Private sector has officially recoveredFollow

That's right. The private sector has officially regained all the jobs that were lost since Obama took office. All 4.2 million of them,

So why is unemployment still so sh*tty?

Oh. The beast has been starved to death and is still on a diet. (Disclaimer: Liberal link.)



What jobs have been starved out of existance?

Teachers. Firefighters. Police officers. Construction workers.

Careers that used to be respected among all sectors of American life, which are now considered pigs suckling at the government teat by too many on the right because they had the gall to form unions.

Four years ago when I went to renew my driver's license, the DMV's new process was in place with all 8 windows hopping and I was in and out in five minutes. On Wednesday, I was in there for almost an hour because only half the windows were staffed, despite the very efficient system still working well. Budget cuts at the state and local levels killed at least those four jobs, greatly inconveniencing everyone who drives in the state, all in the name of saving them a couple bucks on their taxes.

Edited, May 4th 2012 6:06pm by catwho

I'd love to see the source for the chart in your link and some sort of source showing that it's those groups that have suffered the job losses in the public sector. I know that liberal pundits and politicians always rattle off "teachers, police, and firefighters", whenever the issue of public sector employment comes up, but there area a whole lot of folks on the public payrolls who don't fall into those groups at all.



So why do you suppose no one ever includes "DMV workers" in the list of public sector jobs we must save? You know what a bait and switch is, right?




Then by all means, champion the cause of increasing budgets so we can hire more people at the DMV. But don't misdirect people by talking about professions which most people feel a lot more sympathy and respect for. That's dishonest at the very least.

I'm pretty sure it's a commonly established fact that teachers have suffered high levels of lay offs in the last few years. It's not true in every state of course, but on average, I think teachers are getting fired more often than hired. That's one of the main reasons I'm going to go teach English abroad for a few years after I finish my degree. Hopefully it'll turn around.

I wonder why no one ever talks about underemployment...

Seems like these days the retail scene is filled with former NASA engineers and young men and women who grew up under the impression that spending four years in college might somehow land them a decent job.

Let's not start this rhetorical feigned incomprehension ******** again.

The fact that so many teachers have been sacked also explains Romney's "92% of jobs lost under Obama belonged to women" - which is a misleading fact without the background story, but an actual fact nonetheless.

Since these are largely state or local level jobs, no. They actually held on as long as they did in part due to state payouts in the stimulus for shoring up state and local payrolls.

The big answer for the layoffs is lost revenue due to collapsed property taxes and general employment problems cascading on down the line. As you said, public has to follow private because, until there's an economic and tax base for hiring new people, it ain't gonna happen.

On a completely personal note, I've seen signs for optimism in my own field, including jobs coming back from being "on hold" since 2008 or 2009 because they've finally gotten bank financing and firms hiring additional architects or designers. It's not cause for me to break open the champagne but I think it's a positive sign of what direction things are going in.

Construction workers are public employees down there?

And since when is that a respected career?

In certain northwestern states, alot of the loss of jobs has been on the engineering side of the house, and are the kinds of experiance you just don't get back after you throw it away. For example, the budget of a certian state rhymeing with "ashington" does not presently have any new capital improvement projects scheduled to enter design phase during the next biennium. Sure, there will be things built during that time, but given lead times for designing improvement and repair projects of a large nature, we can expect that there will be at least a 2 year period in the near future where there will also be no new construction jobs to replace existing jobs on current projects that are just finishing up at the state level. The county and city governments are looking to be in similar situations, which will likely lead to a huge glut in unemployment in that particular state right when the recovery is supposed to start kicking in. For road construction in particular, thats one of the few areas where you can make a case for benifits usually outweighing cost of the improvements both during construction and afterwards. Concrete and asphalt usually have to be purchased locally, they don't travel well. There are rules in place requireing materials be purchased from american sources. Decreased road conjestion improves local economy by allowing more population, allowing faster and less expensive shipping via trucks and making it more likely local shippers can bring in additional buisiness and expect to distribute it, which provides more import taxes to the local and federal economies, etc. Particularily on the main trade routes in from Canada along Interstate 5 and 90, there are major projects that need to be done to improve conjestion that need to be completed before the ports can afford to expand, and as the ports go, so does the state economy and to a certian degree, the federal economy. Instead, we are getting rid of that capability, which will end up working for more expensive consultant agencies. which will make future projects cost even more. One particular large project which i will not name, is currently using 70% consultants, and has spent roughly 40 million dollars on consultant costs over the last 10 years above and beyond what the same project would have cost had they used government workers on government salaries for the entire thing (and no, i can't provide specific cites for that info, but trust me, it is accurate). The argument being that consultants have the better workers, or can get things done quicker, or can be easily fired without having to deal with long term pensions, etc. But the whole thing really kind of stinks to me. it just seems like we are shooting ourselves economically in the foot in the name of prosperity,

It's frustrating.

Construction and road work seems to be booming up here. The Interstate highways seem to all be under construction, and they started doing the major work converting Rt. 17 into I-86 which includes altering the route several miles along its old path and building a few new bridges. Many abandoned big-box stores are being re-purposed (mostly for private medical practices) and there is a lot of land development as well.

Here I thought this thread was about a certain clstr that shall not be named.

Oh, the memories.

Yup, Oregon is pretty talented at doing that too.

Googling is easy. Interpreting the results is not so simple.




Sure. But I'm not saying that they haven't been affected. I'm pointing out what appears to be a pretty slanted presentation of which groups have been most affected. And, some pretty questionable terminology which muddles the whole thing even more.

For example: Are you aware that only a small percentage of teachers who receive pink slips are actually laid off? Yet, the figures for pink slips handed out are often used interchangeably with "teachers laid off". You know, like you just did with your quote from google. They also count every teacher laid off, but don't account for whether they are rehired elsewhere in the district (or find another teaching job outside that district). This creates a perception that tons and tons of teachers are losing their jobs and are stuck on unemployment, when the reality is that the number is much smaller. Has the actual number of employed teachers decreased over the last 4-5 years? Given the context of the original post, this would seem relevant, right? If we counted every private sector person laid off, but didn't count for every new private sector job created, we'd have massive numbers as well, but they'd also be equally bogus.


My earlier post was designed to hopefully get someone to realize this little difference, but I guess that sailed right over some people's heads.

Edited, May 7th 2012 1:09pm by gbaji