danivon wrote:I meant 40s. Sorry for the typo

The report concludes that about half of the recent decline is due to the recession while the other half is due to the aging work force.

danivon wrote:Am I going completely mad, or is 65 the normal retirement age in the USA? Does that age ring any bells with you as to why it might be 'at the top age of this data'? It's because the people who compiled it are cherry picking, ignoring the people who are a little bit older but were in that age range a few years ago.

If the late 40s was when the baby boom started (and conventionally it is describes as the period 1946-1964), then from 2011 we would expect to see that cohort retiring at 65. So, that's the common sense part.

Here's some evidence: Baby Boomers And The Decline In The Labor Force Participation Rate

There's a link to the report, and some nice graphs for you to look at. When you get to the end...

The report concludes that about half of the recent decline is due to the recession while the other half is due to the aging work force.

As I said, the demographic bubble is a reason for large numbers of people leaving the workforce that you conveniently avoid and try to deny, because you can't feasibly blame Obama for it.

That March factory orders declined 1.5% was not very surprising: the market was expecting a decline of 1.6%. However, this is not good news as the prior February increase of 1.3% was revised lower to 1.1%, netting out as a negative two month change. Where this number was troubling is that this 2.6% swing brought the index to its biggest decline since March 2009 when the pumping of trillions started.

The April jobs report, issued by the Labor Department, was eagerly anticipated by policymakers and analysts seeking clues about the economy's direction. Job growth in March had slowed sharply, after three winter months of gains averaging a solid 252,000 jobs. Some analysts were hoping the report would show that the nearly 3-year-old recovery might be heading into a new phase of more robust hiring and growth.

Instead, the report fed concerns that the economy, after showing some muscle in the winter, is now afflicted by a spring malaise, as has been the case for each of the last two years.

"The details of this report are disconcerting," said Patrick O'Keefe, economic research director at J.H. Cohn, an accounting and advisory firm in New Jersey. Apart from a rebound in retail and temporary-help jobs, almost all of the other industries showed weaker hiring activity. Government payrolls fell back again. Workers' earnings hardly budged and employees' weekly hours of work were flat. "It's just an across-the-board deceleration," he said.

The report provoked strong reactions from investors and presidential candidates. Financial markets in the U.S. and Europe skidded, with the Dow Jones industrial average ending down 1.3% to close at 13,038.

Doctor Fate wrote:People were retiring long before this and we never hit a 30-year low. The last two months were huge hits to the labor participation rate.

There may be a fraction of truth to what you are saying, however, the long-term unemployment rate, the tripling of disability claims, and the underemployment numbers suggest a sluggish jobs market.

If you think a soaring economy is going to save the President's bacon, guess again.

danivon wrote:Yes, there's a sluggish jobs market. It's what you get after recessions. However, you want to attribute the blame not to recession (which started in late 2008 and was presaged by a credit crisis in 2007), but to Obama.

If you think a soaring economy is going to save the President's bacon, guess again.

I hope so, for two reasons.

1) A stronger US economy is a good thing for the rest of us
2) Romney is the worse choice as President

Will it be soaring? No. But I still think it will be growing, and faster than the average First World nation.

danivon wrote:He did, but contemporary polls put Obama ahead by about the same margin as Walker in Wisconsin. Perhaps an incumbency factor, perhaps Independents are clearly still in play.

freeman2 wrote:The Wisconsin result is of minimal value unless you think Romney (and his cohorts) wil spendl 7.5 times what Obama spends.(in Wisconsin or elsewhere). Money talks.

Ray Jay wrote:

freeman2 wrote:The Wisconsin result is of minimal value unless you think Romney (and his cohorts) wil spendl 7.5 times what Obama spends.(in Wisconsin or elsewhere). Money talks.

Source?

Richard L. Hasen, an elections law specialist at the University of California-Irvine, said Citizens United is “a convenient scapegoat” but that “it’s hard to see it as the culprit” in the Wisconsin recall contest. He noted exit poll results suggesting that a large portion of pro-Walker voters were opposed to the recall process on principle.

“There certainly was a disparity between the money raised on the pro-recall versus anti-recall side, but I don’t think there was any question that those mounting the recall got their message out,” Hasen said. “I’m not convinced that if there was less disparity it would have closed the gap between Walker and Barrett in the results.”