Via email;
On Friday Oct. 5, the Department of Labor released it's monthly employment report with some surprising results. Jack Welch's knee-jerk tweet said out loud what a lot of professionals thought to themselves with regard to the string of data they had been showing a dropping unemployment rate. Most of this was due to people stopping looking for work, thus lowering the denominator part of the percentage calculation. The September number was just a drop too far in most people's eyes, so they viewed it as "manipulated". I was one of them. No longer, and here's a confirmation just out today as to why.
The Philadelphia Federal Reserve released it's monthly Business Outlook Survey, this AM, and, as is their custom, they included two special questions. Both were on employment practices and were designed to reflect businesses' hiring and staffing changes. It confirms two features of Obamacare that are just now being discovered by the populace at large.
First, under Obamacare, companies with 50 or more full time employees are under all the mandates proscribed by the Bill and subject to each and every fine and tax, so proscribed. One new wrinkle with regard to just what is a full time employee. Per Obamacare, if you work 30 hours a week or more, you're a full time employee. If you're CEO of a company with 1,000 or more employees, there is only one way to dodge it, self-insuring. If you're closer to that magic 50 level, is there a cheaper way around it? Everybody goes part time, or you hire temporary workers as needed. This worked so well in France, and they're at 35 hours a week.
The chart is at the bottom of this page.
Yes, we now have a 30 hour work week. The income disparity is going to explode if this sticks.
The only thing I'd unexpect would be an apology from all the paid liars who slandered Welch.
One needn't be a conspiracy theorist to believe that the previous numbers made no sense but were most likely a statistical outlier. It appears they were, and the magical unicorns will not arrive to save the incumbent from his policies.
I admit, I don't see how the linked chart proves the author's point. While there are more businesses who have increased temporary workers than full-time workers, the numbers frankly aren't that big (27% vs 19%), and almost 35% of the surveyed businesses don't use temporary workers in the first place.
What am I supposed to be seeing here?
Well I.M., it is simply an indicator that businesses are moving towards giving employees fewer hours. Why? To avoid Obamacare costs?
The Darden restaurant group (Red Lobster, Olive garden) is worried, and they aren't alone.
http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20121010/article/310109985
Second chart, Increased Share column.
The lion's share of jobs growth went into the bottom five horizontal line items, as a percentage of the whole, and the decreased share was predominantly in full time workers. It's a new pattern.
I don't get how the Unemployment rate drops because people have "given up" looking for work.
That's it? They're just like, "This is taking to long and I can't find what I want so...screw it. I'm going to stop being unemployed by just not even trying."
How do they live? Do they die? Go full on homeless and just walk around with a shopping cart?
Jeff: People drop off (give up) for a variety of reasons, chief if which is exhausting their 99 weeks of unemployment insurance. No unemployment, no job, you lose your housing and downsize dramatically (move in with relatives or share with someone--or live in your car or on the street). You do whatever you can to get income for food and shelter: food stamps, church/charity support, casual labor.
You only show up in the "unemployed" number if you're drawing unemployment. When that ends, you're invisible.
The Obomaites are Digging a hole to China economically, in more ways than one.
Part time vs. full time.
Bell Canada tried a stunt like that some years ago in Ontario, to avoid enrolling full-time employees, who get benefits and pensions as part of their compensation - an additional expense for Bell. At that time, (and maybe still today) the minimum duration for an employee to be labelled "full-time" was 6 months, so, at 5 months and three weeks, the part-timers were pink-slipped, since "there was no work" for them. Then, miraculously, about a month later they'd get a phone call... "There's more work now. How'd you like to come back to work?". (Part-time, of course) After 3-4 years of that crap, someone finally launched a class action against Bell - "unfair hiring practices", and the courts made Bell hire some of those repeatedly laid off "part-time" folks on as full-time employees. Perhaps it's just me, but wouldn't this Obamacare thing be more easily swallowed if "full-time" actually meant "40 hours", just as it has for, oh. about a thousand years? Where did they get 30 hours from, anyway?
Don't forget those who have become filled with hopelessness and stopped looking for work.