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Showing posts with label unemployment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label unemployment. Show all posts
Jobs picture stalling in 10 battleground states

Jobs picture stalling in 10 battleground states

From the WSJ:
The data confirm job growth has sputtered in these states since the winter's brisk pace of job growth. . .
The basic numbers:
Unemployment rose in June in six of 10 battleground states that could play a pivotal role in the presidential election, reflecting job cuts in some cases and weak payroll growth in others. The jobless rate climbed a 10th of a percentage point last month in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Iowa, New Hampshire and Virginia, the Labor Department said in a report released Friday. The rate held steady in three other battleground states—Nevada, Florida, and North Carolina. Ohio was the only battleground state where unemployment fell last month. Nevada's 11.6% jobless rate remained the highest of any state in the nation. The rates in North Carolina, at 9.4%, Michigan, at 8.6%, and Florida, also at 8.6%, remained stuck above the national average of 8.2%. Joblessness was far below the national rate in three of the battleground states—Virginia, with 5.7%; Iowa with 5.2%; and New Hampshire, with 5.1%. Employers cut jobs in Colorado, Iowa, Michigan and Nevada. . . .
"Economists less optimistic as early 2012 gains wither"

"Economists less optimistic as early 2012 gains wither"

Another summer of recovery lost. From Fox News:
Economists say the sales and profit gains of early this year are disappearing, and they are increasingly pessimistic about short-term growth.

They also are gloomy because of the potential impact in the U.S. from Europe's financial crisis, the possible expiration of the Bush tax cuts in December, and the prospect of major cuts in federal spending.

A survey by the National Association for Business Economics released Monday also found less evidence of hiring, confirming the trend in recent monthly jobs reports from the government.

In the quarterly survey of 67 economists who work for companies or industry trade groups, 22 percent reported rising employment in July, down from about 30 percent in the last three surveys and 42 percent a year ago. On the positive side, only 9 percent said employment was falling. The rest said it was unchanged.

Just 39 percent of the economists surveyed reported rising sales at their companies in July, down from 60 percent in April. There was a similar trend on corporate profit margins, with 29 percent reporting rising margins in July, compared with 40 percent in April.

"The survey results suggest worsening economic conditions," said Nayantara Hensel, a business professor at National Defense University who analyzed the results for NABE. "The rising sales and profit margins experienced earlier in the year may have been short-lived." . . .

Now they tell us: Obama DOE Official says Loan Program to Solyndra and Abound Solar Wasn't About Job Creation

Obama Department of Energy official: "By definition, they are not a multiplier for job creation."

Obviously Vice President Biden got the wrong memo about whether these stimulus loans were supposed to create jobs.

. . . And I'm really happy, along with the Secretary, to announce today that we've closed a $535 million loan guarantee for Solyndra, more than half a billion dollars. This is the first in what the Secretary is going to be announcing the Department of Energy will be making available for more than $30 billion in loan guarantees the Recovery Act is providing and will provide to American companies that are leading the way to a new, clean energy future.

The loan to Solyndra will allow you to build a new manufacturing facility and with it almost immediately generate 3000 new well paying construction jobs. And once your facility opens, there will be about 1000 permanent new jobs here at Solyndra and in the surrounding business community and hundreds more to install your growing output of solar panels throughout the country.

It's important. It's important because these jobs are going to be permanent jobs. These are the jobs of the future. These are the green jobs. These are the jobs that won't be exported. These are the jobs that are going to define the 21st Century and the jobs that are going to allow America to compete and to lead like we did in the 20th Century. . . .

Even Obama apparently misunderstood what his project was supposed to do. This ripple effect on jobs sure sounds like a multiplier claim. From the White House website:

. . . So that’s why we’ve placed a big emphasis on clean energy. It’s the right thing to do for our environment, it’s the right thing to do for our national security, but it’s also the right thing to do for our economy.

And we can see the positive impacts right here at Solyndra. Less than a year ago, we were standing on what was an empty lot. But through the Recovery Act, this company received a loan to expand its operations. This new factory is the result of those loans.

Since the project broke ground last fall, more than 3,000 construction workers have been employed building this plant. Across the country, workers -- (applause) -- across the country, workers in 22 states are manufacturing the supplies for this project. Workers in a dozen states are building the advanced manufacturing equipment that will power this new facility. When it’s completed in a few months, Solyndra expects to hire a thousand workers to manufacture solar panels and sell them across America and around the world. (Applause.)

And this in turn will generate business for companies throughout our country who will create jobs supplying this factory with parts and materials. So there’s a ripple effect. It’s not just localized to this area. . . .

So these steps are helping to safeguard our environment. They’re helping to lower our dependence on oil. At a time when people are struggling and looking for work, these steps are helping to strengthen our economy and create jobs. We all know how important that is, because times here in California are still tough. It’s going to take time to replace the millions of jobs we lost in this recession.

Unemployment remains high, even though the economy is growing and has started adding hundreds of thousands of jobs each month. So it took years to dig our way into this hole; we’re not going to dig our way out overnight. But what you are proving here -- all of you, collectively -- is that as difficult as it will be, as far as we’ve got to go, we will recover. We will rebuild. We will emerge from this period of turmoil stronger than ever before. . . .

A lost generation of workers: Young people in Obama's Recovery

A lost generation of workers: Young people in Obama's Recovery

From a new report entitled: "No End in Sight?"
The standard unemployment rate does not count those who have given up any hope of finding work. At the moment, fewer than half of 16- to 24-year-old Americans hold any kind of job at all; fewer young people were working during the recession than at any time since our nation started tracking unemployment data. . . . The American economy is currently “missing” an estimated 2.7 million youth jobs. More young people went back to school during the recession, but this migration does not come close to accounting for the lost jobs. . . .

Outsourcing debate: For private companies, who cares. For government, my problem is with the government funding.

Disappointingly, both Republicans and Democrats are trying to out demonize each other over who has done the most outsourcing. The bottom line is that trade makes the US wealthier. That is certainly true for private companies. And while Obama has dishonest attacks on outsourcing while Romney was governor, if Obama didn't outsource some of his government expenditures, presumably the cost to taxpayers would be even greater.

There is a certain irony for President Obama to attack anyone over the trade issue. People may remember the promise that Obama made during the 2008 presidential race to renegotiate NAFTA.

I wouldn't criticize Romney if he had used outsourcing to rescue the companies that he helped. But Romney didn't really engage in outsourcing (though I assume that new documents will create a debate over when Romney really left Bain), while Obama spent almost $29 billion last year on outsourcing. By the way, Obama gets a lot of campaign donations from employees at companies that do outsourcing. Will he return those donations?

I suspect that a lot of the people denouncing Romney for outsourcing are using an iPhone. Would it be better if they bought a smart phone from South Korea or Taiwan? Possibly Suppose that Apple was forced to build the iPhone entirely in the US.

Figure from the New York Times, July 5, 2010, about the iPhone 4. Even more here:
...designed by Apple engineers in the United States, sourced with high-tech components from around the world and assembled in China. Shipped back to the United States, the iPhone is priced at $600, though the cost to consumers is less, subsidized by AT&T in exchange for service contracts.

“China makes very little money on these things,” said Jason Dedrick, a professor at Syracuse University and an author of several studies of Apple’s supply chain. Much of the value in high-end products is captured at the beginning and end of the process, by the brand and the distributors and retailers.

According to the latest teardown report compiled by iSuppli, a market research firm in El Segundo, Calif., the bulk of what Apple pays for the iPhone 4’s parts goes to its chip suppliers, like Samsung and Broadcom, which supply crucial components, like processors and the device’s flash-memory chip. . . .

Apple, for instance, pays Samsung about $27 for flash memory and $10.75 to make its (Apple-designed) applications processor; and a German chip maker called Infineon gets $14.05 a phone for chips that send and receive phone calls and data. Most of the electronics cost much less. The gyroscope, new to the iPhone 4, was made by STMicroelectronics, based in Geneva, and added $2.60 to the cost. . . .

The least expensive part of the process is manufacturing and assembly. And that often takes place here in southern China, where workers are paid less than a dollar an hour to solder, assemble and package products for the world’s best-known brands. . .

Note that if Apple didn't assemble the iPhone in China it might not be able to make that $360 in profit. As Hal Varian wrote in the New York Times:
The real value of the iPod doesn't lie in its parts or even in putting those parts together. The bulk of the iPod's value is in the conception and design of the iPod. That is why Apple gets $80 for each of these video iPods it sells, which is by far the largest piece of value added in the entire supply chain. . . .
From Fox Nation. The first few paragraphs are my own rough transcription. But do you really want a Republican candidate attacking a Democrat over outsourcing. I would have attacked it over government spending, not outsourcing. Is this really too difficult to explain? If it is too difficult, what does that say about future policy that will also be too difficult to explain?

Andrea Mitchell, MSNBC: But Mitt Romney today in Colorado, which is one of the important battle ground states, making the point that President Obama has an outsourcing problem.

John Sununu: Yah, he does. And the outsourcing issue really causes two problems for President Obama. One it really underscores his dishonest. . . .

And the second problem that he has with outsourcing is that there is a huge amount of outsourcing which was driven by Obama policy. The $500 million that they gave to Fisker created jobs in Finland. The solar energy grants that they gave created jobs in Mexico. The windturbine grants they gave created jobs that in Denmark. So the point that I think is really interesting is that it that the os issue underscores how few smarts there are in this White House and in this Obama campaign. That they expose themselves to the response criticisms that I think . . . is going to make it a winning issue for Mitt Romney.

Andrea Mitchell, MSNBC: Isn't it a winning issue for the White House, fundamentally, granted that the PolitiFact folks and the Washington Post pointing out that the President's campaign ad on that issue had a lot of questions and a lot of questionable attacks?

John Sununu: But they said it was wrong. A lot of questionable tactics is not right, it was wrong.

Mitchell: But the point is, that isn't Mitt Romney more vulnerable than the President on this issue because there still is -- the whole question of private equity of outsourcing. Yo could argue about when he left Bain Capital and whether he was still getting money from Bain Capital and what some of the companies in Bain were doing, companies that did end up working overseas and sending jobs overseas. But isn't it a bigger problem for Republicans than for the White House?

Sununu: No. When you've sent $500 million to Fisker and it goes to Finland immediately. When you send the solar money and it goes to Mexico. When you send the turbine money and it goes to Denmark. And we can go on all day. There is $29 billion worth of purchases that came out of this administration, outsourced jobs to foreign countries.

Mitt Romney outsourced zero --

Mitchell: Zero?

Sununu: Zero. He wasn't there when those issues came up.

Mitchell: Well, first of all the $29 billion are not all outsourced from the administration because ---

Sununu: Sure they are.

Mitchell: A lot of those jobs still remained here. There are jobs -- when you do a grant, governor, there are jobs here as well as overseas.

Sununu: [laughing] You're struggling, Andrea. You're struggling.

Mitchell: First of all, these are competing claims and we will get back to you with all of the numbers.

UPDATE: See more here from Michael Kinsley.
Democrats argue that he should be ashamed of Swiss bank accounts and other foreign currency investments that amount to "betting against the dollar." If Romney is sincere in his belief that Obama is wrecking the economy, then he ought to bet against the dollar. . . .
Only problem with Kinsley's point here is that Romney's money is in a blind trust. Here is something from the WSJ: What about Romney making protectionist arguments against China? Probably it is in response to the anti-free-trade arguments for China from Obama. Not that I want him to follow these policies, but what tough policies has Obama imposed on China? From Fox News:
President Barack Obama challenged rival Mitt Romney's promise to get tough on China, saying in a new ad released Saturday that Romney "made a fortune" allowing China to take U.S. jobs. Obama's ad turns again to a report that several businesses backed by Romney's former private equity firm moved American jobs to China and India to cut costs. In a parting shot, a narrator says Romney is "not the solution. He's the problem." The ad follows Obama's two-day bus tour in Ohio and Pennsylvania, where the president announced plans to file a trade complaint against China at the World Trade Organization for unfairly imposing duties on the exports of U.S.-produced automobiles. Ohio is home to several auto plants and tens of thousands of workers directly employed by the auto industry. . . .

Newest Fox News piece: The truth about Obama's tax cut extension plan

My newest piece starts this way:
Politics, not economics, is driving President Obama's election year strategy to force a battle over his efforts to raise income taxes. So much of Obama's speech Monday focused on his political opponents and the difference between those whom he claims support the middle class and those who support what Obama continually called "the wealthy."
For an administration that last week blamed Fox News for the class warfare rhetoric, Obama's talk today sure contained a lot of such rhetoric.
But contrast Obama's position with that of other prominent Democrats. Just last month, his former chief economic advisor Larry Summers told MSNBC: "The real risk to this economy is on the side of slow down, certainly not on the side of overheating, and that means we've got to make sure that we don't take gasoline out of the tank at the end of this year that's gotta be the top priority." Former Democratic President Bill Clinton made a similar claim warning against tax increases because it is better to "avoid doing anything that would contract the economy now." Under Obama administration pressure both quickly retracted their statements.
Obama seem oblivious to Summers' and Clinton's concerns about the poorly performing economy. . . . .
Brit Hume has an excellent response here.
Obama's very selective use of unemployment data

Obama's very selective use of unemployment data

Guess who made this statement.  A hint the news that the first quote is referring to is 310,000 new jobs.

Good morning. This is _____, the _____. For the past few weeks, President ____ and members of his administration have traveled the nation to celebrate recent, improved economic statistics. Well, I've been traveling, too. All over this large and diverse state, in cities and suburbs, Downstate and upstate, I've heard from people who say it's way too early to claim victory when it comes to our economy.
After three dismal years of job loss, we all welcome encouraging statistics. But for most Americans, the health of our economy is measured in a different and more personal way: If I lose my job, where will I find one that pays as well and offers real benefits? Can I afford health care coverage on my own, or the cost of sending my children to college? Will I ever be able to save, and retire with dignity and security? . . .
Or this quote:
Let me begin by saying a few words about the latest economic news.  This morning, we learned that American businesses added another 212,000 jobs last month.  Altogether, more private sector jobs were created in 2011 than any year since 2005.  And there are a lot of people that are still -- (applause) -- there are a lot of people that are still hurting out there.  After losing more than 8 million jobs in the recession, obviously we have a lot more work to do.  But it is important for the American people to recognize that we’ve now added 3.2 million new private sector jobs over the last 22 months -- nearly 2 million jobs last year alone.  So after shedding jobs for more than a decade, our manufacturing sector is also adding jobs two years in a row now.  So we’re making progress.  We’re moving in the right direction. . . .
So have you guessed who made these quotes?  Obama made both of them.  The first quote is from state Senator Obama in June 2004 criticizing a report of 310,000 jobs the previous month.  The second quote is from President Obama on January 6, 2012 lauding the announcement of 212,000 jobs the previous month (actually the final number was 223,000 jobs). 


Obviously the second quote goes beyond just the number of jobs in the previous month, but that is where some real dishonesty comes into the discussion.  You see by July 6, 2012 Obama's recovery had been going on for 37 months, but the comment that he was making about Bush was 30 months into his recovery.  


So what if we made the second quote the same based on that point in the corresponding recoveries?  Obama could have said this in June 2004:
Let me begin by saying a few words about the latest economic news.  This morning, we learned that American businesses added another 310,000 jobs last month.  But it is important for the American people to recognize that we’ve now added 2.5 million new jobs since the recovery started 30 months ago -- over 1.5 million jobs last year alone.  So we’re making progress.  We’re moving in the right direction. . . .
And he could have said this on Friday, January 6, 2012:
Let me begin by saying a few words about the latest economic news.  This morning, we learned that American businesses added another 212,000 jobs last month.  But it is important for the American people to recognize that we’ve now added 2.26 million new private sector jobs since the recovery started 30 months ago -- nearly 2 million jobs last year alone.  So we’re making progress.  We’re moving in the right direction. . . .
For those interested, this is what President Obama said on Friday:
We learned this morning that our businesses created 84,000 new jobs last month, and that overall means that businesses have created 4.4 million new jobs over the past 28 months, including 500,000 new manufacturing jobs.  That's a step in the right direction.  (Applause.)  That’s a step in the right direction. 

Newest Fox News piece: A disappointing jobs picture and no, we're not doing better than Europe


My piece starts this way:
Americans faced another disappointing jobs picture today. Of course, we could go through the numbers again. With the working age population growing by 191,000 last month, 80,000 more jobs doesn’t even come close to absorbing all these new workers, let alone employing those who have long been out of work. And then there’s the most important number of all: for 41 months, the unemployment rate has been above 8 percent.  

 
But how does the US labor market compare to Europe or the rest of the world?  Earlier this week news reports may have made Americans feel a little better, if only by comparison. Reflecting the philosophy that you should be thankful for what you have because things could always be worse, the headline in the Los Angeles Times read: “Think 8.2% unemployment is bad? It's a record 11.1% in Europe.”  An Associated Press article carried by Fox News and a host of other outlets made the same point.

 
The point has not been lost on President Obama, whose administration frequently references Europe as an explanation for our slow growth.  Last month, Obama noted: “slower growth in Europe means slower growth in American jobs.” 
The problem with such a seemingly obvious comparison is that the US and most of Europe define unemployment quite differently. . . .
A couple of other notes.

1) About a third of those 80,000 jobs are temporary service sector jobs.
2) 85,000 people went on disability in June.
3) Obama predicted that the unemployment rate now would be about 5.8% (January 10, 2009) and 6% (February 26, 2009 estimate).



Comparing changes in Labor Force participation rates in Europe and the US


Click on figure to make it larger.


Euro Stat provides detailed data on both employment and the number of working age people.  Similar numbers are available from the US Bureau of Labor statistics.  Since the beginning of 2009, the labor force participation rate in the US has fallen by 3 percent.  


Euro Stat Employment-Unemployment Database
Euro Stat Employment statistics explained
Euro area unemployment rate at 11.1% June
Employment down by 0.2% in the euro area and stable in the EU27 June 

News coverage of Unemployment in US and Europe fails to mention how unemployment is defined differently

From an Associated Press article in the Washington Post and Fox News on Monday: 
Eurostat, the EU’s statistics office, said unemployment rose to 11.1 percent in May from 11 percent the previous month. . . . May’s unemployment rate compares badly with an unemployment rate of 8.2 percent in the United States and 4.4 percent in Japan, and is expected to rise further in the coming months as the eurozone economy is forecast to slide back into recession this year. . . .


Here is a headline from the San Jose Mercury News: Think 8.2% unemployment is bad? It's a record 11.1% in Europe.  The exact same headline has also appeared in the Los Angeles Times. 

The US definition of being unemployed is available at the BLS website.  But note that it is much easier to be defined as unemployed in Europe that the US.
the EU includes those who only study job advertisements as unemployed (if they pass the other screens)—this is true in Canada as well—while the United States does not consider reading ads as active job search. In addition, persons waiting to start a new job are considered unemployed in Europe, but in the United States they are not considered unemployed unless they have actively searched for work within the previous four weeks. . . .
The US BLS does provide adjusted unemployment numbers for some countries based upon how the US defines unemployment.  Take the comparison between the US and Canada, which has been studied fairly extensively.  If you look at the official numbers and ignore that Canada defines its unemployment rate more the way European countries do, it would look like the difference in unemployment rates in April was 0.8 percentage points.  In actuality, the gap was more than twice that, 1.7 percentage points.






In March, for example, the official French unemployment rate was 0.3% below what the BLS calculated the actual rate to be.  The difference for other countries that the BLS can't compare are likely to be much, much greater.  For those interested, the EuroStat EU unemployment data is available here.



For only the fifth time in 33 years weekly wages have fallen over the last year

For only the fifth time in 33 years weekly wages have fallen over the last year

The BLS finds that weekly wages dropped over the year by 1.7 percent to $955 in the fourth quarter of 2011 from a high of $971 in the fourth quarter of 2010.

The U.S. average weekly wage decreased over the year by 1.7 percent to $955 in the fourth quarter of 2011. This is one of only five declines in the history of the series which dates back to 1978. (See Technical Note.) This is the only quarter in which the average weekly wage decline occurred while employment grew over the year and total wages decreased (-0.5 percent). Smaller bonus payments in the fourth quarter of 2011 contributed to the decrease in the average weekly wage. In contrast, the average weekly wage declines posted in the first two quarters of 2009 resulted from significant declines in both employment and wages. During this period, total wage declines were 5.0 percent or more, while employment losses were above 3.0 percent. In the fourth quarter of 2011, Olmsted, Minn., had the largest over-the-year decrease in average weekly wages with a loss of 21.3 percent. Within Olmsted, a total wage decline of $287.3 million (-29.1 percent) in the education and health services industry had the largest impact on the county’s decrease in average weekly wages. . . . 
When unemployment insurance payments run out, people start claiming disability payments

When unemployment insurance payments run out, people start claiming disability payments

One reason why unemployment is worse than many people think.  From CNS:

A record of 8,733,461 workers took federal disability insurance payments in June 2012, according to the Social Security Administration. That was up from 8,707,185 in May.
It also exceeds the entire population of New York City, which according to the Census Bureau's latest estimatehit 8,244,910 in July 2011. . . . 

Newest New York Post piece: "A Nation too scared to quit"

I hope that this piece gets shared widely as I think that the information in it is pretty important.  The piece starts this way:

In case you missed it, hiring fell a staggering 9 percent last month. The hidden secret is how bad hiring has been throughout the “recovery.”
Economists say the recovery started in July 2009 — but the jobs picture still looks more like a recession. 
New hires not only fell during the recession, they’ve kept on falling during the “recovery” — something that isn’t supposed to happen. 
The economy has added jobs for 20 months, but very slowly. The total actual number of jobs has grown by just 1 percent during the 36-month “recovery.” In all past recoveries since 1970, the average job growth in the first 36 months is 7 percent. 
The story gets even worse when we look more closely at that small increase in jobs. 

In the year and half before the recession, new hires averaged 5.25 million per month. During the recession (December 2007 to June 2009), they fell dramatically to 4.39 million, hitting 4.2 million per month in December 2008, right before Obama became president. . . .
Note: the word actual was missing from the piece as it was published in the NY Post.



New National Review piece: Obama's revisionism: He predicted a strong economy, but blames his failure on Bush.

New National Review piece: Obama's revisionism: He predicted a strong economy, but blames his failure on Bush.

My newest piece starts this way:
Americans’ patience is running thin. Unemployment has been above 8 percent for 40 months. Since the recovery started, over 7.2 million Americans have given up looking for work and left the labor force. It is during recessions, not recoveries, that people are supposed to give up looking for work.
But it is obviously all Bush’s fault. At least, that is President Obama’s new take. During his big economic address on Thursday, Obama repeatedly said that the economic problems we face today were “a decade in the making.”
But there is a problem with Obama’s logic. Over the last three-and-a-half years, the president and his administration have continually claimed that the stimulus was working and that a robust recovery was starting. If the legacy of the Bush administration policies was going to hinder the recovery so badly, why did Obama keep on predicting that things were going to get better soon? . . .
People with college degrees cluster together in same cities

People with college degrees cluster together in same cities

Apparently people like to live in areas with people like themselves, surprise.  From the NY Times:

Just 24 percent of the adult residents of metropolitan Dayton have four-year degrees, well below the average of 32 percent for American metro areas, and about half the rate of Washington, the country’s most educated metro area, according to a Brookings Institution analysis. Like many Rust Belt cities, it is a captive of its rich manufacturing past, when well-paying jobs were plentiful and landing one without a college degree was easy.
Educational attainment lagged as a result, even as it became more critical to success in the national economy. “We were so wealthy for so long that we got complacent,” said Jane L. Dockery, associate director of the Center for Urban and Public Affairs at Wright State University here. “We saw the writing on the wall, but we didn’t act.”
Dayton sits on one side of a growing divide among American cities, in which a small number of metro areas vacuum up a large number of college graduates, and the rest struggle to keep those they have.
The winners are metro areas like Raleigh, N.C., San Francisco and Stamford, Conn., where more than 40 percent of the population has a college degree. The Raleigh area has a booming technology sector and several major research universities; San Francisco has been a magnet for college graduates for decades; and metropolitan Stamford draws highly educated workers from white-collar professions in New York like finance. . . .
How bad is the unemployment rate?

How bad is the unemployment rate?

The real people hurting are those under 25 and those over 55, but even those in the middle are having a hard time.  For those in the middle of the age distribution, the numbers in the middle are the worst in 23 years.  From the Washington Post:
The percentage of workers between the ages of 25 and 54 who have jobs now stands at 75.7 percent, just a percentage point over what it was at the downturn’s worst, according to federal statistics.
Before the recession the proportion hovered at 80 percent.
While the unemployment rate may be the most closely watched gauge of the economy in the presidential campaign, this measure of prime-age workers captures more of the ongoing turbulence in the job market. It reflects “missing workers” who have stopped looking for work and aren’t included in the unemployment rate. . . .

The two groups of people having the hardest time getting jobs: young people just entering the market and those over 55

The two groups of people having the hardest time getting jobs: young people just entering the market and those over 55

Previously, I posted this on how horrible the job market is for young people.  Now there is this on those over age 55.  From Fox News:

About 55% of jobless seniors, or 1.1 million, have been unemployed for more than six months, up from 23%, or less than 200,000, four years earlier, according to a Government Accountability Office report released on Tuesday. . . .
More seniors with jobs expect to work longer, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, and just 14% say they believe they can retire comfortably. . . . .
For example: an individual with a defined contribution plan who stops working at age 55 instead of age 62 would see a 39% drop in median-level retirement income, from $817 per month to $500 per month, according to the GAO, which did not take other retirement income sources into account.
Another similar worker would see a 13% drop in median Social Security retirement benefits from $1,467 to $1,273 a month. . . .
This is a horrible job market for young people who have recently graduated from college

This is a horrible job market for young people who have recently graduated from college

Don't major in fun but useless majors.  The bottom line is that young people are most likely to be unemployed and even if they do get a job it is a low-skilled job that their college degree isn't remotely related to.  From the Associated Press:

. . . The figures are based on an analysis of 2011 Current Population Survey data by Northeastern University researchers . . . . They rely on Labor Department assessments of the level of education required to do the job in 900-plus U.S. occupations, which were used to calculate the shares of young adults with bachelor’s degrees who were “underemployed.”
About 1.5 million, or 53.6 percent, of bachelor’s degree-holders under the age of 25 last year were jobless or underemployed, the highest share in at least 11 years. In 2000, the share was at a low of 41 percent, before the dot-com bust erased job gains for college graduates in the telecommunications and IT fields.Broken down by occupation, young college graduates were heavily represented in jobs that require a high-school diploma or less.
In the last year, they were more likely to be employed as waiters, waitresses, bartenders and food-service helpers than as engineers, physicists, chemists and mathematicians combined (100,000 versus 90,000). There were more working in office-related jobs such as receptionist or payroll clerk than in all computer professional jobs (163,000 versus 100,000). More also were employed as cashiers, retail clerks and customer representatives than engineers (125,000 versus 80,000).
According to government projections last month, only three of the 30 occupations with the largest projected number of job openings by 2020 will require a bachelor’s degree or higher — teachers, college professors and accountants. Most job openings are in professions such as retail sales, fast food and trucking, jobs not easily replaced by computers.
College graduates who majored in zoology, anthropology, philosophy, art history and humanities were among the least likely to find jobs appropriate to their education level; those with nursing, teaching, accounting or computer science degrees were among the most likely. . . .
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