March 1st, 2004

An inter­est­ing point from Tim Blair’s Weblog, regard­ing how the media can twist fig­ures to fit their polit­i­cal bias. unem­ploy­ment is around 5.5% right now, give or take. one tenth of a per­cent­age point a few years ago was ‘low’, now a it’s a huge number.

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22 Responses to “Well Said, Friend.”

1. Amber says:
   March 1st, 2004 at 11:52 pm

   In Jan­u­ary 2004, 112,000 jobs were cre­ated. Since August, a total of 366,000 jobs have been cre­ated.
   • Despite five months of job growth, there are still more than 2.3 mil­lion fewer jobs than at the start of the reces­sion in March 2001.
   • Also, there are more than 700,000 fewer jobs than at the start of the recov­ery in Novem­ber 2001.
   • Com­pared to job growth in a typ­i­cal recov­ery, employ­ment was down more than 8.8 mil­lion jobs in Jan­u­ary.

   A ‘5.6′ or ‘5.3′ doesn’t make a shit­load of dif­fer­ence if you don’t under­stand the real num­bers behind it.
2. Cory says:
   March 2nd, 2004 at 9:15 am

   Jobs are cer­tainly impor­tant, and I agree that we are kind of behind in that area right now. But I think the topic that very few people under­stand is how much pro­duc­tiv­ity has increased in the last year or so. Pro­duc­tiv­ity is how many dol­lars of value are cre­ated by each worker per hour. The reason we’ve been seeing increases in GDP despite the slow growth in jobs is pre­cisely because the people that are work­ing are more pro­duc­tive than they were before. It has been said, and it’s some­thing I per­son­ally believe, that many of the jobs that were cre­ated in the late 90’s were not needed. Tons of people had good paying jobs but they were essen­tially pro­vid­ing little or no ser­vice. I think we are now seeing a little back­lash from this.

   So while I agree that our econ­omy is lack­ing enough jobs, I am glad to see that busi­nesses are becom­ing more effi­cient with their cur­rent work­force. I don’t think I’ve heard a single politi­cian yet praise the more effi­cient econ­omy that is coming out of the ashes of the last reces­sion. Until worker pro­duc­tiv­ity reaches a max­i­mum, I think it is unlikely we will see much of an increase in jobs. But we could already be at that point. Many econ­o­mists are fore­cast­ing a large increase in jobs in the next six months.
3. Daniel says:
   March 2nd, 2004 at 9:56 am

   first of all - it seems as you’re miss­ing the point. i’m talk­ing about media bias here, not the actual num­bers. but …

   ‘In Jan­u­ary 2004, 112,000 jobs were cre­ated. Since August, a total of 366,000 jobs have been created.’

   i’m assum­ing you’re taking your stats from the bureau of labor stats( http://​www.​bls.​gov/​n​e​w​s​.​r​e​l​e​a​s​e​/​e​m​p​s​i​t​.​n​r​0.htm) that 112,000 figure, while par­tially true, is slightly mis­lead­ing. you’re quot­ing this:

   Non­farm pay­roll employ­ment increased by 112,000

   but, leav­ing this out:
   Total employ­ment rose by 496,000 in Jan­u­ary after account­ing for the adjust­ment to pop­u­la­tion con­trols. The employment-​population ratio–the pro­por­tion of the pop­u­la­tion age 16 and older with jobs–increased to 62.4 per­cent over the month.

   more­over, the Amer­i­can work force is at an all time high of 138.5 mil­lion right now. in the past year, 2 mil­lion jobs have been cre­ated by pri­vate and public com­pa­nies.

   Self employed amer­i­cans (which are not accounted for in these ‘job cre­ation sta­tis­tics) are at an all time high as well, at 16.4 mil­lion. this number has increased by almost 1 mil­lion in the past year as well.

   ‘Compared with a typ­i­cal recovery…’

   it’s hard to say that any eco­nomic growth or change is ‘typical’. cory made a good point about eco­nomic pro­duc­tiv­ity, and i’ll add what i read: appar­ently, despite a 6% increase in the ‘economy’ last fall, jobs have not fol­lowed suit as quickly as hoped. pro­duc­tiv­ity usu­ally accel­er­ates as busi­nesses invest during the early stages of eco­nomic growth, but then sub­sides. instead, pro­duc­tiv­ity has soared, elim­i­nat­ing the need for new work­ers.

   basi­cally, increased demand for goods/services gen­er­ated by the grow­ing econ­omy has been MORE than met by the gains in pro­duc­tiv­ity. for exam­ple, if there is a growth of 6% in demand, but your employ­ees can pro­duce 6% more per hour … there is no need for new employ­ees. most of the ‘blame’ seems to have fallen on mas­sive invest­ment in the IT indus­try during the late 90’s, using tech­nol­ogy to make employ­ees work much more effi­ciently, and cre­at­ing this surge in pro­duc­tiv­ity. even­tu­ally, the gains in demand will out­weigh what the cur­rent work­force can handle, and then jobs should sky­rocket. the pre­dic­tion is around 4-5 mil­lion jobs by the end of this year alone, as per white​house.gov (take that with a grain of salt, obvi­ously).

   ‘Despite 5 months of job growth…’

   you said it your­self. more jobs are being cre­ated. you don’t get out of a reces­sion overnight, but as long as things are going UP, things could be a lot worse.

   hon­estly, all i care about is growth. we can talk about num­bers from 2 years ago versus now all day long, and we can copy and paste stats till the cows come home. all i know is this month is better than last month, and next month will be better than this one. job growth takes time, espe­cially when you factor in what kind of eco­nomic tur­moil we’ve gone through in the past 5 years or so. a reces­sion, the whole 9/11 thing, 2 wars, and some of the biggest cor­po­rate implo­sions in modern his­tory.

   my point all along was not the num­bers, really. i was point­ing out another person’s obser­va­tion regard­ing the ‘bias’ of the media … or simply how one word can change the entire per­cep­tion of a number.
4. fruity says:
   March 2nd, 2004 at 9:57 am

   EXACTLY. To cut costs, com­pa­nies have finally real­ized that by paying less people to do the same job, you can some­times make a profit. Which the last time I checked is the goal of most firms in the econ­omy, PROFIT MAX­I­MIZA­TION.

   Let’s just hope that that prick Kerry can get elected just in time for the econ­omy to swing back, so he can take all the credit. How’s that sound? Then Kerry can pour all the excess money into wel­fare pro­grams and 8 years later hand a fucked up econ­omy back to the next Repub­li­can pres­i­dent.

   BTW, anyone else notice that leg­less one-​armed troll of a man Max Cle­land clap­ping last night, by bang­ing his only func­tional limb onto his tat­tered stump. That almost made me puke my com­mu­nist guts out.
5. Cory says:
   March 2nd, 2004 at 12:15 pm

   Maybe the real job prob­lem is a pop­u­la­tion issue. Here is a good way to reduce unem­ploy­ment: the govt should just kill off a few thou­sand people look­ing for jobs. A new depart­ment could be cre­ated called, “The Depart­ment of Unem­ploy­ment Correction.” It would essen­tially be a slaugh­ter­house, but dis­guised of course as a typ­i­cal gov­ern­ment build­ing. You walk in, fill out a form, and take a number. If you filled out, “Looking for a job, cur­rently unemployed” then you go through the door on the left, the cur­tain closes, and thwack! One less unem­ployed person at a time! We could dras­ti­cally reduce unem­ploy­ment this way. I like it.
6. fruity says:
   March 2nd, 2004 at 1:23 pm

   …and then the employ­ees could molest the bodies of the dead women and chil­dren while they’re still warm…
7. amber says:
   March 2nd, 2004 at 7:10 pm

   You guys are really pathetic.

   Maybe this coun­try isn’t being as pro­duc­tive because the jobs are going else­where?
8. fruity says:
   March 2nd, 2004 at 7:42 pm

   I believe the point WAS, this coun­try is being MUCH MORE pro­duc­tive, hence fewer work­ers for the same amount of tasks. What does jobs moving else­where have much to do with pro­duc­tiv­ity in the US anyway? Are you actu­ally John Kerry in dis­guise?
9. Daniel says:
   March 2nd, 2004 at 9:52 pm

   Amber - employ­ees are being MORE pro­duc­tive, not less. that’s the prob­lem, as we’ve already spoken to great length about.

   regard­ing out­sourc­ing: it’s called com­pe­ti­tion. kerry wants to raise the min­i­mum wage, and penal­ize com­pa­nies for taking their busi­ness else­where, where they can find cheaper labor. if the min­i­mum wage con­tin­ues to increase, more jobs will be lost even­tu­ally.

   think of it like a pie: there is only one pie to go around. if we raise the min­i­mum wage over and over, there will be fewer people to be able to eat said pie. even­tu­ally, people will look to go find another pie to split up. kind of a crappy anal­ogy, but it’ll work.
10. Cory says:
    March 2nd, 2004 at 10:28 pm

    Another side of the out­sourc­ing debate that is again rarely dis­cussed by politi­cians is that prices decrease when jobs go to coun­tries where pro­duc­tion is cheap­est. We work jobs to earn money and then we use the money to buy things. Having more money doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily mean that we can buy more things. If we were to take the totally pro­tec­tion­ist approach (ie we don’t trade with other coun­tries at all) we would find prices to be astro­nom­i­cally high. There are tons of exam­ples, both the­o­ret­i­cal and empir­i­cal where trade can be shown to be ben­e­fi­cial.

    But I think one of the deeper prob­lems with out­sourc­ing jobs to other coun­tries is that fact that cer­tain jobs, or maybe an indi­vid­u­als par­tic­u­lar career choice, is over-​romanticized. Being a “family farmer” is con­sid­ered morally “good” by many people in the US. US con­sumers could enjoy lower prices if we moved most (not all) farm­ing to dif­fer­ent coun­tries. But the idea is some­how that being a family farmer is a good pro­fes­sion, and those that are doing it should con­tinue. I think a much smarter lesson to teach is that learn­ing to be flex­i­ble is “good”. Learn skills that will enhance the your abil­i­ties in many jobs, rather than learn­ing the spe­cific facts of one par­tic­u­lar job. Then when your job is out­sourced to a for­eign coun­try, you don’t have to sit at home and cry about jobs moving over­seas.

    Another exam­ple about the ben­e­fits of pro­duc­tiv­ity comes from the now deceased USSR. In that coun­try EVERY­ONE had a job. It was a state man­date that every­one have a job. In hind­sight it appears that most people sat on their ass all day. Some­times I think this is the com­mu­nist dream; to sit around all day and do noth­ing, yet be con­sid­ered employed. It is easier to tell your­self, “I am a pro­duc­tive member of society.” This of course is not the case.

    If you are not doing some­thing the best way pos­si­ble, then you are wast­ing your life, and you should let some­one else take over; you’ve been beat.
11. Daniel says:
    March 2nd, 2004 at 10:31 pm

    we need some good lib­er­als on this site cory. we just agree with each other all day ;)
12. Cory says:
    March 2nd, 2004 at 10:35 pm

    We do. Although I’ve only met a small hand­ful of good lib­er­als in my life­time. They are a strange breed. I would say that being a lib­eral is just more trendy than being a con­ser­v­a­tive. It’s more an image thing than an issue thing.

    The good lib­er­als I have met have some con­vinc­ing points, but all of them would fully agree with us here.
13. amberq says:
    March 2nd, 2004 at 10:58 pm

    Sooo .. you don’t want your wages to be raised? Or hey .. your over­time to well .. actu­ally be PAID to you??? That’s fine. Daniel I know just as well as you more than $6 an hour (after taxes) might actu­ally be nice.

    Pro­duc­tiv­ity might be UP here because we have less people doing more jobs!

    What­ever go to move to India.

    I’m going to Van­cou­ver in April 2005 if the Neo­cons pass the new draft move­ment under the noses of Amer­i­cans.

    No matter age 18-26, being a woman, being in school, having kids, or being mar­ried won’t matter a bit. Go ahead though stay igno­rant to bills in front of Con­gress. I refuse to get screwed over.
    Let’s go fight for a war which we were lied to and was unnec­es­sary in the first place! YAY PNAC!

    When are you people going to get it through your thick skulls THEY LIED?! You’re so quick to call some­one a ‘commie’ or a stupid ‘liberal’ .. but this isn’t a par­ti­san issue you fools. Has George Bush done ANY­THING for us as young adults? No. NO!

    Grow the hell up and GET OVER the par­ti­san shit and look at the facts. Or course I’m sure those big bugs up your asses are pre­vent­ing that… Get some common sense. I believe most in the Lib­er­tar­ian Party plat­form so you all can fuck off for con­tin­u­ing to call me some left-​wing lib­eral commie nut. I just look at what the hell is going on. Read some .gov press releases and brief­ings and gag­gles. You’ll real­ize WTF the press wants to know and what Scott McClel­lan has no con­science lying about. They’re all liars.

    No WMD?
    Kelly not a sui­cide?
    UK/US spied on UN?
    War debt?
    Retire­ment age = 70?
    No tax cuts for *US*
    War that you might be shipped OFF TO.
    Water with arsenic in it.
    Half the gro­ceries at Kroger made else­where?
    Bush never attend­ing a sol­diers funeral?
    Rums­feld fuck­ing up every­thing?

    If you guys are so “anti-lib” or what­ever you’re trying to show off to be .. explain to every­one …

    WHAT HAS GEORGE BUSH DONE FOR YOU?

    Please. Inform me.

    GROW THE FUCK UP AND OPEN YOUR EYES.
14. Rick says:
    March 2nd, 2004 at 11:51 pm

    Amber, basi­cally George Bush as stepped up to the plate and said to ter­ror­ists or other people that try to harm this coun­try that we’re not going to take shit from anyone. “Water with arsenic in it.” What’s your fac­tual basis for that?? Come on, you actu­ally believe that? The gov­ern­ment, which i have cer­tain dis­agree­ments with, is not this big bad entity that you lib­er­als make it out to be. What is this draft you speak of?? Where is your evi­dence for that? Don’t give me some bull­shit link to some con­spir­acy web­site either, show me fac­tual basis behind your argu­ments and maybe people will get off your case. George Bush has rebuilt the econ­omy that Clin­ton ran into the ground. You people are quick to say that Bush had some con­spir­acy to let 9/11 happen, theres more fac­tual proof that Clin­ton knew more about Bin Laden than Bush. If any­thing, the prob­lem with Bin Ladan should have been taken care of under his regime. Clin­ton didn’t do shit about the pre­vi­ous attacks on the Trade Center or the USS Cole, hence why 9/11 hap­pened. Like Erik said a lib­eral pres­i­dent fucks shit up and the next repub­li­can pres­i­dent that comes into office takes the blame. If this post seems all over the place I apoli­gize, i know the logic in this com­ment is a little hard to follow, but i think all of you get my gen­eral points. That is all for my debut post on this site.
15. rick says:
    March 2nd, 2004 at 11:59 pm

    Oh yea, in address to the orig­i­nal point of the post, it’s true that the media can warp things. One of the first things that we were taught in my media classes was the con­cept of agenda set­ting. The gen­eral media is more or less a form of enter­tain­ment that some­times has fac­tual basis. The media, much like other forms of enter­tain­ment, is a buis­ness; so the goal is to reach the high­est audi­ence pos­si­ble. The only way to do this is for the reporter, or anchor to add a cer­tain level of per­sonal opin­ion that is geared to the target audi­ence. I’m not sure if this is com­pletely bad. I’m a firm believer that the gen­eral public is une­d­u­cated and as a news source you want to try to get those people to buy your paper, or watch your news­cast. Whether your news­cast or paper is 100% fac­tual or not doesnt matter. People still side with a gen­eral polit­i­cal party regard­less of their edu­ca­tion, so the media acts on that. No one news source is greater than another because of the fact that theres bias no matter where you get your news from. It’s impos­si­ble to be objec­tive when it comes to the media because of the fact that people are biased by nature, no matter how objec­tive they try to be. The goal is to read as much as you can about a cer­tain sub­ject and form your own opin­ion about it.
16. Cory says:
    March 3rd, 2004 at 6:46 am

    Amber, do you ever re-​read your posts? Half the things you say aren’t even eng­lish. You switch sub­jects so fast I’m rarely sure I know what you are talk­ing about. My sug­ges­tion: take a deep breath before you start typing.
17. fruity says:
    March 3rd, 2004 at 9:24 am

    Hey Amber?…You bril­liant genius, Cory’s right, print out copies of the things you say, and the con­spir­acy web­sites that you believe, and put them in a little box under your bed. Open them in 10 years, and see what you think then. Most of us don’t know about this shit you’ve been spew­ing, because 99.9% of it is com­pletely made up, so don’t preach it to me as fact, because I don’t believe a word. I think you need to get a job, make a life for your­self, and stop blam­ing the evil tyran­ni­cal gov­ern­ment for all of your pathetic fail­ures and per­sonal prob­lems. Vote for who you feel is best qual­i­fied, and if the out­come really both­ers you that much…GET THE FUCK OUT. I DARE YOU to find a better coun­try, any­where in the world, at any time in his­tory that will give a whiny, inse­cure, angry young lady such as your­self a second glance. Please, PLEASE grow up.
18. fruity says:
    March 3rd, 2004 at 9:25 am

    Sorry, make that a BIG box.
19. amber says:
    March 4th, 2004 at 8:12 pm

    Rick I won’t even bother return­ing those insults. You should feel sorry for your­self.

    Hey Daniel said I’d be a fail­ure too. You guys are awe­some.
20. amber says:
    March 4th, 2004 at 8:26 pm

    http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20040304-112720-3622r.htm

    http://​www.​news24.com/​N​e​w​s​2​4​/​W​o​r​l​d​/​N​e​w​s​/​0​,​,​2​-​1​0​-​1​4​6​2​_​1​4​2​0​2​5​8​,​0​0​.html

    http://​www.​reuters.​com/​n​e​w​s​A​r​t​i​c​l​e​.​j​h​t​m​l​?​t​y​p​e​=​t​o​p​N​e​w​s​&​a​m​p​;​s​t​o​r​y​I​D​=​4​4​96104

    http://​www.​tal​la​has​see.​com/​m​l​d​/​d​e​m​o​c​r​a​t​/​8​1​0​0​4​2​2.htm

    http://​news.​ft.​com/​s​e​r​v​l​e​t​/​C​o​n​t​e​n​t​S​e​r​v​e​r​?​p​a​g​e​n​a​m​e​=​F​T​.​c​o​m​/​S​t​o​r​y​F​T​/​F​u​l​l​S​t​o​r​y​&​a​m​p​;​c​=​S​t​o​r​y​F​T​&​a​m​p​;​c​i​d​=​1​0​7​7​6​9​0​8​7​9​5​6​6​&​a​m​p​;​p​=​1​0​1​2​5​7​1​7​27172

    http://​releases.​usnewswire.​com/​G​e​t​R​e​l​e​a​s​e​.​a​s​p​?​i​d​=​1​3​4​-​0​3​0​22004

    http://​query.​nytimes.​com/​g​s​t​/​a​b​s​t​r​a​c​t​.​h​t​m​l​?​r​e​s​=​F​1​0​7​1​5​F​A​3​E​5​8​0​C​7​6​8​E​D​D​A​B​0​8​9​4​D​C​4​04482

    http://​www.​wash​ing​ton​post.​com/​w​p​-​d​y​n​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​s​/​A​2​8​5​2​5​-​2​0​0​4​M​a​r​3​.html

    http://​seat​tle​times.​nwsource.​com/​h​t​m​l​/​n​a​t​i​o​n​w​o​r​l​d​/​2​0​0​1​8​7​0​0​4​2​_​i​r​a​q​d​i​g​0​3​.html

    http://​www.​epinet.​org/​i​s​s​u​e​b​r​i​e​f​s​/​1​9​8​/​i​b​1​9​8.pdf

    http://​www.​wash​ing​ton​post.​com/​a​c​2​/​w​p​-​d​y​n​/​A​2​6​4​4​6​-​2​0​0​4​M​a​r​3​?​l​a​n​g​u​a​g​e​=​p​r​inter

    Rick for you:
    http://​web​server.​cr.​usgs.​gov/​t​r​a​c​e​/​p​u​b​s​/​f​s​-​0​63-00/

    (Bush won’t drink Wash­ing­ton DC water.)
21. fruity says:
    March 5th, 2004 at 9:19 am

    not sure how strongly i’d put my faith in an arti­cle from the “Tallahassee Democrat”, but that’s just me…
22. amber says:
    March 5th, 2004 at 11:05 am

    it was off google news .. *shrug*

    so what about the other ones?