Unemployed? Donald Trump Just Cost You $300.

Lame duck President Donald Trump spent Christmas on his Palm Beach golf course, diligently dithering and refusing to sign the latest COVID economic relief bill, so supplemental payments to 14 million unemployed Americans expired. He finally was cajoled into signing on Sunday, but states could not begin cutting checks until he did, so the delay means January’s first payments could not be processed. Since the supplemental weekly support must end on March 15, Donald Trump trimmed the extension of benefits from 11 weeks to 10.

When unemployment benefits ran out, Mr. Trump was on his golf course with Lindsey Graham, Vice President Mike Pence was skiing in Vail, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin took a private jet down to his vacation home near Cabo San Lucas.

More:

“Trump just cost jobless workers one week of federal unemployment assistance after he failed to sign the relief bill by midnight on Saturday,” Kelsey Vlamis and Joseph Zeballos-Roig, Business Insider

“Extra unemployment benefits may take weeks to arrive. Fewer checks may be coming.” Greg Iacurci, CNBC

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The Real Unemployment Rate.

The U.S. Unemployment Rate is measured by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, an arm of the U.S. Deparment of Labor, but BLS recognizes several joblessness measures. The one you read in the media is called U3, the percentage of unemployed civilian adults actively seeking fulltime nonfarm employment. Right now, the U3 rate is 7.9%. A broader measure, U6, includes those working part-time because they can’t find full-time jobs and people who want to work and have looked for jobs anytime in the past year. The latest U6 jobless rate is 12.8%.

But those aren’t the only — or most realistic — measures of unemployment. The Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity, founded by Gene Ludwig, former U.S. Comptroller of the Currency, has a yardstick for U.S. functional unemployment, and it’s unnerving:

“A person who is looking for a full-time job that pays a living wage — but who can’t find one — is unemployed. If you accept that definition, the true unemployment rate in the U.S. is a stunning 26.1% ….”

“If you measure the unemployed as anybody over 16 years old who isn’t earning a living wage, the rate rises even further, to 54.6%. For Black Americans, it’s 59.2%.”

“Only 46.1% of white Americans over the age of 16 — and a mere 40.8% of Black Americans — now have a full-time job paying more than $20,000 per year.”

— “America’s true unemployment rate,” Felix Salmon, Axios

More:

Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity (LISEP) website

Hundreds of thousands are maxing out unemployment benefits

As state employment benefits run out, the federal Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) program has helped COVID-idled American workers get by, but funding for it is expiring. Funding for another program aiding the self-employed, Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA), expires at the end of December. Congressional action is required to extend the income assistance, and that’s not happening.

More:

“Hundreds of thousands of Americans are about to max out their state unemployment benefits,” Kathryn Krawczyk, The Week

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Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.Hundreds of thousands of Americans are maxing out unemployment benefits

October Employment Numbers

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has released the jobless numbers for October 2014. There’s good news, not-so-good news, and bad news.

Good news: The official unemployment rate is:5.8%. 214,000 new jobs were added to the workforce last month, 2.3 million so far this year.

Not-So-Good News: The real unemployment rate is 11.1% (U6, includes people who no longer get unemployment benefits, need work but have stopped looking because it’s futile, or have only found part-time work). Learn more here.

Bad News: Wages for those new jobs are low. Very low, down where they were in 2009. And 2.9 million people have been out of work for half a year or more.

The economy may suck for working people, but Wall Street is doing just fine, thank you.

More:

“America’s dual economy,” Heather Long and Patrick Gillespie, CNN Money

“American workers are still waiting for their raise,” Matthew Yglesias, Vox

“Job Growth Is Picking Up. But What About All the Sidelined Workers?” Josh Bivens, Wall Street Journal blog

“Black Unemployment Falls to 10.9 Percent,” Joyce Jones, BET News

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Congress Gives the Jobless a Christmas Gift

“More than 1 million Americans are bracing for a harrowing, post-Christmas jolt as extended federal unemployment benefits come to a sudden halt this weekend, with potentially significant implications for the recovering U.S. economy. A tense political battle likely looms when Congress reconvenes in the new, midterm election year.”

— “1.3 Million Losing Unemployment Benefits Saturday,” Bradley Klapper, Associated Press

165,000 New Jobs In April. Maybe.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced employment figures for April 2013: 165,000 new jobs. No one knows exactly what that means, but one thing is certain: This number will certainly change. Does that indicate government ineptitude or political manipulation? No.

Low Unemployment Rate, But Low Job Numbers

U.S. jobs grew by only 88,000 in March, less than half of recent monthly job increases, yet the unemployment rate was the lowest in four years, 7.6 percent. How come? People stopped looking, went back to school, or were otherwise no longer counted as unemployed. Was job growth a victim of austerity anticipation? Opinions differ.

Jack Welch Quits, Raising Jobless Numbers

Jack Welch is sticking to his conspiracy theory, no matter how much it’s debunked and ridiculed . The Bureau of Labor Statistics, he says, that bunch of technocrats long trusted by Wall Street, an outfit without political appointees, cooked the books and fiddled the September employment figures to give President Obama’s re-election campaign a mild boost. They must be lousy cooks, though, since the drop in joblessness was a measly fraction of one percent. Mr. Welch was much better at this kind of thing when he “managed earnings” as CEO of GE.

200,000 New Jobs in December, But This Is January.

The December 2011 employment figures are out, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that last month saw an increase of 200,000 new jobs.  At that rate it will be a mere 65 months before we get to full employment.

The BLS adjusts these statistics to account for seasonal variations so that temporary holiday jobs — evergreen salesmen, reindeer renters, maids-a-milking, department store Santas  — don’t distort the figures.  Some analysts aren’t sure the Bureau understands our 21st century retail supply chain, where orders on the InterWebz make temporary work for thousands of migratory warehouse gypsies and delivery drivers. Stay tuned for next month’s job numbers.

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(un)Employment Report: No New Jobs

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has released the jobless numbers for August 2011.

The official unemployment rate, the one in the headlines, is 9.1%. The real unemployment rate: 16.2% (includes people who no longer get unemployment benefits, need work but have stopped looking because it’s futile, or have only found part-time work). The official rate hasn’t changed from last month, the real rate has grown by a tenth of a percent. Learn more here.

45,000 jobs were temporarily lost in the Verizon strike, and those workers are back on the payroll this month, but the 17,000 government jobs eliminated last month are permanently gone. While 62,000 private sector jobs were added in August, this is no comfort to America’s 14 million unemployed.  More that 6 million of them have been out of work for over six months.