[Pops]

Everyone in the business of selling homes benefited from the bubble, from the appraisers who valued houses at multiples of replacement value to the Realtors who assured buyers the prices weren't inflated.

How could it be a surprise Realtors would have "mistakenly" understated the weakness of the market?

Or for that matter why any number coming out in a PR statement from groups with a vested interest might be skewed.

[ralfy]

"HALF of Americans now 'poor or on low income', shock new figures reveal"

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... ncome.html

[Armageddon]

HAHA
Realtors: We Overcounted Home Sales for Five Years

Data on sales of previously owned U.S. homes from 2007 through October this year will be revised down next week because of double counting, indicating a much weaker housing market than previously thought.
The National Association of Realtors said a benchmarking exercise had revealed that some properties were listed more than once, and in some instances, new home sales were also captured.

"All the sales and inventory data that have been reported since January 2007 are being downwardly revised. Sales were weaker than people thought," NAR spokesman Walter Malony told Reuters.

"We're capturing some new home data that should have been filtered out and we also discovered that some properties were being listed in more than one list."
The benchmark revisions will be published next Wednesday and will not affect house prices.

Early this year, the Realtors group was accused of overcounting existing homes sales, with California-based real estate analysis firm CoreLogic claiming sales could have been overstated by as much as 20 percent.

At the time, the NAR said it was consulting with a range of experts to determine whether there was a drift in its monthly existing home sales data and that any drift would be "relatively minor."

The depressed housing market is one of the key obstacles to strong economic growth and an oversupply of unsold homes on the market continues to stifle the sector.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/45659547

When are they going to admit they "overcounted" the unemployed ?

[Quinny]

I assume you mean undercounted!

[Lore]

When are they going to admit they "overcounted" the unemployed ?

You have a Presidential election going on;.... remember?

[eXpat]

If the recovery is complete, why is this happening again???
Deal reached to avert government shutdown

WASHINGTON | Thu Dec 15, 2011 9:48pm EST

(Reuters) - Lawmakers on Thursday reached a tentative deal to fund an array of government agencies through September 30 and avert shutting down many of Washington's operations starting this weekend.

Democratic Senator Daniel Inouye, one of the chief negotiators on the massive spending bill, told reporters the deal had been struck and the full Senate could vote on the measure as early as Friday.

The House of Representatives is expected to vote on Friday, a Republican aide said.

Current funding for agencies ranging from the Defense Department and Homeland Security to the Environmental Protection Agency expires at midnight on Friday.

Meanwhile, work on a separate but equally important deal to extend a payroll tax cut and long-term unemployment benefits continued in Congress. Negotiations were also aimed at preventing a pay cut for doctors treating elderly patients under the Medicare healthcare program.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/16/us-usa-taxes-idUSTRE7B827K20111216
http://www.newsday.com/news/nation/bargainers-reach-deal-to-head-off-gov-t-shutdown-1.3391188

[peripato]

That FOMC statement paints a bleak picture of the US economy, with no announcement of new measures to address the situation. To whit;

While indicators point to some improvement in overall labor market conditions, the unemployment rate remains elevated. Household spending has continued to advance, but business fixed investment appears to be increasing less rapidly and the housing sector remains depressed.

Without jobs and housing the US economy cannot recover.

No, it does not paint a bleak picture of the US economy, it says there have been "some improvement in overall labor market conditions." And here's one of them!

Oh looky! See how the chart for Labour Participation mirrors that for Initial Claims! Hmm, the 'unexpected' decline in jobless claims wouldn't have anything to do with people dropping off the unemployment rolls, I wonder? Much as the 'unexpected fall in the employment rate being mostly due to the same condition.


In the past the US economy should be 'singing' two years into 'recovery' and the unemployment level should the one statistic that's at an all time low - NOT the worker participation rate.

[copious.abundance]

Not this again.

It's a labor participation bubble bursting.

[copious.abundance]

Hmm, the 'unexpected' decline in jobless claims wouldn't have anything to do with people dropping off the unemployment rolls, I wonder?

And BTW, the answer to your question (for about the zillionth time) is NO, because initial unemployment claims - which is the chart I showed - counts people being laid off from jobs - it does NOT count those falling off unemployment rolls. That's why they're called "initial" claims.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

And since I've had to point this out so many times (mostly to you, I believe, but probably also to eXpat and vision-master) I do think it's worth repeating again:

Initial unemployment claims do not count people falling off the unemployment rolls. They count people who have recently been laid off from their jobs and file for unemployment insurance.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

And yet again, just to make sure it sinks in ...

Initial unemployment claims do not count people falling off the unemployment rolls. They count people who have recently been laid off from their jobs and file for unemployment insurance.

Capiche?

[sjn]

OF2, would you not agree that the vast majority of those who have "left the labour pool" make up the famous Flexible US Labour Market, representing the workers most likely to be hired and fired. Those remaining, are in jobs which are either systemically necessary or supported within the Military/Medical-Industrial Complex etc...?

[peripato]

Hmm, the 'unexpected' decline in jobless claims wouldn't have anything to do with people dropping off the unemployment rolls, I wonder?

And BTW, the answer to your question (for about the zillionth time) is NO, because initial unemployment claims - which is the chart I showed - counts people being laid off from jobs - it does NOT count those falling off unemployment rolls. That's why they're called "initial" claims.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

And since I've had to point this out so many times (mostly to you, I believe, but probably also to eXpat and vision-master) I do think it's worth repeating again:

Initial unemployment claims do not count people falling off the unemployment rolls. They count people who have recently been laid off from their jobs and file for unemployment insurance.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

And yet again, just to make sure it sinks in ...

Initial unemployment claims do not count people falling off the unemployment rolls. They count people who have recently been laid off from their jobs and file for unemployment insurance.

Capiche?

Ok Mr OilCan, fair enough. Let me attempt my argument from another angle.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Has the job creation rate not been negative for the past four years as shown by the elevated level of unemployment in the graph below?

Does that not indicate there are today fewer people employed in jobs that would be eligible to file for unemployment insurance when the do get laid-off?


Recovery indeed! What a bunch of bollocks!

[Pops]

Not this again.

It's a labor participation bubble bursting.

?

So the recovery will be complete and expansion will begin as soon as we clear that pesky 50-year backlog of extraneous jobs?

Only another 15 or 20 million people out of work until the economy is "recovered" you think?


We're all doomers, now.

[Pops]

It's a bubble bursting all right:

#1 A staggering 48 percent of all Americans are either considered to be “low income” or are living in poverty.
#2 Approximately 57 percent of all children in the United States are living in homes that are either considered to be “low income” or impoverished.
#3 If the number of Americans that “wanted jobs” was the same today as it was back in 2007, the “official” unemployment rate put out by the U.S. government would be up to 11 percent.
#4 The average amount of time that a worker stays unemployed in the United States is now over 40 weeks.
#5 One recent survey found that 77 percent of all U.S. small businesses do not plan to hire any more workers.
#6 There are fewer payroll jobs in the United States today than there were back in 2000 even though we have added 30 million extra people to the population since then.
#7 Since December 2007, median household income in the United States has declined by a total of 6.8% once you account for inflation.
#8 According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 16.6 million Americans were self-employed back in December 2006. Today, that number has shrunk to 14.5 million.
#9 A Gallup poll from earlier this year found that approximately one out of every five Americans that do have a job consider themselves to be underemployed.
#10 According to author Paul Osterman, about 20 percent of all U.S. adults are currently working jobs that pay poverty-level wages.

40 more sad economic facts from 2011...

[copious.abundance]

OF2, would you not agree that the vast majority of those who have "left the labour pool" make up the famous Flexible US Labour Market, representing the workers most likely to be hired and fired. Those remaining, are in jobs which are either systemically necessary or supported within the Military/Medical-Industrial Complex etc...?

There are probably a zillion different reasons why people leave the labor force. Some decide to go to school (or *back* to school), some retire (note previous article I posted somewhere on first Baby Boom retirees), some are women who decide to leave the workforce to be stay-at-home moms (just got one of those where I work last week - it *does* happen), and undoubtedly other reasons.

[copious.abundance]

Has the job creation rate not been negative for the past four years as shown by the elevated level of unemployment in the graph below?

Does that not indicate there are today fewer people employed in jobs that would be eligible to file for unemployment insurance when the do get laid-off?


Recovery indeed! What a bunch of bollocks!

Uhhh ... hello?? Your own chart shows about 1-1/2 of those past 4 years in a recession. A recession, by definition, is not a recovery. Jobs get lost during recessions. Since the end of the recession in mid-2009, jobs have been gained. The recovery/expansion is only about 2-1/2 years old, so it's rather disingenuous to cite the last four years.

[AgentR11]

OF2... you always manage to leave off that list those people that would love to work, but whom are no longer considered worth hiring.

Why is that?

Could it be that you don't want to consider the possibility that the economy is less vibrant than it was five years ago, and that there is reasonable probability that it will never achieve that level again.

[copious.abundance]

So the recovery will be complete and expansion will begin as soon as we clear that pesky 50-year backlog of extraneous jobs?

Only another 15 or 20 million people out of work until the economy is "recovered" you think?

1. The labor participation rate right now is about the same as it was in 1984. Was there anything particularly wrong about 1984? If it falls until we get to, say, 1970 levels, was there anything particularly wrong about the labor force participation rate in 1970?
2. Just for the heck of it, do a bit of research on labor force participation rates in Japan and much of Europe. In Japan, for example, nearly half of the population is not engaged in the workforce. So, if we get to be like Japan ... so what? Is Japan some poor, starving 3rd world nation with half the population begging on the streets? Hardly. True, they've had slow growth over the past couple decades, but just because your labor force participation rate is declining, does not mean some doomerish thing is happening. Sometimes you just get a lot of people retiring (nothing anyone can do about that), a lot of women getting out of the workforce, and a host of other perfectly normal reasons.

[copious.abundance]

OF2... you always manage to leave off that list those people that would love to work, but whom are no longer considered worth hiring.

Why is that?

Could it be that you don't want to consider the possibility that the economy is less vibrant than it was five years ago, and that there is reasonable probability that it will never achieve that level again.

For a lot of them, it's because they majored in Ethnic Studies, Sustainability Studies, Sociology or some similarly useless degree, learned nothing useful, once managed to get a job as a secretary or government researcher somewhere, got laid off during the recession, but now can't find a job because they have useless skills from a useless degree. So they spend their time nowadays participating in the "Occupy [insert city here]" protests. Meanwhile there are some 600K manufacturing jobs going begging, not to mention countless openings in the oil fields of North Dakota and south Texas, but these people don't want jobs like that because they aren't used to actually using their brain to do something halfway hard, or they don't want to do hard physical work, or they don't want to do jobs like those because it isn't something that will Help Save The World. Boo hoo hoo.

[copious.abundance]

Oh yeah, one other thing ... A lot of the people who had jobs 5 years ago were construction workers building housing during the housing bubble. Those people are going to have to wait a while until the wreckage from the bubble's aftermath has been cleaned up a bit more. But a lot of those people probably headed back to Mexico or Guatemala.

[AgentR11]

Exactly, and there are a lot of them. I'm not saying its not their fault, being the hard... that I am, I most assuredly do think they hold most of the responsibility for their economic condition; they chose training appropriate to a debutante and then went to pursue a middle class career. When the bubbles were hot, it was enough to be a warm body that could vaguely speak something resembling language and would usually show up. Nowdays, companies can't support workers that don't produce more value than they cost.