Unemployment Statistics

America With 23.4 Percent Effective Unemployment Rate, Likely To Reach Or Surpass All Time High Of Early 1933 By End Of May!

Ronald 16 Comments

The official unemployment rate reported this week is 14.3 percent, but that is not reality!

It does not not include the last two weeks of unemployment applications, as a result of the CoronaVirus Pandemic.

There are now, officially, 36.5 million unemployed people, and with a working population of about 156 million people, that means, using basic math, that the actual unemployment rate in mid May is 23.4 percent, just a point and a half lower than the all time high of 24.9 percent in February 1933, the worst moments of the Great Depression before Herbert Hoover handed over power to Franklin D. Roosevelt!

it is clear that as soon as another 2.5 million Americans file for unemployment this week or next, the unemployment rate will be at 25 percent or more, an all time high in American history!

Republican House Districts Worse Off Economically, But Vote GOP Anyway Due To Racism, Fear, And Religion!

Ronald 1 Comment

Statistics demonstrate that hard line Republican House districts, who have supported Tea Party candidates, and are vehemently anti Barack Obama, have a higher unemployment rate than the average House district.

The rate in the Tea Party districts is around ten percent, while the rate in other Congressional districts is 7.5 to 8 percent, a substantial difference.

One would think that the Republicans who represent these districts would wish to do anything and everything to encourage job growth, and to avoid the disarray of confrontations that undermine economic development, but instead it is the opposite,

When Barack Obama has promoted the need for infrastructure projects and educational investments, that has been enough to convince Tea Party types, plus the GOP leadership in both houses, to sit on their hands and refuse to cooperate in any fashion!

One would imagine that the voters of these districts, who elected these representatives, would begin to realize that they are playing politics, refusing to allow Barack Obama to have any ability to claim any progress economically, but at the expense of their constituents, who would benefit from such economic progress.

But instead, the emphasis is on fear of the “black” President from “Kenya”, obvious racism, and instead invoking religion, which should have no place in the public sphere, so we see emphasis on abortion and gay marriage to scare these constituents into voting for representatives who do not give a damn about them, and are even willing to cut food stamps, which benefit many of their own population, especially considering that the majority on food stamps nationally are white!

The ignorance and prejudice of so many people in these Tea Party districts, and other Republican districts, is absolutely mind boggling!

“It’s The Economy, Stupid!”: How Obama Is Helped, Despite Economic Slowdown

Ronald 4 Comments

The latest news on the economy is very disconcerting, as we saw the smallest job growth in eleven months, 69,000 jobs, and the unemployment rate inching up to 8.2 percent from 8.1 percent.

According to economists, the Great Recession started in December 2007 and ended in June 2009, and we are now into three years of “economic recovery”. After losing 7 million jobs, we have regained 4.2 million of them in the past three years.

Economic statistics can be used to prove or disprove any point. Obviously, the economy is a big problem, and Republican nominee Mitt Romney banks on that, and keeps on hammering it home, and will do that even more with the new economic figures.

But it is also important to realize that the economic recovery, the slowest since World War II, could also be seen in a different perspective, that the Great Recession has never really ended, and that the Republican opposition, by resisting any jobs legislation in the past year and a half, when they have controlled the House of Representatives, has massively contributed to it.

There is plenty of blame to go around, and Barack Obama and the Democrats must share the blame, but to claim that the GOP has no responsibility is ridiculous, and those who would claim that a President McCain would have had a better economic record must be smoking something that promotes delusions!

And the good aspect of the economic problem is that in seven of the ten “swing states” that the Obama Victory Fund contributes funds from sale of merchandise, the unemployment rate is lower, often substantially lower than in the nation at large.

This includes the following:

Iowa 5.1%
New Hampshire 5.0%
Virginia 5.6%
Wisconsin 6.7%
Ohio 7.4%
Pennsylvania 7.4%
Colorado 7.9%

The unemployment rate is higher in:

Florida 8.7%
North Carolina 9.4%
Nevada 11.7%

It should also be pointed out that in 34 states out of 50, two thirds, the unemployment rate is lower than the national average.

So Mitt Romney using the issue of unemployment in seven of the ten”swing states” is not going to ring as genuine, and if Obama wins those seven states, he can lose Florida, North Carolina, and Nevada, and still win a second term handily!