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Open thread Sept. 8, 2015

Dan Crawford | September 8, 2015 12:46 pm

Tags: open thread Comments (13) | Digg Facebook Twitter |
13 Comments
  • Denis Drew says:
    September 8, 2015 at 5:03 pm

    What’s this? Is this for real?

    698K Native-Born Americans Lost Their Job In August: Why This Suddenly Is The Most Important Jobs Chart

    Submitted by Tyler Durden on 09/08/2015 06:14 -0400

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-09-07/698k-native-born-americans-lost-their-job-august-why-suddenly-most-important-jobs-ch

  • JimH says:
    September 8, 2015 at 6:05 pm

    Denis Drew wrote: “What’s this? Is this for real?”

    It is meaningless information. They list the source as BLS. Probably based on the monthly A7 tables

    Here is the news release for August 2015 data:
    http://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/empsit_09042015.pdf

    Here is the news release for July 2015 data:
    http://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/empsit_08072015.pdf

    From those 2 news releases you can do the math.

    But it is meaningless, since the BLS says in the news releases that “The household survey does include questions which identify the foreign and native born, but it does not include questions about the legal status of the foreign born. Data on the foreign and native born are published each month in table A-7 of The Employment Situation news release.”

    There are many foreign born workers here legally and working here legally. At least some of them are US citizens.

  • Arne says:
    September 8, 2015 at 7:50 pm

    I did the math. I got different numbers.

    Nonetheless: here is an old tabulation:
    http://www.pewhispanic.org/2014/06/19/latino-jobs-growth-driven-by-u-s-born/ph-2014-06-19-hispanic-labor-4-01/

    It seems to me there is something to comment on in there. The growth in low paying jobs is higher than in higher paying jobs. Job growth for foreign born is also higher.

    So there is correlation, but is there meaning?

    Are native born less likely to accept low paying jobs?
    Are people who have had higher paying jobs less likely to accept low paying jobs?
    Do the data capture people who left the country because they could not find jobs?

  • Warren says:
    September 8, 2015 at 7:54 pm

    Well, it is both true and not true.

    The Household Data (Table A-1) show both a decline of total people employed (494k) and an increase in the total number of people employed (96k). The first number is not seasonally adjusted, and the second is.

    The numbers in Table A-7 are NOT seasonally adjusted. There, we see an additional 204k foreign-born workers employed, and 698k fewer natives employed.

    How that would work out if seasonally adjusted to show and increase, I do not know.

  • The Rage says:
    September 9, 2015 at 1:10 am

    Adjust for labor market size. The retirement boom is confusing so many people.

  • Warren says:
    September 9, 2015 at 7:41 am

    Unfortunately, that is hard to do. There is no data on how many people have retired voluntarily.

  • JimH says:
    September 9, 2015 at 9:58 am

    Denis Drew,

    Sometimes, on further examination a story just gets more and more meaningless.

    From A-7 here: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/empsit_09042015.pdf
    If you subtract Total Employed for Aug 2014 from Employed for Aug 2015 for Foreign Born and repeat that for Native born, you will see that the original story was even more meaningless.

    The result is:
    Gain of 275,000 for foreign born year over year (1.1% increase)
    Gain of 2,306,000 for native born year over year (1.9% increase)

  • Denis Drew says:
    September 9, 2015 at 10:21 am

    How the next president could bring growth to everyone
    by Felix Salmon | September 08, 2015 9:52 a.m.

    World Economic Forum has just released a massive report
    ” [T]he page for the United States … ranks it against 29 other rich countries on a variety of measures … ”

    1. Employment and labor compensation: 28th out of 30
    ” … But it’s bad on occupational injuries (ranking 22nd out of 27 countries) and it’s dreadful (29th out of 29) on employment protections. In America, much more than in any other rich country, you can be fired for pretty much any, or no, reason. That helps the rich, who tend to be business owners, and hurts the poor, who tend to be the most vulnerable employees

    “America is even worse when it comes to wages, and how much the people at the bottom of the greasy pole actually get paid. (The people at the top, needless to say, are fine.) The United States ranks 30th out of 30 on what the report calls “wage and non-wage compensation,” with more than 25% of workers counting as low-paid – that’s 24th out of 24. America also, unsurprisingly, does very badly on measures of unionization and the probability that you’re covered by some kind of collective bargaining agreement. And it’s not great to be a parent working in America: the country’s parental-leave policies are generally weak, while the cost of child care ranks very high as a proportion of the minimum wage.”

    2. Education and skills: 21st out of 30
    3. Corruption and rents: 20th out of 30
    4. Basic services and infrastructure: 19th out of 30
    5. Financial intermediation of real economy investment: 16th out of 28
    6. Fiscal transfers: 15th out of 30
    7. Asset building and entrepreneurship: 2nd out of 30

    http://fusion.net/list/194164/how-the-next-president-could-bring-growth-to-everyone/

  • Arne says:
    September 9, 2015 at 3:16 pm

    Looking at seasonality might be interesting if I were willing to look up more data since

    in both 2014 and 2015 jobs increased from July to Aug for foreign born and decreased for native born

    and in both July and Aug jobs increased for both groups from 2014 to 2015.

    Regardless of whether more data showed a continuation of the trend (which might interest some folks), we would still have zerohedge pointing to a difference in the seasonality of low wage and high wage jobs and taking cherry picked months to imply unfairness to its readers.

  • Bruce Webb says:
    September 10, 2015 at 4:41 am

    Before a couple weeks ago the name “Tyler Durden” meant nothing to me. Until some drivel he was responsible was reported here by IIRC the other Bruce. At which time some elementary source checking revealed a clear and in my view incontrovertible equation:

    Tyler Durden = Derp.

    In much the same way as Jonah Goldberg = Doughy Pantload and Victor Davis Hanson = Sociopathic Wannabee Cheney Warmonger.

    As they used to say in the ballparks when I was a lad: “You Can’t Tell the Players Without a Scorecard!”

    Derp, Pantload, Warmonger. See? Saved you all some time.

  • Bruce Webb says:
    September 10, 2015 at 4:49 am

    There are smart people who wander by here from time to time. And you have to take people like Tyler Cowen seriously. Because wrong headed in my view but smart. Also you need to be wary of folk like Greg Mankiw. Because he actually has textbooks taught in universities across the country. But then you get to borderline cranks like Larry Kudlow. For whom the proper response is “Lock up the children! Before they get convinced by the nonsense!”

    And then there are the impresarios who have by-lines at BI and IBD and ZH and NRO. Who you need to take with a whole dry lake bed of salt.

  • bkrasting says:
    September 10, 2015 at 5:58 pm

    Webb – I’m not surprised at your attitude towards ZH. Not your style.

    There is one aspect of modern markets that you will not be familiar with. It falls under the general heading of High Frequency Trading. Look up HFT for an understanding of this. By far and away ZH has covered this story better than any news outlet including FT,Reuters, WSJ and Bloomberg.

    An example of what this is about occurred this morning at 6 am NYT. Someone manipulated the markets. ZH has two stories about this. One this morning that posed the question of “what happened”. And later an explanation of exactly what did happen.

    A few weeks from now the SEC will comment on this event, and that will get to the papers. I’ll send you a link.

    Oh – I’ve been writing for ZH since July of 2009. 800 articles, millions of reads, hundreds of thousands of comments. You may not like it, but it is a go-to place for market news. I love the audience I get.

    me
    http://www.zerohedge.com/blogs/bruce-krasting

    The stories from today re spoofing:

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-09-10/what-happened-612-am-morning

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-09-10/we-now-know-what-happened-612-am-morning

  • EMichael says:
    September 10, 2015 at 10:18 pm

    The mind shudders.

    Another million brain cells I could use gone.

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