The problem with this Zero Hedge “implied unemployment rate” chart that the wingers are screaming about as proof of a massive “Democrat Party scam” is the fact that Tyler Durden ran the numbers back for 30 years and it exists all the way back to the Reagan era, and it shows that the “real” unemployment rate under President Bill Clinton was actually under two percent by the time he left office. Slick Willie was such a monster that he lowballed his numbers every month for both of his two terms and spotted himself a higher 4.0% plus unemployment rate instead, and then George W. Bush came along and quadrupled it from 2 percent to 8 percent. (Why Bush the Elder didn’t learn from his boss, I dunno.)
Not only that, but the implied rate under St. Ronaldus (nearly 14%) was far worse than anything currently under the Obama administration (falling from 12%), meaning that if we’re measuring who the worst President in history is by the implied unemployment rate and by how far the numbers are “lying” then that particular crown goes to Jellybean. His guys basically shaved 3.5 points off the unemployment rate for the entirety of his first term and still got him re-elected overwhelmingly in 1984 as a result. Of course, since that’s the benchmark, it doesn’t count. President Obama took a far worse collapse and is handling far better than Reagan did with his recession, so of course everyone has to ignore 95% of the chart.
You know, because President Obama is judged by a different standard for reasons that nobody on the right can seem to articulate…
WereBear
They have left Reality behind and now they are attempting to throw Math out of the boat, too.
I like to imagine their efforts opening a Portal and a Terry Gilliam-type beast leaping out and devouring them. I love dinner with a fine whine.
Betty Cracker
“Chart of Darkness” = genius!
mcmullje
Obama is guily of the two most serious right wing mortal sins: Black and Democrat
Odie Hugh Manatee
Oh they’re trying to articulate it all right, they’re just not able to scream it out loud like they used to so things like “YOU LIE!” have to suffice. Give them a bit more time though, like to at least this fall.
I expect we haven’t seen anything yet.
MikeJ
@Betty Cracker: Zandar has blazed a trail that many will now follow in the field of punning headlines for posts about statistics. Expect lesser bloggers to go with “chart like a wheel”, “straight from the chart”, or even Palin’s “America by chart”.
JGabriel
Those Clinton years look pretty good, according to Durden’s chart.
I wonder how the wingnuts feel about that.
.
c u n d gulag
@MikeJ:
My chart belongs to Obama.
WereBear
I’m afraid you are right. As the classic literature about challenged beliefs meets with the winger brain dysfunction, we will see previously unparalleled doubling down and fantastic conspiracy theories.
Betty Cracker
@MikeJ: Home is Where the Chart Is. Tell It to My Chart. Stop Dragging My Chart Around.
(Someone stop me. I could go on all day. Really.)
JGabriel
Zandar @ Top:
Are you saying it’s because Obama went to Harvard?
No, wait, that can’t be it. So did Bush fils.
Must be something else … I dunno, I’m stumped.
What could it possibly be that makes Obama so different from other presidents that the conservatives won’t say?
.
Woodrowfan
the comments on Zero Hedge are, well, interesting. Screaming about the “leftwing” New York Times, how Alex Jones is the only honest reporter left, etc, etc.
fmbjo
Who is this Tyler Durden and do we trust his results? Where did his info come from? Why hasn’t this been noticed before? I guess I need more background to get enraged.
MikeJ
@Betty Cracker: Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Chart Club Band? Sweetchart of the rodeo? Chart and Soul?
Omnes Omnibus
@JGabriel: He’s quite skinny.
General Stuck
Seems like only yesterday, the BLS UE number came straight from gawd hisself at over 9 percent. Now it’s tallied up by Satan, with doctored input from the Kenyan Witchdoctor.
The UE number has always been largely a political number, with internals that are some like crosstabs of a poll to get a better idea of how the report might play with voters. And the internals of this months BLS report is chock full of indications of continued hiring. Most voters don’t read nor care about what the BLS churns out. They make their decisions on local impressions of hiring of friends and family. Of not only the number of jobs available, but also the quality of those jobs. And 50,000 manufacturing jobs stands out as a number that should impress voters on the current trend, which is most important election wise for Obama. Bush’s recovery in the middle of his presnitcy, was losing manufacturing jobs and gaining lower paying services jobs.
The wingnuts know their only hope for winning the WH is continued poor job production, so they swarm like keyboard vamps toward discrediting the BLS. It is how they roll. And won’t work.
Brian R.
It’s certainly not because he’s a ni-CLANG!
jteeDC
So the media hasn’t been doing their job for the last 30-odd years? Oh.
Also, too: I am Trying To Break Your Chart
GregB
So the statistics and charts were perfectly fine for all of Wingnuttistan to quote when the numbers were going up.
Now that they are on a downward trend those stats and charts are all part of the evil vast left wing conspiracy media complex.
Damn it must be great to live in a world where whatever I believe can be affirmed and discounted on the sole evidence of whatever I believe.
catclub
@MikeJ: Mix up one of these posts and pets pics and you get The Cat in the Chart
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Brian R.:
Naah, he’s just too damned “blah” for them.
@MikeJ:
Chartocalypse Now?
Suffern ACE
The economy felt better under Reagan. Because … Cowboy. When unemployment started to fall in a big way (to the point that the talking heads were worried about inflation), the dems did mount the same complaint – numbers were fixed. There’s a real unemployment rate. It didn’t work then and I don’t think it will work now.
Playing with the queen of charts?
BGinCHI
Hotwire my chart. Two charts beat as one.
Took the night off the intertubes and come back to find Cole’s dad with a mild (I hope) heart attack and much distress and love/support on this blogmunity.
A big hug to the Coles. Hope he’s doing better.
Soonergrunt
@MikeJ: On behalf of those lesser bloggers, MikeJ, let me only say, ‘thanks for the ideas, I’m so stealing them if I ever do a chart!’
scav
@Betty Cracker: You Dun Stomped on My Chart.
Soonergrunt
@GregB: We have a number of people like that on this very site, you know. We should study them, like animals on the savannah.
Soonergrunt
Straight from the chart
Chart to chart
Owner of a lonely chart
Chartbreak
Chart and Soul
Chart of Rock and Roll
schrodinger's cat
Is Zero Hedge a good and reliable site for Econ? Its seems very bearish on the whole with an extremely negative outlook on everything.
catclub
It might be wise to realize some points:
1. Re-adjusting of this number could change its significance.
2. The second chart of labor participation by age bracket, that purportedly shows ‘that people are not retiring at 65 any more’, neglects that the population (If I am not mistaken), is getting older, so that the older bracket that does have substantially lower job market participation, is also getting larger, (and also LMP of that group is 40% while LMP of the 18-54 group is more like 75%).
3. If unemployment is so high, are they calling for a manhattan, interstate highway, and railroads to the moon projects of government jobs to get it down?
hmmm, wonder why not.
AkaDad
Shot through the chart
And you’re to blame
You give stats
A bad name
Joel
Maybe I’m dull, but I don’t even really get how Durden is calculating the implied unemployment rate. Why not just show the formula?
JGabriel
@Betty Cracker: I believe you’ve hit: The Chart of the Matter.
I hope all the info in that chart is good, because I don’t know How To Mend a Broken Chart. We’d have to make a new chart, which would be bad, because if it overtook the first one, well, then we’d have a Total Eclipse of the Chart.
My god, it’s contagious.
.
General Stuck
Another example of brightening econ skies
Even in tea tard heavy NH friendly to Romney we see the turn around. And I think it was Martin yesterday, noting similar improvements in other battleground states, on the jobs front.
Fred Coulter
While it is fun to blame and praise the President, Congress does affect things a bit.
gbear
I left my chart in San Francisco
Jay C
Yeah, funny how UE figures go unchallenged (if agonized over) when they reflect badly on an incumbent Democrat, but somehow lose their luster when things start to look up for same…
I (chart) Obama!
Maude
@gbear:
WIN
Amir Khalid
Two charts are better than one
Two charts girl get the job done
Two charts are better than one
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
I lurk on ZH.
Most of the posters and commenters there are people who have a vested interest in US economic failure, whether financial, political or emotional.
It’s not really a good source of valid info. Good on you for calling them on their BS.
kindness
Reichtwingnutz sctick is motivation through anger and fear. That’s all they do. Doesn’t matter the subject, doesn’t matter if it’s true or not.
If our side can’t get the MSM to report what is correct instead of reporting ‘the controversy’ we’re toast. If we can get some truth out there, we’ll do OK.
@mcmullje: Black, Democrat and successful. That’s what really gets ’em. Just think of what could have happened if every single thing wasn’t filibustered?
Legalize
Ugh. OT but Ben Gazarra died. His work in Killing of a Chinese Bookie was out of this world. :(
R-Jud
Don’t go fakin’ my chart.
Chart-Shaped Box.
gbear
@General Stuck:
I wonder how much of Obama’s improved approval rate has to do with New Hampshire having had the opportunity to see Mitt up close and personal.
Legalize
Charty Charty, Bang Bang
chrome agnomen
it’s a slippery slope from a chart to a shart.
MikeJ
@Joel: His claim is that the long term labor participation percentage is X, and thus all unemployment stats should be based on that number X, forever. He gets his number by multiplying 65.8%(his value for X) times the population and then declares that’s how many people *should* be working or counted as unemployed.
Rather than just, you know, like count them and stuff.
Kane
Sure, President Obama took an economy on the brink of another Great Depression and turned it in the right direction. And granted, Obama did save the American auto industry from collapse. And yes, Obama eliminated Bin Laden. And yes, Obama has kept the country safe from another 9/11-type attack. But vote against Obama anyway!
I believe this is what political insiders call a “losing argument”
MikeJ
@Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor:
People started paying attention to them at the crash because, hey, they had said bad stuff was coming. Of course they always say bad stuff is coming. Eventually they would have to be right.
ZH is James Glassman[1] times negative 1.
[1] the guy who wrote, Dow 36,000
different-church-lady
The astonishing thing is that Tyler and Zero Hedge are actually darlings of a certain subset of the Daily Kos commentariat.
GregB
@gbear:
I think there are two tracks here. We got to see Mitt and Newt and Ron and Rick and Rick and Michelle close up.
Plus NH is being lead by a Speaker of the House, GOP natch, who is extremely divisive and pushing a very narrow and very far rightwing agenda that has little to do with bettering the economy and much to do with bettering the 1% and religious fanatics.
Suddenly President Obama is seeming less Hitlery to a lot of the rubes.
Two charts, one GOP.
Tommybones
Why would anyone actually believe employment numbers would be getting better anyway? What conditions exist which would create jobs in any significant way? What policies are in effect? Jobs don’t magically happen. I’ve been using Durden’s chart as my reference point for a while now. Seems to be the most accurate estimate out there.
We need to inject demand into the economy. Absent that, any alleged decrease in unemployment numbers are nothing more than hot air. Problem is, we’ll never see sufficient stimulus injected into our economy as long as the GOP and numerous conservative dems have any say on the matter. Instead we’re going to be living in a world where we are told things are getting better, even as we can see quite clearly that it isn’t the case.
General Stuck
@gbear:
Hard to say. But he was governor of Mass next door, so they ought to know something about him already. From what I can gather, NH has a large population of tea tard types, but also a large population of pragnatic voters who will vote dem if that dem gives them a practical reason too.
JGabriel
Slightly OT (but it has a chart!):
There’s nothing ad hominem in it, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen as direct a takedown by one Times op-ed writer of another, as this blog post from K-thug critiquing Brooks’ economic defense of the 1%.
.
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@MikeJ:
Yep.
There is no “Tyler Durden”: It’s a ‘nym used by some number of anonymous finance/banking/investment insiders (somewhere between 4 and 40 people, depending on who you choose to believe).
IMO, an anonymous investor who’s balls-deep in gold, commodities and hedge funds isn’t going to be the most objective observer of the Obama admin, or likely to be rooting for a recovery between now and the election.
SiubhanDuinne
@MikeJ:
MoDo: My Chart Belongs to Daddy
lamh35
Hmmm so the Romney camp fired the debate prep guy who prepped mittens for that FL debate that the village claims turned Romney’s FL fortunes around. I betting mittens isn’t planning on doing anymore debates from now on until the general. I’m guessing he figures that he’s done with Newt
lamh35
Hmmm so the Romney camp fired the debate prep guy who prepped mittens for that FL debate that the village claims turned Romney’s FL fortunes around. I betting mittens isn’t planning on doing anymore debates from now on until the general. I’m guessing he figures that he’s done with Newt?
ETA:TPM reporting that the campaign thought he debate prepper was getting too much credit for Romneys “turn around” in FL
JoyfulA
I wonder if “non-institualized” includes military. Back in the day, Reagan famously added everyone in the military to “employed” on the grounds that we had an all-volunteer military and so soldiering had become a job like any other job.
The recalculation sure did change the percentages, and historical comparisons of unemployment rates have to take the Reagan boost into consideration.
Of course, too, if we weren’t the most overinstitutionalized (by number jailed) country in the world, our unemployment rate would shoot upward. Or maybe not, because all the corporations now “hiring” prison labor to get Made-in-America tags would have to hire free labor at minimum wage instead of 40 cents an hour.
Then again, I’m going to stop arguing with myself and get back to work.
Soonergrunt
@different-church-lady: That’s not really astonishing. Any community that size is going to have a group of like-minded people for whom their whole shtick is “doom and gloom, doom and gloom, doom and gloom” usually accompanied by “unless you do whatever crazy-assed crack-addled idea we’ve just come up with!”
That such crack-addled idea would actually do more damage to the entire system, or would accomplish the goals of the opposition is always rationalized away or overlooked, usually in the name of purity, and “true liberalism ™”
Jewish Steel
It’s getting chart in here/So take off all your clothes
Wait, am I doing this right?
Joel
@General Stuck: New Hampshire used to run quite a bit more rural, and more conservative. It’s still one of the whitest states in the country. But the southern part of the state, especially around Nashua, has been assimilated into the Metro Boston area. So that changes things.
different-church-lady
Just had a realization: lots of people think the internet levels the playing field and allows people to push back against institutional disinformation. But the way it really levels the playing field is it allows individuals to disinform just as much as a institution can. Instead of shining light, it just moves bullshit manufacturing to the mom-and-pop level.
WereBear (itouch)
love this
General Stuck
@Joel:
Thanks for local info. As NH is way far away from me to speculate on very much.
Tommybones
Anyone trying to claim Tyler Durden is some right wing outfit probably hasn’t been to their site all that often. They take pleasure in pointing out the lies of Wall Street banks….
Krugman has linked to them many times as well….
schrodinger's cat
@Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor: I just checked it out, I agree, that’s exactly the sense I got. Very bearish, they have an agenda, they are not neutral.
Wasn’t Tyler Durden, Brad Pitt’s character in the Fight Club? So that is tell, they are nihilistic, they want everything to go down in flames.
JGabriel
@lamh35:
Typical vulture capitalist thinking: Let’s fire the guy that made things work successfully, so we don’t have to pay him more or give him any credit.
.
WereBear (itouch)
Achey-breaky Chart
Montysano
Zero Hedge is a purveyor of doom porn, slightly more respectable than Godlike Productions. Every week or so they scream “This is it! We’re going down!” and reap their thousands/millions of pageviews. Inevitably, it’s not “it!” and we all get up the next day and go to work.
Amir Khalid
@lamh35:
So who’s Mitt got to prep him for his three debates against Obama? (You know, the guy who handed the entire Republican House caucus its ass in that healthcare meeting.) Or does Mitt figure that he’s learned enough from Brett O’Donnell?
different-church-lady
@Soonergrunt: Well, it does kinda provide more proof of the “curved universe” theory of politics — go far enough to the left of the right and eventually the extremes will meet each other on the other side of the cosmos.
But the reason I was astonished was because the sole place I’ve ever seen Zero Hedge cited was at the GOS, and it was always to treat them like they were defenders of truth, justice, and the bizarro-world American way.
EDIT: Wait… now that I think about it, isn’t Zero Hedge a favorite of the FDL crowd as well? I seldom ever wade into that particular “wetland” unless someone from GOS links over there.
SiubhanDuinne
@BGinCHI:
Fixed in the interests of threadly consistency.
JoyfulA
@General Stuck: New Hampshire is also where the libertarians decided to move en masse a decade or so back, a small state where 100,000 libertarians could come to run the place. According to my libertarian informant, who stayed in Georgia, only 2,000 or 3,000 actually moved to NH.
General Stuck
@JoyfulA:
LOL, one of many reasons we call them wingnuts.
Mike in NC
@lamh35:
Can’t help himself: he likes to fire people that provide him services! Expect to see Willard burn through a ton of advisers and consultants in the coming months.
Montysano
@GregB:
My favorite wingnut method is Argument Via Youtube Video, i.e. “You won’t believe this! This guy lays it all out!”, with optional “Wake up, America!”.
Just yesterday a friend posted a video of some random guy ambushing teenagers with questions about politics. Their inability to answer was, in his opinion, proof that public education should be immediately and completely abolished. Srsly.
robertdsc-iPhone 4
BrokeChart Mountain.
Gian
the chart is a lonely hunter
Camchuck
Hale Stewart at Bonddad blog did a nice job debunking a related zerohedge post on the jobs report here: http://bonddad.blogspot.com/2012/02/no-rick-santelli-and-zero-hedge-one.html
divF
A broadly applicable, but particularly apt quote for this.
Willard: They told me that you had gone totally insane, and that your methods were unsound.
Kurtz: Are my methods unsound?
Willard: I don’t see any method at all, sir.
(Actually, everyone here does see their methods – see above)
Soonergrunt
@different-church-lady:
I didn’t want to incite the firebaggers unnecessarily, but…
bigfatdrunk
@Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor: I used to lurk there, but the child-like paranoia made me feel so dirty, I couldn’t do it anymore. Every once in a while, they’ll post a nugget of information, but it’s not worth the weekly wait and Alex Jones (and Rick Santelli!) fellating that comes along with it.
Somebody mentioned it, and I agree: they are actively rooting for a tremendous bear market.
WaterGirl
Can anyone else get to the thread titled Why am I just now Finding This? I had it up, then refreshed and now it says page not found.
It had 60+ comments, so I don’t I didn’t imagine it.
different-church-lady
@Soonergrunt: Damn, did I just light a bat light somewhere?
SiubhanDuinne
@WaterGirl:
I certainly do remember it. Pretty sure it was up earlier this morning, but it’s gone now. I wonder why . . . .
bigfatdrunk
Oh, and hugs to John and the gang. Best wishes to your dad for a quick recovery.
Soonergrunt
@robertdsc-iPhone 4: “Bottom line is… we’re around each other an’… this chart, it grabs hold of us again… at the wrong place… at the wrong time… and we’re dead”
“I wish I knew how to chart you.”
Bruce S
“a different standard that nobody on the right can seem to articulate”
Actually, they articulate it quite explicitly. Say “The Food Stamp President!” with a sneer, while doing “air quotes” with four fingers.
But Rick Santorum didn’t say nothing!
different-church-lady
Sheer Chart Attack
Setting the Record Straight
1. Zerohedge is a permabear/goldbugger site. The only thing they’re good for is making fun of eurozone policymakers and Goldman Sachs.
2. While their motivations are transparent, their chart is saying something true about the recovery. Something true that was not true in any previous recovery. Something new.
The decoupling between the black and red lines is real. These are the people “falling out of the workforce” that you might have heard about. The “left behind” who are not “actively part of the labor force” anymore. And historically, you expect people of proper age to, you know, be part the labor force and compete in the job market. When the economy improves and job growth is occurring, the labor force should swell with hopeful job seekers. People should also be regularly retiring (which they aren’t right now at pre-recession levels) and the rate at which young people pursue higher education rather than work right away also affects the labor participation rate.
3. And when the economy is booming (like in the 90s), you can expect that the population sampling can produce an “implied unemployment rate” (under this terminology) that is lower than the BLS adjusted rate. I’d advise anybody to go to the bls.gov site and look at the chart for the labor force participation rate from 1980-2012. It peaks in the late 90s, right as the red line in the ZH chart drops to 2%. Never was there a higher percentage of Americans working in this country at one time, it was the healthiest and most dynamic job market in our nation’s history.
4. Conclusion: the decoupling is real. Old people aren’t retiring as quickly, young people are going to college more and more, and there is a contingent of pre-recession workers who have been left behind. It has nothing to do with politics or parties in the White House, it’s not a gimmick or a conspiracy, it’s an accurate story of how the labor force is changing and adapting at the moment, more so than anything about “which Prezdent created the most jobz ftw.” If you’re being honest about it, it doesn’t tell you anything about or deny job growth, it just maps a changing labor force dynamic. Fewer people are participating, for various structural and secular reasons. But also, fuck zerohedge.
Tripod
That doom porn shit comes from a small, angry, sad place deep down inside. There’s not enough pain they could inflict on others to ever fill it.
In short – be nice to your kids.
JasperL
ZeroHedge has proven itself incompetent/stupid/ignorant/dishonest when it comes to the employment numbers over and over. Another of their posts yesterday was screaming about how 1.2 million people left the workforce. It was ALL due to revisions from the latest census numbers, pointed out by BLS with extensive discussion and TWO tables that showed in fact 75k ENTERED the workforce.
Of course, Drudge and CNBC faithfully reported this bogus analysis because it makes Obama look bad.
There are many more examples of their stupidity/ignorance/dishonesty when it comes to the monthly BLS releases. Point is they’re simply not trustworthy on ANY of their employment analysis. Believing anything they put out is like trusting a Rove press release. It might be factual, but truth or accuracy is secondary to the point.
MikeJ
Ok, I know this thread is old now, but I rethought that chart and WTF? He took the long term rate of workforce participation and then declared that any year that didn’t exactly match the average was an example of cooking the books. It’s like saying the average temperature in Seattle is 59F, therefore it is simply impossible to believe that it has ever snowed. Obviously the weather service is cooking the books.