An economics, investment, trading and policy blog with a focus on Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). We seek the truth, avoid the mainstream and are virulently anti-neoliberalism.
Pages
▼
Pages
▼
Friday, April 5, 2013
Robert Oak — The Terrible Unemployment Figures of March 2013
Looking behind the numbers, it's bad. How bad? How about "god awful, terrible."
If I look at Civilian participation rates, I see that in two months, approximately 3/4 of a million people dropped out of the work force (a 0.3% drop in civilian non institutional population)
How many of those dropping out is due to benign reasons such as planned retirement?
Oak says not enough to account for the huge numbers. And anecdotally, from what I am seeing people that would normally be retiring aren't because they need the money.
Twenty years from now, young whippersnapper economic historians will come to interview me.
They will ask: "Why don't you think Ben Bernanke was the worst Fed Chair since the Great Depression--worse even than the hapless G. William Miller--because of his failure to understand even one of (a) the implications of the pre-2008 growth of leverage, derivatives, and shadow banking; that his job in the summer and fall of 2008 was not to curb moral hazard but to prevent depression; (c) the goals of his dual mandate; the structure of the economy he was managing; and (e) how to mark his beliefs to market when the economy did not evolve as he had predicted?"
If I look at Civilian participation rates, I see that in two months, approximately 3/4 of a million people dropped out of the work force (a 0.3% drop in civilian non institutional population)
ReplyDeleteHow many of those dropping out is due to benign reasons such as planned retirement?
ReplyDeleteSudden retirement over a 2 month period - after a flat 2012 - when retailers like Walmart were busy hiring retirees who had to go back to work?
ReplyDeleteHow many of those dropping out is due to benign reasons such as planned retirement?
ReplyDeleteOak says not enough to account for the huge numbers. And anecdotally, from what I am seeing people that would normally be retiring aren't because they need the money.
Also Brad DeLong on this
ReplyDeleteQuote:
This is a bad employment report.
Twenty years from now, young whippersnapper economic historians will come to interview me.
They will ask: "Why don't you think Ben Bernanke was the worst Fed Chair since the Great Depression--worse even than the hapless G. William Miller--because of his failure to understand even one of (a) the implications of the pre-2008 growth of leverage, derivatives, and shadow banking; that his job in the summer and fall of 2008 was not to curb moral hazard but to prevent depression; (c) the goals of his dual mandate; the structure of the economy he was managing; and (e) how to mark his beliefs to market when the economy did not evolve as he had predicted?"
What answer am I going to be able to give?