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September 6, 2024 - 9:30pm
Good employment figures are welcome news, regardless of whom they help or hurt politically. In August, the US economy added 142,000 Americans to the ranks of the employed — good news whether you’re a Republican, Democrat or that one guy who created his own country in the California desert.
Even if hiring fell short of the projected 165,000 new jobs figure, it was much better than the dismal 89,000 jobs added in July, a figure which was itself revised down from 114,000. Unemployment is down to 4.2% and wages are up 3.8% over the past year, giving workers relief from elevated prices. Now the Federal Reserve will move to cut interest rates, making it likely that America will escape inflation without plunging into a recession, thus sticking that mythical “soft landing” we’ve been hearing about for three years.
But with the election only weeks away, it is impossible to look at the recent employment figures without treating them as the latest twist in America’s national obsession with trying to handicap November’s results. Today’s jobs numbers appear to help Kamala Harris in particular. But that does not mean that she and President Joe Biden have necessarily done a stellar job as economic stewards. For one thing, it is basic macroeconomics that flooding the economy with trillions of dollars would contribute to inflation. At the same time, inflation was a global problem in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, which the US handled better than most.
What is surprising, though, is that an astonishingly low 23% of Americans hold a favourable view of the economy. Economists are puzzled over the disconnect between statistics and sentiment, a discrepancy some have called a “vibecession”. It is there, on the uncertain terrain of vibes, that Harris is weakest. A more adept opponent than Donald Trump would be doing all they could to capitalise on that disconnect, but the Republican candidate is struggling to fully articulate why Americans are unsatisfied. He had a better sense of it in 2016, for sure.
Last year, Wall Street Journal columnist Greg Ip used the term “referred pain” to explain why the vibes were sour even when the numbers were good. He surmised that people were using the economy as a proxy for other concerns. “Just as one part of your body can hurt because of injury to another, pessimism about the economy may reflect dissatisfaction with the country as a whole,” Ip wrote. We emerged from the pandemic into one war (Ukraine) followed swiftly by another (Gaza). The social order seems flimsy, if not frayed. Everything is on edge. That may explain why more than 60% of Americans think the country is going in the wrong direction. We are economic creatures, but that doesn’t mean we can shut out the part of the world which can’t be reduced to prices and valuations.
Another line of critique against Harris is that she represents more of the same, a continuation of the Biden administration, as well as those of Barack Obama and Bill Clinton before. The party has generally embraced a neoliberal consensus, which is why dozens of the nation’s top corporate executives have endorsed the Democratic pick. Harris’s 28% capital gains tax rate, 12 points below Biden’s proposed top rate, will no doubt please them.
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SubscribeI’m not sure how much faith we can put in any of these numbers. The Labor Department issued a report just a couple weeks ago that there were 818,000 fewer jobs than reported, for the year ending in
March.
Every aspect of the establishment, most notably the legacy media, is now fully behind Harris. They are whitewashing her long, sad political history, flatly denying some of her earlier statements, refusing to report on her blunders, and throwing her the softest of softballs in interviews. That’s probably all it will take to nudge her over the edge. I’m not sure what you call this behavior but it surely isn’t democracy.
The western media is almost completely subverted by left-wing, Marxist ideologues. Just contemplate the BBC as one example. They are ruthlessly determined to sink any right-of-centre (even centre) political movements and have little or no opposition media to maintain balance. That is why free speech has almost totally died as a democratic concept – as has democracy itself,
Peel away the onion a little and you will find that virtually all of these so called jobs were part time and went to illegal aliens. That’s why the American public believes the economy stinks. Lived reality trumps lazy reporting every time.
Also, many are government sector. Real jobs are not growing. Job offers are fewer and not as well paid. Retailers and restaurants serving the middle and lower income folks are hurting.
Ludicrous article based on an inaccurate depiction of non farm payrolls.
No mention of the downward revisions to the previous two months data , plus the internals of the report are far from good news.
“it was much better than the dismal 89,000 jobs added in July, a figure which was itself revised down from 114,000.”
Which they do every month…
In the certain knowledge that the initial estimate will be reported on page one and the revisions back with the obits.
With a particular, robust emphasis on ludicrous.
lu·di·crous – /ˈlo͞odəkrəs/ – adjective
so utterly foolish, completely irrational, and far out of place as to be uproariously laughable and thoroughly ridiculous.
Even if the prices aren’t rising as fast any more, people are still able to look at the price of goods and think “it didn’t used to cost that much” which then annoys the hell out of them. Good for the country that things are hopefully going well economically, but really not much mystery that a lot of people are thinking that isn’t the case.
Oh that’s right because she’s simultaneously the existing regime and fresh face of change.
“Economists are puzzled over the disconnect between statistics and sentiment, “
Maybe the problem lies in the disconnect between statistics and reality. The people are not happy but the statistics say they should be, That’s the real disconnect; reality and what the experts think.
Typical inflation malaise.
If the benefits of economic growth go to other people, why would it those not benefitting happy?
Might be a word missing there, but yes, we agree.
Yep, badly edited that one
“reality and what the experts think”..like the idiotic export author of this article
Joe Sixpak can see that the price of everything has gone up but his pay hasn’t. Understandably, he thinks the world is out of joint, the opinion of statistical economists notwithstanding. The economists might try talking to him. The economists might try talking to whoever buys the groceries in their families.
…Alex, you’re behind the play. Check out the latest from Nate’s Silver’s forecast model, (and the betting markets) as well as the revision of the unemployment numbers.
Can I ask why the link to employment numbers is to an X/Twitter feed and not to official sources? I’ve noticed this has happened in other articles (eg on the Argentinian economy) and leaves me wondering if the writer is ‘skimming’ or ‘cribbing’ other people’s opinions without checking.
The Bureau of Labour Statistics who publish this stuff, in their September release (https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm) noted little change but summarised with “Both the unemployment rate, at 4.2 percent, and the number of unemployed people, at 7.1 million,changed little in August. These measures are higher than a year earlier, when the jobless rate was 3.8 percent, and the number of unemployed people was 6.3 million.” which seems worse than the “Good employment figures are welcome news” driver of the first sentence of the piece.
Exactly. And employment increases are mostly attributable to an increase in government jobs. When public sector growth drastically exceeds private sector growth, overall economic growth suffers. Private sector voters see, feel and live it. But the author is probably right without knowing why. All those government workers vote for democrats.
The headline figures mask the distribution, and one suspects many in the US ‘feel’ inequality has increased and the game is loaded against them. It is not dissimilar here in UK. The Author mentions the Neo-Liberal consensus and how almost inexorably this has driven the trend. The Democrats may ameliorate slightly better but it’s why it always surprises when US commentators suggest the Democrats are Left. Economically they are a million miles from that, as of course are the Republicans and Trump.
The West is tossing and turning almost trying to avoid the conclusion that has been evident for some time, latching onto false scapegoats in the process. The fundamental is the Neo-Liberal consensus, coupled with key design flaws in investment capitalism perhaps more pronounced in the UK, are not creating sufficient trickle down to contain growing resentment. Paradoxically the spread of western capitalism has lifted billions out of absolute poverty worldwide – undermined by specific conflicts spurred by Autocrats and Theocrats. So this is not about being anti-capitalism per se but rather prompting reflection about important corrections we could make but avoid, with the V Rich controlling sufficient information sources to ensure the real problem remains masked and the traditional scapegoats fully deployed.
Back to US – the ‘stunner’ is how on earth so many think Trump the solution. Even putting the obvious chaos that would ensue he’s absolutely no intention of fundamentally changing the rules of the game.
With all due respect, you don’t read like somebody with a strong grasp on how government spending and regulations affect prices.
The Democrats have imported European-style command economics and public-private partnerships to the US. Meanwhile the US has exported the cultural zeitgeist, Intersectionality to Europe and the UK.
I think you try too hard to attach a Left label on the Democrats. Doesn’t stack. It’s a bit like the problem Trump campaign has with Harris – she can’t be both a Commie and the personification of corporate America.
Describe China’s economy.
The TDS afflicted are as predictable as they are uni formed.
After the cost of government (which is going up), housing is the next highest household cost. Food and gas are right behind. All have risen significantly under Harris/ Biden.
For young, lower income families this is devastating. Their standard of living is down.
On the other hand, the higher income (often liberal) households are doing well. They own houses and stocks which are appreciating nicely. Necessities are a much lower portion of their spending so they are not feeling the pain of income not meeting expenses.
This is why polls show such dissatisfaction despite the “good” economic numbers. The people Democrats claim to help are hurting.
Like a few other articles recently there appears to be a certain amount of wishful thinking going on.
Or media collusion with government… we’ve seen that show before. Not interested in watching the rerun.
A lot of people do not have very much and work in shitty jobs.
now we know why a lot of people think the economy sucks.
QED.
The DoL lying about the economy to hurt America by helping democrats is a long tradition going back to at least 1992. Then the lie was to hurt President Bush by lying that we were in a recession. Months later, after the election, the “correction” was that the recession had in fact ended months before the election.
It always blows me away when I see articles on the economy unironically ask why the average American views the economy unfavorably. Do these people not shop for themselves? Anyone who went grocery shopping before COVID, and continued to shop for groceries (or just about anything else for that matter) during and after COVID, noticed that seemingly everything went up a good 25%, and maaaayyyybe got nudged back down about 5-10% over the last year (if we are lucky).
Things still cost a lot, and wages have stayed relatively stable for most of us. I don’t really care what economists say about the economy, because it rarely represents what us “working class” actually SEE.