It’s the economy, stoopid:
Employers added 162,000 non-farm payroll jobs in March, the government reported Friday, the strongest job growth since the nation entered recession in December 2007 and the strongest confirmation yet that the U.S. economy is on the mend.
In another bit of good news, the unemployment rate in March held steady at 9.7 percent, according to the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Although the mainstream economic forecasters had expected even higher job growth in March, by about 40,000 posts, those higher forecasts anticipated strong hiring by the government to carry out the census. The number of census workers hired in March was less than half of expectations, meaning March’s number reflected actual private-sector hiring.
This is excellent news for the American people and great news for Democrats.
As a side note, I just want to state to all the people out there who think good journalism is dead, you really need to be reading McClatchy. Read that piece and see how clear, concise, and easy to understand it is. They really are the only print news of any value any more.
demkat620
Whew! Not a truly great number but positive nonetheless.
Now build on it democrats!
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@demkat620: They are good enough politically for dems, and a harbinger for better things to come for the American people.
First post Mr. Cole makes me mad, second makes me glad. This is shaping up to be one hell of a morning.
tamied
@General Egali Tarian Stuck: He likes to keep you on your toes.
Rhoda
Good to see positive news. I saw a CNN poll that Republicans are more trusted on the economy than Democrats; after they presided over the collapse of our economy. I blame Democrats. Where the hell are they? I never see them on tv fighting the fight and repeating the party line like I do Republicans. It’s like they’re waiting on the White House to do everything.
Face
OT:
Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot. Yikes.
I thought I’d see this with more blue-collar gigs, never thought I’d see what seems quasi-unethical and certainly unprofessional w/r/t white-collar jobs.
WereBear
@Rhoda:
Yeah. I certainly don’t want them to turn into Republicans, but a little straight talk, even, would be highly welcome.
The Other Steve
It’s not about whether you can get the job, it’s whether you can do the job.
Noonan
@Rhoda: Agree. But it’s also a lot easier to look competent when you don’t have any responsibilities.
debit
@Rhoda: I think the problem is the dems, like Grayson, who do push back aren’t invited on the TV machine unless it’s MSNBC. And even then Tweety tells him he’s wrong (even when Grayson was right).
CalD
I wish all newspapers could be McClatchy. They actually don’t suck — or at least their Washington bureau doesn’t. It’s refreshing.
Pasquinade
Moderators, please consider this for a new topic:
…a new study put together by The Winston Group, a conservative-leaning polling and strategy firm run by the former director of planning for former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich.
RSR
we need to change the perception of that jobs number by relating it to the minimum number of jobs needs to keep up with population growth, which I believe is about 140,000.
So, really the economy only expanded enough to create 20,000 more jobs than the minimum.
It’s like saying 32º F isn’t cold because it’s higher than zero. It’s still fucking freezing, and so is the economy.
Nick
@Rhoda:
They’re there, they’re just not being shown.
Nick
@RSR: When it’s been zero degrees for 18 months, 32 degrees feels like a heatwave and you need to revel in it. Stop looking a gift horse in the mouth. To answer Rhoda’s question, THIS is why Democrats lose the messaging war.
Rhoda
@Noonan: The White House has a lot of responsiblites but they are the ones expected to go out and sell legislation and also help craft it and hold everyone’s hand. It’s insane IMO.
All I want is for the leadership in the House and Senate to tell their members; get on tv and say x, y, and z.
IMO the reason Democrats didn’t get a bigger bump in the polls is all because Republicans decided early on the Americans hate this and Democrats rammed this through talking point and said that over and over so it became a line in every reporters story on health care.
This is a big problem and a major reason why Democrats are not getting the credit for the stimulus.
cleek
sometimes it helps when you put things in context.
Nick
@debit: Grayson has been on CNN twice…once to get bitched out by a “panel of political experts” for calling Republican names and again to debate Michele Bachmann in the great “extremist nutzos in Congress debate” on Larry King.
Both times it was essentially like putting a retarted kid in a talent show…done just so people can laugh at him, not listen to him.
The Other Steve
@RSR:
Have you factored in baby boomer retirement in your equations or are you just spouting conventional wisdom from 1990?
Nick
@Rhoda:
If TV would let them on, that would be easy. Take it from a long time TV producer, they get on TV when TV lets them on. They don’t want them on…precisely because they will sell their agenda and it will ruin the “horse race” and “political drama.”
Here’s how it works.
Anthony Weiner goes on TV channel, talks about awesomeness of healthcare bill. Weiner is debated or followed by some right wing nut who negates everything Weiner says with lies. Media anchor goes “thank you for the debate. The American people who decide these tough issues” and now the American people are confused. Anthony Weiner goes back on to clear up confusion, but media just throws on another right wing nut to negate everything he says and media anchor goes “Well, these are very tough issues for the American people to figure out” and, once again, people are confused.
Rhoda
@debit: Tweety seems very sympathetic to the Dems and while he’s a blowhard I don’t think he’s the problem. The problem is that a basic message like without stimulus you would have no job and no home isn’t being made.
This is so simple. But Democrats take a simple message and worry it to death to make sure it’s fact check proof. Or whatever.
People want to know did you do the right thing. When they’re wrong and know they’re wrong; Republicans will say they did. Look at unemployment; they’re going to blame democrats for the funding mess. And I bet it works; because who the fuck is going to stop them?
The MSM is a conservative teabagging institution now; they love the lies. And when they don’t; they can’t stop them.
Case in point: death panels.
Rhoda
Nick, they have to find a way. The folks that do get on TV don’t have a clear message to sell. And I don’t see them fighting the fight at the grassroots. I don’t see these simple messages on the blogsphere.
ETA: Nick, the main thing is that democrats are having THEIR policy fights in public. That’s just a recipe for disaster and leads to half of the confusion IMO. The Democrats need to get behind closed doors, settle among themselves, and then come out with the plan. That’s what happened to get health care passed. That needs to be how the jobs situation is handled.
We have a three way debate now; and democrats are lumped with conservadems who are Republican lite. That means Republicans are getting credit for work DEMS are doing.
It’s infuriating. And causing half the confusion.
Nick
@Rhoda: They don’t have a clear message to sell because this isn’t simple. Any simple explanation is muddled up by someone to counter it with confusion and questions, in the name of “unbiased reporting”
The only way to keep Republicans off television and if you have a way to make that work, I’m all ears.
geg6
All I know is that my brother-in-law Regis works in logistics at a stainless finishing plant here and they have been working 4 day weeks for a year. Just this week, his plant manager said that they’ll be going back to 5 days as of next week.
I laud his company for cutting hours rather than doing massive layoffs. Of course, most of the guys working there are Teabaggers (it’s a non-union shop, of course) and won’t give our president or congress any kudos for pulling them out of the slump. Hell, Regis tells me that they have been bitching about extending unemployment benefits for those who have not been as lucky as they have.
Nick
@Rhoda: Ok let me talk to you as a TV news producer for a second.
This message has often been made by Democrats we put on our shows, the few we actually put on, but Republicans countering by saying “no job! Unemployment is high!” “No home! Look at the foreclosure rates!” We in the media treated the stimulus as the fix-it-all and not a means to stop the bleeding before we could attend to the wounds…so since we’re not back to a 1998-style booming economy, Republicans get to make the argument it failed and Democrats are on defense.
Because Republicans are free to lie on our airwaves and Democrats are not. I spent three hours in a meeting last fall talking about how to go forward in calling out the White House for a wrong number of “jobs saved by the stimulus” on the White House website, but when I brought up that we needed to stop allowing Republicans to come on our show and say Obama created a $1 trillion deficit, I got told that if I wanted “to write Democratic talking points, I should get a job at the White House”
Then I’m not really sure what you want the Democrats to do? Send in the national guard to shut down news networks?
Noonan
@Rhoda: It’s tough to take credit for the stimulus when unemployment is around double digits. “Hey, at least it’s not at 15 percent!” That’s not exactly a winner. There’s no easy X, Y and Z platitudes that can spin away the disaster that is our employment numbers. I agree that Democrats would be better served having a coherent message. But that’s been the case for decades.
Put simply: it’s easy to criticize. And that’s about all Republicans can do at this point.
Nick
@Rhoda:
Ah, a TV news producer’s dream.
“Why are Democrats doing everything behind closed doors? They said they would be transparent! They’re hiding from us. They’re afraid of something. They’re doing something sinister. Here is John McCain to tell us more”
You see why that doesn’t work?
GregB
John,
McLatchey is really one of the few remaining redoubts of actual journalism.
They cover the facts of the story in a simple and straight forward manner.
More blogs should drive traffic their way.
-G
Da Bomb
@Rhoda: I agree with Nick aboout how hard it is to even get Democrats on television. I worked in media for a while.
Most of the companies that own the news stations are conservative, so there is a slight bias towards trying to look “balanced” even though they are not.
It’s a struggle and there’s still that idea of if it bleeds it leads mentality. That’s just not incorporated with violent crime stories, but also politics.
The shrillest, craziest, most outlandish crap that causes controversy and confusion wins the day. Anyone sounding rational doesn’t get the attention or exposure that is warranted.
Just Some Fuckhead
It’s frustrating to see an opportunity to shorten the workweek to 32 or 35 hours pass by without any serious debate. It’s crazy to insist that full employment means every American working a 40 hour/week job. The only way to sustain the demand for that kind of capacity is with a bubble economy which introduces a whole nother level of employment instability.
kay
@geg6:
Everyone is going back to work here. It’s been getting better for a while, in manufacturing.
I think there is going to be stubborn unemployment in the least educated group for a long time. I actually think that’s a structural problem.
Unemployment rate for:
Less than a high school diploma: 14.5%
High school with no college: 10.8%
Some college or associates degree: 8.2%
Bachelor’s or higher: 4.9% (this is near full employment from an economic perspective).
No one wants to talk about this (IMO) because it goes against the idea that we’re all suffering in this, but that simply ain’t true, and it’s never been true. That consumer-debt driven economy we’ve relied on for 20 years kept the lowest tier working. I don’t know that that’s coming back.
AhabTRuler
Hey. shout out to McClatchy, esp. the DC office, which is primarily the old Knight-Ridder DC office.
OTOH, it’s also where Clark Hoyt won his PP, so he wasn’t always a hack.
Kirk Spencer
@Nick: This is why Democrats won’t lose as much as the hotheads are expecting.
Yes, things are bad, but they are getting better. People have a tendency to act on how things are going, not where they’ve been.
Oh, there’ll still be plenty of pain. Lots of people are still bad off, and will still be bad off in November.
But everyone will know people who /finally/ got a job. They’ll notice that when push came to shove, Democrats got their goals accomplished and the nation is NOT going down, but is instead going up.
Seriously, look at the Republican message right now. In a nutshell, it’s “Stop the Democrats from being successful.”
Joey Maloney
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot redux: That crazy asshole Virginia state’s attorney, not content with making himself look like an (and here reality bifurcates between the twenty-seven percenters and the sane:)
hero
idiot
by suing to overturn HCR and then
heroically saving money
lying
by saying that it will only cost the state of Virginia $350, the court filing fee – is now suing the EPA for releasing new fuel economy standards for cars. His
brilliant
mendacious
grounds: that releasing the standards is an implicit rejection of his challenge to
obamanazifacistikenyan totalitarianism
reality
that CO2 emissions are a cause of global climate change.
Moral: don’t vote for “The Cooch”.
ChrisB
The jobs report also revised the January and February figures upward:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/03/business/economy/03jobs.html?hp
Before the report came out this morning, Morning Joe was pounding the lack of job growth. Think this report will stop them?
El Cid
McClatchy has consistently reminded me and its readers over the last few years what actual journalism looks like, and since its Washington version is the one most people see on the net, it isn’t bloated up with crazy hawk/punditariat blowhard liars.
Right now one of the most popular stories on the Yahoo! News list is this McClatchy story on how the right wing generally is trying to re-write history (but, of course, they’re jes’ fixin’ it back frum whin the libruls ruint it).
I am pleased to realize that I had no idea that modern righties had beefs with the Jamestown settlement.
However, McClatchy does play the bullshit “but tha leff duz it too” by noting that, um, you see, Ward Churchill exists! Which proves that ‘the left’ also re-writes history, since all of us Democrats and liberals and leftists do nothing but quote crazy comments from Ward Churchill and defend him and his writing and allow him to play Indian.
Nick
@Kirk Spencer: Meh, I’m beginning to notice movement in the teabaggers direction in some public option around me and in polls, so I don’t know. Gallup had a poll that made me ! the other day, said 53% thought Democrats “abused their power” when passing healthcare.
I’m a fairly cynical person when it comes to how the public feels. I have to wonder if we’re reaching a point where Democrats not passing legislation means they can’t get anything done and Democrats passing legislation means they’re abusing their power and they’re just in a no-win situation no matter what happens.
At least for this year, not in the long run.
Rhoda
@Nick: Okay, brother. UNCLE! It’s pretty much hopeless to think Democrats can put out a winning message. The whole world is against them.
kay
@ChrisB:
I think Morning Joe was pounding unemployment because he knew the jobs report was coming out.
I hadn’t watched him in a while, but he’s completely dropped any pretense of being anything other than a GOP shill.
They’re morons on that show. It exists to showcase morons, and the moronic guests and “co hosts” have to kiss his ass or they don’t get invited back.
I do not know why liberals play along. Is it worth it?
Nick
@Rhoda: It’s not a question of being able to put out a winning message. We know some Democrats have been doing that. It’s a question of whether or not the winning message can be delivered.
You can write the greatest letter in the world, but if the Post Office doesn’t deliver it, what good does it do?
Maude
@Nick:
It is better to allow events to play out. People will see things getting a bit better. It is a slow crawl back to any kintd of decent economy. There has to be a lot of change because the financial industry was too big and manufacturing went downhill.
Health care allows people to get out of jobs they hate and start new businesses. This is where inovation begins. I heard that on Bloomberg a few months ago.
It’s about what happens, not what anyone on cable tv says about what happens.
I am sure that Obama doesn’t want the congressional dems out there declaing victory over the economy. This isn’t getting solved in a 20 second commercial.
If you don’t watch cable, things are a lot calmer and there are some small signs that we are not going down the tubes.
Let the repubs scream. They are going to be left with egg all over thier faces.
This time last year, there was still talk about 1929.
El Cid
@Pasquinade: A great number, perhaps a majority, of my coworkers and neighbors, believe that one of the biggest problems we have currently been dealing with is our terrible inflation, you know, because of all the debt and stuff, and they really don’t seem to like it when I point out there has been NO inflation, in fact we’re still in (in Krugman’s term) a “disinflationary” period.
And we can go round and round and round and I can suggest that they’re using “inflation” to mean that it’s harder to buy stuff since people are making less at work (less hours, lower sales, their family members etc. having lost jobs and even if they found another one they’re in debt, etc.), and they seem to grasp it, and then shortly later they’re talking about “all the inflation” again.
And I tune into right wing AM radio and I hear that we’re facing all this terrible Democrat inflation right now, and also around the corner we’re going to be Zimbabwe, etc.
El Cid
I think it would help Democrats as a party to remember that they have to work on every single issue and desired outlook as though it’s a campaign and you have to use every tool possible to sell your message to not just enemy territory billion dollar news media, but to citizens so that they’ll grasp the theme you’re trying to push.
They seem to do this in political campaigns, but then often seem to expect that this will just ‘happen’ while governing.
Elie
@kay:
And the uneducated tier are what make up the teabaggers. That will get worse before it gets better…
While I agree to some extent with Rhoda upstring that the “message” about the economy is not getting out completely, I do think that the impact of the stimulus, health care changes and other things will begin to change perceptions over time. There is no short cut for citizen self awareness and the teevee is not going to do it…its a more indirect process in this country, unfortunately.
Elie
@Maude:
I agree with your comment, Maude
kay
@Elie:
I just don’t know that retail-related is coming back. Look, the fact is, we were spending money we did not have.
It couldn’t go on forever, and it didn’t.
I’m encouraged (somewhat) that the recovery is slow. Maybe this time it will be based on something tangible and real.
We can’t just keep creating bubbles to get re-elected. Someone has to address this. Obama is the goddamn grown up. It is the main reason I backed him. He doesn’t believe in fairy tales.
I see the political risk in telling people who are unemployed that they may need more training, it sounds unsympathetic, and I think media collude in pretending that the pain from the recession is shared, but it’s not. That’s not true.
It is cruel to continue to lie to people. Any job that was dependent on consumers spending more than they make is not coming back.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
Dems by nature are people who are driven to give their independent opinion. All you have to do is read this blog and other left wing blogs to see that in action.
A little message discipline for congress critters would be nice and I encourage it, but do not get upset or too frustrated, nor overly criticize them, because I am the same way.
It’s like getting cats to be more like dogs, and vice versa. Goes against nature, and I am glad it is that way.
kay
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
The media promoted the Bush economy (even financial papers, and “experts”) well past it’s sell-by date.
They were caught unaware when the whole economy imploded. I maintain that regular people knew long before media did that the whole thing was coming off the rails.
They’re not real fast off the mark when it comes to the economy, and every time they’re wrong (and they’re wrong a lot) they double down on caution.
They’ll be reporting on any recovery about two years after it happens, if their reporting on the crash is any guide.
Elie
@kay:
We have a long way to go to become more a nation of adults. We have been children or worse for a very long time and the consequences of that are visible in seeing where we are now. No one ever wants to pay the piper but we are going to have to one way or the other. It may take bearing negative consequences over and over before we “get it”… I dont think most of it can happen during Obama’s tenure, whether two terms or not… just too difficult to get past the real distortions in attitude and perceptions that quickly. No, we are in a long game with some real hard times still ahead… The opposition party will continue to breathe life into the distortion as long as it can
some other guy
@El Cid:
The shitload of bitching about the weak dollar that was going on in the financial media for months and months last year was really stupid, too. So what? As long as inflation remains low, a weak dollar means an increase in exports. Hell, one of things that fueled China’s huge growth was that they pegged their currency to a rate way below that of the dollar making their exports even more ridiculously cheap!
Also, a weak dollar drives stock and bond prices up, no? As long as inflation stays low, what’s the downside of a weak dollar, exactly? Aside from pissing off countries holding the dollar in reserve, that is.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@El Cid:
I think I understand what you are saying, but I worry that people (including our leaders) are finite, they only have so much time, energy and mental focus to spend, and part of what I like about Dems is that a fair number of them actually spend some time reading about, thinking about, and talking about policy issues as policy issues, not political issues. And that is sort of how we go about making the right policy decisions on the merits. How much of that will have to be given up if Dems spend even more time (than they do now) focusing on the permanent campaign?
It seems to me that this trend towards having to be on-message 24/7, and having to always fight every minute of the day for media share, is both antithetical to the very idea of representative (rather than direct) democracy, and in the long run tends to destroy it. And for the GOP this is a feature, not a bug. Our system of govt is designed for episodic politics and continual governance, and between the two of them the GOP and our media are doing everything they can to break that system.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@kay: Most employees want to please their bosses, and doubly so in the highly competitive media world. And the liberal media anchors and pundits are employed by big bidness, that Bush’s economic policies were developed for.
Obama and dems in general look after the peasants that plutocrats look down on, so you can do the math.
The most under reported story is the fact that when the peasants do better, so do the well scrubbed upper crust, especially over the long haul. It is our overall short sightedness as a country that is the main problem. Always has been, with some brief interludes of enlightenment when neglecting the demand side nearly sinks our economic boat.
But it seems now days, not even near catastrophe provides much introspection. The era of the soundbite owns us.
El Cid
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Sure, I’d rather live in a saner society in which they didn’t have to do that. But I think that they got to the point of ‘campaigning’ for HCR as it came time to finish it. I’m not trying to shout for the players to ‘play harder’, I’m just mentioning what I think is the real operative media and messaging environment.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
Um, there are only, what, six more labor reports before the election? Do you think that treading water or microscopic improvements is gaining any real traction outside of Dem partisans?
I think the best news for Dems is that Republicans are still mired in the hog wallow of sleaze and insanity. If there are six more “not as shitty as the month before” reports before the election I would hardly see that as good news for Dems in general.
Bob L
Well obviously the fair and balanced answer is Job growth is the Bush Recovery after the Obama Recession.
cleek
every Dem should carry a copy of the chart i linked to, above. any time someone mentions jobs, they should whip it out and say “Look, motherfucker, the GOP under Bush put us in a goddamn huge hole. They lost millions of American jobs. Now, it’s going to take some time to get back to where we were, but the data could not be any clearer about the fact that the Democrats under Obama have turned the GOP’s recession around. Yes, it’s taking time, but fer fuck’s sake, how long do you think it takes to replace 8 million jobs? Idiots. Every last one of you!”
Mike P
@El Cid: I did a big post on that same topic over at True/Slant. The stuff that’s going on in Texas is nuts.
Hob
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Totally in agreement with you on the second part, not so much on the first.
I mean, yeah, the current standard is nuts, it makes people miserable, and it’s unsustainable unless we either start another bubble or luck into some kind of massive unexpected opportunity/emergency to reanimate our industrial sector. And we can look across the pond and see proof that another way is possible, except whenever the subject of Europe comes up, it’s way too easy to scare people with either (a) it’s a commie hellhole!! there are no things nicer than our things!!! or (b) yes they have nice things, but WE can’t ever have nice things because we are inherently special in some unlucky way (our history, our political system, our awesome work ethic, too many of the kind of people I don’t like, etc.). Some version of one of those two arguments is infinitely adaptable to the fears of any given American, so it’s a huge mental and political obstacle. And yet if they actually got to experience some little step toward the other way, and live the benefits of it, I think most people would start to get over that. That’s what I hope will happen when some of the first modest steps in the health care bill start taking effect.
So yeah, it’s frustrating. But I don’t think this is the opportunity you want it to be. Right now, for most people here, working 30 hours is just not a good thing. It means they don’t have enough money, and it means things are so unstable that next week they might be at 20 hours, or the whole job might be gone. It’s the worst time for trying to convince people that 30 hours a week in a healthy economy could be good, because this obviously isn’t a healthy economy, and because they’ve probably been hearing a lot of rationalizations from their bosses about how everyone has to “work smarter” and tighten their belts, so you’re going to sound like just another boss trying to sell them excuses to get screwed over forever.
It’s like if your friend has caught her husband lying and cheating– and this was exposed due to him having picked up the clap– and you take this as an opportunity to suggest that she might be happy in a truly open non-monogamous relationship. Well yes, that really could be true for some people. But is that a helpful thing to say right then, and should you be surprised or annoyed if your friend upends a glass of beer on your head? Well no.
les
Ditto on McClatchy; back when they were Knight Ridder, they were about the only folks who got it right in the runup to Georgie’s Great Adventure.
El Cid
@Mike P: One of the notable things about the McClatchy story, though, is that they’re emphasizing that the crusade to re-write history yet again is not limited to Texas and the school books question, as insane as that situation is, and I don’t quite see why other, non-Confederate states don’t form regional collectives and refuse to accept Texan “standards” for textbooks.
drillfork
Err, I think some perspective is needed on this. So here’s Atrios:
cleek
@drillfork:
another perspective:
after 18 months of rectal bleeding, it’s good to stop bleeding.
Nick
@Rhoda: Also Rhoda, just to give you further information as to why Democrats can’t keep a message together, look at the Huffington Post, perhaps one of the only major news outlets friendly to liberals.
Their headline on the jobs report is “SURPRISING BAD OMENS IN JOBS REPORT DESPITE MAJOR JUMP IN HIRING” and they give you eight ridiculous reasons why the jobs report is really sucky.
So instead of praising a good jobs report, OUR OWN side is pissing on it and giving the Republicans an opening, and all because underemployment ticked up a point, largely because people who weren’t looking for work two months ago are taking part time jobs/freelance jobs now, which is, in itself, NOT a big trend.
Nick
@drillfork: Where Atrios is wrong here is that he says this jobs report isn’t great because during the best economic times, we were adding 67,000 jobs more…leaving out the fact that we’ve added 193,000 MORE jobs in March than in the month before where we had a net loss, so if we’re only off by 67,000 in a great economy’s job growth, then this is REALLY good.
Kirk Spencer
I think Steve Benen at Washington Monthly has a gamewinner. Look at the chart at the bottom. It’s a simple bar chart showing job losses per month since this began. Two colors: under Bush and under Obama.
It also explains, at least in part, my optimism.
Nick
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.):
The biggest increase in jobs in three years is hardly a “microscopic improvement” or “treading water” and the fact that we’re spinning it as so makes it more likely it won’t get traction outside of Dem partisans. A gain of 169,000 jobs is great. If it weren’t for the fact that we lost, what, like 8 million, it would be better…but we’re never going to increase the number of jobs in a month by the millions, or even hundreds of thousands when even in the best economy, we only gain 250,000 jobs a month.
Besides, weren’t we all told all we need to win an election is the “base?”
kay
@Nick:
Arianna Huffington isn’t credible as a populist warrior. Talk about jumping in front of a parade.
I think she is actively harming “the middle class” by appointing herself their advocate. She does get invited on television, though! Where she babbles like an idiot for 7 minutes, and is the token liberal, who joins with the conservative on the other side of the table to complain that Obama doesn’t understand middle class America.
I think she should give the middle class a well-earned break and find someone else to “help”.
cleek
@Kirk Spencer:
mine too! :)
but, seriously, that’s what i was babbling about here.
Nick
@kay: The problem with people like Arianna is she goes on TV to complain about the administration and the Democrats, but she never offers specific solutions. You don’t hear her saying “We need to spend more money on jobs programs…when employment is high, it solves our deficit problems” Instead all she does is discredit the administration and the party to people who complain the administration an the party are too liberal, therefore she irresponsibly and unintentionally discrediting herself and all progressives because as soon as she’s off the air, the MSM pundits will say Arianna’s complains are valid because the administration/Congress is radically liberal.
Emerald
@Nick:
“. . . look at the Huffington Post, perhaps one of the only major news outlets friendly to liberals.”
But Huffpost has been hostile to Obama since the beginning of the primaries. Arianna decided to bet against him, and she’s continuing that game. She keeps losing, but perhaps she’ll win in the end, as she’s got help from all over the M$M.
The founders had it right: without a vigorous, free press, democracy can’t stand.
Well, we don’t have a free press any more, at least not the most visible part of the press. Obama will have to fight them at every turn, and I’m not sure even he can overcome the constant negativity.
kay
@Nick:
There are lots of good populist spokespeople, who know the issues and have put some time in. Elizabeth Warren is one, and there are many Democratic members of Congress (Marcy Kaptur comes to mind).
Warren makes smart principled arguments about Obama, and offers suggestions, and she’s honest enough to give him credit when it’s due. Warren doesn’t allow herself to be used as an unwitting dupe by the Right.
I don’t know: I’m getting increasingly cynical about the much-vaunted “blogosphere”. It seems we ended up with celebrity bloggers who all spout the same the same things, and indulge in groupthink, and can’t be questioned without MASSIVE umbrage, and hire each other, and promote each others careers.
There are populists in Congress who were working to address income inequality when Huffington and the rest were still voting for Republicans. How has she earned this head place at the table?
I don’t know how that ” the blogosphere” is any different than the mainstream media. It’s celebrity bloggers telling each other how wonderful they are, instead of celebrity “journalists”. WTF is the difference?
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
@Nick:
U1 – unchanged
U2 – 0.1% improvement
U3 – unchanged
U4 – 0.1% improvement
U5 – unchanged
U6 – 0.1% worse
If March was “great” how will you describe it when meaningful numbers of jobs finally start getting added? Sixty minute orgasm?
Christ, stop overselling this shit. I expect spin from the politicians but was hoping to be spared when I read blogs.
kay
@Nick:
The trouble with people like Arianna is the problems in this country didn’t begin in 2001, when she started paying attention.
Her two handed Bush-Obama “analysis” is so narrow because the fucking world started turning when she turned into a liberal.
It’s like listening to liberals on DOJ terrorism issues who only plugged in when Bush took office. Clinton was prosecuting a war on terror beginning when he took office. It’s a “tell” to me that I’m looking at a facile legal analysis when we BEGIN with Bush, and do the Bush v Obama dance.
Clinton was a law and order freak and former AG who prosecuted a lot of terrorists. He made a lot of law. That we always begin with Bush and end with Obama smacks of “too easy” to me, and I think that applies to Iraq, too. Iraq didn’t begin with the 2003 invasion. Our policy has a long arc.
Nick
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.): I don’t know what you consider a “significant number” but if you look at history, 169,000 is a pretty significant number.
Dr. Morpheus
@Just Some Fuckhead:
You’re absolutely right, Fuckhead (I’ve been waiting to be able to write that sentence).
But in all seriousness, I agree with you. But technically there will always be some unemployment as long as there is any period of time between jobs.
I don’t think it’s possible to have a real 0% unemployment rate. More realistically might be 1% to 2%.
Nick
@Dr. Morpheus:
0% Unemployment is terrible, and for that matter so is 1% and 2%…with unemployment THAT low, business couldn’t expand because the jobs they would create couldn’t be filled…there would be no one to fill them.
“Acceptable unemployment” is something like 4%-6%. It keeps a large enough pool to fill jobs, but not too large that jobs are hard to find.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
@Nick:
Are you joking? This number was exceeded 73 times in the Clinton years, 59 times in the Reagan years. Granted, it looks good compared to the pathetic Bush I and Bush II years, but if you use destroyed economies as your baseline anything will look good.
Nick
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.):
by how much? and at what part in their terms?
The Clinton years are not applicable because they were a once in a generation unique boom that we are unlikely to see again for decades and did not immediately follow a recession like the one we had.
Better to look at the 1930s and if you look at those years, while job growth was big, it was almost entirely in the public sector.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
What difference does that make?
Um, the non-shitty parts? Are you driving at anything of interest?
Roughly speaking, 75% of the months during Clinton and 60% of the months during Reagan had better new jobs gross numbers than this one. Does this help?
they destroy your argument?
I see where this is going.
Yes, throw out all the good years. Then throw out the Bush I recession. This number looks better all the time. What else should we throw out? Bush II had 22 months that had better jobs numbers, so let’s throw those out too. Holy cow, you’re right, March was grrrrrrrreat!
Yes, better to look 80 years ago for our comparisons than 15 years ago. Why didn’t I see it before.
To summarize, if you want to know what “great news” is on the jobs front simply compare this most recent report to all the shittiest recent ones and those from 70-80 years ago. Voila, it’s GREAT!
Bill Murray
Nick writes like someone never expecting to be in the 4-6% unemployed. I mean businesses could expand/start-up by paying better wages but that would mean more of the returns going to labor rather than capital and that has to be avoided at all costs. People on the low end of the pay scale must never ever get the full value of their labor input or capitalism will fall apart. Capitalism as practiced today can’t work without a flexible work force that is just thankful not be one of the semi-permanently unemployed.
Kirk Spencer
@Cleek: oops. Yeah, yours too. (Gotta read these things better.)
mclaren
Meanwhile, back in reality, The March Jobs Numbers: Not So Good, Actually.
Keep on drinking that Brand O Kool-Aid, Obots. Dear Leader will save you by increasing military spending and enacting a freeze on the rest of government. Oh, and continuing warrantless wiretapping and extending the USA Patriot Act without comment.
eyeballs
John, the spelling of “stoopid” is in fact “stoopit.”
Aside to Fuckhead: if you look at the widespread use of unpaid furloughs, you will probably find that for many workers average work weeks have in fact declined to 35 hours.
Nick
Every recession since the Great Depression since none of them were close to be this bad. We’re not recovering from a Bush 1 recession, we’re recovering from a Great Depression-esque recession.
We could sorta include the early 1980s recession, which was close to this bad, but you’ll find we didn’t return to acceptable employment numbers for about 5-6 years, even with all those Reagan-era months of job growth you speak of.
Seriously dude, the worse the recession, the longer it takes to recover from it, it’s not rocket science.
Nick
and then you link a piece from FireDogLake? Funny
Nick
Actually I spent a good portion of 2005 and some of 2007 in that 4-6%. If you ever took a fucking economic class, you’d know that in a good economy, that 4%-6% isn’t always THE SAME PEOPLE, but a rotating group. Who makes up that percentage in January usually isn’t the same people who make it up in September.
As people get laid off, laid off people get hired, etc.
Serious, Eco 101. Your local community college probably has a class open for you t sign up for.