The AP Reports: The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits dropped last week to its lowest level since April 2008, extending a downward trend that shows the job market strengthening.

First-time applications for unemployment benefits fell 4,000 to a seasonally adjusted 364,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. It was the third straight weekly drop.

The four-week moving average, a less volatile gauge, fell for the 11th time in 13 weeks. At 380,250, it’s the lowest since June 2008. Applications generally must fall below 375,000 — consistently — before hiring is strong enough to reduce the unemployment rate.

Unemployment applications are a measure of the pace of layoffs. Job cuts have fallen sharply since the recession, though many employers remain slow to start hiring.

News Busters Reports: Did you know that seasonally adjusted full-time employment in September 2011 was  lower than it was when the recession officially ended in June 2009, and that  this was the case for 26 of the first 27 post-recession months?

Full-time employment finally surpassed the June 2009 level for two consecutive  months in October and November… For those who are  wondering, during the first 29 months after November 1982, the official end of  the Reagan-era recession according to the  National Bureau of Economic Research, full-time employment increased by  almost 8 million!

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Simple: If a veteran is competent, anyone will be happy to hire him over a civilian who likely is less disciplined. If the veteran is an invalid with limitations and thus can’t find now a job, then a tax credit of $9,600 won’t help because it will be a net loss for the company. End of story.

Newsweek has former President Bill Clinton on its cover with Fourteen Ways how to Save Jobs. I didn’t read it yet, but are they referring to the following fourteen ways?

1)      Declare your candidacy for the White House only after the economy is out of recession.

2)      Win your election at a time when the economy is gaining monthly approximately 100,000 jobs and when the Unemployment Rate is already decreasing.

3)      Walk into the Oval Office when the economy is gaining 200,000 jobs monthly and increasing before you put one of your finger prints on the economy.

4)      Raise tax slightly when the economy is strong enough to absorb it, yet keep the rates close to where Ronald Reagan left them and then claim that raising tax does not hurt job growth.

5)      Make sure that the pro-business Republicans control both houses on Capitol Hill (for the first time in forty years).

6)      Attack Republicans for forcing you to keep spending down and then take credit for it when it balances the budget and then helps with job growth too.

7)      Sign – against your will – a series of tax credits early on in your second term, which in turn will continue pushing the economy and create more jobs.

8)      Make sure to have a bubble – such as em, er… a Tech Bubble – to prop up the Equities Markets; in turn it installs confidence in the economy and in turn we get more economic and job growth too.

9)      Make sure that Corporate America cooks its books to make business look better, which in turn helps with confidence and economic growth and then again with jobs.

10)  Make sure to give only lip-service to the rising threat of Terrorism and North Korea because otherwise you will rattle oil markets which in turn may kill confidence and growth.

11)  When you have a Regime Change policy against Iraq, don’t invade them: The cost of war will dent your Surplus and in turn it may reduce economic activity.

12)  Make sure to leave the White House within a year of a disastrous market crash and when the economy is 2/3 in recession. By the time the mess will be felt, you will be enjoying your cigar(s) again…

13)  When the business corruption explodes shortly after a terror attack that happens seven months after you left office, use it to prove how good things were when you were in the White House.

14)  When the economy losses close to two million jobs within a year after you leave office, blame it on your successor. When the economy losses millions of jobs within the first year of your party’s next President, then place the blame backwards – to the predecessor of your party’s president.

And of course, signing a free trade with China just months before you leave office is great: It paints you as a great diplomat while manufacturing in the USA start bleeding jobs on your successor’s watch.

Yeah. Clinton Economics 101

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Austan Goolsbee, the Chair of the WH Council of Economic Advisors wrote the following on a White House blog regarding today’s jobs report:

“Though unemployment remains elevated, we are seeing signs that the initiatives put in place by this Administration – such as the payroll tax cut and business tax incentives for investment – are creating the conditions for sustained growth and job creation.”

It’s cool that the Administration indirectly admits that less than three months of tax stability, tax cuts, and tax credits, does more than what spending endlessly does in years…

I am glad to see bipartisanship too in Washington. Speaker Boehner wrote that  the improvement seen is credit to the “success in stopping the tax hikes that were due to hit our economy on January 1.  Removing the uncertainty caused by those looming tax hikes provided much-needed relief for private-sector job creators in America.”

Contact: yossi@yossigestetner.com

Can the crazy Democrats STOP extending Unemployment Benefits and instead create an environment where JOBS can be found? Is this our new economy? Unemployment Benefits?

People are already two years on these benefits, some up to $405 a week. These people even if they find a job paying $700-$800 a week, will not take it because they will lose the $400 they get for free. Why was the system not changed that when a person finds a job, they should not lose all of the $405 at once?

Had Dems made the changes, more people would have been productive in new found jobs, thus spurring more economic growth, which in turn would have created more jobs, and by now would cost less for the Government in terms of Unemployment Benefits.

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Why do they oppose extended Unemployment benefits out of concern about the deficit? That comes across as out-of-touch with Americans that can’t find work.

Republicans need to oppose it by saying “the agenda of the Dems to give endless Unemployment Benefits is going on for eighteen months now in forms of ‘jobs bills,’ but obviously it didn’t put Americans back to work. Instead, we should pass immediate tax credits and tax benefits which will generate economic activity, jobs and (pay for itself by) revenue to the government, just as the Republican-requested tax credits for home buyers revitalized the housing market until the credits expired.”

Why can’t Repubs use this reasoning? They are NUTS!

Why don’t Repubs ask the Dems ‘if your Stimulus created SO many jobs, why do we need to give Unemployment Benefits for periods three times longer than any recent recession, in an economy that is eitheen months since the Stimulus; ninteen months since Obama has the White House, and 42 months since Dems control Capital Hill?’

O right, the Dems messed-up the economy. It’s time to vote them out!

If you are a Democrat or simply an Obama fan, you sure like to see the headline of this article. However before you think that I am ready to concede the November Elections to the Democrats, continue reading.

It is very good news that the US economy added hundreds of thousands of jobs in recent months. However, looking at the big and full picture, it is WAY too early for Democrats to run with the Jobs issue for the November election.

Here’s why:

The economy lost a net of 6.9 million jobs, starting in February 2007, the first full month that Pelosi and Reid are in control of Capitol Hill. Dividing this into the 38 months since then, we are looking at a monthly average jobs loss under the Dems of 181,000-plus. Subtract the temporary Census jobs, which don’t reflect any real economic growth, and the numbers got even worse.

During the last full 38 months that the Republicans controlled Congress, the economy gained 6,745,000 jobs. Dividing that into a monthly basis (which ended December 2006), we are looking at a monthly jobs gain of 177,000-plus.

In short, the Democrats’ Congress erased ALL the jobs gains of the same period under Republican control, even if include the Census workers.

Besides all this, the unemployment rate was at 4.4% during the last Republican month; now it is at 9.9%. Not exactly a record that you want people to know.

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Dems will complain that it is not fair to count the jobs this way because Bush was President until early 2009, so he is to blame (too). Well, No problem, I will go with this. Furthermore, I will not place at President Obama’s feet the jobs lost from his first January in office, the way Democrats did to count jobs lost during the early Bush years. However, any jobs activity following the signing of the Stimulus, February 17 of 2009, is certainly the full credit or failure of Obama and the Democrats.

Here are the numbers:

Since March of 2009, the first full month of the Stimulus, until and including the preliminary Jobs reports of March and April of this year, the economy lost a net of 2,662,000 jobs. Dividing this into a monthly basis, the Obama Stimulus Jobs Market (OSBJ) LOST more than 200,000 jobs PER MONTH!!! If you exclude the Census thing, you are looking at a much steeper loss. Losing a net of three million jobs during the full thirteen months of the stimulus is not exactly the success that it promised to be.

I am not done yet: In February of last year, the Unemployment Rate was 8.2%, now it is at 9.9%. This record is not exactly economic “success” for the Democrats to use in campaign commercials.

Until Friday Feb fifth, we thought that the Stimulus Economy lost “only” 2.7 million jobs. When Democrats were called out on the bad jobs market, they always answered “if not for the Stimulus, it would have been much worse.”

Well, well, well. By revising its jobs numbers Friday, we learned from bls.gov that the stimulus economy lost almost 3.3 million jobs, which is worse than thought until now. Will Dems now again say “it could have been worse”? Sorry, they said it when we thought the economy lost only 2.7 million jobs.

The revised numbers shows the American people that the “could have been worse” line is just an excuse pulled out of thin air – not by facts, as we see: the job market IS worse!

It’s All Good

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From today’s bls.gov report on jobs, I noticed three things:

1)      The Pelosi/Reid economy which started in January of 2007, lost a total of 6,653,000 jobs, worse than the 6,090,000 thought until today.

2)      Despite the Stimulus, the economy in 2009 lost 4.7 million jobs, worse than the 2.9 million lost in 2008.

3)      The Stimulus Economy (Starting March of 2009) lost 3,296,000 jobs, worse than the 2,742,000 thought until today.

VP Joe biden informed us all over the weekend that for the final three months of 2009, the Stimulus bill saved/created 599,108 jobs, and the bill is on track to save and/or create a total of 3.5 million jobs at the end of 2010, as Prez Bam promised us in early 2009 that the bill will do.

How long will Biden go on with this junk of jobs saved/created? Better yet, if we have jobs reports from Recovery.gov on how many jobs we saved/created, why do we still need the monthly jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics?

If saved/created is bona fide, can we go back to the Bush years and claim that 4,528,396 jobs were saved/created from the 2003 tax cut? Plus, now that we will have a new Jobs Bill, how would we know which jobs were saved/created by the Stimulus and which ones got saved/created from the new jobs bill?

This saved/created term was a mess from day one, and it complicates things every time such reports are published. I just wonder how VP Biden goes ahead and reports these numbers with a straight face.

ENOUGH!

Prez Bam is focusing recently on creating jobs.

Is it not funny that almost a year after Bam signed the stimulus, we still need to worry about job creation?

Besides, if it is true that the Stimulus saved/created 2 million jobs as Bam and his people like to say, why is he still looking for new ways to create/save jobs?

Plus, speaking about creating more jobs and crafting new legislation for it, is an admission that the first job created, the Stimuli, is one big failure. Don’t you agree?

The problem with Bam and the Dems is that they are focused on “creating jobs” rather than working/letting that the economy should recover. When a recovery is here – we will have millions of new jobs.