Obama’s October Surprise - 7.8 % Jobless – Conservatives Angry About Good News

Choosing substance over performance is a novel thing in a world fixated on drama, flash and shiny objects. Mitt Romney unleashed a tsunami of animated policy reversals during the first Presidential debate. On Friday October 5, 2012 President Obama answered loudly when the September unemployment rate came in at 7.8%, the lowest in 44 months.

As soon as the lower unemployment rate was made public some conservatives lost their minds and accused the Obama administration of cooking the books to make the President look good right before the election. Some highly respected business leaders, politicians and journalists went berserk with conspiracy theories. One even said that Obama supporters were misrepresenting their employment status to lower the jobless rate.



Now the picture is crystal clear. President Obama has been trying to bring the economy back from the brink of depression with an opposition party that is admitting it was in their best interest to keep unemployment high until after the 2012 election. Will a political party be held accountable for not doing everything it could to help get Americans back to work? It seems that the tantrums being thrown because it appears that more Americans have found work is a testament that many have placed politics above the needs of the people.

Some need to take a hard look into the mirror and consider their vote. Why would you cast your vote for someone rooting for a higher level of suffering among your fellow citizens because it served their political ambitions? Some may say they would have made things better after they took office, but when you hold public office it should be the American people that come first, not your political party. Delaying any efforts that would have put more people back to work as quickly as possible meant more lost homes, hungry children and despair. There should be a price to pay if anything was intentionally done or not done in order to delay the speediest economic recovery possible.

Unemployed But Not Destroyed & 911 Country Down

I went to work today for the first time in over one year. That statement illustrates the depth of the nation’s problems. Educated, experienced and willing workers can’t get jobs in the United States and some can’t even get a face-to-face interview.

In light of going through this journey across the desert, I have written my 13^th and 14^th written works. Unemployed But Not Destroyed is for everyone out there who is absolutely confused, disgusted and perplexed at the state of the economy and job market. Companies seem to be sitting on mounds of cash and are hiring more workers abroad than in the United States.

How do you maintain your dignity during long periods of unemployment? How do you react to those accusing the jobless of being lazy, unmotivated or even needing drug testing? How should the unemployed feel about those who accuse them of riding on the public dole by accepting unemployment benefits? There are ways to respond to all of those attempts to pile guilt onto those unexpectedly thrown into this extremely harsh job market. Ironically many of those hurling insults helped cause the problem in the first place.

911 Country Down is a quick examination of the current state of the United States of America. We have companies with massive cash reserves that won’t hire. We have politicians that are more concerned about the needs of special interests than of citizens that voted them into office. Elected officials and special interests that fund their campaigns have turned politics into a two party reality show complete with point scoring. Many of us participate in our own misery by continually falling for the pick pocket and distraction games. Distractions such as hot button social issues, crazy Presidential birth certificate theories and double-secret hidden religious agenda nonsense allow the collective American pocket to be picked and send upward to the richest among us.

Government is being demonized all across the country as being something undesirable and many are buying into the narrative. Stop. This is just a preparation to transform everything from our public schools, roads and Social Security system from service based to profit making concerns. In other words the carving knife is out to slice up the spoils and pass them out to business interests as rewards for filling campaign coffers with cushy positions waiting for them in the newly privatized former government run systems.

911 Country Down – How to Fix America is value priced at $.99.

Some are fixated on assigning blame. I only have one thought for you to consider. If your car is in the ditch do you blame the tow truck driver trying to pull you out or the person that ran you off of the road?

9.1% Unemployment, Disposable Workers And Where Are Job Creators

One Year Unemployed Anniversary Let Them Eat Cake

Well the jobless numbers are in for May 2011 and the rate increased to 9.1% . When will the job creators use their continued tax breaks to hire permanent employees because there is a growing trend afoot in the United States and it is the age of disposable workers. Disposable contract workers do little to get the economy back on a solid footing.

There is a constant refrain of it is not good to raise taxes on those that would be creating jobs. We are waiting for the trickle down; the Bush tax cuts for the top income levels have been in place for years and should have trickled down in the form of permanent jobs by now. There is a new and not often talked about trend out there in the job market, disposable workers. This group of disposable workers is not the gathered on the roadside ready to do a short term construction job, but are computer programmers, project managers and recruiters. Just about every career disciple you can think of from engineers to architects is often hired on a contract basis.

Some contract workers find themselves working on 3, 6, 12 or 18 month contracts and often without medical benefits. Some job seeking network groups will see the same people cycle through 3 or 4 times after their contracts end or even before the terms are up. The reason companies are doing this is because they don’t have to count these people as part of their workforce, provide medical benefits or contribute to retirement plans. Often contract workers actually work for another firm and their paycheck comes from someone other than their work location company.  

The catch 22 for a contract worker is they answer to the powers that be of the contracting firm and the feedback from that company can get them dismissed for almost any reason. Since the company that pays the contracted employee is basically just supplying labor there is very little push back when someone is said not to be suitable for a particular task.

Can someone with a 3, 6, 12 or 18 month job outlook purchase a new car or home that has a 5   to 30-year loan commitment? It is not likely that a contract worker will be able to or want to enter into a long term financial commitment. The continued uncertainty caused by high unemployment, temporary employment and underemployment will continue until job creators start hiring permanent workers.

People with permanent jobs think, act and spent on a long term basis. An article by Gallup places the combined underemployment and unemployed rate at 19.2%. That means that almost 20% of the workforce is not participating in the economy on a normal basis. A video produced by CNN titled Barely Getting By On ‘underemployment’ shows the effects of the issue.  

So exactly what is going on here? The recession allow companies to clear the decks and now many bring in professionals to work on a project basis just like a fast food joints brings in extra help for the lunch rush and then sends them home. The extra profit from this type of labor management goes to bonuses, acquisitions or international expansion. From a long term standpoint this is a worst case scenario because it creates an environment of zero loyalty and is a race to the bottom because the employer and employed are engaged in short term behavior. The employer is planning for profit and the employee is planning for survival.

Blackout – Black Unemployment Rate Rises As Overall Rate Falls

 Empty - Ghosts of The Middle Class

Sometimes statistics speak louder than shouts from rooftops. Cheers went up as the March 2011 jobless rate fell from 8.9% to 8.8%. Hold the celebrations unemployment rate for black increased from 15.3% to 15.5%, almost twice the 7.9% of whites.

What is going on in the face of celebrations surrounding the number of jobs being created and an unemployment rate that has dropped to 8.8% from 8.9% the month before, blacks seemed to be left off the party invitation list. Hispanics have little cause to be raising their glasses for a toast as well. The unemployment rate for Hispanics fell from 11.3% to 11.1%, but it is the unemployment rate among blacks that is totally disconnected and going against the tide.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics report lists the rates for blacks, whites, Hispanics and all other groups in the United States. Even inside the black community the pain is unevenly spread. Black women had a drop in their unemployment rate from 13% to 12.5% while black men went from 16.2% to 16.8%.  Let’s not gloss over the gap between black men and black women with a 4.3% more of an unemployment percentage among black men.

Let’s get away from percentages and get into how many people this represents. The tables state that 7,923,000 black women are employed compared to 6,758,000 black men. That means that 1,165,000 more black women have jobs than black men. On the flip side the number of unemployed black women is listed at 1,127,000 versus 1,361,000 black men. There is a quirk in the numbers that show fewer black women have jobs than before. The number of black women that were employed in February was 7,993,000 compared to 7,923,000 which are 70,000 fewer jobs and the jobless rate went down for black women. You may ask how fewer working black women mean a decreased in the unemployment rate, it is because so many gave up looking for work and were not counted in the numbers.

The participation rate for black women went from 63.1% to 62.1% and that caused the rate to decrease even though 70,000 fewer black women had jobs. Black men actually had an increase in the number holding jobs from 6,745,000 to 6,758,000 which is 13,000 more jobs and the jobless rate among black men went up because the participation rate went up from 68.2% to 68.7%. Simply speaking, more black men looked for jobs and the jobless rate went up due to math.

So, what is going on? Blacks don’t seem to be included in this slow recovery and what does it mean for the long term future of the black community. The unemployment rates reported are always lower than reality. What is the rate if part-time and underemployment are factored in. Where are the crisis level emergency outcries, because as we speak, decades of economic gains in the black community are being destroyed?

The Mean Index – Profit Over Jobs In U.S. – Opposite In Europe & Japan

 Empty - Ghosts of the Middle Class

There was a time when recessions caused employers in the United States to figure out ways to keep employees busy in order to keep from losing them. Now laying off workers seems to be the first, not last option for U.S. companies compared to the rest of the world.

In the past when economic downturns would hit, U.S. companies would do everything it could to keep from losing employees. Employees would be assigned cleanup tasks, filing and straightening up the storeroom. It seems that something has dramatically changed in the United States. An article titled “Unlike competition, U.S. values profits over jobs” by Paul Wiseman March 31, 2011 and published on the MSNBC website shows the difference in how some foreign country based companies treat employees in a recession versus United States based firms.

In the United States worker productivity is up as fewer employees are producing more output after companies shed workers during the recession. According to the article that is not the case in Japan and Europe. Productivity actually went down during the height of the recession during 2009 by 3.7 percent in Japan and 2.2 percent in Europe while U.S. productivity growth doubled from 2008 to 2009 and again in 2010. Now that U.S. corporate profits are at record levels, U.S. firms are hiring a pace far lower than businesses in other recovering nations.

It seems that companies in other developed nations kept more of their employees during the downturn, even at the cost of profits and productivity. Something has changed in the United States as employees are not seen as being as valuable as they once were. Downsizing and trimming the workforce seems to be the first strategy to deal with a downturn as opposed to keeping more employees and sacrificing some level of profitability. Earnings per share and bottom line profits have won out over retaining skilled employees throughout a downturn. Pumping every ounce of output from the remaining workers is seen as a better strategy than hiring new employees as profits bounce back, employee morale and well being take a back seat.

I guess the United States is firmly entrenched in the “employee as a unit of labor input” formula as opposed to an individual with respect, responsibility and loyalty if treated well. This should be no surprise when the action that are taking place in some states towards professionals such as teachers and firefighters as they are hammered down into the roles of “just shut up and work.”

Blacks Distracted By Angry Black Woman Pepsi Max Ad While Black Unemployment Rate Almost Twice That Of Whites

The uproar over a Pepsi Max Super Bowl XLV commercial has caused a firestorm because it was thought to have promoted a stereotype about the angry black woman. For the record it could have been interpreted as hitting on other hot buttons in the black community, such as black men finding blond white women so irrestible that they would disrespect their wives to look at one. How about black people not being able to resist food that is bad for us. We are outraged about that when the January 2011 unemployment rate among African Americans was 15.7% compared to 8% for the same category of Whites according to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics. That is a true outrage. The jobless rates for Whites went from 8.5% to 8% while blacks went from 15.8% to 15.7% comparing December 2010 to January 2011.

Selective Outrage

A firestorm erupted after the commercial aired. Black bloggers, websites and even politicians weighed in on the issue with their outrage. An article titled “'Angry black woman' Super Bowl ad promotes stereotypes” by Ronda Racha Penrice February 7, 2011 and published on the Grio website go into the roots of the anger. We can may reasons to be outraged over or image being trampled by our own people given the movies and television shows that have been produced with angry black women and brutal black men made by black producers. Music videos promote other negative images of low morals among black men and women worshiping at the alter of sex, money and excess.

There are many things to be angry about when it comes to how our image is being promoted, yet we support the TV shows, movies and music just as much as we buy Pepsi Max soda. Was the real outrage that it was shown to 111 million people. Was the commercial wrong, yes it was, but let's use the outrage to clean all of the bad image promotion up. We should not get caught not get caught in the old we can say something among ourselves and cheer, but someone else can't show the same thing. We already have that problem with the use of a certain word.

Cheers will erupt in a movie theater when a black woman burns down her husband's car, throws hot grits on him or let's his luxury SUV go over a bridge. Areas are packed as a black entertainer describes how he has his way with women and throws them aside. Where is the outrage?

Do We Need A Black Unemployment Stereotype Ad

Do we need a commercial showing a consumer products company hiring white workers at a 2 to 1 rate over equally qualified black applicants with black women getting angry in the interviews and black men leering at the white blond receptionists. That would be something to become outraged about because we know that is not why the black unemployment rate is almost twice that of whites. Why aren't we expressing our outrage?