Jobs numbers are impossible to spin

by: Chris Bowers

Fri Jul 02, 2010 at 11:03


Another weak jobs report:

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(...)

In June, the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over) was unchanged at 6.8 million. These individuals made up 45.5 percent of unemployed persons.

With the decline in the U3 unemployment rate, it might be tempting for Democratic partisans to try and spin the numbers as showing signs of improvement.  However, economic spin is largely ineffective. People don't need press releases and communications staff in order to figure out whether they are in good financial shape or not.

Additionally, blame for the lack of improvement to a poor economic situation can't really be spun.  If times are tough, and not getting better, the governing party just gets blamed, period.  Perhaps a political scientists can correct me, but I believe outside of a major war there are no examples to counter this.  Even during the Great Depression, Democrats won huge in 1934 because the country was growing like an Asian Tiger economy, with an eye-popping 10.9% GDP growth that year.  Times were getting better, so the governing party won.

We can, and should, make the twin arguments that time would be even worse if Republicans were in charge, and that  it would have been better if progressive were in charge.  However, I have real doubts about either of those being makeable cases.  People just blame the governing party, and they also blame the ideology with which the governing party is, rightly or wrongly, most closely associated with.  In this case, that means blaming liberalism, even if 60% of thee country wants more government spending to create jobs (no one ever said most Americans had thoroughgoing ideological critiques).

Objective economic conditions are beyond the reach of any type of messaging  What Democrats needed to do was enact policy that would improve people's personal economic situations before the November elections. Either that hasn't happened, or it won't happen in time.  Further, with the defeat of the second stimulus, nothing can really change it now.  The end result is going to be a very good election for Republicans.

Chris Bowers :: Jobs numbers are impossible to spin

Tags: , , , (All Tags)
Print Friendly View Send As Email

Jobs numbers are impossible to spin | 56 comments
This was never "cyclical" (4.00 / 3)
as the Keynesian Kargo Kult wants us to believe.

This is permanent civilizational change.

When you misdiagnose the disease, don't be shocked that the cures don't work.

Let's try real change.

The cures didn't work... (4.00 / 9)
...because they weren't administered in proper doses.  A "stimulus" that was roughly half the size which mainstream (Keynesian) economists said was needed, with over 1/3 of the stimulus frittered away on tax cuts which have much less economic impact.  

Combine that with a failure to permanently restructure the economy in any meaningful way:  shifting $ from rich asset speculators to production/infrastructure.

The solutions are so obvious that I suspect that many congrssional Democrats and/or the Obama administration want the Republicans to take over congress so that we all can be grateful to them when nothing happens.

[ Parent ]
Your Either/Or Mindset Is Tiresome Beyond Belief (4.00 / 12)
We needed--and still need--Keynesian counter-cyclical spending as part of the way out of the deep hole we're in.  But since Keynesian policy has been neglected for so long, it's hardly surprising that that alone would not be enough.  Keynes himself never claimed that that would be enough to cure all ills.  We've utterly neglected our manufacturing sector since the 1970s, just as we've negelected our need for clean energy.

Those two unmet needs clearly go together, and stand directly opposed by the over-investment in finance, a dysfunctional medical sector and the military.  Those who can walk and chew gum have no problem with talking about these problems as well without poking their fingers into other folks eyes.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
"Keynesian Kargo Kult"? KKK? (4.00 / 3)
Really?  Ok, even aside from the seemingly inexplicable linking of Keynesians to the KKK, in what ways are they like a Cargo cult?

[ Parent ]
You touch on what has long worried me (4.00 / 14)
Obama's neoliberalism (aside from the fact of it): people mistake it for liberalism:

In this case, that means blaming liberalism, even if 60% of thee country wants more government spending to create jobs (no one ever said most Americans had thoroughgoing ideological critiques).

Clinton, at least, was seen, because he wanted to be seen, as a centrist (esp after 1994.) He also had the tech boom to mask his flaws. But Obama, for a variety of reasons, is seen as the embodiment of activist government.

Liberalism will be blamed for neo-liberalism's failure.

All the more reason for progressives to distance themselves from him.  

Seen on the Yahoo Page: (4.00 / 3)
Is Obama a socialist? Members of Socialist Party say no

Oy.  

[ Parent ]
well, for starters, actual socialism would, ya know, fix things (4.00 / 1)
it's almost ironic that I can't afford to move to a country where the government realises this
[ Parent ]
. (0.00 / 0)
I could see inventing a time machine to move to the USSR would be expensive, but moving to North Korea, Venezuela, or Cuba can't be that bad. :)  
[ Parent ]
ah yes, that democratic socilaist worker's paradise North Korea (4.00 / 3)
seriously, get out
[ Parent ]
I'll pay for you to leave (2.00 / 2)
You may have missed it, but the rose is off the socialist bloom in Europe. Socialism is basically eating your seed corn; living beyond your means today by funding vast entitlement programs through debt. The problem is, the money runs out at some point, necessitating even larger tax hikes and gutting of social programs. European socialism is fiscally unsustainable. Soooo...if you want to move to a socialist country, I suggest you do it quickly before they all disappear. Make sure you take your buggy whip, 8 track player, and communist manifesto with you.
[ Parent ]
ridiculous (4.00 / 2)
The problem Europe is facing isn't a fiscal crisis, it's a currency crisis.  Their social programs aren't the problem -- the problem is that the Euro doesn't give individual countries sovereignty over their own fiscal affairs.  European countries have not eaten their seed corn; in fact, Germany is doing quite well. So are the Scandinavian states.  Unfortunately, Germany's surplus comes at the expense of Greece's deficit, and Greece can't do anything about it because it's locked into the Euro.  Then, of course, there is the pesky problem of the Greek elite who refuse to pay taxes.  

If any country has eaten its seed corn, it's the US, in that we've allowed our manufacturing base to be dismantled, our educational system to collapse, our water and sewage systems to rust, our highway system to disintegrate, and our political system to ossify into a reptilian battle between two dinosaur parties.    

[ Parent ]
Ain't it so. (0.00 / 0)
Until the Progressives cohere into a real political force, with a clear alternative message to the corporatists, noting can possibly change.  Even then it will be damn near impossible, but we have to try.
[ Parent ]
put up or shut up (4.00 / 1)
seriously, go down to the bank, get a cashier's check for $20k and I'll get out of your shitty country forever
[ Parent ]
I also take paypal (0.00 / 0)
too bad you're not for real
[ Parent ]
Hilarious (4.00 / 4)
"European socialism is fiscally unsustainable."

Yes, it's a darn shame socialists like Goldman Sachs had to wreck Greece's economy.  

[ Parent ]
don't TR this! (4.00 / 3)
seriously guys I don't have any other hope of seeing Amsterdam
[ Parent ]
This is bewilderingly ignorant (4.00 / 3)
Let's leave aside your uninformed screed against socialism. It's wrong and you're an idiot, but I'll let other people demonstrate.

Instead, let's ask how many European nations in fiscal trouble are actually socialist:

Iceland? Well, the Social Democrats and the Left-Greens are in power now, but when the economy collapsed it was the right-wing Independence Party (which had been praised by every libertarian ideologue in the western world for the previous decade) which marched the nation over the cliff with unsustainable borrowing.

Greece? The crash hit when Papandreou was in power, but only just. Truth is, PASOK inherited a time bomb, as the Greek conservatives had falsified economic statistics and spent unsustainably.

Ireland? Oh hell no. Ireland's not just reactionary as far as women's rights go. Fianna Fail and Fine Gael are both right-wing parties. It's so right-wing a party that even their Greens are reactionary, and voted for the massively counter-productive budget cuts.

Britain? Firstly, the debt isn't that bad and the economy is growing again, so the fiscal hole is not all that bad. Secondly, the Labour Party in the past decade has been a very moderate social democratic party. It overspent in the good years (in order to repair decades of Conservative underinvestment) but mostly because it refused to tax the City or the rich sufficiently. Again, case unproven.

Portugal? I don't know much about this one, as it's got a tiny economy. Still, Portugal has a relatively low social net and whilst the Socialists have governed since 2005, the Cabinet is 50% Socialist and 50% independents, some of whom are quite right wing. By all accounts their deficit reduction plans are fairly credible.

Hungary? The new incumbents are trying to blame the Socialists, but their claims of skeletons in the closet turned out to be lies. Hungary is holed below the water line, but not much worse than is the norm in central Europe outside Poland.

Italy? Well, it hasn't blown up yet, but it's surely only a matter of time. Still, if Silvio Berlusconi is a Socialist then Pope Benedict is Jewish.

That basically only leaves Spain where a proper socialist government is responsible for a crisis, and even there it's a collapse in the construction sector rather than persistent overspending that's the problem.

In contrast, the Socialists of Norway are doing just fine.

All this would suggest that you do not have the first idea what you're talking about. Democratic socialism works fine and if Europe would just give it a try it might knock a couple of years of the continent-wide recession they're currently trying to create.

Forgotten Countries - a foreign policy-focused blog

[ Parent ]
Bill Maher (4.00 / 5)
Bill Maher said, "How can Obama be a socialist?  He isn't even a liberal."  Maher was right.
[ Parent ]
I agree with you here (4.00 / 10)
Progressives absolutely should distance ourselves from Obama. There is no reason to go down with that ship, when he has done so little for our agenda.
[ Parent ]
It probably won't work (4.00 / 2)
I wrote about this in early 2009, Obama is how the public will assess liberalism, for better or worse.  We scoff at right wingers making the no-true-scotsman argument about Bush, and can expect much the same if try the same line about Obama later.

That said, registering your criticism now so that you have something to refer back to later when making the "Obama wasn't liberal enough" defence later is at least credible. So, not to say there's no value in it, just that it will have limited effect. Most of the right wingers disavowing Bush did not of course do so in the midst of things, only later.

Even so, with so many people still convinced liberalism and conservativism are flip sides of the same coin (a major misunderstanding that we must fix somehow) they will easily just lump us in with hypocritical right wingers due to the surface facile similarity.

[ Parent ]
I suspect this particular problem (4.00 / 1)
is not a large as has been suggested.  

I don't think most voters think in ideological, left-right terms. People want their problems solved, and they want to be able to identify with the politicians they support, and they need a narrative that makes sense of their world and their role in it.

For many, ideological labels don't do any of those things, and even when they do, I think alternatives ways of doing it could work just as well if not better.

In any event, conservatism has been able to escape relatively unscathed from the taint of Bush - I don't see why progressivism can't avoid being tarred with any of Obama's failures.

Politics is the art of the possible, but that means you have to think about changing what is possible, not that you have to accept it in perpetuity.

[ Parent ]
I agree somewhat (4.00 / 3)
Although I think the truth--that Bush was a rock-ribbed conservative while Obama is a corporate neoliberal with conservative tendencies--matters, and we shouldn't be so cynical as to believe that the a large segment of the public can't grasp this.

And while I don't think the opposition of any single progressive organization, much less blogger, will make people understand the truth about Obama -- especially when there are so many willing to serve a progressive validators -- I do think a drumbeat of criticism from the left can, and already is, starting to have an impact, at least in the mainstream media, where there are more and more stories about the discontent of liberals. That awareness hasn't filtered down to the public at large, but it's early.  

[ Parent ]
The truth (4.00 / 3)
Conservatism, whatever it is, has consistently failed and failed big time.  What few benefits there are work for the few and not for its many followers who are disproportionately poorer.  For some reason I can't fathom it remains a hugely popular self-identifier.  Arguing with a "conservative" who is being actively screwed by the philosophy is a maddening waste of time.  I know.  I've tried.

Liberalism (as opposed to neo-liberalism) has an effective track record that has benefited the millions rather than benefiting only the millionaires.  It has become a toxic word used for attack of neo-liberals by the right and avoided like the plague by the left.

This flip-flop is killing us.  Ronald Reagan was a lousy President who brought permanent problems and only a mediocre present.  The public consistently rates this malevolent goof ball as better than Lincoln, FDR, Washington or any other President.  Give this machine 20 or 30 years and even W will be glorified.

If the public could somehow know the truth, the country would be set free.  How do we exorcise these demons?  Bipartisanship[ and wishy washy politics are not the answer.  Strong and effective (and yes, partisan) politics are surely part of the answer.  Good, effective government and politics killed the Federalists.  Maybe we can do the same with this present batch of Republicans.

[ Parent ]
The oil spil killed any recovery that we had... (0.00 / 0)
Not only did it directly affect jobs in the gulf, but it killed any confidence from both consumers to buy and the business community to hire.

It's McCain's ultimate revenge... the failure of "Drill Baby Drill" hurting his opponent instead of him.  Very disappointing....

REID: Voting against us was never part of our arrangement!
SPECTER: I am altering the deal! Pray I don't alter it any further!
REID: This deal keeps getting worse all the time!

Wasn't there talk of (4.00 / 1)
a big public works program to help the Gulf?  
[ Parent ]
From us... (0.00 / 0)
...but not a word from Washington... which is bizarre.  It's deficit neutral 'cos BP would pay for it...

REID: Voting against us was never part of our arrangement!
SPECTER: I am altering the deal! Pray I don't alter it any further!
REID: This deal keeps getting worse all the time!
[ Parent ]
It's only bizarre (4.00 / 9)
if you think the deficit talk is serious. If you see it as 1) political and 2) designed to ensure cuts in certain things, rather than to actually bring taxes and spending into line, it's not so bizarre.

Politics is the art of the possible, but that means you have to think about changing what is possible, not that you have to accept it in perpetuity.
[ Parent ]
It wasn't the oil spill (0.00 / 0)
it was Greece. Greece killed the confidence.  
[ Parent ]
If by "confidence" (4.00 / 6)
you mean "confidence game," i.e. "the con," then no, it wasn't Greece that killed it it was lack of jobs. People are not as stupid as Versailles thinks.

Montani semper liberi
[ Parent ]
No job = no confidence in economic system or government (0.00 / 0)
I think that was the point.


"It sounds wrong...
     ...but its right."
[ Parent ]
Greece, oil (0.00 / 0)
Am I the only one that sees the slippery slope?

"It sounds wrong...
     ...but its right."
[ Parent ]
The problem wasn't confidence (4.00 / 2)
it was jobs.

Politics is the art of the possible, but that means you have to think about changing what is possible, not that you have to accept it in perpetuity.
[ Parent ]
. (4.00 / 1)
They are actually related.
[ Parent ]
Business don't hire unless they're sure the worst has passed (4.00 / 1)

The oil spill and especially Greece kept alive the possibility that it's not over.  
[ Parent ]
Right, if you believe in supply side economics (4.00 / 1)
Since I find that perspective to be...evidence deficient, I'd say it's jobs (i.e. demand) not investor confidence. Businesses hire when they have customers, and the expectation of more customers.  

Politics is the art of the possible, but that means you have to think about changing what is possible, not that you have to accept it in perpetuity.
[ Parent ]
There's a chill in the air... (4.00 / 6)
We had our family reunion last weekend. The news regarding stoppage of unemployment extensions was severly misread by all. Almost everyone had a job; but, they read the cessation of coverage to mean that they had to stop spending and prepare for the worst. No new cars, no air conditioners, no vacations...nothing but pay the bills and food (alcohol... obviously - it IS my family).

Even before the news of no extension hit the airwaves, the Consumer Confidence level took a 10 point drop (Gusher in the Gulf?). This is going to get bumpy, fast...very fast. The next recessions will be Obamas. God help us all. All hope has been spent and wasted on Obama.  What remains is fear. Please, God, help us all.

lost 225,000 census jobs? (4.00 / 1)
no problem. the new wind/solar energy program that the dems started will absorb those. any day now.
I hear they are hiring at FoxConn (0.00 / 0)
Bit of a commute, but the company will give you a bed if you ask really nicely.


"It sounds wrong...
     ...but its right."
[ Parent ]
We desperately need to put the progressive perspective forward (4.00 / 1)
We can, and should, make the twin arguments that time[s] would be even worse if Republicans were in charge, and that  it would have been better if progressive[s] were in charge.

Given the corporate control of media and the DLC control of the Democratic Party, it is hard to make these arguments, but we must and as loudly as possible. No one else will do it. It would be great if there was a prominent person putting forward these ideas, like Jesse Jackson did in the 1980s. How about Rocky Anderson? Can we recruit him? Or someone else? If not, then we need to do it ourselves.

If we fail, we may end up with President Palin and a majority Republican Congress backed by the corporate Right and enforced by Tea Party brownshirts. That is a very scary scenario.

Corruption of Washington is now clear (4.00 / 2)
One thing going for us: By now I think most people in this country understand that almost everyone in Washington is in the pockets of Wall Street, the health insurance industry, the oil companies, and Halliburton and Blackwater. And everyone not insane understands that the Tea Party solution -- blaming poor people and Democrats -- won't solve that problem.

So people are receptive to a progressive solution and open to progressive office seekers who will aggressively challenge corporate control of the government. Michael Moore's message resonates.

[ Parent ]
So............. (4.00 / 1)
We're pretty much doomed, aren't we?
I feel a little optimistic (0.00 / 0)
I think that they are kind of good in that the numbers are up aside from the census.  I'm not saying whether or not it's a great talking point.  I'm just saying that I feel that way.
Jobs numbers are impossible to spin | 56 comments
USER MENU

Open Left Campaigns

SEARCH

   

Advanced Search

QUICK HITS
STATE BLOGS

Home | RSS/XML Feed | Register | Contact

  © OpenLeft 2007-2010, Powered by SoapBlox

Powered by: SoapBlox