Recovery. Talking recovery today.
Big Red Car here. I’m vexed. People think that the economy is doing fine or, worse, that it is headed in the right direction. It is not.
Let me tell you why. First, say: STRUCTURAL CHANGES to the ugly face of employment.
There are four things we need to look at: total unemployment, unemployment for 25-54 year olds, the Labor Force Participation Rate for the same 25-54 year olds, and Employment-to-Population ratio for the same 25-54 year olds.
So, the hypothesis of this post is this — while America has been engaged in the weakest recession recovery dynamic in the history of the United States, the job market and the structure of our employment force has changed STRUCTURALLY.
A historic example of something like this was the wholesale introduction of women into the work force in the early 1980s. It changed things. Forever.
Big Red Car, why is this important?
Hey, stop surfing Facebook for a minute. This is important.
This is important because we have been spending a lot of time listening to, essentially, a lot of blown smoke about how many jobs have been created — total bullshit — and how we are gloriously recovering. All lies. All wrong.
Even worse, the structural changes are devastating. They are not going to change and nobody is talking about them. We are so far behind, we cannot catch up. Maybe ever.
OK, Big Red Car, calm down. You’re going to blow a head gasket for goodness sake.
Unemployment
We engage in this fictional notion that when someone is still unemployed for six months then they can be subtracted from the unemployment rolls. Who thought that up? It is madness.
Still, it looks like this.
Please note that we are still above 2007 and 2000 norms. This is after cooking the books on full power. So, the idea that we have “recovered” is still baloney.
This is the best picture of all that we shall discuss today. Do not look at U-6/7 on a full stomach. I’ve warned you.
Read the fine print above — “We would require 0.9 million additional employed to match the interim low in 2007 and 1.8 million to match the lowest rate in 2000.”
Huge, unreachable numbers in our current anemic recovery.
The 25-54 cohort
The “cohort” of 25-54 workers is our “core” work force.
Look here. I will let you read the fine print by yourself. Don’t make me regret this.
We are nowhere near where we should be in a recovery.
Labor Force Participation Rate
I don’t understand why people fail to fixate on the following two criteria — Labor Force Participation Rate and Employment-to-Population Ratio as they are the truest measure of how things are going from a macro perspective. The BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics) and the Obama administration cannot get any lipstick on these pigs. These graphs skin it back and it stinks.
Read the fine print. Can you believe these numbers?
We would require 2,800,000 more jobs to get back to 2008 and 4,100,000 additional jobs to get back to 2000.
RECOVERY? What recovery?
Employment-to-Population Ratio
OK, here is a good one to take a look at.
Fine print it, Big Red Car.
We need 3,200,000 jobs to regain our 2007 posture and 5,200,000 additional jobs to match our 2000 numbers.
Recover, what recovery?
Can you say — “Wow, the talk about a recovery is ……………………………………………….. bull shit, isn’t it?”
So, there you have it. Hat tip to Doug Short of dshort.com, Advisor Perspectives, and Jill Mislinski. Nice work, y’all. Stole the graphs from them.
So, dear reader, what recovery are they talking about in Washington, the District of Corruption? They are fooling y’all and now they can’t do it any more, can they?
But, hey, what the Hell do I really know anyway? I’m just a Big Red Car.
