Employment Charts in Thirty Seconds

I just came across a really cool application, Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey, at the Bureau of Labor Statistics web page. There, you can quickly assemble charts and graphs on a number of labor and economic measures collected by the BLS, broken down by a variety of demographic categories. Just to try it out, I thought I'd take a look at the seasonally adjusted number of people looking for full-time work, and within seconds I had a table (then select the "include graph" box for a graph.) My only complaint is that exporting the graph doesn't work well -- it looks great on the BLS page, but there's no convenient export function. In any event, here it is:

Series Id: LNS13100000
Seasonal Adjusted
Series title: (Seas) Unemployment Level - Looking For Full-Time Work
Labor force status: Unemployed looking for full-time work
Type of data: Number in thousands
Age: 16 years and over


The number looking for full time work climbed by by 2.5 million from 1/01 to mid-2003, before falling by 500k. Notice any similarities between 1993 to 2003? (In fairness to the younger Bush, the population is larger now than in 1993 by about 20 million, so his 7.5 million isn't as bad as Bush Sr.'s 7.5 million looking for full time work.)

AB

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Iowa's Effect on the Political Markets

As I’ve mentioned before, the Iowa Electronic Market is a great place to see how events shape the perceived probabilities of each candidate winning the nomination. Here is today’s graph, showing the last night’s Iowa caucus results have affected the shares of all of the candidates. Note that Edwards is contained in the grey ROF line just below Kerry’s line in recent days.



The market apparently now thinks that Kerry and Dean have almost equal chances of winning the nomination now (about 30-35% each) while Clark and Edwards both have around a 20% chance of winning. I agree with AB: This is going to be good – pass the popcorn!

Kash

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A Preview of the State of the Union: More Concealed Costs?

Bush has made a specialty of proposing policies that are tremendously expensive without actually addressing their costs. Some examples include:

• Tax cuts. Stated cost by Bush before the fact: none. The claim was that they would boost the economy so much that tax revenue would increase. Actual cost: hundreds of billions of dollars per year.
  
  
• War in Iraq. Stated cost by Bush before the fact: none. As Paul Wolfowitz said, "Such estimates are so dependent on future, unpredictable circumstances as to be of little value." Actual cost: $100bn so far and counting.
  
  
• Moon and Mars bases. Stated cost by Bush before the fact: $1 billion. Someone at some point in the future will presumably pay for and accomplish these missions, after all; Bush is just in charge of getting the vision started. Actual cost: We’ll see, but estimates are in the neighborhood of $130 to $250 billion.

So, what new costless, extremely expensive proposals can we expect tonight in Bush’s State of the Union speech? Privatizing Social Security might be one, making the 2001 tax cuts permanent might be another... but we’ll just have to wait and see to know for sure.

Kash

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Edwards-Clark or Clark-Edwards?

The title is actually intended to mock the proclivity of the press for taking any event and projecting it linearly into the future: Dean is definitely down, but not out. Also, I remain firm in my conviction that Kerry will not be the nominee (though I will support him if he is). Overall, it's definitely tough to attribute Dean's dramatic fall to anything other than the rash of negative press he got, unfairly for the most part (I'm giving Iowa Democrats enough credit to assume that the Club for Growth ads didn't play a role in Dean's defeat). And I'd like to attribute Edward's strong second place finish to his lack of negativity vis-a-vis other Democrats so far, but perhaps that's too optimistic.

So what does it all mean? Beats me. Where's the popcorn?

On second thought, I'll venture a call now: Edwards or Clark will be the nominee, and the winner will choose the loser to complete the ticket. Perhaps my predictive skills will surpass those of Atrios. On the other hand, my Condoleeza Rice Resignation Watch is now in day 175, so my prognistications are questionable at best.

AB

P.S. Just a week ago, Matt Y. predicted that "Dean's moment of inevitability would be followed by an inevitable moment of evitability which would be followed by victory. Now it really doesn't look inevitable right now, but I stand by that prediction." Query: Did Matt predict the Iowa outcome, or not?

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We don't care if it's right, thorough, or helps prevent future attacks...Just get it done!

And by get it done, we mean get it done soon enough that voters won't remember it come November:

A growing number of commission members had concluded that the panel needs more time to prepare a thorough and credible accounting of missteps leading to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. But the White House and leading Republicans have informed the panel that they oppose any delay, which raises the possibility that Sept. 11-related controversies could emerge during the heat of the presidential campaign, sources said.

Much of the delay is due to the lack of cooperation by the White House, as spokesman Erin Healy explained:

"The administration has given them an unprecedented amount of cooperation."

Not an unprecedentedly large amount of cooperation, but simply an unprecedented amount. That is, find the smallest amount of cooperation by any White House in an investigation of this sort. If the current White House cooperates a bit less than that amount, then Healy's statement is technically true.

AB

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The No Jobs President

James K. Galbraith, who heads the University of Texas Inequality Project and who I correspond with fairly often, has today's lead piece in Salon, The no jobs president. Here's a highlight:

Next, notice when the deep dive ends. That's right: It was just after Sept. 11, 2001. It's true that President Bush ought not to be blamed for the job losses of the Internet bust. But neither can he properly blame his troubles on Osama bin Laden: Job losses slowed down when the war on terror began.

Bush should be judged on the record after that -- on the creation of jobs in 2002 and 2003. After all, the recession officially ended in November 2001. How many new jobs did we get since then? An average loss of 22,000 jobs every month.

There are no new jobs. Total job growth in the Clinton years: 23 million. Total job losses so far in the Bush years: over 2 million. Total gains in the last six months, since the so-called recovery supposedly accelerated in the third quarter? Just 221,000. That's less than a single month's average under Clinton. And last month? One thousand new jobs.

There's a lot more, including a discussion of the decline in labor force participation, a cynical (but not inaccurate) take on Bush's major policies, and a very pessimistic take on Bush's proposed immigration reform. Read the whole thing.

AB

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Mea Culpa?

Washington Post ombudsman Michael Getler has apparently been getting lots of email alleging that the Post is burying or slanting anti-Bush stories, particularly stories related to Iraq (the WaPo editorial page is pro-war). Point by point, Getler reviews the charges and then admits that they have some merit. The tone is one of denying actual impropriety, but admitting that there may in fact be an appearance of impropriety. Gertler's conclusion:

Editors should not edit because things may "look bad" to some readers. But there is a lot of smoke out there, and probably a fire.

Not mentioned is a plan for addressing these concerns.

AB

P.S. For another mea culpa, this time from NPR Ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin, click here (scroll down to "mea culpa").

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What's With Sully?

Noted conservative hack, Andrew Sullivan, posted this on Thursday:

LET THE KIDS PAY FOR IT: I'm talking about this $170 billion foray into space. After all, the next generation will be paying for a collapsed social security system, a bankrupted Medicare program, soaring interest on the public debt, as well as coughing up far higher taxes to keep some semblance of a government in operation. But, hey, the president needed another major distraction the week before the Iowa caucuses, and since he won't be around to pick up the bill, why the hell not? Deficits don't matter, after all. And what's a few hundred billion dollars over the next few decades anyway? Chickenfeed for the big and bigger government now championed by the Republicans. This space initiative is, for me, the last fiscal straw. There comes a point at which the excuses for fiscal recklessness run out. The president campaigned in favor of the responsibility ethic. He has governed - in terms of guarding the nation's finances - according to the motto: "If it feels good, do it." I give up. Can't they even pretend to give a damn?

Later that same day, he added this:

AND WHEN IN DOUBT, LIE: Leave it to Rick Santorum to say the following: "I would just suggest we stayed within the budget targets the President has set forth. They are substantially less than what the increases were under the Clinton administration. They are, I would argue, fiscally responsible." Here's the truth: If you take defense and entitlement spending out of the picture altogether (and they have, of course, gone through the roof), Bush and the Republican Congress have upped domestic spending by a whopping 21 percent in three years...

Astounding! I completely agree with both posts. But Sully was only experiencing a brief moment of clarity. On Friday, he returned with a very disingenuous and specious account of Gen. Clark's pre-war assessment of the steps America should take to deal with Saddam Hussein. (To see why Sully's argument is specious, see Kleiman, Marshall, Drum, or Columbia Journalism Review's new blog.)

AB

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