The brazenly bogus unemployment data disseminated to the news media each month by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics appears to have tripped up Colorado. Although the state had reported a loss of 89,375 non-farm jobs in 2009, the actual number appears to have been much larger — 106,300, according to the latest revision. Colorado attributes the discrepancy to the Bureau’s rosy estimates of the number of businesses that start and fail each year. Until the new numbers came out earlier this week, Colorado’s official line was that it had somehow been spared the worst of Great Recession’s effects on the labor market. Unofficially, however, the picture was never so bright. “I was surprised when they reported the numbers the first time,” Zoltan Mak, a freight-train conductor on furlough since October, told the Denver Post. “I see everybody around me scraping by and having a really hard time. I don’t think we’re any better off than any other state.”
As much could be said of the supposed economic recovery in the U.S. that we keep reading about but which few workers or businesspeople are able to corroborate. In the Rick’s Picks chat room, for one, out of the many hundreds who log on each day, there has been only a single person who has reported an upswing in business. He lives in the Michigan rust belt, of all places, and that is why his claims have met with skepticism, to put it mildly. But here in Colorado, the notion that recession has been somewhat less severe than elsewhere is flatly contradicted by a blighted retail landscape that seems to be metastasizing with each passing week. Entire strip malls and even some larger malls in the Denver area have imploded, and in our own neighborhood, a Sam’s Club called it quits. At a personal level, nearly everyone we know with a job or a business is working harder than ever just to stay afloat, and virtually everyone who was in real estate has left the field.
‘It’s Not Me’
Colorado’s miscount could have created a sticky situation, since the state’s jobless would have been eligible for seven week’s worth of extended benefits if unemployment had reached 8.5 percent. The question of whether such benefits could have been paid retroactively remains open, but it is moot for the moment, since, even with the upward revisions in joblessness, unemployment only edged above 8 percent briefly. This is small comfort to those without jobs, but it does put things in a new light for those who might have thought themselves especially unfortunate. “It’s a little more comforting knowing it’s not me personally,” Cynthia Dams, an unemployed child-protection worker, told the Post. “But it’s concerning. I’ve gone to these job fairs and seen the crowds waiting to get in the door.”
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{ 15 comments }
“At a personal level, nearly everyone we know with a job or a business is working harder than ever just to stay afloat, and virtually everyone who was in real estate has left the field.”
I think that’s the same for pretty much everyone. No one is buying this economic recovery – but every newspaper article seems to mention or hint at “the economic recovery.” I think to some extent they are able to get away with this because the stock market keeps going up…
Sir,
Although I am from England my “office” for my online trading at the moment is a coffee shop in Loveland, Colorado. There are 3 “regulars” whom I chat to who use their laptops looking for jobs having all recently lost their jobs from local industry. Many of the employed “suits” who frequent the coffee shop work for the City Council. I work out at the Chilson Centre in Loveland and most of the employed people I chat to there work for the City or in Education.
It is just like being back in England where in most regions outside of London most individual’s income is from the state whether public employee or welfare benefits! The only difference is that in England you also get the people who are third generation welfare benefits recipients – meaning that their fathers and grandfathers have never worked and they are continuing a family tradition! This is through boom times as well as bust. This is what will happen in the US.
The socialists are happy to continually pay out the benefits because it buys them votes and it isn’t their money anyway. As Mrs.Thatcher said, “The trouble with socialists is that they eventually run out of other people’s money to spend.”
The European welfare syndrome is rapidly gaining a foothold in the US. Eventually it gets beyond politics as it gets so “inbred” that is impossible for a non-socialism thinking party to get elected when so many people stand to lose their “state incomes”. At this moment I just can’t see the runaway socialism train in the US being stopped – unfortunately.
As a resident of Michigan, I have to agree with that other person from Michigan you mention. I’m very puzzled by it, but things actually do seem to be getting better, at least around here (about 100 miles north of Detroit). One or two stores at the local mall have closed, but the parking lots are as full as ever and several new shops and restaurants have opened lately. Could it be that things are already so bad in Michigan they can’t get any worse? After all, Michigan has been in a recession since 2000!
It’s weird here in DFW, Tx..where glitz , ostentatious, ” never let them see you cry” is king,,senior lawyers are out of work in droves, jr attys lucky to get work at $20/hr, docs fighting for every crumb. But , those that have it are throwing money in the malls. Sales friends at Barneys still have clients walking in and dropping $10k in a clip and Rolls Royces’s still plentiful. Upscale neighborhoods still looking like old days ; tho Plano..the heart of buy huge house then wait 10 yrs to furnish is crumbling.
I’m a Detroit native that has worked only 12 months out of the last 42 months.
Monday, if all goes according to plan, I will begin working at Caterpillar in Peoria.
The unemployment was about to expire, so this couldn’t have come at a better time.
Business is really excellent for me, and getting better all the time. But then, I sell rare gold coins.
I’m just outside Houston. We have people flocking here from all over because they got the impression we’re still thriving. I just heard an unemployment number the other day of 8% for Houston, and that’s using the same cockeyed statistical measures they use in DeeCee. The business people I speak to say it is the worst they’ve seen in their business life, some 40 years or longer. Stores are closing even in the trendy centers. I had a lady at the drive-through window at Jack in the Box tell me they were cutting back hours because their traffic was slumping. We are in the exact same position that Russians found themselves when Pravda was the house organ for the communist party. No one believes the BS but it still comes out in torrents each day. It’s absolutely pathological.
Mercurious…it’s not pathological…it’s rudimentary psychology. What we are seeing is the placebo effect in macrocosm. Tell the guy with brain cancer that the sugar pill you just gave him cured him. He’ll run around with exuberance and energy feeling like he’s on top of the world. Of course…the morning will still come when he does not wake up.
Just think how many economists speak of “a crisis of confidence.” Or FDR’s “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” As if the economy would just magically rebound if everybody thought positive. Maybe if our friends in Haiti learned that secret remedy…they’d reverse two hundred years of misery.
The national unemployment may have hit 23% if we were using the old methods to calculate the unemployment rate. (The worst in the Depression was 25%.)
In CA, the official CA unemployment is 13.2%. But in reality, it is around 25- 30%. That is a lot of unemployed people. It is no surprise that the crime rate is up.
The new method of “arriving at” the unemployment number is just another attempt to hide how bad things are getting. When numbers look bad, people start to demand action, and the current politicians get voted out of office.
In the future, we will only count the people who receive unemployment for the first 3 months. All the people who are receiving unemployment benefits beyond 3 months will be added to all the people who are unemployed but not receiving unemployment benefits; this group will be the new “discouraged” workers and not counted in the official number.
By the sounds of it the U.S. is about to fall apart. A B.S. government run by the Fed banks. All complete liars with Tim Geithner at the top of the list. Also, a president without a clue in charge. Hope? Jeezus, they prayed on the Titanic, what good did it do? What the U. S. needs is a dose of REALITY. There is no free lunch. America has sold its soul to the devil for another flat screen TV.
As a Canadian I cannot believe how literally fat half of Americans are. Something’s wrong. You complain about adopting Canadian healthcare and our socialist system and yet there are 39 million Americans on food stamps and welfare. Your government employs 25% of the population and you knock us as a socialist country. It’s time to look in the mirror.
The big difference between Americans and Canadians is we know who we are. We are polite and friendly, yes. We mind our own business. We watch the rest of the world go by and still mind our own business. We created 60,000 new jobs last month and our unemployment rate dropped from 8.9 to 8.7 percent. We are # 1 in growth among the G7 nations.
We have been been leaders in the fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan. The current top operations commander of the U.S. Marines in Khandahar province is a Canadian army general. I might add that the first four Canadian soldiers killed in Afghan were killed in a “friendly fog of war accident?” by an American Air Force pilot who refused to admit he made a blunder when he refused to cease attack by his own air control centre. He dropped a 500 lb. bomb on them. There was an old saying back in WW2; when the British are flying, the Germans take cover. When the Germans are flying, the English take cover. When the Americans are flying, everyone takes cover.
Right now, the whole world is taking cover!
Aloha Rick et All
Appreciate your bright points and comments.
Key day indeed. Almost hard to comprehend after decades of waiting for financial retail reality to catch up with Animal Farm government deficit politics.
Awesome daytrades on Crude, Euro, Gold, Mini in same direction as Big4.
Only remaining concern, having struggled three days to enter puts at the right point, is not entering or exiting too soon.
Re unemployment, Shadowstats documented for a long time bogus government numbers in CPI and Unemployment closer to real 10% and 22% with 1980 and pre-1994 methodology. Guv models that missed 1974, 1981, 1987, 2000 and 2007 peaks are not to be trusted. They serve mainly to reduce government spending and honoring its promises.
Yesterday came out of Costco having bought just 6 everyday necessaries, with a bill over $100. Middle class consumer hyperinflation while assets deflate and headlines blare recovery and hate foreign enemy products as they cut deficit trade with US. Right out of 1984 doublespeak and the Great Depression trade war playbook.
Underwater homeowners, retirees and people out of work cannot rely on spent broken government promises to return their money even with a huge haircut. Government spending more than tax revenues including Social Security for some time, -$166 B last month, far more than Treasury offerings bought by the Fed, hello.
If responsible government followed the advice of Joseph and Keynes’ to the Pharoah, it would have balanced the budget and saved during the good times for the 7 lean years that are upon US.
Now we face the ultimate deflation with government defaults because government keeps adding to Federal payrolls at higher pay rates than the private sector, having already robbed the economy with TARP and Pork Stim, and so far thwarted into the Tax hike and Medicare cut of 0Care.
With rigged markets, the big bad top more likely to come on a day of new highs and headline euphoria, with sideways churning and declining volume since the Oct 2007 peak.
Government monopoly media corporate investment shills still trying hard to trap John Q with a massive bull PsyOp trap, but it is not working. 2+2 still = 4.
Bought some QID and Q4 puts and hope they will be trading when it is time to profit. Holding cash and food reserves.
Looking out below…
Safe RegardsAll*Rich
http://www.jubileeprosperity.com/
Kahn isn’t there a saturation point with that? I have a friend that has just open another one of many gold stores and is doing well. I just have to think haven’t most people that are wanting to sell there old gold already done so by now?
on another note I know of a small firm that just leased 1500 SF of office space for $700 a month in downtown chicago right across the street from the CBOT. I’ve never seen that it cheap
I live in Atlanta, Ga. I am 56 years old. I have been laid off 3 times in the last 8 years with 3 different companies. This last lay off was the killer. I have been unemployed for 2 years. Tried to be a bus driver for local county but failed
parallel park (two time shot -their rules) t on drivers test. Passed on left side failed by 2 inches on right side back line.. State rule—if you go over line in back that means you would hit car or wall. I was in but over the line.
Anyway—it is tough finding a job in Atlanta, Ga. I have a college degree but it does
not matter any more.
Rocky Mountain high…Colorado…
Rocky Mountain high…Colorado…
Rocky Mountain high…Colorado…
I used to tell people in the 90s that IT was the best business to get into. I’ve experienced three downturns in the last ten years, which, arguably, could just be seen as one long downturn.
I find Robert Higgs’ analysis of the effect “regime uncertainty” on the economy to be very helpful, I would encourage your readers to look into that (he’s with the Independent Institute). In general, business seems to be bad, and getting worse.
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