If you want to understand why Barack Obama is in trouble, here's the chart to see:
The unemployment rate is based on the amount of people who are actively seeking work. That number is going down and quickly. Some of the decline are retirements, but we're adding more people every year. A lot of people are simply leaving the workforce because they can't find work.
368,000 people left the workforce in August. That's more people than live in
New Orleans.
We're going to have an awfully tough time keeping things going if people give up. And based on this chart, a lot of people have. This isn't the Hope and Change people signed up for in 2008. If you want to blame George W. Bush for the trend line, be my guest. But he's been gone for nearly 4 years now. And you can't vote George W. Bush out of office.
8 comments:
existing as i do in a factory labor environment:
many folks are becoming disabled. it pays the same.
i know many soon to be retirees (late 50's) who have gone out early or are in the process of... and to be honest... they can still do labor if they wanted to.
i was putting a plan in place to ride that train myself last year til my doctor said it was 'no can do'.
for reals: its not about being lazy. I AM NOT LAZY, (having put in another 13hr day today, 12 yesterday, 11 the day before, volunteering for 12 more this saturday)...
the issue is that work no longer pays for us. i need to put in 10-11 hrs days to get to where 8hr days put me 3-5 yrs ago... and overtime is in short supply (my seniority grants me an edge for OT, which is why i am getting it the last 3 mos)
i am better off on disability while working odd jobs for cash. its about economic survival, plain and simple.
everything costs much more ($4 a lb for hamburger???), take home pay has contracted considerably (thanks in part to Obamacare), and the dollar aint worth that much anymore.
Gino said,
the issue is that work no longer pays for us. i need to put in 10-11 hrs days to get to where 8hr days put me 3-5 yrs ago... and overtime is in short supply (my seniority grants me an edge for OT, which is why i am getting it the last 3 mos)
i am better off on disability while working odd jobs for cash. its about economic survival, plain and simple.
I agree -- it's not about being lazy. It's about incentives. People respond to incentives. What you were thinking about is absolutely rational given the current context. Which is why it's absolutely imperative to change the context.
The chart requires a bit of interpretation. The LFPR DID go down during Bush's tenure, but it went down TWICE as much during the Obama years. And notice that Bush's drop was over 8 years, while Obama's is in less than 4, so Obamanomics is shredding jobs at 4 times the rate that Bush did.
J. Ewing
Presidents get too much credit and too much blame for the economy. Though I agree you wouldn't know it from how people vote.
It would be useful to know how much of the exodous from the workforce is attributable to the fact that the Boomers started turning 65 in 2010.
Who psys for the cost of these "disabilities?" Another example of people gaming the system. This is fraud and working odd jobs for cash while collecting disability should result in loss of benefits and jail time. I'm saddened that this type of activity is viewed as acceptwble behavior.
It would be useful to know how much of the exodous from the workforce is attributable to the fact that the Boomers started turning 65 in 2010.
Some, but not all. Remember the overall population of the country continues to rise. And one of the reasons that young people are having so much trouble getting into the workforce is that older workers are hanging on to their jobs for longer periods. I expect that trend to continue, too -- there's no way in hell I'll be able to retire at 62 or 65. I fully expect to work until I'm 70, assuming I'm able to do so.
And one of the reasons that young people are having so much trouble getting into the workforce is that older workers are hanging on to their jobs for longer periods.
No need to point that out to me...I'm in the market for a tenure track faculty job. Being academia, guys my age aren't waiting for Boomers to retire...we're waiting for them to die.
(Don't know if anyone is still looking at this, but...)
I came across a possible (likely) answer to the question I posed above re how much of the shrinking workforce is due to Boomer retirement.
Short version: not much.
More here.
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