June unemployment rate 8.2 percent, Labor force participation rate 63.8 percent, Manufacturing and Wages Drop, Waxman Declares a Depression

“The United States economy has lost more jobs than it has added since the recovery began over a year ago.”…NY Times Sept. 20, 2010.

“Guilford (Large NC County) appears on it’s way to a third consecutive year with annual jobless rates in double digits. Economists say that likely hasn’t happened since the Great Depression.”…Greensboro News Record December 2, 2011

“the Times of the nineteenth of December had published the official forecasts of the output of various classes of consumption goods in the fourth quarter of 1983, which was also the sixth quarter of the Ninth Three-Year Plan. Today’s issue contained a statement of the actual output, from which it appeared that the forecasts were in every instance grossly wrong. Winston’s job was to rectify the original figures by making them agree with the later ones.”…George Orwell, “1984″

From Philly.com July 7, 2012.

“U.S. unemployment rate stays at 8.2 percent”

“Three years after the official end of the recession, the nation’s payrolls added 80,000 jobs in June, well short of the 100,000 to 150,000 jobs that economists say are necessary each month to keep up with population growth.

The unemployment rate remained unchanged at 8.2 percent, the U.S. Labor Department reported Friday.

The recession, which rocked the nation’s economy and is still influencing business and consumer spending, began in December 2007 and ended, officially, in June 2009.

“We’re three years past the end of the recession, and for many Americans, the recovery has never shown up,” said Mark Vitner, senior economist at Wells Fargo Securities in Charlotte.

“We’ve been consistently adding jobs,” said Heidi Shierholz, a labor market economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington. “But we’ve been adding what we need to roughly tread water. It’s not what we need to dig out. It’s just what we need to hang on.”

Stock markets fell in response to the news. The Dow Jones industrial average closed down 124.20 points at 12,772.47.”

“Retailing declined, with the biggest drops in department and general merchandise stores, reflecting a general cutback in consumer spending.

To Kurt Rankin, an economist at the PNC Financial Services Group, the drop in retail spending is emblematic of what has been happening since the recession ended.

“Consumer psychology was impacted dramatically and is still suffering from the lingering aftereffects,” he said. Scared by what they saw, Americans are putting their money into reducing their personal debt, rebuilding retirement nest eggs, and increasing their savings, he said.

“We’re stuck with a slow-stall speed recovery,” Rankin said, “and that’s kept hiring and consumer spending from breaking free.”

Friday’s results were particularly disappointing after Thursday’s optimistic trio of portents:

There was the survey from the ADP payroll company showing the addition of 176,000 jobs in June, outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas’ news that June’s announced job cuts were the lowest in a year, and the report that first-time claims for unemployment had dropped for the week ending June 23.

The bad news in June’s Labor Department report included an increase in the “U-6” statistic – the measurement of the miserable – to 14.9 percent. That’s all the unemployed, plus discouraged workers, plus part-time workers who would like full-time work, and others marginally associated with the labor force.

The “U-6” rate is down from 16.2 percent a year ago, but up from 14.8 percent in May.

“We may be suffering through a major heat wave, but the economy is cooling off,” said Bucks County economist Joel Naroff of Naroff Economic Advisers. “With so much uncertainty about the world economy and politics, businesses have decided the best course is to do very little.”

The average length of unemployment grew to 39.9 weeks, up from 39.7 in May and virtually unchanged since 39.8 weeks in June 2011, a testimony to the unrelenting difficulty that the long-term unemployed have in finding jobs.

The median length of unemployment, which is the amount of time it takes most people to find work, has fallen a little more than two weeks in a year, from 22.1 weeks to 19.8 weeks.

Of the 12.7 million unemployed, up 29,000 from May, 41.9 percent have been out of work for more than 27 weeks. Federal emergency unemployment benefits are due to expire at the end of the year, meaning that those who now become unemployed can expect to receive only 26 weeks of benefits, assuming that they qualify.”

http://www.philly.com/philly/business/20120707_U_S__unemployment_rate_stays_at_8_2_percent.html?cmpid=138890509

The Labor Force Participation rate remains at historic lows. It was 63.8 for June.

From the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

http://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet

From Rush Limbaugh July 03, 2012.

“Manufacturing, Wages Drop. “Nostrilitis” Waxman Declares a Depression. Who’s to Blame? Democrats Say…Walmart!”

“BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Well, folks, I hate to be the bearer of this kind of news, but the news is what it is. And this news is from the Washington Examiner: “Wages Drop, Only 5th Time in 33 Years … Average weekly wages fell in 2011, one of only five declines since the category was created in 1978 by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In a just-released review of employment in the nation’s largest 322 counties, BLS found that weekly wages dropped over the year by 1.7 percent to $955 in the fourth quarter of 2011 from a high of $971 in the fourth quarter of 2010. … The wage drop comes as employment has increased in a majority of the counties in the last quarter of 2011.” Employment has increased? “That irony makes it the only quarter in history where wages shrunk while employment grew.”

I’m telling you, if the election were today, it would be a landslide defeat for Obama. I don’t care who Romney picks as his veep, it isn’t gonna matter, if the election were held today.

In manufacturing news. “US manufacturing shrank in June for the first time in nearly three years, adding to signs that economic growth is weakening.” That’s how the AP chose to characterize it. Production declined. The number of new orders plunged. Good Lord, folks. After three-and-a-half years of being told by this administration that they have the answers for this, that they have the answers and we’re on the rebound, we’ve turned the corner, we’re coming back from the brink. Every policy that this administration has instituted has done great damage. They talked about the manufacturing. We have a little montage of media Drive-Bys talking about it.
SANTELLI: Holy smokes. We haven’t been under 50 since July of ’09.

LIESMAN: The softness in the economy is evident in the ISM’s.

VARNEY: The ISM report for the month of June came in weak. That’s taken the market down.

SCHATZKER: A dismal picture this morning.

PAYNE: Below 50 means contraction, not expansion. Manufacturing is the thing that’s supposed to be the game-changer for our economy.
RUSH: That was Charles Payne, Fox Business Channel there, the last comment you heard, and he’s exactly right. Henry “Nostrilitis” Waxman was on C-SPAN Newsmakers on Sunday morning. They’re talking about the economy. One of the panelists was a woman named Kate Hunter from Bloomberg, and she said to “Nostrilitis” Waxman, “Most people seem to think that, you know, passage of the health care law in 2010 contributed to Democrats losing control of the House that year in midterm elections. I’m wondering, do you think that tradeoff was worth it, getting the health care law passed and losing the House?”

WAXMAN: If that were the tradeoff. But, look, the president inherited a terrible economy. We were hemorrhaging jobs in 2008 when he got elected, so by the time he took office in 2009, we had over 10% unemployment. We had the banks frozen. They couldn’t deal with their assets. The economy has not recovered. Some people call it a recession. I think it’s a depression.

RUSH: It’s a depression. The Democrats are tweeting about manufacturing, I kid you not: “Ten Reasons Walmart is responsible for the decline of American manufacturing.” That’s what the Democrats are tweeting. Walmart’s responsible for it. How can that be? Walmart depends on people manufacturing stuff so they can stock it. But I thought the private sector was doing fine. That’s what Obama said. Private sector’s doing fine. Now it’s Walmart’s fault.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here’s Henry Waxman, “Well, you know, he inherited a horrible economy, hemorrhaging jobs in 2008.” They started hemorrhaging jobs in this economy after Obama was elected in 2008. Go back and look at the monthly unemployment numbers and then take a look at November and December and then January. The bottom fell out, the Wall Street bottom fell out. And it hasn’t recovered. But these people had all the answers. Hope and change. Everything was gonna be better now. They had miracles waiting to enact. Everything they have done has brought great damage to this economy under the guise of fixing it.

END TRANSCRIPT”

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2012/07/03/manufacturing_wages_drop_nostrilitis_waxman_declares_a_depression_who_s_to_blame_democrats_say_walmart