unemployment – Page 4

Giannoulias, Fisher go abroad to raise money from trial lawyers.

Along the way, they ran over a polar bear cub with their SUV, then tied it to the bumper with an American flag and dragged it along for a couple of miles.

…while smoking cigarettes.

Giannoulias:

The Giannoulias Democratic Illinois Senate campaign confirmed Monday–after prodding from the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee–that Alexi Giannoulias was in Canada on Sunday attending a fund-raiser at a trial lawyer convention in Vancouver that would benefit his Senate campaign.

Fisher:

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Lee Fisher was in Canada yesterday to attend a reception with a group of American trial lawyers that is supporting his campaign, the Fisher campaign said today.

The Giannoulias campaign didn’t want to admit to the fundraising junket at all, while the Fisher campaign tried the novel technique of trying to frame it in terms of a fact-finding tour about lost Ohio jobs (apparently, Rob Portman has amazing powers over space and time; either that, or he mentally dominated Lee Fisher into losing jobs for Ohio). I don’t see why evasions and lying – excuse me; ‘jokes’ – are necessary, here. Trial lawyers are some of the most loyal Democratic donors in existence: they’ve paid out millions (if not billions) in campaign contributions, and get hundreds of billions in protection and opportunities* in exchange. Shouldn’t the Democrats be proud of their patrons?

Moe Lane
Continue reading Giannoulias, Fisher go abroad to raise money from trial lawyers.

#rsrh Connecting the Jobs dots.

I know that when the President goes off on things like this:

Obama blasts GOP leader’s ‘ant’ comment as ‘out of touch’

…he wants me to think “Wow. That Boehner’s really crazy, huh?” Unfortunately, what I end up actually thinking is “Wow. Friday’s job report is going to absolutely suck, isn’t it?” Which it probably will.

In chorus, everyone:

“UNEXPECTEDLY!”

Moe Lane

PS: Goodness knows what the unemployment rate is going to be, mind you. It’s almost as if they just spin a wheel and sacrifice a pigeon for the number every month.

#rsrh VP Biden admits bad job situation!

Not that he knows it, yet. Why? Because when Joe Biden Opens His Mouth, it’s always a random disaster. As Andrew Malcolm reports:

Speaking for Mark Critz, a Democrat running for a House seat who’s “the real deal” as opposed to some others who Biden says have been “real turkeys,” the Obama administration’s chief gaffemeister said:

We’re going to be creating somewhere between 100 and 200,000 jobs next month, I predict.

Which is a pretty wide range.

It’s also an admission that the administration still hasn’t actually stopped the bleeding:

But let’s set a more modest goal: return to more or less full employment in 5 years –which means seven lean years of depressed employment. To keep up with population growth over those 7 years, the United States would have had to add 84 times 127,000 or 10.668 million jobs. (If that sounds high, bear in mind that we added more than 20 million jobs over the 8 Clinton years). Add in the need to make up lost ground, and we’re at around 18 million jobs over the next five years — or 300,000 a month.

So that’s a useful benchmark. Even if we add 300,000 jobs a month, we’re looking at a prolonged period of suffering — a huge cost from the Great Recession. So that’s kind of a minimal definition of success. Anything less than that, and it’s bad news.

And guess which right-wing shill of the conservative movement said that? – That’s right: Paul Krugman, back in December of 2009. Guess Biden’s behind on his technical reading…

‘Reading.’ Oh, I slay me.

Moe Lane

Reducing OH unemployment, one jobs czar at a time.

It’s… innovative, for a given value of ‘innovative:’ creating a new job in the Ohio state government to address why the Ohio state government has not been able to create jobs, I mean.

Ohio needs a jobs czar to envision ways of putting Ohioans back to work and to coordinate programs scattered across nine state agencies, a new report concludes.

The report, “Help Wanted: a Lead State workforce official,” depicts a system of overlapping and splintered programs and strategies that it says could be strengthened through a unity of purpose. The nonprofit Columbus-based Community Research Partners in Columbus released the report Thursday.

The above word ‘lead’ is meant in terms of ‘head’ or ‘chief’… and not in terms of ‘heavy, toxic weight,’ which is an accurate representation of the general effect of Democratic party policies on Ohio’s unemployment rate since Ted Strickland took office four years ago. 11%, these days: at this rate, they’ll have a czar to address why the job-creation czar hasn’t created more than one job by no later than June. The state’s only hope is that they can somehow accelerate the process to the point where a new czar pops into existence every second… Continue reading Reducing OH unemployment, one jobs czar at a time.

#rsrh Government behind on hiring census workers; wait, what?

I mean, I’m pleased that they didn’t muck up the unemployment rate even worse than it already is (it stayed at 9.7%), and it’s good news that we have positive job growth this month. But… what?

The nation’s economy posted its largest job gain in three years in March, while the unemployment rate remained at 9.7 percent for the third straight month.

[snip]

The Labor Department said employers added 162,000 jobs in March, the most since the recession began but below analysts’ expectations of 190,000. The total includes 48,000 temporary workers hired for the U.S. Census, also fewer than many economists forecast.

By ‘fewer’ the AP means ‘half:’ the assumption was that 100K temporary census jobs would be added in March. 48K of 162K is actually a better ratio than 100K of 200K, in this context, but why is the Commerce Department missing what should be some very easy benchmarks?

Aside from the obvious answer of ‘consider the political party running the show,’ of course.

Moe Lane

Trust us: the job losses are not ‘unexpected.’

Add my voice to the chorus: we got used to the way that job losses would rise ‘unexpectedly‘ a while back. It’s that entire ‘the economy is bad, and the administration isn’t even doing what it can do to fix it’ thing. After a while, you kind of take the hint.

…Yes, I am in a good mood this morning, aren’t I? Three hours sleep: baby is starting to figure out his sleep schedule, which will be great once he’s consistent about it. Until then, it’s a crapshoot, and this morning I rolled snake-eyes.

Unemployment still at 10%. [pause] Yipe.

I was hoping for a drop down into single digits, even if it was a high one. But hope is not a plan, as the current ruling party seems determined to prove. Short version: we lost 85K jobs last month – they were expecting a gain – and the number is only holding still because a lot of people gave up looking for work. If you count that number, we’re at 17.3% and that’s up from 17.2% in November. The report then goes into a lot of detail to avoid coming out and saying that the economy’s currently in neutral, we’re on a slight downward slope, and the administration’s turned on the windshield wipers and called it setting the parking brake.

And, oh, yes: they’ve straightened the wheels, because the previous drivers all braced them against the curb.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Word on the Tweet was wrong: 10% unemployment.

Went down .2% instead of up .2%. My sarcastic reaction to the folks responsible for this amazing long-term trend in the American economic situation* remains unchanged.

*The below is the good news.

There was little change in wholesale and retail trade employment in November.
Within retail trade, department stores added 8,000 jobs over the month.

The number of jobs in transportation and warehousing, financial activities,
and leisure and hospitality showed little change over the month.

Employment in professional and business services rose by 86,000 in November.
Temporary help services accounted for the majority of the increase, adding
52,000 jobs. Since July, temporary help services employment has risen by
117,000.

Health care employment continued to rise in November (21,000), with not-
able gains in home health care services (7,000) and hospitals (7,000). The
health care industry has added 613,000 jobs since the recession began in
December 2007.

Feeling good yet?

Word on the Tweet: November unemployment 10.4%.

[UPDATE]: Word on the Tweet was wrong. A mere 10%.

If true: wonderful. Simply wonderful. And at precisely what unemployment rate do we have to reach before the current ruling party starts to admit that they’ve been mucking up economic policy since January 2007? 11%? 12%? 15%? 36.567%? Things are starting to get a little stretched out here.

Via Hot Air.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Unemployment slideshow? Or zombie outbreak progression?

[UPDATE]: Welcome, Instapundit readers.

You tell me. It’s certainly looking how I’d imagine a bicoastal outbreak would look. Guess the next Romero flick will go with a zombies-as-the-‘funemployed’ metaphor, or something else suitably heavy-handed.

Via Instapundit.

Moe Lane

PS: It is no doubt rude of me to point out that this outbreak video represents two years’ worth of a Democratic-controlled Congress, and one year’s worth of a Democratic-controlled government. At least, I hope that it is, seeing that we were promised an unemployment rate at least two points below the one that we’re having now. My being allowed to be rude seems like a bare minimum in the realm of recompense.

Crossposted to RedState.