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10 Comments

  1. Hugh

    The BLS jobs report covering September came out yesterday. Looking at it in seasonally unadjusted, as in seasonal what actually happened terms, September marks the end of summer and the start of the school year. It’s when hundreds of thousands of hires by state and local governments for schools show up in the stats and when the private sector loses jobs because there are fewer people going on vacation. And over all this, we have the continuing effects of covid.

    So in the establishment survey, or “b tables,” we find that the public/government sector added 877,000 jobs in September to 21.945 million. The private sector lost 223,000 jobs to 125.735 million. The net gain in jobs last month was 654,000. This is in line with a stronger jobs year like 2014 where 686,000 jobs were added overall while 330,000 were lost in the private sector, and considerably better than a not so good September like 2018 where there was a net gain of 312,000 jobs with a private sector loss of 647,000.

    I calculate the covid jobs deficit by starting with the last non-covid September of 2019 and adding in the averaged September to September jobs gains for the last 8 years (2013-2014 to 2018-2019) times two since September 2019 was two years ago. This gives an estimate of where we would be if there had been no covid, that is September 2019 jobs plus the jobs we would expect to have been created since then. Subtracting the actual September 2021 number from this gives the size of the covid deficit.

    So in August I calculated the covid jobs deficit for public and privates sector jobs from the b tables at 9.112 million and for September, it was 8.640 million, a drop of 472,000. That is we would need another 18 months of improvements on this scale to erase the damage to jobs done by the coronavirus.

    The 194,000 September jobs gain reported in the official seasonally adjusted jobs stats doesn’t really capture this.

    However, the relatively good news is tempered by data from the “a tables” of the smaller household survey which estimated the employed at 154.026 million, giving a covid jobs deficit of 9.061 million, an increase of 41,000 from August. So as always, wait and see.

  2. someofparts

    https://www.betwixt.life/

    Can’t imagine how this would work but plan to give it a try.

  3. someofparts

    Watched my home team Braves in game two of the playoffs today. It took getting old to have time to realize how much I enjoy baseball.

  4. Plague Species

    Watching baseball is like watching paint dry. I swore off baseball after the strike in the 90s. I have never watched it since and never will again. I don’t miss it.

    Alabama lost to Texas A&M last night. COVFEFE-45 has aged Nick Saban ten years. We’ve noticed it’s aged quite a few people we know by a decade at least, maybe two decades for some. Alabama played last night like Nick Saban looks. Old and weak. A COVFEFE-45 induced Brain Fog.

  5. Trinity

    One of my favorite weekly reads:

    https://thebaffler.com/latest/fresh-hell-eighty-sixed

    And not so funny (and about systems thinking):

    https://www.monbiot.com/2021/10/04/level-down/

    “Growth is wiping the green from the Earth.”

  6. Trinity

    some of parts,

    Thanks for the link on the homeless, it is a reminder of the inhumanity of our “betters”.

  7. The Ministry of Truth has ordered Youtube to demonetize accounts spreading “Climate Disinformation”.

    Imagine my surprise!

    While covid fear mongering has been pretty successful in herding the sheeple into compliant, 2nd class citizens, whose human rights as defined by the Nuremberg Code are being spat on, the CO2 catastrophists have not, historically, been as successful in fear porning the public.

    But, to authoritarians on growth binge of accumulating power, the opportunity to consolidate their power and extend their control over the sheeple even moreso is irresistable. Perhaps they will try eventually to out fear-porn the public over climate, even more than they did with a virus with an IFR of 0.15%.

    But, for now, just shut down non-compliant voices. Baby steps, first!

    I wonder what Great Thunberg’s handlers are telling her?

  8. Alex Berenson has an article on his substack “URGENT: A Southwest Airlines pilot explains why you will not hear anything about vaccine mandates from his union – and why Southwest has more flexibility than it admits to stand up to the White House”

    SW Airlines partly blamed bad weather, as it cancelled 1,000 flights, but that is a complete fabrication.

    A SW pilot communicated (paraphrased)

    <iEssentially, the union cannot organize or even acknowledge the sickout, because doing so would make it an illegal job action. Years ago, Southwest and its pilots had a rough negotiation, and the union would not even let the pilots internally discuss the possibility of working-to-rule (which would have slowed Southwest to a crawl).

    Some comments back up my impressions about how useless most Republicans are, not just Democrats, against the encroaching medical tyranny:

    Deana
    I am sitting here reading this with tears streaming down my face. Terry, how can we thank you?

    How can we thank the SouthWest pilots?

    I talk to as many people and coworkers as I can and tell them why these mandates are disastrous. I am a nurse, my husband is in health care. We were granted exemptions but who knows how long this will last. I have written letters to my reps and senators. And for what? They do nothing. Nothing.

    I do not see another way out of this unless the system collapses.

    Just know we thank you and have you all in our prayers.

    Fred Bennett
    I’ve also written to my “staunch conservative” GOP senators and rep.

    The silence is deafening.

    Deana
    They are useless. Utterly useless.

    The only ones I respect are Thomas Massie and Rand Paul. Also Senator R. Johnson for focusing on the vaccine’s adverse events.

    Tricia Morris
    Ron Johnson is my neighbor, and I’ve gotta tell you . . . he is trying so hard to make a difference! The opposition is already running attack ads against him, so that’s gotta say something.

  9. Phil in KC

    The adjective “supposedly” should always precede the phrase “free market(s).”

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