time employed in the household survey?  This would account for the strange increase in employment of 18 - 25 year olds these last two Septembers and for the huge increase in part-time jobs precisely in the month of September.  [Update on morning of 10 October 2012.]

We are also hearing more and more reports that many businesses such as restaurants and other service businesses are more and more reluctant to hire full-time employees with the onset of the ObamaUncaringTax program, sympathetically called ObamaCare.  There is already a switch to hiring part-time workers.  Restaurants are adopting the policy of mostly hiring people for 28 hours a week.  An employer needs to hire about 43% more people at 28 hours a week compared to at 40 hours a week.  That is good for a major surge in hiring which Obama is happy to claim is all his doing.  In a way it is, since he gave us ObamaUncaringTax.  Of course that program will ultimately also cost Americans not just full-time jobs, but it will also decrease the total number of hours for which people are hired across the nation.

Overall economic activity will slow as a result of ObamaUncaringTax.  In addition to discouraging the optimal use of employees, it will also be adding to the corporation tax and making us still less competitive with the corporations of other countries.  It adds to our medical care and insurance costs, redirecting the additional money we are forced to spend on overburdened doctors and hospitals from other parts of the economy.  There was already going to be considerable redirection of money into the medical sector due to the aging of the Baby Boomers.  That was already going to cause many problems in our society, including people losing jobs in other industries as a result.

Now Obama and the Democrats have decided to make that problem and the wrenching effects much worse by adding many more medical service demands from younger, more healthy Americans.  After all, if you have to pay for a government approved plan with a low deduction and with many services most Americans have not previously thought were worth paying for, you are going to use more medical services.  Doctor visits for reasons of low importance will go way up.  Pity the frazzled doctors, except those with enough intelligence to refuse to take time for such patients.  In practice, that will mean that more doctors will be refusing to take Medicaid patients and those on ObamaCare insurance that pays them less than the free market would under their still more over-worked conditions.