The link
Democracy. It is beautiful, is it not? It would be so much easier just to have a populist dictator in charge.

Traitorous and cowardly Congressmen are most concerned with fear, getting elected, being politically correct, and betraying the average American citizen, so as a group they follow instead of provide leadership in the direction of what is good for the average person.

I know how it is to have to find a job in this economy, having done it twice myself. I have nothing but sympathy for those who are out of work and look down on privileged assholes who would view that as a reflection on a given person’s character.

There’s a gaping disconnect between what Americans care about and what President Barack Obama and Congress — Democrats and Republicans — are actually doing. A new Associated Press-GfK poll tells the story: contempt for lawmakers, a bare majority approving what Obama’s doing.

Or just listen to Robert Watson.

He backed Obama in 2008. He lost his job at a direct mail company in the Great Recession. And he’s been looking for work ever since. Neither Obama nor Congress, Watson says, is addressing what really matters: “I’m still unemployed.”

“There’s nobody doing any hiring,” he says. And when they are, “100 people are going for the same job.” He wants Obama to focus more on creating jobs, Congress to stop the partisan games and both to remember who sent them to Washington.

“They just can’t seem to agree on what’s important for this country,” laments Watson, 59, of Annapolis, Md. “It’s just a mess.”

Now look at Washington.

The White House and Congress are consumed with the partisan gridlock on overhauling health care. That issue is overshadowing everything else — even legislation in the House and Senate to provide unemployment relief.

The Senate did vote Wednesday to extend many elements of last year’s economic stimulus, including help for the jobless. But that isn’t final: The vote merely sends the measure into talks with the House, which is wary about some Senate provisions.

At the same time, Democrats and Republicans are jockeying for the upper hand on every issue they can ahead of this fall’s midterm elections. Corruption is the latest: Each party has spent the past week painting the other as more tainted.

Job creation and economic recovery — and cooperation in Washington to achieve them — are too often taking a back seat.

The gulf between what voters are focused on and what Washington is talking most about seems as wide as the anger is deep in America, and that helps explain why people are so turned off, so furious at politicians of any stripe.

Only 22 percent of Americans — less than at any previous point in Obama’s presidency — approve of Congress, the new AP-GfK poll shows. Just over half like what Obama’s doing. Frustration is directed at both Republicans and Democrats. Half of all people say they want to fire their congressman.

Unemployment and the economy are among the issues Americans are most concerned about; health care trails behind those issues as well as terrorism and the federal budget deficit.

Despite promises to do things differently, Democrats and Republicans alike are engaged in the politics of usual, maneuvering for election-year advantage. And that’s exactly what their constituents say they don’t want. People are tired of the games. And why wouldn’t they be?

Nearly 10 percent of Americans don’t have jobs, and the prospects for finding them anytime soon are bleak. The Labor Department reported Wednesday that unemployment rose in 30 states in January, evidence that jobs remain scarce in most regions of the country. From coast to coast, Americans are questioning whether anyone they’ve elected is on their side — and actually working for them.

Even voters who supported Obama and his Democrats have soured on Washington. That’s a danger for the party in power as it looks to hang onto control of the House and Senate in November. Angry voters tend to reject the status quo; that’s how Democrats rose to power in Congress in 2006 and Obama won the White House in 2008. Today, voters are still furious with Washington — if not more so. And now Democrats could be blamed.

Simply listen to voters, and you’ll hear their priorities — and their frustrations — loud and clear.

“The jobs, the economy is a much bigger issue for this country than trying to push this health care bill through,” says Republican John Campbell of Del Rio, Texas. He wants both Obama and Congress to shift the focus — and work with each other.”

“There needs to be some bipartisanship,” says Campbell, 52, a warden at a federal detention center.

College student Claire Hatton of Wellington, Ohio, seems jaded at age 19.

“It doesn’t seem to me like a whole lot is getting done except politics in Washington,” says this self-identified independent. Enough with the arguing, enough with the fighting, she adds. “They should be working together and trying to get more things accomplished to benefit everyone.”

And Obama?

“He should be doing more of what he said he would be doing,” Hatton says. “He’s straying off of campaign promises.”

Retired kindergarten teacher Ann Heffernan of Memphis, Tenn., who doesn’t belong to a political party, also questions Washington’s agenda.

“They should be trying harder to get jobs for people,” says Heffernan, 84.

Congress, Obama — “they just seem to be working against each other, and I don’t see either one of them making big progress,” she says.

“There is such a polarity” in Congress, bemoans retiree Carl Cheney, a Democrat from Wellsville, Utah.

Is government working for him?

“Heavens no,” Cheney, 76, says, and launches into a blistering critique.

“Their most important job they feel is to get re-elected, and they have no concern for the nation or the public” — or what matters most to voters. His advice to lawmakers: “Try to develop a little statesmanship instead of individual greed and interest in their jobs.”

The link
The reason America never fixes its problems is that it believes they will auto-correct. This article is the ideological foundation of authoritarianism. If you prefer to smear it, I guess you could call it “emergency dictatorship,” “capitalism in decay” or “fascism.” It is the idea that freedom and liberty “don’t work,” but the logical conclusion is that authority is needed to patch society. It is not really stressing class conflict or the need for the complete elimination of private property, and thus not really addressing the issue from a Marxist-Leninist standpoint but a corrective authoritarian standpoint.

It requires a religious belief in capitalism in order to keep trying to succeed against all odds, because otherwise it is easier to give up. After all, to succeed requires many failed attempts and/or a special networking connection, especially in this global economic meltdown. I can attest to the fact that most hardcore entrepreneurs truly believe these values.

WASHINGTON — The most popular religion in America isn’t Christianity, as most of us have been taught to believe. The most cherished belief system celebrates the principles of unfettered capitalism.

That misplaced faith in free markets was on display in this past Thursday’s health care summit, when — between sound bites and talking points — Republicans argued that “choice and competition” would largely resolve the country’s health care problems. That belief — that the arbitrary, confusing and consumer-unfriendly policies and practices that we euphemistically call a health care “system” can be transformed by relying on free market principles — is confounding.

Except for beneficiaries of Medicare, Medicaid and the Veterans Affairs system — all government-run insurance programs — those of us who have insurance are utterly reliant on the private market. That’s what got us into the mess we’re in.

The health care market simply doesn’t operate like the market for cars or computers or flat-screen TVs. Sony and Samsung make their profits by selling as many of their products as they can. Health insurance companies make their profits by selling as many of their products as they can and then trying very hard not to actually deliver them.

Try to imagine that you’re awaiting delivery of your brand-new 50-inch TV, for which you’ve already made a hefty down payment. But the company calls to tell you that you violated some obscure clause in your contract, so they’re not going to bring it! In the health insurance world, it’s called “rescission.” Insurers decide they won’t honor the contract because of some alleged violation by the policy-holder.

They do that to keep their fat profit margins. Health care giant Wellpoint has proposed substantial rate increases in the individual market (policies for individuals who don’t have employer-based insurance), not just in California but in several other states. In congressional testimony last week, WellPoint president Angela Braly said the company had to raise premiums because of soaring health care costs. But Wellpoint hardly seems to be hurting; it reported a profit last year of $4.7 billion.

California’s Wellpoint subsidiary, Anthem Blue Cross, is not only proposing stunning rate hikes. The state’s insurance commissioner has announced that the company has also repeatedly violated state law by failing to pay medical claims on time and by misrepresenting policy provisions to consumers, according to the Los Angeles Times.

So, it seems, the company tells you that a policy offers broad coverage when they’re trying to get you to buy insurance. But when you need the coverage, you find out that the policy doesn’t offer broad coverage, after all. That helps explain why so many people, even with health insurance, go bankrupt after a costly illness.

Without stricter government oversight and regulation — which is the essence of the health care reform proposed by President Obama — health care costs will continue to soar while consumers get less and less. Obama’s proposals don’t represent a “government takeover,” as critics contend. The vast majority of Americans would still get their insurance in the private marketplace. But insurers would have to live by a different set of rules.

Vice President Joe Biden said it best at the summit: If Republicans agree that insurance reform is necessary, that health insurance companies should be prohibited from turning away consumers because of pre-existing conditions, that they should be prevented from enforcing lifetime caps on benefits, then the GOP must see the need for strict government regulation. You don’t get those changes in the “free market.”

And, unlike the choice of buying a computer or a car, you’d don’t really get to walk away from health insurance. If you do, you take your life into your hands. Having health insurance increases your chances of longevity.

Once upon a time, political leaders realized that all Americans needed access to electricity, and they stepped in to ensure that all households got that small miracle at reasonable rates — something that the “free market” could not provide. Americans need a similar intervention in health care now.

The Link
What frustrates me is the older generation. The older generation denies that this is the case and promotes ignorant viewpoints – such as the viewpoint that your success in the market is a direct return on your skill level and work ethic. Only a very privileged person would believe that.

Thankfully, in my case, things are finally starting to break again.

With job openings few and far between, it’s more important than ever that job seekers’ strategy is on target — and networking should be the basis of that strategy.

Rather than sitting in front of a computer, searching online postings and blindly sending out dozens or hundreds of resumes, job hunters have a better chance of success through networking. The adage, “It’s not what you know, but who you know” is more accurate than ever.

The more time you devote to networking, the higher your probability of finding that elusive job, corporate insiders and job-search experts say. One reason for that: Companies often fill positions by making internal employee referrals part of the company culture. Some firms even make hiring new workers through referrals a strategic goal.

That’s a development job hunters can leverage to their advantage by honing their networking skills. For companies, having current employees recommend new hires gives them access to pools of talent they might not normally attract. And current employees get the opportunity to recommend skilled newcomers and reap cash bonuses and internal recognition.

“Prudential has always viewed their employees as talent ambassadors. Our employees are an excellent source for referrals,” said Peter Price, director of global communications for Prudential Financial Inc.

Prudential employees earn between $500 and $2,500 for each successful referral, depending on the job level. Hiring managers are not required to hire a referral over a more qualified candidate — decisions are based on skills, experience and qualifications. But “serious consideration is given to those candidates who are referred by Prudential employees,” Price said.

At Vistaprint, the company’s “Everyone Here is a Recruiter” program, launched in late 2006, offers a $1,500 referral award for each successful hire, and a home theater system for the employee with the most referrals hired.

“At the end of that first year of the program, employee referrals jumped from 19 percent to 42 percent,” said Kevin Murray, director of recruiting at the firm. Vistaprint USA Inc., a print company focused on business cards and brochures, is a subsidiary of Vistaprint N.V.

“By 2008, employee referrals had grown to 48 percent of all new hires. The program is on track to pass that number this year,” he said.

Will Robinson, a job coach in Arlington, Mass., said in this economic downturn he’s seen a growing number of new hires coming from employee referrals

“In some companies, as many as 75 percent of placements are done through networking,” Robinson said. “Employee referrals are hugely important to companies. They are even more important in a soft economy, when companies are flooded with resumes, and many of them are bad resumes.”

From the organization’s perspective, employee referrals are extremely valuable, said Alexandra Levit, author of “New Job, New You: A Guide to Reinventing Yourself in a Bright New Career.”

“Not only do you receive a steady stream of qualified applicants without having to spend big dollars on recruiting, but those applicants come with built-in, trusted references,” said Levit, who is working with the Labor Department on a plan to make American workers more competitive in the job market.

Many companies consider employee referrals so important they mandate a specific percentage of positions be filled by referral, and human-resources representatives have to meet quotas, Levit said. That creates opportunities for anyone wanting to work at those companies: Networking with the right people can help get your resume in front of someone who actually wants to see it.

Employee referrals also help cut the cost of finding candidates, said Prudential’s Price. “In most cases, the awards that are paid out for an employee referral will be significantly less than the cost of other sourcing methods, like advertising.”

While the extra cash is a strong incentive for employees to suggest qualified candidates, it’s not the main draw of employee-referral programs.

“Employees are definitely motivated by the bonus, but I think they also want to do something that helps a person in need and their organization at the same time,” Levit said. Making a successful recommendation not only helps the company; it also helps the reputation of the employee who made it, Levit said.

“I am an individual with a success story,” said Kindra Hall, vice president of sales at Orenda International, a Tempe, Ariz.-based natural health product marketing company. “I am the one who has offered the insider’s referral. So far, my company has hired all three of the referrals I’ve made.

“I want to make sure that I’m working with the best people, that my team is strong,” Hall said. “Though a bonus would be nice, I was more motivated by what the referred person could do for the growth of the company and therefore my future income.”

Many job seekers don’t realize most openings aren’t advertised, Levit said. Many businesses prefer to hire from within the company or through word-of-mouth. “If you’re coming in from off the street, you could be out of luck,” she said.

While job seekers should use all the tried and true networking techniques, those looking for work should never stalk someone in a bid to network, Levit said.

Instead, practice what Levit calls the 3/6 rule. “Contact the person three times over a period of six weeks, and if you don’t hear back, move on to someone else who will be more open to helping you.”

Vistaprint’s Murray said job seekers tend to overlook their college or university’s alumni resources. Many schools have a dedicated alumni site linked to the larger school Web site, which often includes access to online job boards and discussion forums, and information on alumni networking events all over the country.

Robinson, the job coach, said people should spend 75 percent of their search time networking, and job hunters should use a “targeted company” networking strategy. You first target companies you want to work for and then network to find people in those companies who can eventually tell you about job openings, and ideally, refer you for a spot.

Said Robinson: “Instead of … blasting resumes out to every company that may have an opening, you first identify target companies—usually 10 — and start a networking strategy to find individuals in these companies.”

The link
If you are really anti-recession, then you have to be anti-women. If you enjoy the recession, then enjoy women. The current economy and unwillingness to loan forces men and women to live together. Men have to either live with their Mothers or a girl-enemy, because the economy sucks too much to actually find a steady job and thus isolate oneself from the need of assistance towards housing. The current economy is a result of a deliberate conspiracy of women to buy expensive houses in order to keep their husbands in debt, and to crash the whole economy so that men can’t live without a roomate. I pointed out in an earlier post that women have not been harmed by the recession nearly as much as men. But dick masterson argues that they engineered it.

Perhaps good women are the ones who take on their co-sexualists, and admit that they are responsible for everything that is wrong with America right now. It doesn’t matter if women are necessary for reproduction. We can change that with a technocracy.

This letter was sent to me from America’s Heartland.

Dear Dick,

I live in Nebraska where anyone with a decent job can afford to buy a house. Recently, I’m seeing a trend in the amount of women who feel that they can AND SHOULD buy their own house. “How the fuck do these women expect to mow the lawn?” I asked a friend of mine who is buying a house. She replied, “You.” After I finished laughing, she asked if she could borrow my lawnmower to do it. “How are you going to get the mower from my house to yours?” I said. She replied, “Your truck.”

Property ownership for women should be discouraged, starting at the real estate agent.

CE in Nebraska.

Well said, CE in Nebraska. Women should not own property.

A woman owning property is like giving a monkey a dog on a leash. It doesn’t mean the monkey has a pet. It means some idiot tied a dog to a monkey.

Women owning property doesn’t mean that they themselves aren’t property.

But what’s the worst that could happen? So a few women buy a few houses and fuck them up, it’s not like that will fuck up the entire global economy, right?

Wrong. Women caused the subprime mortgage meltdown.

You Are What You Eat

Women don’t know how to treat property. Just look at how they treat themselves! Getting fat as hell, speaking when they could just sit there and look pretty, giving it up on the first date. Women are the world’s oldest property and they treat themselves like shit.

They also treat their cars and houses like shit. The last time I let a woman drive me anywhere, I didn’t. I insisted on driving her car myself and she had to kick through a foot of trash and debris in her passenger seat to even sit down. That’s how a woman treats something she owns. She lets it go to hell.

If women can’t fuck to make a problem go away, or at least pretend they’re going to fuck after the problem goes away, then the problem goes unsolved. Take my new best friend CE from Nebraska. Sure, he could get his freak on for mowing some dozy bitch’s lawn, but that’s a waste of time and worse yet, it’s a loss of Man Points.

The maximum amount of work any man can do to get laid without losing Man Points is 30 minutes. Any more means you give a shit.

Women Are Consumers

Women don’t understand ownership. They only understand consumership. That’s why they should only purchase things that can be used. Things like make-up, clothing, pots and pans, and especially birth control; all things meant to be used up or thrown away when something better comes along — just like women.

Men are owners. We invented ownership and we fought the wars that resulted from this awesome invention. Ownership is about putting work into something, including ourselves, in order to increase its value. Women just complain until someone either pays more for access to their sex organs, or lies better while doing it.

A boob job doesn’t make a girl smarter, it just makes her look smarter.

Subprime Fuck Up

Subprime is the first word I think of when I think of women and their shit brains. However, it also perfectly describes their real estate investments.

If you don’t understand what the subprime mortgage crisis is, I’ll explain it in man terms.

Let’s say you’re throwing a party and stocking it with booze. You get a bottle of Patron, a 12 pack of Pacifico, and a case of Ralph’s brand charcoal filtered potato Vodka.

Guess what, no one will fucking drink Ralph’s brand charcoal filtered potato Vodka and the people who will drink it, you don’t want at your party! That’s the subprime alcohol at my party crisis. The Pacifico will be gone in ten minutes and the Patron will get smashed on your car by pissed off, sober party guests during an angry mass exodus.

In 2003, one in five home purchases were made by single women.

In 2006 women were 32% more likely to receive a subprime mortgage than men.

In 2006 women were 41% more likely to receive a high-cost subprime mortgage than men.

In 2006, 30% of mortgage borrowers were women

In 2006, 38.8% of subprime mortgage borrowers were women.

In 2006, women were 29.1% more likely to be stupid and irresponsible.

Men are better than women.

The economy is like a symphony. It doesn’t take an orchestra to fuck it up, it just takes like 29.1% of the instruments.

Accountability? Who Me?

Women are experts at shooting themselves in the foot. I think men have too much practice not shooting ourselves in the foot from pissing outside our entire lives. We learn to account for wind, splash factor, all kinds of shit. We learn not to piss all over our shoes. But women don’t. According to women, the reason they accepted shitty mortgages from banks and didn’t use LendingTree.com to shop around like TV told them to, is because banks are sexist.

Fuck you. Banks hate everyone. To banks you are a number not a name and a collection of statistics to milk for cash — not a person. For more information on banks, consult your local library — or ask Mel Gibson. I’m sure he has some interesting theories.

Financial Advice From the Retarded

Aside from trash books telling women not to base their self-worth on men — which they will anyway — financial advice books written by women for women are some of the biggest selling titles out there.

Among money saving pearls like, “Bring your own snacks to the movies”, and “Don’t bother getting a car, just get some man to drive you everywhere!” you’ll will also encounter the following gem amongst the kitschy self-empowerment slogans:

Home ownership is the key to building wealth.

What women fail to realize is that affording a home is the key to home ownership. Women are economically retarded. They’ll write checks until their checkbook is empty. They’ll pay the minimum required amount on their credit cards just for fun. They’ll buy the Extended Warranty because it makes them feel better. Then they’ll throw all the fucking receipts away and cry when their shitty little television breaks two years in.

The point is, women are fiscally retarded.

Financial Advice For the Retarded

“Women are Disproportionately Represented in High-Cost Mortgage Market.” -CFA 2006

So what if women got offered shitty deals? They still took them. That makes it their fault. Who knows how much shit women forgot to put on their applications or how much effort they put into researching the loan process or even looking up the word “loan” before taking one out and leaving the global economy alone on the swing set while trying to convince her friends that she’s had a busy day. Running errands is not having a busy day.

Women wouldn’t know a good deal if it offered them a ride home in exchange for a blowjob. That’s a good deal! It’s five minutes of work vs. an hour of walking. Do the math.

But women can’t do math. Women look at APR and amortization rates and closing costs and fiduciary terms and their little heads start replaying the training montage in Dirty Dancing. “Maybe this time she’ll get in the air without laughing like a whore!” thinks a woman as she’s signing away daddy’s retirement plan.

Daddy

All problems by women are actually caused by men. Men who think their daughter, wife, sister, girlfriend, mother, fuck buddy, or co-worker, has anything more than shit between her ears.

In the case of the subprime meltdown, some man thought it was a good idea to give his daughter a down payment. It wasn’t.

Welcome to the big leagues, ladies. Having the world on your shoulders isn’t as fun as it looked, is it? Make sure your degrees in Political Science are framed to match your bedroom set when the repo man comes to collect both.

“Though no statistics exist to compare foreclosure rates among men and women, it is logical to conclude that higher rates of subprime mortgages among women translates to higher rates of foreclosure.” -Allen J. Fishbein

Here’s a statistic for you. Women have only been allowed to own property for 1% of the time we’ve been around as a species. There’s a reason for that.

Manclusion

“35 percent of women home equity borrowers used the loans to pay off credit card debt, and a third of those borrowers had rebuilt the same credit card debt within four years.” – Money Magazine, July 2004

I should have just lead with that quote, but since it also ends the discussion, I saved it for the end.

End of discussion. Women are fucked.

If I was a bank, I would never lend money to a single woman wanting to buy a house because I know she’s going to blow half of it on overpriced furnishings and a new puppy she won’t discipline for shit. Besides, she’s just going to get married in a few years anyway, and the day a woman gets married all her money suddenly becomes discretionary. Yours is hers and hers is hers. Welcome to marriage. That means whenever a bank signs a mortgage over to a single woman, they’re actually signing it over to her future husband.

Since when is it good banking to give loans to imaginary people!

The link
If you talk to spoiled older workers, they act as if they are the ones harmed by the recession. Self-interest and greed caused the privileged class to maintain its position while laying off more inexpensive workers who are paid by the hour! Capitalism is a nepotistic system! Anyone who thinks capitalism is the expression of meritocracy is not acquainted with the realities of human nature.

A new report on the impact of unemployment and underemployment during the Great Recession suggests that higher-paid workers have enjoyed practically full employment during the worst economic conditions in 80 years, while the lowest-paid workers have suffered through an unemployment rate above 30%.

The dismal findings are contained in a study by Andrew Sum, Ishwar Khatiwada and Sheila Palma of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University, which details the unemployment and underemployment rates of workers in 10 different income categories during the period of October to December 2009.

The report says those in the lowest income group (making $12,499 or less) and the second-lowest group (making $12,500 to $20,000) account for 30.8% and 19.1%, respectively, of those unemployed during the fourth quarter of 2009. They also accounted for 20.7 and 17.2% of those who were underemployed. By contrast, those making $100,000 to $149,000 or $150,000 or more accounted for 4% and 3.2% of the unemployed, respectively, and 2.5% and 1.6%, respectively. of the underemployed.

The middle class was also hit hard during the recession, but those with the highest incomes weren’t affected as seriously.

“Radically Different Labor Markets”

“At the end of calendar year 2009, as the national economy was recovering from the recession of 2007-2009, workers in different segments of the income distribution clearly found themselves in radically different labor market conditions,” says the report. “A true labor market depression faced those in the bottom two deciles of the income distribution, a deep labor market recession prevailed among those in the middle of the distribution, and close to a full employment environment prevailed at the top. There was no labor market recession for America’s affluent.”

New York Times columnist Bob Herbert wrote about the report on Tuesday, pointing out how the pain of this recession has affected those who were in the most pain before it started. “Those in the lower income groups are in a much, much deeper hole than the general commentary on the recession would lead people to believe,” he wrote.

The Northeastern study also says employed workers in the lower-income groups are 13 times more likely to be underemployed than are employed workers in the top income categories. Members of lower-income groups were also most likely to have either withdrawn from the active labor pool or to have chosen not to enter the depressed labor market in the fourth quarter of 2009 to seek paid employment.

Enough of this politically correct bullshit.

Younger predominately male workers need to stop waiting at the back of the line (we’ve waited long enough, how long are we supposed to wait), and really start to discriminate against older workers wherever we have the power to do so. It is the older generation, this baby boomer generation of screwups, who ruined the economy, and it is the older generation who imposes flawed ideology on the younger the generation. The older bourgeoisie useless parasites can shut their mouths about age discrimination, and realize how unfairly good they have it. They can shut up about how hard they worked to get to where they are, and realize that it was easy to succeed until they screwed everything up. The blatant nepotism! The preference of age over skill! The desire to hire a worker solely because he/she is more experienced, when he/she may be an idiot. They run up deficits, they deconstruct the ethnic identity of nations, they outsource jobs, they start imperialistic wars for liberal capitalism, they flood the working class with more immigrant competition and they think they are clever with their two party system.

(note that this article is merely artistic and I don’t really advocate violence)
Death to the bourgeoisie! Exterminate them. Imprison them. Kick them. Spit on them. Throw rocks at them. Hell piss on them. Throw them into volcanoes and then clap when the volcanoes erupt. Make them suffocate on their dollar bills.

The link
If I was not already a misogynist, the recession has certainly helped me to become one. If I was already a misogynist, now I am more extreme.

I know “racial awareness” will appreciate this post!

For the first time in recorded history, women outnumber men on the nation’s payrolls.

This benchmark is bittersweet, as it comes largely at men’s expense. Because men have been losing their jobs faster than women, the downturn has at times been referred to as a “man-cession.”

Women’s new majority in the nation’s workplaces comes decades after women first began trading in their aprons for pantsuits in droves, and it reinforces expectations that women will continue on the path to pay parity.

“Important milestones remain to be achieved, but women’s surpassing 50 percent of employment is something that historians will note for years to come,” said Casey B. Mulligan, an economics professor at the University of Chicago who has been tracking the recession’s effects on both sexes.

According to seasonally unadjusted data released on Friday by the Labor Department, women held the majority of nonfarm payroll jobs in January. They also did so during February, March, November and December of last year, but the shift emerged only on Friday when the Labor Department revised its 2009 data. Women’s slender lead was highest last month, when they held 50.3 percent of the nation’s nonfarm payroll jobs in the raw numbers.

Over the last few decades, women have been steadily claiming a greater share of the nation’s payrolls. In 1964, the first year for which the government began collecting this data, less than a third of the nation’s nonfarm payroll jobs were held by women.

But it was the recession that finally pushed women into the majority.

As in previous recessions, male workers have borne the brunt of the job losses in the last two years. Since the recession began in December 2007, men have lost 7.4 million jobs on net, whereas women have lost 3.9 million jobs.

In other words, both sexes are worse off than they were before the downturn, but men have suffered more.

The types of jobs held by men and women help explain the shift. Men are more likely to work in industries like manufacturing, which rise and fall with the economic cycle. Women are more likely to work in government, health care and education, among the safest categories in a downturn. Health care employment has been among the strongest of any type during the recession.

It is also “no accident” that women pushed ahead of men during colder months, says Professor Mulligan.

Male-dominated industries are actually especially cyclical in two different ways: They are not only influenced by the business cycle, but also by the seasonal cycle. Industries like construction, which tend to employ men, get more work in warmer months.

If you adjust for these regular seasonal factors that affect the job market, women would have held just less than half of the nation’s payroll jobs in January, at 49.9 percent.

All of this means that women are likely to fall back to a minority of the nation’s payrolls again once the weather warms and the recovery gains a foothold in the labor markets. Still, the longer-term trend of stronger representation on the nation’s payrolls will most likely continue, economists say.

The link
Anyone who does not have everything handed on a silver plate knows this is the case!

President Obama’s repeated references to Friday’s surprising decline in the unemployment rate epitomize his utter disregard toward the intellect of our citizenry. His citation of these numbers as evidence we are “climbing out of the hole we found ourselves in” reveals an assumption on his part that the folks are incapable of figuring things out for themselves. While Obama surely isn’t the coldest beer in the fridge, he isn’t stupid enough to actually believe Americans can’t figure out this scam. No, his use of the 9.7% figure to support his position is a blatant lie. After all, his own budget plan projects unemployment will remain higher than this figure at the end of the year. Even his own economic advisor, Christina Romer contradicited the President, saying, “The monthly employment and unemployment numbers are volatile and subject to substantial revision. Therefore, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report, positive or negative.”

The surprisingly low unemployment figure, of course, occurred as a result of an inordinately large number of job seekers dropping from the record as their unemployment benefits expire and many others have simply given up all hope of procuring employment. The government’s hiring of over a million temporary workers this year to perform the census also takes the edge off the numbers.

CNBC’s Rick Santelli emphasized that the commonly-used U3 numbers are being grossly manipulated in an effort to hide the depth of this recession. He explained on Friday how the Obama administration has lowered the total number of jobs supposedly available in the marketplace, taking the 136 million figure down to 129 million. Thus, the percentage of employed per available jobs rises and the U3 number magically goes down.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) provides far more data on actual unemployment than is ever reported by the mainstream media. The U6, which includes the U3 totals plus those who have given up plus part-time and temporary workers plus marginally attached workers, provides a much broader and more reliable measure of actual unemployment. The U6 doesn’t require any math or massaging of the numbers. It simply represents the data from the BLS in the least manipulable manner. Incidentally, the U6 has risen every month since Obama took office – and currently sits at around 18 percent.

The President got his headlines on Friday. We lost 20,000 more jobs in January and added a million more unemployed from last year. But the U3 mysteriously shrinks to 9.7% and Obama has the temerity to proclaim we are “climbing out of the hole”. This was a foolish mistake. Jobs have not been created (nor saved) and will not be in the foreseeable future. These false hopes shamefully advanced by the administration will only result in heightened frustrations down the road.

The link

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — On Friday, the government’s official data on U.S. employment will be updated to reflect what everyone already feels: In terms of job losses, this has been the worst recession since the end of the World War II more than 60 years ago.

Instead of job losses of 7.2 million as currently reported, it’ll be more like 8.1 million lost jobs, if the annual benchmark revision of payrolls through March 2009 comes in as had been estimated four months ago by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Most of the extra jobs lost — numbering a projected 824,000 — came in the first quarter of 2009, adding to the 2.07 million that have already been reported, the government has forecast.

What’s more, the employment picture will likely look even worse after next year’s revision, which will cover payrolls data running from April 2009 through March 2010.

The revisions to the establishment survey will be a “doozie,” said Michael Gregory, economist for BMO Capital Markets.

After the revision, payrolls will have fallen 5.9% from the peak in December 2007 to December 2009, easily beating the post-World War II record decline of 5.2% set in 1948-49, he said. By comparison, payrolls fell by about 18% during the Great Depression.

Most commentators have already incorporated the payroll revision into their thinking. The Obama administration,Congress, the Federal Reserve and the private-sector have all recognized that more than 8 million jobs have been lost — but the fact of the report could still come as a shock to some investors on Friday, when the revisions will be reported as part of the employment report for January.

Economists surveyed by MarketWatch are expecting payrolls to grow by a seasonally adjusted 25,000 in January, what would be just the second increase since the recession began 25 months earlier. The revision will not affect the nation’s unemployment rate, which is derived from a separate survey of households. Read our complete economic calendar and consensus forecast.

Economists are expecting the official unemployment rate to remain at a seasonally adjusted 10% on the month. The broader unemployment rate, which also includes discouraged workers as well as underemployment, should be steady at 17.3%, economists said.
Not a shocker

Despite what you may have read, the payroll revision isn’t a secret. It was first reported in October, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that the benchmark revision to the establishment survey would total an incredible negative 824,000 from April 2008 through March 2009. The actual revision will be announced on Friday.

Each year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics revises earlier estimates, based on monthly samples of hundreds of thousands of businesses, to incorporate information from tax records. The big issue for the revisions: How close the government was when it guessed how many new businesses would open and how many would close down?

From 2003 to 2007, the government’s guesses were pretty good, averaging about 0.2% of payrolls. But in 2008, the BLS “birth-death” model fell apart with a 0.6% miss.

It turned out that the number of jobs created by new firms was much less than expected.

The government adopted the birth-death model to make its monthly estimates more accurate. The monthly payroll count is based on a representative survey of businesses, but the BLS cannot survey new businesses immediately because it doesn’t know they exist.

It would, in other words, miss a lot of job creation if it didn’t have a way of estimating how many new companies have been formed.

Similarly, it also cannot be sure whether a business that didn’t respond to the survey is still in operation or just not returning the form. Statisticians at the BLS have to estimate how many firms go out of business.

Ultimately, new businesses show up in the tax records. And businesses that went out of business are excised from those records. Then, the government can check how close its estimates were to the actual payroll tax records.

It seems impossible to many people that any businesses at all are formed during recessions. That’s just not so.

Even at the depth of the recession in the first quarter of 2009, 1.1 million jobs were created at new establishments. At the same time, however, 1.4 million jobs were lost at companies that closed their doors.

Rex Nutting is Washington bureau chief of MarketWatch.

I concur. And I have nothing but hate for older privileged workers who coasted through it and then make arrogant moral judgments about younger workers who graduated at the wrong time. The nerve of these arrogant pricks! To point the finger at me, and tell me that I should be working harder, when they already had it made going into the recession and never were in any danger of losing their jobs.

I can honestly say that once the recession ends, I will substantially purge people from my social network who I label as arrogant bourgeoisie assholes. And that purge will include flesh, blood and former friends. I cannot wait to be liberated from this whole situations that has just dragged ON and ON!

I also hate people who work in the healthcare field. These people are parasites with no understanding of the business process, and no understanding of what a downturn can do to someone who is targeting opportunities outside of the healthcare field.

The link

Workers under 25 expressed the highest level of dissatisfaction. Roughly 64 percent of workers under 25 say they were unhappy in their jobs. The recession has been especially hard on young workers, who face fewer opportunities now and lower wages, some analysts say.

It notes that sub-25 is the most negatively affected age group. I concur!