September Unemployment: The Job Loss Accelerates October 2, 2009
Posted by geoff in News.trackback
UPDATE: October unemployment results are posted here.
The September unemployment rate rose to 9.8%, as expected by economists, representing a modest 0.1% rise from last month:
Once again, the unemployment rate would have risen by a much larger amount if the civilian labor force hadn’t lost 570,000 people since last month. As we mentioned in previous posts, the labor force normally increases by ~ 150,000/month, so that’s a huge, very unusual, decrease. In fact, had the labor force size simply remained the same, the unemployment rate would have jumped to 10.2%
As we did last month, we ask: just how many jobs have we got out there?
Not so many – the pace of job loss seems to have accelerated, with 785,000 jobs lost since last month. That’s the 4th largest loss of jobs in the past year
We’re nowhere near out of the woods yet, folks.
Previous posts in this series:
- The August numbers
- The “million jobs saved” claim
- Initial unemployment filings
- The July numbers.
- The percentage of private-employed workers is steadily decreasing, meaning that the burden of supporting government workers is increasing. How long can this trend continue?
- The June numbers.
- Mark Zandi (Moody’s Economy.com) kind of agreed with the Obama team’s projection back in January. But his predictions weren’t much better.
- Saying that “the recession is worse than anybody thought” is a tired old tune
- Everybody did not “guess wrong” on the stimulus package
- The corrected chart for May.
- The predicted numbers for May from a few days ago, with some thoughts on why unemployment is worse than expected even without the stimulus package (and a hearty discussion in the comments on proper graphing)
- A look at the stimulus package spending – how late it is, and how little thus far has been devoted to job creation (it’s basically gone to pay off states’ social services debts)
- The April numbers
- The original post on the subject, noting that criticisms of the stimulus package may not have been motivated by racism after all.
Comments
Sorry comments are closed for this entry
Innocent Bystanders 
All hail geoff.
We got a long way to go and we need you.
This post is racist.
They’re using every accounting gimmick in the book to try to make it look like the unemployment “rate” hasn’t gone into double digits.
You can keep up this chicanery for only so long, but sooner or later, it will be time to pay the piper.
For instance, some people are speculating that Social Security may ALREADY have gone into the red.
Purchase guns, ammunition, canned goods, vitamin pills, and toilet paper.
Maybe some coffee & whiskey, if you are so inclined.
Geoff,
thanks for my monthly fix. This chart will be the undoing of Obama.
Slublog emailed this: http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2009/10/02/broader-unemployment-rate-hits-17-in-september/
Even that broader unemployment measure is missing a lot of people, since people are simply dropping out of the labor pool entirely (and undoubtedly involuntarily). I think that the 2nd chart is about the most accurate assessment of where the job situation is at, though I should probably update it to include nonfarms jobs as well.
thanks for my monthly fix. This chart will be the undoing of Obama.
Charts. I live for them.
[…] Not to mention, dreading. […]
[…] Also, dreading. […]
but, but you set the scale at 135000(000s) and 150000(also 000s)!
You’re purposefully distorting the true picture! And what about the end of the federal fiscal year this past Tuesday? Huh? What about it?
[…] — it looks set to do for a bad long awhile. Here’s the obligatory link to the updated chart at Innocent Bystanders comparing the actual rate to The One’s moronic pre-stimulus fantasyland projections. Note […]
[…] See the article here. […]
When I click to embiggen, I can see the triangles. Subtle, but they’re there. Like the FedEx thing.
And hats off to the pale blue line guy! If you look at the new, innocently-bystanded red line, it is almost tracking that original estimate (with the additional bad because of the bassackwardness of the current administration’s economic “theories”).
This chart will be the undoing of Obama.
No. No it will not. If watching modern US television has told me anything, it’s that we are producing faster idiots.
…we are producing faster idiots.
We’ve been working out and training! We just shaved another .25 seconds off of our 500 m yesterday.
Sept DOL figures tell the story…
Story for September Job Loss Figures
This is a stunning assessment by a gent which contrasts the forecasts the potential benefits of our ‘Recovery Plan’ and what actually happened when the recovery plan was instituted. With this estimatin…
[…] Still a good idea for Obama to make the trip, considering the troubles in Afghanistan and today’s unemployment numbers? […]
I was going to suggest dropping most of the month labels to avoid the clutter, but you beat me to it. Good show.
I got sprayed with about half a bottle of Dr. Pepper at work today, so I am at home doing laundry over my lunch break…It was an accident, of course. The guy didn’t realize how shaken up the bottle was. When I washed my top in a tub of cold water and Woolite, the water turned brown from all the Dr. Pepper that squeezed out of it. Ew!
And it was diet, which only adds insult to injury.
[…] September Unemployment: The Job Loss Accelerates There is another interesting graph there concerning actual number of […]
“For instance, some people are speculating that Social Security may ALREADY have gone into the red.”- I’m sure it has. But that’s more of Bush’s problem. See what he did was dip into funds earmarked for Soc. Security t o fund his tax cuts. He assumed that everyone would jump on board his privatization plan and it would be okay, but we didn’t and it wasn’t. Just want to make sure we apportion the blame correctly here.
SSS-
IIRC, Congress, in the late ’60’s-early ’70’s, started spending the Soc. Sec. funds as general revenue.
So, that shit’s been gone for years.
Those typhoons hitting the Philippines are somebodies’ fault too, I just know it. Weather systems can get kinda complex so…it may take me a while to figure out who is at fault. How may Olympic games have South American countries hosted? Whose fault is that? What is the current unemployment rate in Brazil? Why am I so damn inquisitive today? Where is my bourbon?
[…] Innocent Bystanders September Unemployment: The Job Loss Accelerates […]
Harrison is correct. Ever since the early 70’s the Democrat Congress has operated under a unified budget process. The arguement at the time was that this provided a complete picture of government spending. The reality was that Congress could co-mingle Social Security with all of the other spending. Their goal was to get their hands on the then minimal surplus to spend on other “social” programs.
In the late 70’s and again in the early 80’s when the Democrat Congress “fixed” social security by raising and indexing the base for the tax (which now stands above $100,000 for every worker), the created a surplus bonanza for the social security system which they promptly and continuously spent (and still ran deficits as far as the eye could see).
Now that the bill is coming due – the promised benefits for all of those years of paying everyone elses benefits (plus all of the other spending that Congress approved) they now have to cash in all of those Government IOUs to the social security “trust” fund. The only problem with that is is will require the government to borrow more and add even more to the current deficit.
The tax cuts under Bush had nothing to do with the problem with social security. Spending is the problem that is causing our deficits. As we have learned in the past – raising taxes only increases spending. It does not reduce the deficit.
This chart will be the undoing of Obama.
Undoing?
He’ll Blame it on Rio.
Or Bush.
Or Rush.
[…] rose to 9.8% in September. Innocent Bystanders has been tracking the unemployment rate against the Obama administration’s projections. In […]
Mrs. Peel, I love you.
Err. Sorry about your top.
[…] Comments Unemployment rose to 9.8% in September. Innocent Bystanders has been tracking the unemployment rate against the Obama administration’s projections. In […]
Rio is hiring.
You know, your top graph is a bit disingenuous, if it is meant to show how “wrong” Obama was. (Clearly, that what some of your commentors take it to mean)
It was created in January 2009 for comparative purposes of stimulus vs. no stimulus, rather than an actual predictor of the unemployment rate.
The authors of the memo/graph acknowledge this when they write:
“It should be estimated that all of the estimates perpared in this memo are subject to significant margins of error. This is the obvious uncertainty that comes from modeling a hypothetical package rather than the final legislation passed by Congress. But, there is the more fundamental uncertainty that comes with any estimate of the effects of a program. Our estimates of economic relationships and the rules of thumb are derived from historical experience and so will not apply exactly in any given episode. Furthermore, the uncertainty is surely higher than normal now because the current recession is unusual both in its fundamental causes and its severity”
Later on, the authors acknowledge that some economic forecasters predict the unemployment rate (without the stimulus) to go as high as 11%. The point is that back in January 2009, nobody really knew how bad unemployment would get without a stimulus. But they were attempting to show how the stimulus would ameliorate the damage.
Bottom line: you’re comparing reality with a graph drawn long before the full impact of the recession was understood, before the ACTUAL (watered down) stimulus was passed… in fact, before Obama was even sworn in. Is it off? Sure. Is that surprising? Hardly.
Does your modified graph show that the ACTUAL stimulus package failed to keep unemployment rates lower than what would have happened otherwise, i.e., that the stimulus “failed”? No.
[…] 3) As Democrats continue their push to ram ObamaCare down our throats, let’s check up on his previous promises from the first major item Obama just had to have so badly that nobody could even read the bill prior to passing. Yes, the $800 billion dollar stimulus. How is that working out? From Innocent Bystanders: […]
K Ashford…look at that tree! Right there! There!!! Right through that forest!!!!
By your reading of the graph, would it ever be possible for the Obama Administration to have been wrrro…wrrroooo…wrong? Have a link to the graph showing the Administration was right about the effect of the stimulus package? Have a link to the graph proving how many jobs have been “saved”? I’d sure be interested.
“Some economic forecasters” predicted the Stimulus Package would have little effect, or a net negative effect, on the economy. Reality is seeming to side with those experts. And those guys were not the experts advising the Obama Admin.
I look forward to your future comments on Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predictions vs. real data.
But Obami and his propaganda media friends all said it was getting better. That economy was improving, that stimulas give away to their bestest buddies would make America a better place. That stealing the auto industry and giving it to his union budies was good for America. That groveling to every enemy of the USA would make us loved. That insulting all of our friends and allies would proven that we are a better people. That kissing up to Chavez and Castro would make America loved again.
All I hear is pain and laughter, hell even the french (surrender monkeies) are laughing at us. All our old allies don’t want to be anywhere near that egoticical moron. The enemies are too busy rolling around on the floor in laughter to give a damn what he does or thinks.
When my baby,
When my baby smiles at me,
I go to Rio
De Janeiro.
My-o me-o…
I go wild and then
I have to do the samba,
And la bamba.
You know, your top graph is a bit disingenuous, if it is meant to show how “wrong” Obama was.
Oh it is certainly meant to show how wrong Obama’s economic team was, but not in the way that you think. The original reason I started critiquing this chart (back in February), was over the absolutely ridiculous timelines for government spending and impact of that spending. Nobody who has ever worked with the government would ever have made claim of near-instantaneous improvement once ARRA was signed.
So it is the dumbfounding naivete expressed in the original chart that was the primary focus of this series of plots.
But since that time the stimulus has been even less effective than I had thought it would be, and the back-of-the-envelope nature of Romer et al.’s calculations has become clear. We committed to spending almost 800 billion dollars based on projections that were invalid within weeks of their publication. Romer’s caveats didn’t cover being wrong by 300% about the increase in unemployment rate. If she meant them to excuse a 3-fold error, she shouldn’t have published her POS predictions.
Does your modified graph show that the ACTUAL stimulus package failed to keep unemployment rates lower than what would have happened otherwise, i.e., that the stimulus “failed”? No.
Look at the 2nd graph. That’s the graph that shows that the ACTUAL stimulus package is worthless. The shape of the curve in the first graph does as well, but that’s a little subtler.
The graph is certainly better evidence to the claim that the stimulus would have a negative impact than it is to the claim that the stimulus would have reduced the unemployment rate.
As an added bonus, that’s $787 billion dollars that, spent or not, sucked up the borrowing ability of private enterprise. Investors that might have bought corporate, state and muni bonds instead put money into treasury bonds that go to finance the stimulus.
>> It was created in January 2009 for comparative purposes of stimulus vs. no stimulus, rather than an actual predictor of the unemployment rate
Of course it was. That’s why they plotted growth of the kitten population rather than unemployment estimates.
You sir, are a goof.
What kills us is how everyone’s always so fucking SURPRISED when liberals fuck up. Kathleen Parker at the WSJ is exhibit A.
[…] Just a reminder on where the stimulus was supposed to take […]
geoff, don’t know if you saw this post at Mankiw’s (http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2009/10/barro-on-multipliers.html) or the linked WSJ article, but it gives the Keynesian multiplier a fresh kick in the balls.
Even if a stimulus plan was perfectly executed, the multiplier is, at best, damned close to 1. The $787 billion spendulus, that was really just catch-up spending on every bullshit liberal program that’s been throttled since the Reagan era, won’t fare anywhere near that well.
Thanks, Andy. I hadn’t yet seen that, but it falls perfectly in line with my lay perspective.
[…] Read this and weep […]
[…] was that it would reduce unemployment. Looking at this chart done by the guys at Innocent Bystanders, we can see that the Obama government predicted that because of the stimulus, employment would only […]
So K Ashford, Bernanke was wrong when he said the recession was over? And here I was going to go out and buy that $3000 100″ 240 Hz television set. Looks like I’m sticking with the plastic black and white from 1987 with the crack running up the side for a couple more months.
It doesn’t matter what excuses you make here, because no matter what it turns out badly for Obama. If his team didn’t have a better idea of how bad things actually were (and a quick look at the nations overall debt would have provided this) then they can’t analyze for shit.
Furthermore, Obama claimed this back in January:
““Most of the money we’re investing as part of this plan will get out the door immediately and go directly to job-creation, generating or saving three to four million new jobs,” Obama said in the East Room, alluding to the GOP claims that the package won’t be immediately boost the economy. “And the vast majority of these jobs will be created in the private sector – because, as these CEOs well know, business, not government, is the engine of growth in this country.”
(From http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0109/18136_Page2.html)
Your claim that it wasn’t a predictor of the unemployment rate is a flat-out lie, since geoff took the data directly from the Obama team’s own calculations.
It seems the disingenuousness is coming from your direction–sort of like when Obama says “It isn’t about me.”
[…] HERE’S AN UPDATED COMPARISON of actual unemployment contrasted with what the Obama Administration promised the “stimulus… […]
[…] Taxes, The Economy, The Stimulus, Unemployment trackback Ah yes, that stimulus is working great (more charts here). Definitely worth the money. Notice how well it helped push that unemployment rate higher? […]
Part of the point, K Ashford, as you would know if you read the previous posts in this series, is that Obama’s team used this graph to sell the stimulus. It was obvious to anyone who knows anything about how the government works that the stimulus wouldn’t get dollars into the economy as quickly as the chart suggested and would be misused and wasted.
It’s not so much the actual numbers that are important as it is the shape of the curve and the trends, as geoff has pointed out. Like when you are tracking performance – CPI at 1.04 sounds great until you look at the last seven data points and realize you’re trending higher.
[…] rose to 9.8% in September. Innocent Bystanders has been tracking the unemployment rate against the Obama administration’s projections. In […]
[…] payrolls plummeted by 260,000 in September as the unemployment rate inched upward to 9.8 percent, the highest level since 1983. State and local governments are reeling, and […]
Looking at the graph, I have to assume that the little side-step from May to July, is the effect of the Stimulus.
Looking at the graph, I have to assume that the little side-step from May to July, is the effect of the Stimulus.
It’s not that clear – the numbers were bumped around quite a bit by the exodus of people from the labor pool. The unemployment rate is more a political number these days, than a useful number. Look at the 2nd chart, which shows how the economy is shedding jobs. The stimulus undoubtedly had an effect, but it has been insignificant.
[…] (Source: Michael’s Comments) […]
I think July is an outlier, but it’s hard to say. As geoff says, unemployment rate is really not a useful measure. That’s part of why we’ve been focusing on trends and not so much the actual numbers.
Also, we need to bring back the triangles.
The rancor and animosity between the dottists and the trianglists will never end.
*gives Mrs. Peel the stink-eye*
Nice blog ya got here.
It’d be a shame if sumtin happened to it, if you know what I mean.
The rancor will end just as soon as someone drops a gate on it.
(+5000 geek points to anyone who gets that)
[…] Geoff at Innocent Bystanders who made the chart above noted that there has been a decline in the num…. (I attribute this to Baby Boomers taking an early retirement.) Wrote Geoff: “Once again, the unemployment rate would have risen by a much larger amount if the civilian labor force hadn’t lost 570,000 people since last month. As we mentioned in previous posts, the labor force normally increases by ~ 150,000/month, so that’s a huge, very unusual, decrease. In fact, had the labor force size simply remained the same, the unemployment rate would have jumped to 10.2%.” […]
http://tinyurl.com/y9nn26g
*immediately spends geek points on action figures*
That sidestep? The last gasp of the natural economic recovery that was already underway. Yeah, we’d be in solid blue line if they’d done nothing.
Also, as a Pro–Triangle American, I think we need to focus less on our differences, and more on how we can pressure people to obey our will.
Lastly, you said “rancor” and I heard “trogdor”. I think that’s a sign.
[…] today, I quoted Geoff at Innocent Bystanders: “Once again, the unemployment rate would have risen by a much larger amount if the civilian labor […]
[…] But as the famous internet meme goes, “Useless without pictures!” so here is the chart you’ve all been waiting for (credit: geoff at Innocent […]
Geoff, I don’t see a ping, but we got linked by Fark.com/business today. That’s a first. Check the stats — Fark is sending a significant amount of traffic.
Fark has a typical (for him) description of the link: “Just in case you were wondering: Yep, we’re still boned”
Stunning, since our economy was running on Fantasy Dollars (TM) – generated though ridiculously inflated property values – and distributed though means of providing refinancing home loans to people that had no way to pay back the loans (except by infinitely refinancing). Now that the fantasy property bubble has burst, people are attempting to find another means of obtaining cash to live on – the big problem is that our economy (and the vast majority of real jobs – you know, a job that pays enough to pay your bills and have a life) have long since disappeared into third world factories.
Free Trade = No Jobs = Economic Collapse. Unless you *want* to live in a carbon copy of India (just an idea: rather than destroying the US, why don’t all the Free Trade cultists just move to India).
Until wage-differential import tariffs are imposed, and it becomes economically viable to site production facilities in the United States, there will be far too few real jobs to go around. I don’t see any of the fundamental issues being acknowledged, much less addressed.
We are still circling the drain. There is no sign of hope on the horizon.
^
Smoot and Hawley are coming back from the dead with the same old idiocies. You knew they would.
I’ve already claimed this is racist… right?
OK… That’s covered. Good.
Now, let’s fix this mess, shall we?
First, let’s tax the fark outa the rich… By “rich” I’m thinkin’ like $40k a year and up.
Then, let’s ban us some guns.
I think that should cover it. Aren’t you guys glad I’m here?
[…] been put on the web by The Anne Frank House. And, on a completely unrelated note, it seems like The States are fucked, deep and good. Guess that goes for rest of us in the West as well. Then some nice pretty great […]
[…] September Unemployment: The Job Loss Accelerates « Innocent Bystanders a few seconds ago from IdentiFox […]
[…] September Unemployment: The Job Loss Accelerates The September unemployment rate rose to 9.8%, as expected by economists, representing a modest 0.1% rise from last […] […]
AWWWW YEAHHHHH
No shit, Laura. I was starting to think they had programmed Top Posts to exclude us.
[…] Obamanomics. How is that stimulus working for ya? September Unemployment: The Job Loss Accelerates Innocent Bystanders […]
[…] projections of Larry Summers and the administration’s economic team have been shown to be completely off base. The structural imbalances that exist in the world economy are apparently coming home to roost, and […]
raaaaacist!
[…] https://michaelscomments.wordpress.com/2009/10/02/september-unemployment-the-job-loss-accelerates/ Posted on October 5, 2009 at 4:55 am by alexmanzara · Permalink In: Eurodollar Options […]
Stimulating Unemployment…
So much for that stimulus package creating more jobs. The unemployment numbers for September were released on Friday and they had risen to 9.8 percent. Wall Street had expected 180,000 job losses, but the total came in at 263,000. President Obama, if o…
Now this is what you call real “voodoo economics”, complete with a dead chicken, a small doll, some pins, and a curse.
[…] What they promised versus what they delivered with the stimulus. […]
#74 – that’s racist. I’ll fix this – I just need a lot more gov’t money from the ATM.
And when you factor in all the folks who’ve dropped off the UE roles and have just given up, you end up at, what, 17%+?
Interestingly enough, the left end of the scale, when UE as 4.5%, is right when the Dem’s took over Congress.
Excellent article. We shamelessly cribbed your chart for a blog post at Ed Martin for Congress website.
Reality vs Promises – Billions in Debt, No New Jobs
We’ll keep an eye on your site, great resource.
[…] unemployment would be MUCH greater except the labor force is shrinking – […]
[…] this view” that borrowing more is better. Which data would that be? The data which shows the unemployment rate increasing beyond any measure of what we were told it would once the stimulus was enacted? The data which […]
[…] unemployment. Well yeah, he inherited an economy in free-fall. Good thing the stimulus worked! Lie. You're entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts. The stimulus was advertised as […]
[…] de los Estados Unidos se sitúa en el 9.8%, su valor más alto desde que comenzó la recesión. El gráfico de Innocent Bystanders no deja lugar a dudas, las previsiones del gobierno Obama no se […]
[…] Just think how bad things would be without their brilliant intervention. […]
[…] have already seen the comptetence level of the White House economists in predicting the impacts of the Stimulus on the […]
If you assume that the stimulus has the reverse effect and increased unemployment, the curve tracks very closely with the predicted results.
[…] important instance of such wrong forecasting is found in the United States. The Innocent Bystanders blog has been comparing the actual unemployment rate with the projections made by the Obama […]
It’s a bit difficult to read the chart. Is the forecast peak unemployment (without stimulus) at 9% or 9.1%?
It’s a bit difficult to read the chart. Is the forecast peak unemployment (without stimulus) at 9% or 9.1%?
If I take the center of the line, I read it as 9.075%.
Thanks, the administration is claiming they’ve created or saved 650k jobs. But it looks like forecast unemployment is 13,976,000 based on 154,006,000 * 9.075 (workforce size* rate). Since current unemployment is 15,142,000, then perhaps they should actually be taking credit for a loss of 1,166,000 jobs? Or maybe even more since the without recovery plan line does not appear to peak until after Sept.
Extremely helpful information. Good to see the with/without recovery comparason.
[…] The September numbers […]
[…] rose to 9.8% in September. Innocent Bystanders has been tracking the unemployment rate against the Obama administration’s projections. In […]
[…] slow news day. It’s not like there is anyhthing important to report on like the election, the economy, Libya, or the government selling guns to mexican cartels. Instead, let’s run a story about a […]
[…] are lots of great graphs all over the web (see, for example, here and here for some snappy pictures of unemployment trends from blogger […]