The Truth about the Unemployment rate.

ok, we all know the Obama Adminmistration has got a lot of criticism about the unemployment rate. In all fairness even the most die-hard republican will admit(if they are honest) that the Unemployment rate was a problem before Obama took office. However, even the most loyal Obama supporter(if they are honest) must admit that the problem must be handled by Obama.
Ok today an economist panel stated that U.S companies are sitting on some 890 billion in cash that if they were to use it could employ 1million people at a salary of 70,000 per year for 5 years.
Nlow, speaking for my self- my pharmacy is making good sales, but i am unable to hire any new workers. I have a friend who told me for the past 3 months she and other co-workers have been working minimum 50 to 60 hours per week- I asked her did they need help- her reply was "Yes" I said well are they hiring anyone she said- "NO" they are just giving more work with less people.
I am pretty sure many of you have heard similar stories to the above. There was another economist who said if companies were hiring would they really need that the true unemployment rate would be roughly 6 to 7 percent at the most.

On NPR this morning there was a report(I forget from whom but credible) that said if the Stimulus package had not been passed then unemployment would have doubled in size and we would be in a depression deeper than the 1930's.

Cost cutting and reallocation of work is an old and common practice. Frankly in the new era many of those jobs are now meaningless and there is a sea change in the business world where new jobs will have to come from new industries and innovations. Tax Credits to spur development and growth must occur. R&D is priceless.

Don't wanna go off thread but if you look at the oil spill the engineers and scientists came up with some really high tech and manufactured solutions in a very short time frame. Pretty amazing stuff if it had been proactive and not reactive.

We need Hydrogen stations, a new and better electrical grid, a few new nuke power plants, wind farms, solar panels blah blah blah.

Lucky for us girls...the adult entertainment industry is here to stay.

It is the stress of having a job that makes us all stiff and tense.Your magnificent breasts also make me all stiff and tense.I am just patiently waiting for you to come to the dark side. lol

It is the stress of having a job that makes us all stiff and tense.Your magnificent breasts also make me all stiff and tense.I am just patiently waiting for you to come to the dark side. lol Originally Posted by catnipdipper

lol Don't hold your breath
but Thank you for the compliment

No matter how bad the economy is, there are pleasures that help us weather the bad times and enjoy the good times. Keeps us sane and keeps us going.

As a business owner - yes we are working more hours and not hiring people we are paying the overtime. 2 reasons are keeping me from hiring. 1 - my staff has been on short weeks for almost a year and the OT is helping them get some of that back. 2 - I don't know what new regulation or tax increase will come down the road so yes we are holding our breath (and our cash) until we get a better feel for the future. Look at the tax cuts that are expiring this year and what it will cost business next year. Look at the new Health care reform and what it will cost business and individuals next year. Whats next ???

On a personal note when the economy crashed we layed off a lot of people part of me doesn't want to go through that again. The last 18 months have been the hardest to deal with from a people standpoint in my more than 20 years owning my company. Letting somebody go that has been with you for 10 years or longer is awful. Because deep down you know that he / she can't replace what he / she was making with you in any short time. And knowing them for that long you know the wife - kids - and all the family issues they are dealing with.

As a business owner - yes we are working more hours and not hiring people we are paying the overtime. 2 reasons are keeping me from hiring. 1 - my staff has been on short weeks for almost a year and the OT is helping them get some of that back. 2 - I don't know what new regulation or tax increase will come down the road so yes we are holding our breath (and our cash) until we get a better feel for the future. Look at the tax cuts that are expiring this year and what it will cost business next year. Look at the new Health care reform and what it will cost business and individuals next year. Whats next ???

On a personal note when the economy crashed we layed off a lot of people part of me doesn't want to go through that again. The last 18 months have been the hardest to deal with from a people standpoint in my more than 20 years owning my company. Letting somebody go that has been with you for 10 years or longer is awful. Because deep down you know that he / she can't replace what he / she was making with you in any short time. And knowing them for that long you know the wife - kids - and all the family issues they are dealing with. Originally Posted by 1963Cobra

Cobra thank you for your input since you are an employer and thereby have good knowledge of the subject, but are you optimistic about Obamas proposal to use 30 billion of the TARP money for small business owners? Also, I knew at one time the Obama administration were suggesting tax incentives for companies who hire and employ somone for a year or it may have been if they hired "x" amount of people per year.

Cobra thank you for your input since you are an employer and thereby have good knowledge of the subject, but are you optimistic about Obamas proposal to use 30 billion of the TARP money for small business owners? Also, I knew at one time the Obama administration were suggesting tax incentives for companies who hire and employ somone for a year or it may have been if they hired "x" amount of people per year. Originally Posted by wellendowed1911

As a small business owner I am not holding my breath for any help from the government. Missouri came out with a plan for helping small buisnesses, it was a freaking nightmare of red tape and no one, no one that I know of and this is more than a few businesses received any of the money.

Here is something else people do not take into consideration, the majority of the companys that are holding on to this money are publically owned companys. The company is artificially producing profits, (by cost reduction) in order to maintain stock prices. Now before you dems get excited there not doing it for their own personal gain. If the stocks were allowed to fall, the stock market will experiance a drop causing investors to hold on to their money and yes you guess it, it affects the economy. Then as Cobra said, with the uncertain atmosphere involving taxes, future taxes and additional costs for programs we are not aware of yet no one wants to spend their money, borrow money or in anyway increase their debt load or reduce their capital and then have a suprize tax or cost land in our laps in 6 months. By the way Obama catches crap about unemployment because 1. he said the rate would not top 8% and then it did and 2. he has done nothing but scare businesses into not spending, not expanding by his policies. Cant wait for my electric bill to double because of cap and trade, by the way his words not mine "the cost of electricity will have to sky rocket if my energy plan is adopted, if it costs more, people will use more of it". By the way this is the same philosphy his Czar has on fuel costs.

No I have no confidence in any of his proposals or anything that the entire federal government does.The government needs to get out of the way and let the economy fix itself.

As long as interest rates stay low the economy will come around. The 30 billion would come with so many strings that you wouldn't want to borrow from it anyway. There are several goverment programs about hiring people now and not having to pay certain taxes. However you can only hire somebody who has been off work for more than a year. If the person who fits the job has only been unemployed for say 3 months you wouldn't get the tax credit. They make the programs so time consuming to keep up with that to take real advantage of them you would need a person to file all the paperwork.

regulations regulations regulations - somebody in the goverment both federal or state justifying their job. Have you seen any state or federal layoffs??

Yes, Obama's stimulus package is receiving a lot of hits. I truly hate to admit it, but his package has done some good, even though to listen to Moran and Tiahrt, they are a total failure. I have yet to hear from the candidates of my party, (for any office being sought) anything about the Bush Bailout package. You know the one, where Paulson said it was needed now (Yesterday) and there was no accountability. What happened to that money? Brownback and Roberts (and Moore, too) have yet to give me an answer. I asked all three if the CEO's of AIG (too big to fail?), Goldman-Saks, et. al. got their big bonuses from them? I am still waiting for an answer. Moran said he was against the bailouts. Unless I'm wrong, I thought my research showed he got behind the Bush/Cheney/Paulson/Rove machine and gave that package his blessing. True, he did vote against the TARP that Obama gave us. I agree, "No more Moore," but Tiahrt and Moran are the same old business as usual, only instead of running for reelection to their congressional seats, they now want to be our senators. What a choice. I'm thinking Independent, in November.

It is the stress of having a job that makes us all stiff and tense.Your magnificent breasts also make me all stiff and tense.I am just patiently waiting for you to come to the dark side. lol Originally Posted by catnipdipper

Well as a recently new member to the unemployed club the stress of not having a job makes one very tense, (aren't men always stiff). But at least I can live vicariously through the others on this site.

Reality is worse that the numbers would indicate. Look at:

(a) how many people (6.8M) have been unemployed for 7 months or more (that's 45.5% of the 14.6M),
(b) how many more (8.6M) are not included in the unemployment number (14.6M) because they are underemployed (part-time but want full-time), and
(c) how many more (2.6M) are not included in the unemployment number (14.6M) because they have stopped looking for work (because they don't think they can find work).

From http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm:

Both the number of unemployed persons, at 14.6 million, and the unemployment rate, at 9.5 percent, edged down in June.

In June, the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over) was unchanged at 6.8 million. These individuals made up 45.5 percent of unemployed persons.

The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers), at 8.6 million, was little changed over the month.

In June, about 2.6 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force, an increase of 415,000 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.

Among the marginally attached, there were 1.2 million discouraged workers in June, up by 414,000 from a year earlier. (The data are not seasonally adjusted.) Discouraged workers are persons not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them.

I have this rotten feeling that there is no recovery in rehiring people for the same jobs they had. A few may help companies go back to full staff but growth in those old industries will not come.

We need new ideas, businesses and services and a retooling to make this work in the long run.

I have owned businesses for 30 years or more. Every time I had to reduce staff I went into the bathroom and threw up. It is a very personal and human interaction that comes with lots of guilt and pain. I never got good at it and don't ever want to.

Christine as an entreprenuer you could "expand" your service offerings and gain new more profitable business. Think of it as a contribution to Society and a great help in providing needed help in coping with the stress and stiffness in everyday life.

We either change, innovate, create, or we die and we are at the crossroads.

I know one thing, you cant fix a problem by ignoring it and this President has done nothing more than give a little lip service to the problem, oh yeah he had a jobs summit, give me a break. He is more concerned with getting the Dem party pet projects passed then addressing the number one problem in America, jobs. There are things he could do to stimulate job growth but he does not do them. Where are all these shovel ready jobs we were promised in the stimulas package of pork. Where are all these jobs that we were told would come in the second year of the package, uh its the second year folks. Things he could do.......

- Force the banks to loan money to businesses - banks are not loaning money to anyone
- Reduce all of the government red tape involved in appling for credits for hiring people.
-Issue more tax credits for businesses that hire unemployed people.
-Stop with the spending and tax increase talk, let things settle down and let business adjust and get confidence that the risk of expanding will not be rewarded with another tax and expense, a company can only absorb so much expense increase before it starts to hemorage.
- Lose this idea that many in government and in the public have that people who own businesses are rich and "can afford it". Some of us after all is said and done and the expenses are subtracted from the gross make no more than most of you. Would you consider yourself rich.
-They also must lose this idea that businesses are in business to generate jobs, they are not, businesses are in business to make money. If expanding will lead to a net gain in revenue then its something a business will do, but they will not expand just to create jobs. So stop punishing the businesses for embracing capitalism, capitalism is not a bad thing, greed on the scale of very large coperations such as AIG is, but capitalism on the scale of the small business owner its the engine that pulls the train.