Tag Archives: Unemployment Rate

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Survey of small businesses: Obamacare is the biggest challenge to new hiring

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From CNS News:

More than one in five businesses (21%) are considering dropping employee health insurance due to Obamacare, and 59% are considering changing the coverage they offer, a new industry survey shows.

Two-thirds (67%) of small businesses and manufacturers say Obamacare will increase their health care costs, the survey of owners and top decision-makers by the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) and National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) shows.

Of those providing health insurance to their employees, 38% fear Obamacare will cause them increase the amount employees have to pay for coverage.

Small business owners and manufacturers see Obamacare as one of the most daunting problems facing their businesses today. Fully 56% rate Obamacare a major challenge, well above other issues like regulatory costs (36%), energy costs (39%) – and more than twice the threat of foreign competition (25%).

The cost of health care is the top problem facing small businesses today, a separate 2012 NFIB survey of small business concerns shows, with 52.3% of small businesses rating rising health care costs the most “critical” problem today.

NFIB analysis also shows that Obamacare’s health insurance tax (HIT) could cost up to a quarter million (249,000) private sector jobs.

There is a reason why we have a 10.5% unemployment rate if we count people who have given up on looking for a job as unemployed. Businesses don’t like the policies of this President, and they are going to wait him out.

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Unemployment rate is 10.5%, counting those who have stopped job-hunting

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From Reuters.

Economists, analyzing government data, estimate about 4 million fewer people are in the labor force than in December 2007, primarily due to a lack of jobs rather than the normal aging of America’s population. The size of the shift underscores the severity of the jobs crisis.

If all those so-called discouraged jobseekers had remained in the labor force, August’s jobless rate of 8.1 percent would have been 10.5 percent.

[…]The labor force participation rate, or the proportion of working-age Americans who have a job or are looking for one has fallen by an unprecedented 2.5 percentage points since December 2007, slumping to a 31-year low of 63.5 percent.

“We never had a drop like that before in other recessions. The economy is worse off than people realize when people just look at the unemployment rate,” said Keith Hall, senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University in Arlington, Virginia.

[…]The economy lost 8.7 million jobs in the 2007-09 recession and has so far recouped a little more than half of them.

[…]Americans of all ages are leaving the workforce, but the problem is most acute in the 20-24 age group, where the participation rate has plunged by 4.4 percentage points since December 2007.

[…]”Because of delays to their career, the skills set accumulation that normally happens in the first or third job is not happening,” said Paul Conway, president of Generation Opportunity in Washington, a non-profit, non-partisan organization that works with 18- to 29-year-olds on economic issues.

Last month, the proportion of 20- to 24-year-olds in the labor force was its lowest since 1972. Other age categories are faring little better. The 25-54 age group has seen a decline of 1.8 percentage points since December 2007.

Meanwhile, from the radically left-wing Newsweek, of all places. (H/T Defeating Obama)

Excerpt:

[T]he total number of private-sector jobs is still 4.3 million below the January 2008 peak. Meanwhile, since 2008, a staggering 3.6 million Americans have been added to Social Security’s disability insurance program. This is one of many ways unemployment is being concealed.

Can anyone look at numbers like this and explain to me why anyone – especially young people – would vote for this man?

News

Egan Jones cuts U.S. credit rating again, this time from AA to AA-

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Story from CNBC.

Excerpt:

Ratings firm Egan-Jones cut its credit rating on the U.S. government to “AA-” from “AA,” citing its opinion that quantitative easing from the Federal Reserve would hurt the U.S. economy and the country’s credit quality.

The Fed on Thursday said it would pump $40 billion into the U.S. economy each month until it saw a sustained upturn in the weak jobs market.

In its downgrade, the firm said that issuing more currency and depressing interest rates through purchasing mortgage-backed securities does little to raise the U.S.’s real gross domestic product, but reduces the value of the dollar.

In turn, this increases the cost of commodities, which will pressure the profitability of businesses and increase the costs of consumers thereby reducing consumer purchasing power, the firm said.

In April, Egan-Jones cuts the U.S. credit rating to “AA” from “AA+” with a negative watch, citing a lack of progress in cutting the mounting federal debt.

Moody’s Investors Service currently rates the United States Aaa, Fitch rates the country AAA, and Standard & Poor’s rates the country AA-plus. All three of those ratings have a negative outlook.

Could this have anything to do with the decision to print $40 billion a month to “stimulate” the economy? Once you’ve given up on letting businesses create jobs by lowering their taxes and removing burdensome regulations, then printing money is all you have left. But no one mistakes that for economic growth, least of all credit rating agencies.