That’s the new unemployment rate, the highest since June 1983:
U.S. employers cut a deeper-than-expected 263,000 jobs in September, lifting the unemployment rate to 9.8 percent, according to a government report on Friday that fueled fears the weak labor market could undermine economic recovery.
…The government revised job losses for July and August to show 13,000 more jobs lost than previously reported. Preliminary annual benchmark revisions, released together with September’s employment report showed that total non-farm payroll employment for March would have to be revised down about 824,000.
But I thought the stimulus has worked better than Vice President Biden’s “wildest dreams”? And what about the administration’s assertion that the stimulus has “pulled the economy back from the brink”, even though they told us unemployment would not rise above 8% if they passed the bill? Unfortunately, unlike 1983, the government has not implemented policies that will encourage a strong recovery. We still have a looooong way to go.
October 2nd, 2009 at 10:43 am
The 9.8 is completely meaningless. It’s much higher than that and should be reported by that metric.
October 2nd, 2009 at 10:50 am
I agree, IG, but at least the number rose, and the media can’t play up a drop in the rate.
October 2nd, 2009 at 10:57 am
OT: Chicago did not get the Olympics!! Huzzah!!
It’s between Rio and Madrid.
October 2nd, 2009 at 11:05 am
Bob, as a fellow Illinoisan, I join you in celebration!
October 2nd, 2009 at 11:37 am
from chicago here…and thank god we did not get the stupid olympics
October 2nd, 2009 at 11:38 am
Not to be a pedant, Anthony, and not to claim that the administration’s plan is doing any good, but your arguments aren’t very strong. If Biden’s wildest dreams featured a possible 18% unemployment rate and the stimulus plan reduced it to 12%, then he could still claim that the stimulus pulled the economy from the brink.
October 2nd, 2009 at 11:39 am
So someone fill me in… What’s with the hate for the Olympics? Is it just because of the expense? Or is it something else?
October 2nd, 2009 at 11:43 am
#7:
The logistics of running the Olympics is a nightmare, and there are always additional problems. For Athens and Beijing, it was the pollution. Other times, there has been terrorism and riots (1968 in Mexico City, Munich in 72, and the bombing in Atlanta in 1996). It’s just a mess to deal with.
October 2nd, 2009 at 11:45 am
freds-
i dont think they hate the olympics, i think they hate obama and they see the defeat as confirming that he is a loser.
having been to several olympic games i find it hard to believe that people dont like them.
October 2nd, 2009 at 11:51 am
first of all they are boring as hell…and the construction for them ruin cities….it would have changed chicago forever, and for what? so daley can tax all those people staying the hotels some more?…this is so daley anyway..chase industry and business out of the city, give coprorate welfare to get one back (Boeing) and try to get some one time ,bureaucratic, pseudo govt thing like the olympics to buy prosperity for a few years
October 2nd, 2009 at 11:56 am
If it wasn’t for the stimulus package, Bush’s recession would be Bush’s depression. I wouldn’t have expected McCain to have had any better effect, given what mess was dropped on the new President’s lap. Still, let’s hope we see less layoffs in the immediate future.
October 2nd, 2009 at 11:58 am
I certainly don’t mind seeing Obama embarrassed, but the local opposition to the Olympics has nothing to do with Obama — it’s about Daley and his gangster administration — the Olympics would have given them an incredible pile of money to steal and to cement themselves more firmly in power.
Congratulations, Rio.
October 2nd, 2009 at 12:01 pm
11.. you really don’t have clue do you…the nature of the credit cycle, where it comes from,..what a recession even is., etc…there’s still time to turn yourself around though..
October 2nd, 2009 at 12:02 pm
Don’t local governments get loads of pork money from DC to upgrade their venues, transportation and communication systems, etc. when they win an Olympic bid? They just have a hard time staying under budget.
October 2nd, 2009 at 12:06 pm
#11.AI,
Just out of curiosity, how much longer are you going to blame Bush? At what point does Obama own it?
October 2nd, 2009 at 12:09 pm
Just out of curiosity, how much longer are you going to blame Bush? At what point does Obama own it?
2015
October 2nd, 2009 at 12:10 pm
mark , obama will never own it, thats the problem
October 2nd, 2009 at 12:13 pm
#15:
It can’t ever be Obama’s fault. The system is inherently racist and stacked against Obama, so everything that goes wrong is the systems fault for not loving Obama more or being more open to him and his greatness.
October 2nd, 2009 at 12:14 pm
The problem with blaming one administration or another is that it’s impossible to untangle all the influencing factors. I’ll bet most economics would have a hard time agreeing on specifics. Nothing happens in a vacuum.
October 2nd, 2009 at 12:18 pm
To make things interesting…
marK, at which point in time can we categorically state that any mistakes Bush made no longer have a major factor in the economy?
October 2nd, 2009 at 12:33 pm
#20.
Bush’s mistakes will continue to be a factor — hey, George Washington’s mistakes continue to be a factor — but as to a “major” factor, I think six months into Obama’s term is the crossover point.
I would still like to hear from AI where his crossover point is.
October 2nd, 2009 at 12:50 pm
They didn’t count the more than half million people who stopped looking for jobs, so the figure is 10+. Well, if we’re going to be more like Europe with their one-size-fits-all health care and responsibility-absolving safety nets, then we shouldn’t be suprised when people stop working like they do in Europe.
October 2nd, 2009 at 1:00 pm
So American Ideals, are you willing to commit to a date when problems are no longer Bush’s fault, that they are Obama’s? Or are you going to continue to blame Bush whenever something bad happens?
You know, if Obama is as helpless and powerless before the Bushian mistakes as you make him out to be, that really doesn’t say much for his leadership abilities, does it?
Contrast that with Mitt Romney when he took over the 2002 Olympics. The situation was a disaster. No new sponsors were signing up, and the ones who had were threatening to pull out. Morale was rock bottom. Nobody trusted the SLOC. They were deep in debt. They were paralyzed.
When Mitt Romney took over, he went right to work. He didn’t once blame the previous administration. He immediately took ownership of all the problems. They were HIS problems now. He began to work, and work hard to solve them. And solve them he did. The SLC 2002 Winter Olympic games were one of the best, if not THE best games in history.
So when are you and Obama going to stop blaming the nation’s problems on Bush? When are you and Obama finally going to take ownership?
October 2nd, 2009 at 1:06 pm
Obama’s communistic policies will keep unemployment elevated much higher than it normally would be for years to come. We will be L shaped for the next 2 years at least after a slight GDP increase in this last quarter from govt handouts on houses etc.
October 2nd, 2009 at 1:07 pm
Well marK, Mitt’s competence notwithstanding, turning around an Olympic games is much much simpler and faster than turning around the national economy.
October 2nd, 2009 at 1:27 pm
#25,
I could not agree more. I was using that anecdote to illustrate the difference between responsible and irresponsible leadership. Leadership that accepts responsibility and leadership that sloughs it off.
October 2nd, 2009 at 1:52 pm
I think that the problem with all of this is….Bush made personal efforts to cut short a recession with his rebates plan….which went through a democratic congress. The continued depression that we are now facing is more the fault of Nancy Pelosi and the democratic controlled congress than it is Bush or Obama’s fault. Although Obama was part of the congress, so maybe it was his fault as well. The truth is, the recession didn’t really hit until the dems passed a minimum wage increase and started ramming their agenda down our throat. It’s only bush’s fault in as much as it is his fault that the republicans lost congress in the first place.
To me, this is entirely on Obama and the dems. Obama said he would fix it, and he hasn’t. The most likely outcome from all of this is a repeat of 94 and 96. The republicans gain cotrol of congress, and control the agenda, forcing a slow economic improvement. Obama gets the credit just like clinton did, and wins re-election in 2012. Unless the repubs can’t get their agenda passed the liberal white house. That would be the only real difference. Clinton was willing to come to an agreement to fix things…obama will only do things HIS WAY.
October 2nd, 2009 at 1:53 pm
If things were improving quickly, then Obama could say “things were bad when we took over, but we’ve fixed it.” If things were going according to plan, they could point to the plan they announced upon coming in.
But their projections showed unemployment dropping sharply soon after enactment of the stimulus — that that has not happened means that the problem is Obama’s, because Obama’s plan has not done what they said it would do.
October 2nd, 2009 at 2:20 pm
Pass my stimilus or we will get 8% unemplyment….
October 2nd, 2009 at 3:52 pm
#11.AI,
Just out of curiosity, how much longer are you going to blame Bush? At what point does Obama own it?
Well, when we’ve recovered all the money that Dubya spent in the last eight years, INCLUDING the TARP bailout, have found a way to patch the unfunded tax cuts for the rich (which was passed through reconciliation, by the way), the unfunded Medicare Part D, and all the money thrown to corrupt companies like Haliburton in no-bid contracts….once we’ve gotten back to where we WERE before all that fiscally irresponsible spending, then it’s Obama’s economy. If McCain had been elected instead, it’d still be Dubya’s mess until McCain could get us back up. Put blame where it belongs, not where you wish it was.
October 2nd, 2009 at 4:27 pm
#30.AI,
You do realize that what you said is Obama cannot take the blame or the credit of anything that happens in the economy until it gets back to the way it was before the downturn hit. Then and only then can he start being responsible for it. So therefore any recovery, no matter what Obama does, is to the credit of George Bush. Obama will have had nothing to do with it.
That is according to what you said in #30.
So, would you care to try once again to state when Obama has to take responsibility for the economy — the good and the bad?
October 2nd, 2009 at 5:21 pm
The way Obama and the Democrats are spending money and sending the economy into the tank, we aren’t going to recover any thing. If we’re judging Obama only after a recovery, we won’t be judging him ever.
October 4th, 2009 at 6:36 am
8 months is the cross over so Barry owns this now.