The Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor has released its monthly report of the employment/unemployment situation for September 2016. Forecasters were predicting the addition of 170,000 new jobs but 156,000 were reported in the BLS statistics, about a 9% shortfall.
This jobs report pushed the needle on the jobs dial up from 4.9% (since June) to 5%. This unemployment indicator reminds us of the age-old axiom that ‘figures don’t lie but liars sure can figure.’ The unemployment rate for White workers is 4.4% while the unemployment rate for Blacks is almost double at 8.3%. This disparity is troubling considering that Mr. Obama has said while campaigning that minorities would be raised up in wage and employment equality.
The BLS, driven by favorable political insertions and deletions uses selective statistics to arrive at the monthly unemployment index. For example, if workers stop looking for work, they are no longer counted as being in the workforce. The 5% published unemployment number is derived from dividing the number of unemployed (7,939,000) by the number of workers employed (151,968,000). However, if the number of persons not in the workforce who want a job (6,088,000) were added into the equation, the unemployment number for September would jump to 9%.
Also, consider that the participation rate of workers is just 62.9% which is the actual workforce (159,907,000) divided by the civilian population (254,091,000). That means that there are more than 94 million potential workers not participating in generating the U.S. GDP (Gross Domestic Product).
The logical question is where are these people? Social Security (including Supplemental Security Income) SSI is 65,764,000. Numbered among these recipients are 10,652,000 beneficiaries of disability insurance. Average payments per recipient amount to $1,100 to $1,300 per month for a total payout of nearly $80 billion per month or almost a trillion dollars per year. The U.S. budget for 2016 had projected income of about $3.525 trillion with spending about $4 trillion with Medicare budgeted at about $910 billion. Our government mathematical wizards are smart enough to create a spending budget but not quite smart enough to balance it with income.
Here are some additional statistics that we will have a test on at the end of this column: Food Stamp recipients 42+ million, Citizens without health insurance 31+ million, Retirees 50+ million, Living in poverty 43+ million, Medicare recipients 73+ million and total recipients of government benefits 162,559,942.
With a current population of 324,507,496, our great nation has almost exactly the same number of donors as recipients. There are many reasons for this donor/recipient situation including the aging of our population, generous retirement benefits, especially in government work that often allows retirement benefits to kick in prior to age 50.
Additionally, marriages are occurring at older ages of couples and they are having fewer children. Incidentally, the fertility rate in the U.S is about 1.84 (children) and the rate required for ‘replacement’ is slightly over 2.
The obvious meaning of this statistic is that we need immigration to sustain growth in GDP, family formations, workforce availability and contributions to national, state and local budgets. Most industrialized economies in the world share our problem of low birth rates. The principal challenges with immigration is the cost of integrating new citizens due to the cost of language and occupational training, welfare support, healthcare and compliance with local and federal statutes and cultural mores.
Here is where the problem is: The current candidates are debating personal issues while the national debt approaches $20 trillion; the shortfall of local, state and federal retirement benefits is about $7 trillion meaning politicians have made scads of promises they can in no way keep. Mortgage debt is $14 trillion, student loan debt is $1.4 trillion and credit card debt is $975 billion. Growth in GDP is less than 2%.
Now, dear friends and neighbors, we are in the process of transforming our nation from a democratic republic (or a republican democracy if you prefer) to a socialist form of government. We have become a socialist debtor nation. It is here and it will become more noticeable unless we turn back to our constitutional principles of government by the people instead of by the Political Elites.
The test was postponed due to discomfiture.
Dick Baynton
