Dean Baker
Delinkage, September 11, 2016

In a Sunday editorial the Washington Post touted the strength of the economy. While it got some things right, it also showed some serious confusion.

At the top of the list is its concern for the declining labor force participation rates for prime-age men (ages 25–54). This is not a men's problem, there has also been a comparable decline in the employment rates for prime-age women. (Employment rates are a better measure than participation rates because many people who are not working continue to look for work as long as they are eligible for unemployment benefits. With stricter eligibility rules in place now than a quarter century ago, a smaller share of the non-employed are counting as unemployed. Using the employment rate gets around this problem.)

As can be seen, the employment rate (EPOP) for prime-age women is down by more than 2.0 percentage points from its pre-recession level and more than 4.0 percentage points from its 2000 peak. This drop is especially striking since the EPOP for women had been rising in the late 1990s and was projected to continue to rise by the Social Security Trustees, the Congressional Budget Office and most other forecasters.

The fact that the EPOP has fallen for prime-age women, and not just men, indicates that the problem is not some peculiarity of prime-age men, but rather a lack of demand in the labor market. This could be remedied by increasing demand in the economy, but this has been prevented by deficit hawks, like the Washington Post and the various Peter Peterson-funded organizations and their followers in Congress. In fact, even in this piece, the government debt is listed as a major problem in spite of the fact that the burden of debt service is near a post-war low.

September 8, 2016

September 2016, David Rosnick, Alexander Main, and Laura Jung

En français

“The situation cannot afford Washington to sit on sidelines. They elected him and they need [sic] pressure him. He can't go unchecked,” Laura Graham, then the Chief Operating Officer of the Clinton Foundation, wrote to Bill Clinton in early 2012. Graham was referring to the increasingly erratic, and potentially dangerous, behavior of Haitian president Michel Martelly. When she said “They elected him,” she was referring to the US government, which intervened through the OAS to change the election results of the first round of Haiti, putting Martelly in to the second round. The e-mail, one of many Graham sent to Bill Clinton’s deputy chief of staff on February 26, 2012, eventually was sent to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her top aide, Cheryl Mills. The note is perhaps the clearest evidence to date that key officials, even within the Clinton camp, viewed the US intervention in the 2010 Haitian election as decisive.

The 2010 Haitian election was a mess. Held less than a year after a devastating earthquake, millions of people were displaced or otherwise disenfranchised and then-president René Préval was accused of fraud on behalf of his preferred candidate Jude Célestin. A majority of candidates held an afternoon press conference on election day denouncing the process and calling for new elections. But Washington and its allies, who had funded the election, pushed forward, telling the press that everything was okay. Mirlande Manigat, a constitutional law professor and former first lady, and Célestin came in first and second, respectively, according to preliminary results, putting them into a scheduled run-off. Martelly was in third, a few thousand votes behind.

Protests engulfed the capital and other major cities, threatening the political stability that donors have long desired, but have failed to nurture. With billions in foreign aid on the table and Bill Clinton overseeing an international effort at “building back better,” there was a lot on the line: both money and credibility.

With Martelly’s supporters leading large, and at times violent, protests, the US turned up the heat by publicly questioning the results just hours after they were announced. Within 24 hours, top State Department officials were already discussing with Haitian private sector groups plans to force Célestin out of the race. “[P]rivate sector have told RP [René Préval] that Célestin should withdraw … This is big,” then US Ambassador to Haiti Ken Merten wrote the next day. Merten wrote that he had personally contacted Martelly’s “camp” and told them that he needs to “get on radio telling people to not pillage. Peaceful demo OK: pillage is not.” Unfortunately, much of Merten’s message and those in response have been redacted.

The Haitian government eventually requested that a mission from the Organization of American States (OAS) come to Haiti to analyze the results. The mission, despite not conducting a recount or any statistical test, recommended replacing Célestin in the runoff with Martelly.  With the lowest turnout for a presidential election in the hemisphere’s recent history, and at least 12 percent of the votes simply missing, any decision on who should be in a second round would be based on faulty assumptions. (CEPR analyzed all the voter tally sheets at the time, conducting a statistical analysis of the vote, and later showed how the OAS recommendation could not be supported by any statistical evidence.)

Nevertheless, pressure began to mount on the Haitian government to accept the OAS recommendations. Officials had their US visas revoked and US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice even went so far as to threaten to cut aid, even though the country was still recovering from the devastating earthquake earlier in the year.

In late January 2011, two months after the elections, but before any decision had been made, Laura Graham wrote to top Hillary Clinton aide Cheryl Mills, warning that her boss, Bill Clinton [wjc] would be very upset if certain visas were pulled:

There are rumors abt ur second visa list and jmb [Prime Minister and co-chair of the Clinton-led reconstruction commission, Jean Max Bellerive] being on it. He's a conflicted guy and is being pressured on both sides and we believe trying to help. Wjc will be v unhappy if that's the case. Nor do I think u need remove his visa. Not sure what it gets u. Remove elizabeth's [Préval’s wife] and prevals people. I'm also staying at his house fyi so exposure in general and this weekend in particular for wjc on this.

In response, Mills questioned the “message it sends” for Graham to stay at Bellerive’s house, but Graham replied, indicating a certain coordination between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department in influencing Haitian politics: “For the record, I discussed staying at his house w both u and wjc long ago and was told good strategic value and ive [sic] stayed there every time.”

Okay, they only consider the latter a mystery, but for those who follow the data both are equally mysterious. The piece was titled "an economic mystery: why are men leaving the workforce?" The piece noted the reduction in the percentage of prime-age men in the workforce from nearly 100 percent in the 1960s to 88.3 percent at present. It then said that no one really knows why there has been this decline.

Actually, it really is not much of a mystery. While the piece wants to attribute it to the peculiar situation men face in the labor market, it is worth noting that there has also been a sharp decline in the percentage of prime-age women in the labor market. (Actually, a better measure is simply looking at the share of people who are employed. Many workers stop saying they are looking for jobs when they are no longer eligible for unemployment benefits. With a sharp reduction in eligibility for benefits over the last three decades, people who are not working are now much less likely to say they are looking for work.)

The figure below shows the percentage of prime-age women that are working since 1990.

Employment Rate for Women, Ages 25-54

                                                                 Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The chart shows that after rising sharply from 1993 to 2000. It then fell sharply following the 2001 recession and again in 2007–2009 recession. It has since risen in the recovery but it is still 3.8 percentage points below the peak hit in 2000. The pattern among prime-age men is similar, although the employment rate is now 4.8 percentage points below the 2000 peak. (Remember the EPOP for women had been rising before the 2001 recession and was projected at the time to continue to rise.)

Mark WeisbrotÚltimas Noticias, 4 de septiembre, 2016

Dean Baker
Truthout, September 5, 2016

September 2016, Eileen Appelbaum and Ruth Milkman

Earlier this morning, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the August jobs report. The new numbers were mostly positive, with employers reporting net job growth of 151,000 for the month.

However, one disturbing aspect of the report should be the relatively high rate of long-term unemployment. While the percentage of jobless workers unemployed 27 weeks and longer has been trending downward in recent years, it is still exceptionally high by historical standards.

Even more disturbing is the relatively high rate of “extreme” long-term unemployment, the condition of being unemployed one year or longer. The figure below shows extreme long-term unemployment as a percentage of total unemployment from May 1977 to present. Currently there are over 1.3 million Americans who have been out of work for over a year.

September 2, 2016

September 2, 2016 (Jobs Byte)

September 2, 2016