U.S. Jobless Claims Drop, Lowest Since 2007
 

It seems there might be hope for the economy rebounding. Housing prices also creeping back up. Less inventory.

SOURCE

Ouch!

Economy shrinks in 1st quarter; winter slowdown worse than thought

Also I think as usual the "low unemployment" is to some degree a larger percentage of people dropping out of the labor force.

politics schmolitics

Complete and utter bullshit.

People are not filing the claims because the lion share of folks who need the benefits are no longer eligible. Many have given up.

In all reality, the unemployment rate in the USA is over 20%.

That is an economic fact, and if folks would do their research instead of taking the word of the content whore media that we have in this country, they would know those facts.

With regards to housing, I can tell you by personal affect that the housing market is getting better in more affluent areas, as the rich are getting richer.

I bought my house, which was worth 905k at the top of the market for just 590K two years ago at the very bottom of the market. I got a cash offer just 2 months ago to sell my house for 725k. Of course we said no. There is no inventory right now in the best neighborhoods in California, and people are offering +5-9% over market because they know that the property values are going to continue to rise.




.

once you stop counting most of the unemployed, you can make up any number you need to look good.

It's the same here.

A couple of years back, it seems like every 10th house on a block was for sale. Now, you can barely find anything decent. Those on the lake are creeping back up into the half million dollar range. There is little inventory right now for those looking to buy anything beyond investment bread box type houses.

:disgust

I completely disagree with this. At the low point of the recession, everyone I knew locally was out of work and loosing their jobs and loosing their houses. I no longer see any of this - all of my local friends have jobs.

You can argue about the true number of unemployed people until you are blue in the face. You can argue there are people who fell off of unemployment because they were on it too long, but you can also argue that some people who are on unemployment are on unemployment because it's free money. (My brother was on unemployment, and he told he wasn't interested in looking for a job. Why work a crappy job when he can get a paycheck for doing nothing is what he told me. The moment his unemployment ran out he went and got a job.)

The unemployment rate has been determined the same exact way since I was a youngster - why are we suddenly questioning it now? If you want to change the way we come to this number then that's fine - but we'll need to adjust it for every year. And then we compare. And I'm guessing we'll end up with the same exact result - higher numbers, but unemployment coming down.

yuup

8char

It didn't happen because I didn't see it!

Once again, I'm not going to debate anyone on a message board. I make 5 posts a month here now. Believe it or not, I can care less. I'm going back to getting ahead in the world now. Enjoy folks.

E

wow. thats the kool aide answer for sure.
read this and learn a thing:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-0...bs-beckon.html

"we're suddenly questioning it now because in the past, we never had a real unemployment rate in the high teens. people found work after their unemployment ran out. thats no longer the case. worker "participation is lower than its been in 36 years.

:2 cents: At this point, the unemployment numbers mean nothing.

yup pure lies. and the us economy is retracting

True. However, a lot of that is by choice. A mix of entitlement and laziness.

True. However, the best training in the world does not mean anything if the person is lazy.

True. Others are more than happy to work in fields, McDonalds drive thru, mowing lawns, and cleaning your house. While many look down on these jobs, there are plenty of other counties and immigrants/illegals more than happy to take those jobs and work their way up from the bottom.

Again, very true.

There are too many people on this planet as it is now. You are starting to see it's effect on natural resources, especially water and oil. While some countries have the land mass and ability to feed their people, others not so much. Either way, with the increase in technology and automation, there is less need for manual labor and low skilled jobs. Where are all of these people going to go?

I am sure if you eliminated the government teet, these people would somehow find a job. Find a place to live. Find a way to get what they want out of life. However, if you provide them handouts, they will take them versus trying to learn to fish themselves.

Profits are up for business's because median wages are down.

There are less jobs out there, so people can't leave the jobs they have unless they want to get into lower paying jobs, thus people are stuck and not getting raises. People that are pushed out of good paying jobs are forced to take low paying jobs.

I watch Jon Stewart and even he says this, good paying jobs are being replaced with low to minimum wage jobs. The unemployment rate means jack shit.

Over the years, presidents have made changes to them, I remember when Clinton added the military to the equation to lower the numbers. It wasn't like that before and shouldn't be part of it.

When Reagan left office, we had a little over 4% unemployed, after people said that under Carter, we would never get back to those levels, kinda like the same people that are celebrating that under Obama we are in the 6% level.

The government doesn't count people as unemployed unless they are actively searching.

This thread as officially arrived.

We have Vendzilla and a Reagan reference. :thumbsup

Rochard should be along to tear apart Vendzilla in 5....4....3...

:winkwink:

:thumbsup

GDP shrank 1% at the same time. It's quite the interesting feat to grow jobs and shrink the economy at the exact same time. ;)

No, according to Rochard, he has me on ignore, yet he recently visited my profile. He says I can't debate. He give opinions, I post facts, he drops out of the conversation and puts me on ignore. Rinse and repeat.

I don't like whats going on in washington, we have a weak leader. If he was a republican, I would still call him a weak leader. I don't give a shit what party he's in. In don't like either party anymore.

Dipshit promised in 2008 that he would fix the problems with the VA during his campaign, how many VETS have to die to prove he's a worthless president?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...x-va-hospital/

Auditors determined that the hospital?s leadership ?significantly understated the time new patients waited for their primary care appointment in their FY 2013 performance appraisal accomplishments, which is one of the factors considered for awards and salary increases.?
Official VA data showed that 226 patients in a sampling from the Phoenix clinic had waited just 24 days on average for their first primary care appointments. But the inspector general?s office determined that those veterans had actually waited an average of 115 days.

But don't worry, I'm sure Rochard has an excuse for this

There goes the dollar! Every time the job market rebounds, the dollar drops :(

I was kidding man.

I know you love political threads....to say the least.

:upsidedow

No worries, it may seem I get bothered, but in reality i'm not. Most on this forum that when they meet me wonder where Vendzilla is, I'm only that person here.

I play on GFY for fun and to keep up with business.

If I upset people about my views, I feel sorry for them if that's all they have.

I post in political threads, but I read thru most of the threads.

Anyways, taking a break, going to get on my Harley and take my girl out for lunch shortly. Waiting on Webair to fix a word press problem for me that I haven't encountered before. I'm using a new program to generate sliders for design and so far the program makes awesome sliders.

GDP has been awful this year. ISM Manufacturing, ADP and NonFarm Payrolls next week.. S&P in hitting record highs this week.. Going to be interesting to see what Yellen does with the Interest rate decesion coming up in a couple weeks.

These are the numbers that matter:
Employment-to-population ratio in OECD countries
Persons aged 15?64 years (percentages)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employm...pulation_ratio

Toplist for 2012
Iceland 80.2
Switzerland 79.4
Norway 75.8
Netherlands 75.1
Sweden 73.8
Germany 72.8
Denmark 72.6
Austria 72.5
Australia 72.3
Canada 72.2
New Zealand 72.1
United Kingdom 70.9
Japan 70.6
Finland 69.5
Russia 69.0
Estonia 67.2
Brazil 67.2
United States 67.1

I think there are plenty of jobs out there for the lower middle class. I'm talking $10hr to $15 or what would usually be considered manual labor/service. In other words people making well under $40k/year. There are loads of these kinds of jobs out there and as I've traveled I constantly see lots of help wanted signs in even smaller towns for these kinds of positions.

Now the jobs seem to dry up when it comes into the 50k and up range. That's where the real loss of jobs are and people in that range don't want to settle for less. This IMO is more so due to the way companies have become more efficient than anything else as well as out sourcing of better paying factory jobs.

What we have in the US is a lot of service type jobs and labor jobs, things you can't outsource as easy.

Now what amazes me is the serious shortage of truck drivers. I see truck driving jobs all over the place and specially for someone with just a HS diploma or GED it would be a good career choice as those guys can easily get well above the $50k mark, which isn't bad for the average person. Not to mention many companies are so desperate for drivers they will pay for the CDL training or give a sign on bonus for experienced drivers.

What it comes down to, is there are plenty of blue collar jobs, but the white collar stuff has dried up when it comes to management positions and engineering type stuff. No need to keep a 60-80k a year guy around when they can hire a college grad whom wants to prove himself for $40-50k. They can get the college grads for half the price and get several years of work out of them saving a good chuck of change before the grad moves on..

I own shit the worst area of my city and it has doubled so that part is also looking good.

More mothers are staying home. America is aging. Most people on this board would be considered unemployed... ok need more? going form 66% to 63% is a big deal but there are a lot of factors.

more mothers are NOT staying home by CHOICE, retired people aren't counted as UNEMPLOYED, and most of the people on this board ARE unemployed......so yeah, I'll need more.

Exactly right. There are, and have been, help wanted signs all over the place for the past 2-3 years.

I have talked to a number of business owners around town, as well as in my travels, and many are hiring now or have been looking for some time. However, they all share a common bitch about the caliber of individuals available to pick from.

For any one job, you will get 100 applicants. Out of those 100, 90% are not even worth interviewing for any number of reasons (drugs, entitlement, unrealistic expectations, work history, etc.). Out of the couple that are left, you have to try and find a viable candidate you want to train or can handle the work, which is not easy.

:disgust

When I was living in Northern California, there was a job fair at Coca Cola. I went in, I was starting to fill out the form when I was asked to come in the office for the interview. The jobs they were hiring for involved some electronics background. He showed me a circuit board and asked me to identify a component on it, I told him it was a capacitor and the rating was like 35 micro farads. He just laughed and said I was hired. It was the second day and the end of the day and I was the only person to say it was a capacitor and he didn't know about the color coding on them was the same as resistors, let alone what the colors meant. I still remember today after being taught that in high school.

During that time, some guy with the name "Steve Austin" failed the drug test for meth, they allowed him to test again 2 weeks later and he failed again. It's only in your blood for 3 days! LOL

I'm disappointed with your response.
You left out the part where all the houses on you street were for sale when Obamo took office now they're all sold and people living in them.