Toro
Diamond Member
- Thread starter
- #21
Toro, I have seen many a graph claiming that such employment has risen sharply, and now hovers around 50%. Are the authors of such graphs just flat out lying?
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Two things about those graphs. First, they are near the bottom of the recession. The private sector always sheds more jobs during a recession and hires more during a recovery. Thus, there's some data mining in those graphs. If you did the same graph for the end of 2006, it would look dramatically different.
Second, its disingenuous. Why only measure construction and manufacturing jobs? Both are minorities in the broad economy. The private service sector is much greater. Manufacturing jobs have been steadily declining for years, and construction jobs have undergone one of the biggest booms and busts of all time.
There is a stale debate that periodically pops up here about Bush and Obama regarding job growth. Those pimping Bush fail to realize that by some estimates, roughly half of all jobs created under Bush were directly or indirectly related to the construction and mortgage finance industries. Both were huge beneficiaries of one of the biggest bubbles of all time. With the Housing Bubble, job growth would have been nowhere near as strong under Bush. Now, that's definitely not Bush's fault. But its also not right (mostly) to blame Obama for this mess. Its a joke to hear people try to explain that the stimulus and Obamacare are keeping unemployment high. I'm sure that is true to a small extent, but a third of the 8 million jobs lost in this recession are related to the collapse of the Housing Bubble, and its probably about half if you include the jobs lost due to the multiplier affect. WTF is the administration supposed to do? Inflate another housing bubble? Tax cuts are going to bring back jobs lost forever because of the collapse of one of the biggest bubbles of all time? Are you kidding me? What are these people smoking? Half the jobs during the last expansion were due to the Housing Bubble and half the jobs lost were due to the collapse. That's Obama's fault? That's Bush's fault? People are clueless. There are deeper structural problems in this country. We'll work through them, but the cacophony is tiresome.
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