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Understanding Reality - You Don’t Know What You’ve Lost Till Its Gone

Michael Shedlock — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 00:27:00 +0000

As everyone should know by now, my main concern with unions is specifically with public unions. While I do not care for unions at all, and never have, at least with private unions, someone other than corrupt politicians buying votes is bargaining at the other end of the table.

In the case of public unions, if politicians strike a bad deal, taxpayers foot the bill. In the case of private corporations, if management strikes a bad deal, the company goes bankrupt, shareholders take a hit, or the jobs move elsewhere, as soon as the contract is up.

Except in few cases every now and again, private unions just cannot seem to understand this simple economic fact.

Machinists Union Pickets Cessna Aircraft

The Kansas Wichita Eagle highlights the typical union response, public or private, in Cessna's initial offer to Machinists includes wage cut

Machinist union members at Cessna Aircraft picketed near the company's plant in southwest Wichita on Thursday to protest jobs being sent outside the city.

Members fought strong, gusty afternoon winds and carried signs that read "Keep it Made in Wichita," "Outsourcing is Treason" and "We built the Air Capital," as they picketed at K-42 and Hoover roads. Some carried American flags.

Cessna and the Machinists union are in the midst of contract negotiations. The current contract expires Sept. 19. About 2,300 hourly workers at Cessna are covered by the agreement. Hawker Beechcraft also has reopened negotiations with the union as it considers sending work to Louisiana, Mississippi and outside the country.

Cessna's initial proposal is for a 10-year agreement that cuts wages 4.2 percent, weakens job security, replaces the pension plan with a 401(k) plan and increases the share of the cost of health insurance paid by the workers to 30 percent, said union spokesman Bob Wood.

"There's no job security in the current proposal," Wood said.

"Wichita is based on aircraft," said Cynthia Hise. "If you don't get a good contract...." Darren Hise finished her sentence. "It's going to hurt the whole economy in Wichita."

Reflections on Job Security

Here's the deal. The Hise's and the union in general, appears ready willing and able to "hurt the whole Wichita economy" if they do not get what they want.

I have to ask "How stupid is that?"

The answer is "tremendously stupid".

It is far better to have a good paying job and no job security than no job at all and no prospects of a job. That's what it boils down to, and like it or not, that is the economic reality.

I do not know what salaries are, but a 10 year contract with only a 4.2% pay cut does not strike me as a bad deal. Those who think otherwise need to compare it to the alternative: seeing all the jobs go to Louisiana, Mississippi, or outside the country.

By the way, wouldn't residents of Louisiana and Mississippi be very grateful for those job, regardless of what the salary was? I think so. So the bottom line is this mess, is the unions would be to blame and only the unions to blame if Cessna moves elsewhere. The union will also be responsible for wrecking the entire local economy if it happens.

Take the contract and run! It's for 10 years! Because .... You Don't Know What You've Lost Till Its Gone, Then It's Too Late. In this case, it will be gone forever.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
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Will your pension let you give up working by 65?

The Independent - Pensions RSS Feed — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 23:00:01 +0000

Pensions have never enjoyed so much time in the spotlight. Regulatory overhauls, demands from campaign groups and proposals from the new Coalition Government have combined to ensure that the sector has often made headlines. A vision for reforming the state pensions system was unveiled in June by Iain Duncan Smith, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, who said everyone needed to take responsibility for achieving the income in retirement to which they aspire.

Reflections on the “Recovery”

Michael Shedlock — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 19:43:00 +0000

One year ago the official unemployment rate was 9.7%. Today it is 9.6%.

One year ago U-6 unemployment was 16.8%. Today U-6 is 16.7%

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For more details on the jobs report, please see Jobs Decrease by 54,000, Rise by 60,000 Excluding Census; Unemployment Rises Slightly to 9.6%; A Look Beneath the Surface

For all the trillions of dollars in stimulus and additional trillions of dollars in bank bailouts and trillions of dollars of expansion of the Fed's balance sheet, this is all we have to show for it.

Moreover, the economy is clearly slowing already by many economic reports including new home sales, existing home sales, the regional Fed manufacturing surveys, sentiment measures, and consumer spending trends. The only major discrepancy is ISM.

This week, none of that matters. However, I would like to point out that bear market rallies end, not on bad news, but on good news. It will be interesting to see how much more good news there is, and the market's reaction to it.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
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Mideast Talks: Now for the Hard Part

Council on Foreign Relations — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:57:30 +0000

The Israeli and Palestinian leaders launched new Mideast talks with seriousness and without theatrics but face a looming deadline on settlements and a tight timeline for success, says CFR's Robert Danin.

Jobs Decrease by 54,000, Rise by 60,000 Excluding Census; Unemployment Rises Slightly to 9.6%; A Look Beneath the Surface

Michael Shedlock — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:08:00 +0000

This morning the BLS reported a decrease of 64,000 jobs. However, that reflects a decrease of 114,000 temporary census workers.

Excluding the census effect, government lost 7,000 jobs. Were the trend to continue, this would be a good thing because Firing Public Union Workers Creates Real Jobs.

Unfortunately, politicians and Keynesian clown economists will not see it that way. Indeed there is a $26 billion bill giving money to the states to keep bureaucrats employed. This is unfortunate because we need to shed government jobs.

Birth-Death Model

Hidden beneath the surface the BLS Black Box - Birth Death Model added 115,000 jobs, a number likely to be revised lower in coming years. Please note you cannot directly subtract the number from the total because of the way the BLS computes its overall number.

Participation Rate Effects

The civilian labor force participation rate (64.7 percent) and the employment-population ratio (58.5 percent) were essentially unchanged from last month's report. However, these measures have declined by 0.5 percentage points and 0.3 points, respectively, since April.

The drop in participation rate this year is the only reason the unemployment rate is not over 10%. The drop in participation rates is not that surprising because some of the long-term unemployed stopped looking jobs, or opted for retirement.

Nonetheless, I still do not think the top in the unemployment rate is in and expect it may rise substantially later this year as the recovery heads into a coma and states are forced to cut back workers unless Congress does substantially more to support states.

Employment and Recessions

Calculated Risk has a great chart showing the effects of census hiring as well as the extremely weak hiring in this recovery.

click on chart for sharper image

The dotted lines tell the real story about how pathetic a jobs recovery this has been. Bear in mind it has taken $trillions in stimulus to produce this.

June, July Revisions

The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for June was revised from -221,000 to -175,000, and the change for July was revised from -131,000 to -54,000.

Those revisions look good but it is important to note where the revisions comes from. The loss of government jobs in June was revised from -252,000 to -236,000 and July from -202 to -161,000.

Major Discrepancies

The BLS jobs report for August does not match ADP payroll estimates. Moreover, neither the BLS jobs report nor the ADP jobs report is consistent with the hot ISM number reported Wednesday. Both the BLS (details below) and ADP have a decline in manufacturing employment while ISM had a rise.

Please see Rosenberg says "ISM Flunks Sniff Test "; Cashin calls ISM "an Outlier"; ADP, Other Data Does Not Confirm for more details that suggest the ISM number is nonsense.

Part-Time Employment

The number of involuntary part-time workers increased by 331,000 over the month to 8.9 million. In January, the number of employees working "part-time for economic reasons" was 8.6 million.

Now for this month's report ....

July 2010 Report

Please consider the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) July 2010 Employment Report.

Nonfarm payroll employment changed little (-54,000) in August, and the unemployment rate was about unchanged at 9.6 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Government employment fell, as 114,000 temporary workers hired for the decennial census completed their work. Private-sector payroll employment continued to trend up modestly (+67,000).

Unemployment Rate - Seasonally Adjusted

Nonfarm Payroll Employment - Seasonally Adjusted

Since September 2009, temporary help services employment has risen by 362,000.

Establishment Data

click on chart for sharper image

Highlights

54,000 jobs were lost
19,000 construction jobs were added
27,000 manufacturing jobs were lost
38,000 service providing jobs were added
67,00 retail trade jobs were added
20,000 professional and business services jobs were added
45,000 education and health services jobs were added
13,000 leisure and hospitality jobs were added
121,000 government jobs were lost. Of them, 143,000 were temporary census workers

Note: some of the above categories overlap as shown in the preceding chart, so do not attempt to total them up.

Index of Aggregate Weekly Hours

Production and non-supervisory work hours rose .1 to 33.5 hours (from a revised lower hours total of 33.4 hours). Average hourly earnings rose $.03 at $19.08.

Birth Death Model Revisions 2009

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Birth Death Model Revisions 2010

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Birth/Death Model Revisions

The BLS Birth/Death Model methodology is so screwed up and there have been so many revisions and up it is pointless to further comment other than to repeat a few general statements.

Please note that one cannot subtract or add birth death revisions to the reported totals and get a meaningful answer. One set of numbers is seasonally adjusted the other is not. In the black box the BLS combines the two coming out with a total. The Birth Death numbers influence the overall totals but the math is not as simple as it appears and the effect is nowhere near as big as it might logically appear at first glance.

BLS Black Box

For those unfamiliar with the birth/death model, monthly jobs adjustments are made by the BLS based on economic assumptions about the birth and death of businesses (not individuals).

Birth/Death assumptions are supposedly made according to estimates of where the BLS thinks we are in the economic cycle. Theory is one thing. Practice is clearly another.

Household Data

The number of unemployed persons (14.9 million) and the unemployment rate (9.6 percent) were little changed in August. From May through August, the jobless rate remained in the range of 9.5 to 9.7 percent.

The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over) declined by 323,000 over the month to 6.2 million. In August, 42.0 percent of unemployed persons had been jobless for 27 weeks or more.

In August, the civilian labor force participation rate (64.7 percent) and the employment-population ratio (58.5 percent) were essentially unchanged.

The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) increased by 331,000 over the month to 8.9 million. These individuals were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a fulltime job.

[Mish Note: In January the number was 8.3 million]

Persons Not in the Labor Force

About 2.4 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force in August, little changed from a year earlier. (The data are not seasonally adjusted.) These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the
survey.

Table A-8 Part Time Status

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The key take-away is there are 8,860,00 workers whose hours may rise before those companies start hiring more workers.

Table A-15

Table A-15 is where one can find a better approximation of what the unemployment rate really is.

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Grim Statistics

The official unemployment rate is 9.6%. However, if you start counting all the people that want a job but gave up, all the people with part-time jobs that want a full-time job, all the people who dropped off the unemployment rolls because their unemployment benefits ran out, etc., you get a closer picture of what the unemployment rate is. That number is in the last row labeled U-6.

It reflects how unemployment feels to the average Joe on the street. U-6 is 16.7%, up .2 from last month.

Looking ahead, there is no driver for jobs. Moreover, states are in forced cutback mode on account of shrinking revenues and unfunded pension obligations. Shrinking government jobs and benefits at the state and local level is a much needed adjustment. Those cutbacks will weigh on employment and consumer spending for quite some time.

Expect to see structurally high unemployment for years to come.

Keep in mind that huge cuts in public sector jobs and benefits at the city, county, and state level are on the way. These are badly needed adjustments. However, economists will not see it that way, nor will the politicians.

Recap

The private sector hiring increase of 67,000 is very weak for a recovery. That number is not enough to keep the unemployment rate steady. However, the unemployment rate comes from the Household Survey (a phone survey), not from actual payroll data.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
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