Total nonfarm payroll employment declined by 125,000 in June, and the unemployment rate edged down to 9.5 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The decline in payroll employment reflected a decrease (-225,000) in the number of temporary employees working on Census 2010. Private-sector payroll employment edged up by 83,000.
Although if you look at the numbers (right side of this link) you will see many states are above that rate, some above 10 percent, 11 percent, 12 percent and Nevada topping the chart with a 14 percent unemployment rate.
It was reported yesterday that the Senate was unable to pass their bill to extend coverage to long term unemployed people because Harry Reid was not willing to consider using unused stimulus funds to pay for the extension of benefits. The bill would have extended those benefits for the unemployed to 99 weeks.
As part of the Economic News Release today, it has some news about those long term unemployed individuals:
In June, about 2.6 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force, an increase of 415,000 from a year earlier. (The data are not seasonally adjusted.) These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. (See table A-16.)
Among the marginally attached, there were 1.2 million discouraged workers in June, up by 414,000 from a year earlier. (The data are not seasonally adjusted.) Discouraged workers are persons not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them. The remaining 1.4 million persons marginally attached to the labor force had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey for reasons such as school attendance or family responsibilities. (See table A-16.)
Emphasis mine.
I emphasized that particular point because while reading the discussions going on about this new report, I ran across something over at Hot Air who hat tips The Right Scoop for the video shown below.
Nancy Pelosi, in some of the most convoluted logic I have ever seen or heard, claims that extending unemployment checks to individuals so that they last to 99 weeks, almost two years of paying people for not working, would be stimulus to the economy and "creates jobs faster than almost any other initiative."
Huh?
Really, she says that. I have watched this clip now like three times and she really, truly, is trying to sell that crap.
Remember too, that "1.4 million persons marginally attached to the labor force had not searched for work" and those people would also benefit from those extensions.
Watch this tripe.
Everyone needs a helping hand now and then and unemployment benefits were created for just that purpose. To help people that have lost their jobs, hold them over until they can find another.
Benefits last for up to 26 weeks, half a year and Pelosi and crew not only want that extended to 99 weeks, just shy of two years, but they wish to do so without offsetting the cost to our deficit in any way, shape or form, even when unused stimulus funds from the last stimulus package are just laying around unused.
Ed Morrissey over at Hot Air, takes Pelosi's strawmen arguments down, one by one, showing the ridiculousness of her claims:
Let’s count the straw men:
- “This is one of the biggest stimuluses to our economy” — No, it’s a net drain on the economy, although for understandable purposes. It reroutes capital from production to non-production. We are paying people who aren’t working by using capital that could otherwise go to creating jobs. It’s a policy tradeoff and understandable, although not for 99 weeks, which is what Pelosi is attempting to extend further.
- “It injects demand into the economy” — Not at the rate in which the capital gets destroyed. Remember, the money for this program gets confiscated from producers and passed through the government bureaucracy to non-producers. What winds up back in the hands of producers is much less than what left their hands in the first place.
- “It creates jobs faster than almost any other initiative” — No, it doesn’t. In fact, it depresses job creation, which is part of the policy tradeoff. If this was right, we’d be at zero unemployment by now. Tax cuts, especially on capital gains, creates jobs by getting capital into the hands of job creators.
- “It’s impossible to think of a situation where we would have a country without unemployment benefits” — That’s not actually the debate. No one is suggesting that we eliminate all unemployment benefits. The debate is whether we will keep extending them further.
Erza Klein points out that the unemployment number went from 9.7 to 9.5 but not because people were hired, but because "652,000 people gave up and stopped looking for work."
Klein also talks about the unemployment benefits not being extending, blaming Republicans and Ben Nelson, but oddly enough he neglects to mention that the Republicans did offer a way to pay for those extended benefits using unspent stimulus funds and the Democrats, led by Harry Reid, refused to consider it to get the bill passed.
Wonder if Klein simply forgot about that option and that Reid and crew are the ones that took it off the table after Republicans suggested it.
It also is worth pointing out that the 9.7 percent figure is misleading and the portion of the release I pasted above tells you why.
Lets look at that paragraph one more time:
In June, about 2.6 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force, an increase of 415,000 from a year earlier. (The data are not seasonally adjusted.) These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. (See table A-16.)
Had those 2.6 million persons been counted into the unemployment figures, because, ummmmmmmmmmmmm, they are not working.... that average of 9.7 percent would be much higher.
Here is a novel idea, hire those that are still looking for work to build the damn fences on the border states to Mexico, that would employ tens of thousands for start and hey, maybe train them and hire them to police it.
The money saved from chasing illegal aliens crossing into the US, catching them, trying them and deporting them would more than pay for the cost.
Related:
NYT, Wapo, The Politico and Economix
.
