Re: Trump Staff Picks
Yeah, but the number of people who have given up and opted out of the labor market is at record levels.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct...z5YOLfes1jWrZ9GxQ&sig2=aeVq6QHvPbgQquh91OtWAA
Since another poster has already quoted your post, I will quote it also with apologies to the members who have you on ignore.
Your post has three problems:
- You are continuing to try to derail the conversation to introduce right-wing talking points regarding Obama and to avoid the discussion of "Trump Staff Picks" which is the actual topic of the thread.
- Your post quotes a site owned by Media Research Center which is a site that takes news and "re-interprets" it to support their conservative positions. The founder of MRC, L. Brent Bozell III, is an activist is also involved in organizations like Parents Television Council and the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. If someone cannot use original source material to support their positions, it's usually because a) they have not read the original reports or b) because they don't understand the original reports or c) all of the above.
- With that said, the BLS report includes a metric called "Labor-Force Participation". It's a metric that hasn't gotten much attention until recently when it became the "glass is half empty" talking point for those who don't want to accept positive employment news from a Democratic administration.
If you would have read the original reports and the analysis from the Fed, you would know that the Labor-Force Participation is actually a comparison of two factors- the number of eligible workers compares to those who are actually working in the civilian job force or who are actively looking for work. It also excludes those are incarcerated.
The argument that people "have given up" is not accurate. In the same
BLS report that the faux-news sites use, there's another chart called "
Not in Labor Force, Want a Job Now" that shows that it is not the case- the number of people who are unemployed but want to work jumped up after the 2008 recession but has been in decline since then. It is however, higher than it was pre-2008, reflecting that there are segments of the economy that have not recovered from the recession.
Also in the same report:
Not in Labor Force, Searched For Work and Available
Total unemployed, plus discouraged workers
Employment-Population Ratio
So why is the Labor Force Participation rate declining?
The biggest reason is that because baby boomers are aging out of the workforce and retiring. The other reason is that the population of people who were continuing to work because they needed health insurance is lower because the Affordable Care Act (ACA aka Obamacare) now allows people to purchase insurance as individuals. This was discussed in a
CBO report in 2014 (quoted below since you must have missed it when you read the CBO's report):
The most significant effect will come from the aging of the population (and other demographic changes), but federal tax and spending policies will also play a role.
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) will tend to reduce participation, with the largest impact stemming from new subsidies that reduce the cost of health insurance purchased through exchanges. Specifically, by providing subsidies that decline with rising income (and increase with falling income) and by making some people financially better off, the ACA will create an incentive for some people to choose to work less.
So, bringing us back to the actual topic of this thread....The danger in appointing cabinet heads who don't understand things like economics and who don't have an interest in actually understanding what's underneath all those pretty charts... and the problem with having a President-elect who gets his information from sites like CNS and Breitbart is that
not reading original source material and understanding the numbers will lead to ineffective or damaging actions. And as one can see from the effects of the 2008 recession- it can take years to undo damage done during previous administrations, so the decision to nominate persons who have never worked in government, who are not qualified for the position and who do not properly understand the metrics will lead to bad decisions, bad policy and damage to the nation.
I'm sure that Putin is loving this.
