On Friday, Uncle Sam’s Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the nation’s unemployment rate rose to a seasonally adjusted 9.7% in August, and that the economy lost another 216,000 seasonally adjusted jobs.

In various ways, the press tried to put a happy face on the news and otherwise tried to minimize its impact. It also continued, as it has for years, to ignore what really happened on the ground (i.e., the not seasonally adjusted numbers) during the month; in August, a look at that info punctures any illusion that the employment situation is improving. It also ignored prior-month downward revisions to both June and July totaling 49,000 seasonally adjusted jobs.

Here are the first four paragraphs of the Friday report by Christopher S. Rugaber at the Associated Press:

In Rugaber’s defense, if his “not all bad” reference red-boxed by me is to the economy as a whole, he’s correct.

Two paragraphs later in his report, he writes that “many analysts say the economy should grow by a healthy 3 to 4 percent in the third quarter, pulling the United States out of the longest recession since World War II.” That would indeed be welcome news after four dreadful quarters brought on by what I have been referring to since July of last year as the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy, which has turned during the past four quarters into the POR Recession (radio talker Mark Levin would prefer to use the term “repression“) As Normal People Define It. In addition to a person Rugaber cited, I found some corroboration for the contention that growth will resume at this link at the Philadelphia branch of the Federal Reserve, where in mid-August “professional forecasters” predicted third-quarter annualized growth of 2.4%.

But if Rugaber or anyone else thinks that the employment situation is “not all bad,” they are sadly mistaken. That’s because, despite the lower seasonally adjusted job-loss number, what actually happened on the ground in August (i.e., not seasonally adjusted) went the wrong way for the 22nd consecutive month:

After narrowing the year-over-year decay to 42,000 in July, August 2009′s on the ground number was worse by 131,000. Also, August’s report revised July’s figure downward by 110,000 jobs; what had appeared last month to be the first year-over-year improvement vaporized. The last time there was a year-over-year improvement in the not seasonally adjusted jobs added/lost figure was October 2007.

Meanwhile, at the New York Times, Peter S. Goodman and Jack Healy were rewriting history, trying to convince readers that the expected recovery will be jobless, as it was during the last downturn:

Many experts envision a jobless recovery, in which the economy grows but job losses persist. That would reprise the end of the last recession in 2001, when payrolls continued to decline for nearly two years afterward.

Sorry, Peter and Jack, payrolls did not “continue to decline” during the entire period in question.

As seen above, there was a net decline in seasonally adjusted jobs from December 2001, the first month after the recession as the National Bureau of Economic Research defined it ended, until August 2003, 21 months later. But five of those months showed gains, October and November 2002 showed consecutive gains (it’s pretty hard to claim something “continued” if it had a break of two full months), and the final four of the 21 months had a net loss of only 25,000 jobs. During every month of the past year (September 2008 – August 2009), including the past two months which we are now being told is part of a recovery, that many seasonally adjusted jobs have been lost every 3-4 days.

After the 21-month period Goodman and Healy cited, the Bush tax cut-driven economy added jobs for 46 consecutive months, the longest job-adding winning streak since the Reagan tax cut-driven economy added jobs for 82 consecutive months (September 1983 to June 1990).

If Goodman and Healy are going to persist in call that 2001-2003 time period a “jobless recovery,” I would hope that they call one where jobs are consistently lost in monthly six-figure amounts a “job-loss recovery.” But I don’t expect it.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Give Sharon Silke Carty of USA Today credit for unearthing important information about the serious back-office problems with Uncle Sam’s Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS) program, popularly known as “Cash for Clunkers.”

This is the program that ABC, CBS, and NBC have all characterized as “a victim of its own success.”

But Carty didn’t do nearly as much as she could have with the information she learned. Her most grievous oversights were her failures to compare the government’s newly promised payment timetable to the 10 days dealers were told to expect, and to explain to her readers the extra unreimbursed costs dealers will have incurred as a result of the program even if (emphasis if) dealers receive full payment for their Clunker transactions.

Here are relevant paragraphs from Carty’s report:

Officials set Sept. 30 as goal to pay dealers on clunkers

The Department of Transportation is kicking up efforts to pay dealers who sold cars under the federal cash-for-clunkers plan and hopes to process all outstanding rebate claims by Sept. 30.

A spokesperson for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, who did not want to be identified because the government’s data are not yet public, said the government will have 5,000 workers handling claims by the middle of the week, up from the 3,000 now.

So far, the government has paid $500 million to dealers, the spokesperson said, or about 17% of the total claims. By next week, the government hopes to be paying out $100 million a day.

…. Once all the applications are sifted through, there may be money left in the pot, the government spokesperson said, because some percentage of the applications will be rejected. That money will go back to the Treasury Department.

John McEleney, chairman of the National Automobile Dealers Association, says he’s happy the government has set the Sept. 30 goal to pay dealers.

“It’s taken longer than we would like; a lot of our members are strapped for cash,” he said.

McEleney’s response seems rather muted, given the grief his dealers are incurring.

The $500 million paid out thus far is only half of the original $1 billion allocated to the program. That amount was used up in clunker deals during the very first week (July 24-30) of the program. Even if the government is able to keep its dubious $100 million a day payment promise starting on Tuesday (more on that in a moment), that means that many dealers have waited over 40 days to get paid. The original payment promise, according to this report, was 10 days.

Congress expanded the program to $3 billion in early August, and clunker deals that used up the additional $2 billion were done from August 7-24. At best, the government will be usually be paying dealers 35 days after their respective deals.

25-30 extra (35 or 40 minus 10) days is a long time to wait for large amounts of money. There are really only three ways a business can deal with this: Dig into cash reserves if they exist, thereby losing interest income; carry more debt while waiting, thus incurring interest expense; or slow down payments to vendors, pushing the pain onto them and potentially damaging those relationships. These problems are more than minor inconveniences. McEleney should have brought them out (is he afraid of offending an administration official?), but even if he didn’t, Carty should have known better than to ignore these consequences.

There’s plenty of reason to doubt whether DOT can catch up as quickly as promised. You can’t increase staff from 3,000 to 5,000 and expect everyone to hit the ground running. Even if we bravely assume that all 2,000 newbies have been screened and are all qualified and ready to work first thing Tuesday morning, you have to have or find the space for them to work, buy or find them work stations, train them, have supervision in place to monitor them and review their work, and have all the necessary controls in place for processing large volumes of cash transactions. Excuse me for being skeptical that DOT can pull this off and get totally done by September 30. I think that’s why the agency is expressing that date as a “goal” and not a promise, and why USAT reporter Carty writes of “hope.”

The fact that DOT feels it has to ramp up to such a level this far into the program indicates that it had no idea of the scope of what it would have to do to support Cash for Clunkers when it was enacted. Instead of trying to operate the program itself, it seems from here that it should have engaged one or more of any number of outfits accustomed to processing large volumes of financial transactions (banks, loan companies, insurance companies) that would already have had most of the systems capability, and perhaps even much of the staff, in place to handle the workload.

Given the program’s myriad problems — there have been many other issues besides slow payments to dealers, including processing snafus (Carty herself noted that some dealers may not get paid for some of their good-faith transactions), dealer opt-outs, market distortions, and poor disclosure of sales and income tax consequences to buyers — it would seem more appropriate to talk of Cash for Clunkers not as a “victim of its own success,” but as a creator of victims who trusted the government to keep simple promises to run a program efficiently, and to make timely payments.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

A government of, by, and for politically corrupt cronies.

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Note: This post went up at Pajamas Media and was teased here at BizzyBlog on Friday.

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I’ve caught some heat since Election Night when I made my first reference to the person whom I expected would turn out to be our first Punk President.

As I noted in a related February column, there was plenty of pre-election justification for concern that the most powerful elected office in the world was about to be occupied by, at the very minimum, a “a young, inexperienced person” who lacks major elements of maturity one would expect in someone about to take on such a serious responsibility. Normally, these traits would be acquired in one’s life as a result of running a business, working in the private sector, serving in the military, or occasionally through wide-ranging experience in political office. Barack Obama brought in none of these four attributes.

Evidence abounded during the campaign that trouble was brewing. There was the “subtle” bird-flipping of opponents — twice. There were allusions to inflicting violence on rivals. There was gaffe after gaffe after gaffe, dutifully minimized by the lapdog media establishment. There were false narratives, ranging from self-aggrandizement to whitewashing family history to (despite a big set of ears and his thin-skinned sensitivity about them) completely implausible denials about having heard objectively racist, America-hating rhetoric from a pastor of almost 20 years. The tissue-thin resume, in combination with even a small sample of the items just described, should have been enough to disturb any objective observer concerned that we were about to elect the lightest of lightweights. And we did.

Obama’s ignorance and inexperience have been quite evident since Inauguration Day — in fact, even on Inauguration Day. The gaffes have continued, from his “joke” about the Special Olympics to his (and his wife’s) Gerald Ford imitations to his “where have you been?” misstatements relating to basic culture and history. His advisers must cringe at the thought of any future teleprompter accidents.

Not that his advisers are particularly bright either; or maybe they’re fiendishly clever. Consider the garble they inserted into the beginning of the president’s primarily H1N1-related speech on Tuesday:

Before I say a few words about the meeting we just had I’d like to mention some good news that came out today about our economy. For the first time in 18 months, our manufacturing sector has expanded, and the statistics used to measure manufacturing output is the highest it’s been in over two years.

The statistic involved is the Institute for Supply Management’s Manufacturing Index. That ISM’s statistic did increase to a two-year high of 52.9% in August, and it was the first time in 19 months that the reading topped 50%, the minimum indicator of expansion. It was also the index’s highest reading since June 2007.

The Manufacturing Index measures whether or not overall economic activity in the manufacturing sector expanded or contracted in the previous month, and to a degree how widespread the expansion or contraction was. It is a widely respected and very useful statistic based on data gathered from corporate purchasing and supply executives who are on the ground and in a position to know what’s really happening. But the index does NOT measure “output.” All one can really say after Tuesday’s result is that after 18 months of contraction, manufacturing started to get up off the floor. By far the worst index readings during the contraction streak came during what I have since July 2008 been calling the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy, which is now the POR Recession (radio talker Mark Levin prefers to call it a “repression“) As Normal People Define It.

Obama’s “clever” wording (possibly deliberately so) likely gave many listeners and viewers the impression that manufacturing is in its best shape in two years. That is obviously not even close to being the case. As to the potential for a sustained rebound, Jeff Pope noted in a recent PJM column that the POR Economy’s architects and their party don’t have the slightest appreciation for what manufacturing concerns need in order to have a decent chance at long-term success.

It would be bad enough if the punk behavior of Obama and his administration was limited to immature errors of fact and judgment.  But with this administration and its leader, the dictionary’s alternative definition of “punk”  (“a young ruffian; hoodlum”) has been operative for quite a while.

Michael Barone, who may have been the first to describe the Obama administration as a “Gangster Government,” recognized it early on. In May, after seeing what the Obama administration was in the midst of doing to Chrysler’s first-lien, secured creditors, Barone wrote the following:

The Chrysler negotiations will not be the last occasion for this administration to engage in bailout favoritism and crony capitalism. There’s a May 31 deadline to come up with a settlement for General Motors.

….. We have just seen an episode of Gangster Government. It is likely to be part of a continuing series.

Sadly, that is exactly what has followed. Obama’s car czars also ran roughshod over the contractual rights in bankruptcy of GM’s unsecured bondholders to the direct benefit of the United Auto Workers Union’s VEBA. More recently, the administration-favored health care bill as voted out of committee by the House has a $10 billion (at least) promise to shore up the benefit plans of predominantly unionized employers.

Elsewhere, the Obama administration is funding oil drilling off the coast of Brazil while doing everything it can to stifle domestic exploration and drilling. It browbeats corporate executives for taking bonuses it and Congress previously allowed, while bonuses to government employees proceed merrily along. It seemingly treats anyone who would disturb its budding empire as an enemy and not merely an opponent. Its closely-tied affiliate Organizing For America sends thugs and astroturfers to town hall meetings to crowd out others, intimidate dissenters, and worse.

It’s clear that our Punk President and his gangster government are bent on deciding, on their own and in as many areas as possible, who gets rewarded and who gets punished. Whatever you want to call it, this behavior is not characteristic of a representative government.

What is required to combat this group of thugs is an army of Eliot Nesses. Though that army may be forming in the nascent Tea Party movement, it will have to be about a lot more than periodic demonstrations. Gangsters play for keeps.

From Cleveland (HT Brent Bozell at NewsBusters.org), via LifeSite News:

August 25, 2009

Infamous Hollywood screenwriter Joe Eszterhas, 64, known for such sordid films as Basic Instinct and Showgirls, has undergone a conversion and now will be writing a new film on Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Eszterhas has been one of Hollywood’s most influential screenwriters, writing lucrative blockbuster films, such as Flashdance, Jagged Edge, and Basic Instinct, and raking in million-dollar paychecks. Known for living the full ‘Hollywood lifestyle’, Eszterhas gave it up to move home to Ohio with his wife and children in the late 1990s.

In 2001, faced with throat cancer resulting from his smoking and alcohol addictions, which threatened to kill him, Eszterhas turned to God in desperation.

“Seven years ago, I sat down on a curb near my home, sobbing, and asked God to help me,” he writes in a September 2008 Washington Post article. “I cried and begged God to help me … and He did. I hadn’t prayed since I was a boy. I had made fun of God and those who loved God in my writings. And now, through my sobs, I heard myself asking God to help me … and from the moment I asked, He did.”

God, he says, cured him of his disease, but, more than that, He gave him the strength to turn away from his worldly life and back to the Catholic faith. “Not only did He give me the strength to be able to defeat my addictions,” he wrote, “He saved my life. My throat surgeon … told me seven years after the surgery that I am ‘cured.’ Not that I am in remission, but that I am cured. … My life has turned inside-out. I have stopped my excesses and replaced them with prayer and long walks. I am carrying the cross as often as they’ll let me at Holy Angels Church in Bainbridge Township, Ohio. And I have written a book as a thank-you to God. Not just for saving my life, but for saving me.”

Eszterhas shares his story of conversion in his 2008 book, Crossbearer: A Memoir of Faith.

This summer it was revealed that Eszterhas will be writing the screenplay for a new movie about Our Lady of Guadalupe. He is calling it a “labor of love,” and has indicated that he had been “hoping for some time to write a film that is both entertaining and inspiring.” ….

Go here for the rest of the story.

(image found at townnews.com)

Yesterday’s Employment Situation Report from Uncle Sam’s Bureau of Labor Statistics had lots of of dismal news.

One of the bigger disappointments, but sadly not one of the bigger surprises, is that the teenage unemployment rate reached an all-time seasonally adjusted high of 25.5%.

People who know even a little bit about economics should understand why, but an oddly titled New York Times blog post by Catherine Rampall took a pass on realistically trying to explain it:

Oh What a Time to Be Young!

Pity the unemployed, but especially pity the teenage unemployed.

According to today’s job report, the overall unemployment rate (the percentage of people in the labor force not working but looking for work) in August rose to 9.7 percent, its highest level in 26 years. The teenage unemployment rate, however, is at 25.5 percent, its highest level since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began keeping track of such data in 1948.

….. Of course, teenagers are likely to have fewer financial obligations than their older counterparts. But in a job market where older workers are expected to continue postponing retirement a little longer, the outlook still isn’t good for young Americans desperate for the work openings that typical turnover and attrition can offer.

Many blog post readers explained it for Ms. Rampall, and accurately. Here are some of them:

Undoubtedly due to minimum wage increases. I don’t know of a single business that kept on as many teenage workers when the minimum wage increased. — Josh

Wow. The kids are applying for unemployment instead of just going back to school and studying. Free is free. When I was in school, I never considered applying, even though I could have. — Cathy

Combine Cathy’s great comment with the fact that the minimum wage keeps raising such that the output they produce doesn’t match their costs, and you have all the answers you need. — Jeffrey

Higher minimum wages will kill job prospects for the young. In 27 years of business I never paid just the minimum wage, but now I have to in California. It costs way too much to train someone before they become productive; it’s just not worth it and now I am much more likely to cut my losses with a slow learner rather than train them more. — Jon A

…. This happens every time they increase the minimum wage; teenagers are laid off and their wages are spread around to pay the remaining workers’ higher wages. The first full month of the new minimum wage, 150,000 teens lose their job. It is a sadly predictable result of liberal policy. — Vitalis

The federal minimum wage was $5.15 per hour from September 1, 1997 until July 24, 2007. The 1997 increase did not have a material effect on the employment market, because most employers were already paying starting workers more than $5.15. During the following 10 years, the highest seasonally adjusted teenage unemployment rate was 19.0% (June 2003).

The federal minimum wage was increased to $5.85 on July 24, 2007; to $6.55 on July 24, 2008; and to $7.25 on July 24, 2009. In July 2007, teenage unemployment was at 15.1%. By August 2008, it was at 19.2%. Now we’re at 25.5%.

I’d say there’s a correlation, and that the press isn’t willing to make it. The minimum wage is a favorite of the left, no matter how many kids and low-skilled adults it throws out of work. Supporting minimum-wage increases is considered one of the things the late Sen. Ted Kennedy “got right.” I don’t see how.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Here (HT Jawa Report) is how Columbus Mayor Michael “25% income tax hike” Coleman, Mary Jo “Emily’s List” Kilroy, and Lugubrious Lee Fisher (alternative nickname, “Pecs”) handled questions about how statist health care would be paid for:

Lord have mercy, the CBO has nuked everything Kilroy and Fisher inarticulately attempted to claim. Coleman was at least “smart” enough to know that they have no good or valid answer to the question.

Van Jones’s Truther involvement defenses have shriveled away to virtually nothing. Gateway Pundit (HT Michelle Malkin) has now shown that Jones was involved and apparently even a leader in the movement (what do you call someone who’s on the “organizing committee”?) since its very early stages in January 2002, only four months after the 9/11 attacks. This makes his claim that he was in essence duped into signing a 2004 Truther statement impossible for anyone to believe.

Now we learn that 10 years ago (HT JammieWearingFool) Jones was THE leader of a group of “Free Mumia” disruptors of what was supposed to be a police-community event in San Francisco.

I separately studied the 1981 killing of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner in great detail in the late 1990s, and have followed related developments since then.

There is nothing resembling a reasonable doubt that Wesley Cook aka Mumia Abdul-Jamal killed Officer Faulkner; go here for starters to get to that conclusion on your own. But the Obama administration’s so-called green jobs czar (who, by the way, can’t even define a “green job”) subscribed to the idea that Wesley/Mumia is innocent or deserves a new trial a decade ago. There’s no reason to believe he has since changed his mind.

It’s also evident, based on this comment from Obama’s left-hand adviser Valerie Jarrett, that they know what Jones is about, and have known all along. Michelle Malkin noted this quote from Jarrett in mid-August:

So, Van Jones. We were so delighted to be able to recruit him into the White House. We were watching him, uh, really, he’s not that old, for as long as he’s been active out in Oakland. And all the creative ideas he has. And so now, we have captured that. And we have all that energy in the White House.

Jarrett’s message is clear: We really know this guy, and we’re okay with him.

Lessons abound:

• The large lesson is that, until shown otherwise in actions, not words, Van Jones is Valerie Jarrett is Barack Obama. By extension, unless specifically shown otherwise, Barack Obama owns the history and beliefs of his czars. For all practical purposes, John Holdren is Barack Obama, Zeke the Bleak Emanuel is Barack Obama. Rinse and repeat 30-something more times.
• The larger lesson is that the president’s accumulation of an unprecedented number of unaccountable czars is dangerous and undemocratic. Who in Congress vetted, let alone confirmed, Van Jones? Obviously, no one. This troubling power consolidation was evident mere days after Obama assumed office; press commentary has been mostly non-existent. Anyone want to guess what would have happened if George W. Bush had accumulated 32 (or is it 37?) czars, instead of its alleged 12 (which was also wayyyyy too many)?
• The largest lesson is that this administration can’t be allowed one iota of its agenda as long as Barack Obama and his czars occupy the White House. Not. One. Iota. Obama’s selection of the czars who surround him disqualifies him from any benefit of the doubt.

If given an inch, what these people would do to our health care system, our supposedly still-capitalist economy, our supposedly free airwaves, our educational system, and so many aspects of this country would leave it in a condition that bears little resemblance to what people are used to, and no resemblance to what they want. We should also be concerned about what these people are doing without the bother of legislation, which is why I expressed the need for an army of Eliot Nesses in my Pajamas Media column yesterday.

From Benton, Arkansas:

Joseph Allen Hampton of East End has a new lease on life, thanks to the quick-thinking efforts of a Saline County Sheriff’s Deputy.
Thursday, 03 September 2009

Just a few days ago, after spending 14 days at Baptist Health Medical Center in Little Rock, 38-year-old Hampton walked through the doors of the sheriff’s office. He wrapped his arms around Deputy Bill Hutto with tears in his eyes.

“I know there was a higher power at work that night — I was dead at the scene of the accident,” Hampton said, first to those around him and then directly to the man who saved his life. “Hutto came across the accident, and I wouldn’t be here now if it wasn’t for you. I wouldn’t be able to be with my 14-month-old daughter, Whisper Marie, if it wasn’t for your actions. There is a lot of things I could say, but most importantly, thank you.”

While trying to fight back the tears in his own eyes, Hutto responded, “No, thank you.”

“Shaking his hand and touching him and getting to know him… ,” Hutto said with a pause. “In this job, we usually deal with bad guys. These moments come along once in a blue moon. To know that I put my hands on someone and saved their life as an end result … there is a special bond there with us.”

The two embraced in another hug, and Hutto was presented a certificate of appreciation from Sheriff Bruce Pennington for his heroic efforts.

Just four minutes before midnight on Friday, Aug. 7, 2008, Hampton was driving southbound on Chicot Road. Hampton said he still does not know exactly what happened, but the last thing he remembers is Hutto’s police cruiser was behind him and a few seconds later Hutto passed him.

“I was actually going to another call,” Hutto said.

The report said Hampton’s truck drove off the roadway and struck a tree. The vehicle flipped on its left side and came to rest in the middle of Chicot Road, near Sterling Oaks Place.
Hampton, however, was not found in the vehicle — he was ejected headfirst through the front windshield and was found lying in a ditch. Hampton was later told in the hospital that he was seconds away from death before Hutto’s arrival.

“I actually remember seeing my dad’s face,” he said. “My dad died a few years ago, but I swear his face was looking at me.”

Hutto said he just happened to look in his rearview mirror and did not see Hampton’s headlights anymore. He also knew there was not a road or driveway for Hampton to turn on to, so Hutto stopped and turned back around to check out the situation.

“He was so lifeless there,” Hutto said. “I found a very faint pulse, and I didn’t think he was going to make it. I just reacted — it was my natural instinct to begin performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation and first aid.” ….

Go here for the rest of the story.

A government school in Massachusetts can [fraudulently] suspend a 6-year old boy for alleged “sexual harassment” against a girl, but….

(Wait for it)

(Get out the duct tape)

…Government schools in Maine must allow a 15-year old boy to use the girl’s bathroom.

Un-fricking-believable. I think in the dictionary under “inconsistency,” it should read “see entry for the political left.”

Yet another reason to have the battle of Armageddon against the NEA and cut the Department of Education out of our lives for good. Neither has educated one single child. Neanderthals.

It’s here.

It will go up here at BizzyBlog on Sunday morning (link won’t work until then) under the title “Our Punk President and His Gangster Government.”

(Image links are here and here.)

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Left on the cutting room floor –

• How crazy is it that Ford has to “negotiate” a new contract with the United Auto Workers union, even though the union has ownership interests in two of its principal competitors, overseen by a government that engineered contract law-violating seizures of value from secured Chrysler bondholders and unsecured General Motors bondholders to enable to union to get its outsized positions in those two companies? The UAW appears to have the government’s implied backing to do whatever it (and the governments) wants. What’s to prevent the government from engineering a strike regardless of what Ford offers?
• The administration’s mistreatment and sackings of corruption-finding inspectors general (e.g., Amtrak, Americorps).

Also: Thanks for the reminder from commenter “Fred Beloit” at PJM — “In foreign affairs Obama seems to be the dictators’ friend. He continues to put pressure on Honduras for legally replacing an illegal administration. At the same time he ignores Iran’s phony election.” Gangsters and punks tend to gravitate towards tyrants and thug rulers.

The runup:

• ADP’s employment report showed another 298,000 seasonally adjusted nonfarm private jobs lost in August, and a revision of +11,000 to July from -371,000 to -360,000. According to a CNN e-mail I received, this was worse than expected.
• This WaPo blog link says that “Forecasters expect the national unemployment rate to tick up from 9.4 percent to 9.5 percent.”
• This AP story at the Houston Chronicle says that “Economists predict the 9.4 percent jobless rate will rise to 9.5 percent, with 225,000 net job losses in August.” That’s echoed here.

The -225,000 figure is seasonally adjusted. Looking at the not seasonally adjusted job add/loss figures from previous years, it will be a sign of improvement, or should I say lessening decay, if the economy added some jobs on the ground in August:

July 2009 was the first time since October 2007 that the on-the-ground number improved over the previous year. One would at a minimum hope that that will to continue. Oops, with the release of today’s report that sentence is not longer true.

Things to watch for: Black and teenage unemployment changes in the wake of the increase in the minimum wage that took effect on July 24; whether or not the overall workforce (i.e., people working or looking for work) is shrinking, which would tend to dampen the official unemployment rate; and the impact of revisions to prior months.

We shall see, at 8:30 a.m., at this Bureaus of Labor Statistics link.

The report — Ouch, this is not a good Labor Day sendoff for Dear Leader:

Nonfarm payroll employment continued to decline in August (-216,000), and the unemployment rate rose to 9.7 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Although job losses continued in many of the major industry sectors in August, the declines have moderated in recent months.

No matter how you try to spin it, the 0.3% increase in the unemployment rate is the big news. Absent other evidence, it indicate that the slight rate drop last month from 9.5% to 9.4% was a one-time breather and not a trend-breaker.

Additional items:

• The adult male unemployment rate (10.1%) is 2.5% higher than that of adult women (7.6%). That gap widened by 0.2% from July’s 9.8% and 7.5%, respectively.
• “About 2.3 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force in August, reflecting an increase of 630,000 from a year earlier.” That year-over-year change is an improvement over July’s 709,000 increase.
• “Among the marginally attached, the number of discouraged workers in August (758,000) has nearly doubled over the past 12 months.” The number is down from July’s 709,000 (not related to the same value in the previous item).

Revisions to previous months went the wrong way by a total of 49,000 jobs. June went from -443K to -463, and July went from -247K to -276K. Thus, BLS now believes that 265,000 fewer Americans (-216K reported today minus the 49K just noted) were working in August than it believed were working in July when it issued its July report.

Most important, and something you can virtually guarantee the press won’t mention, is that the on the ground, not seasonally adjusted number for August of -179,000 was terrible:

Additionally, June (from -69K to -95K) and July (from -1,333K to -1,443K) were both revised downward. July’s downward on-the-ground revision of -110K caused it to be worse than the previous year (instead of better, as reported last month), meaning that there is now, pending possible revisions to July and August, an unbroken string of 22 months of poorer year-over-year performances.

Before the report was released, I said that “it will be a sign of improvement, or should I say lessening decay, if the economy added some jobs on the ground in August.” Today’s report, despite the seasonally adjusted job-loss number that came in better than July, really indicates that the decay continues on its merry way.

From St. Petersburg, Florida:

Last Update: 8/27 7:37 pm

Joel Lydecker has shaken many hands, but on Thursday Joel shared a handshake with the doctor who saved his life for the very first time.

….. Five years ago, the former firefighter was hit by a speeding car. The accident left him with extensive brain and bodily injuries.

But Dr. McKalip, a neurosurgeon, immediately operated on Joel, never conceding to the idea that he wouldn’t make it.

“They remembered a conversation that we had in the hospital room when I said I don’t know if he’ll live another day he may come into my office two years to say hi and that’s what I hoped,” McKalip says.

McKalip says he never stopped hoping that day would come.

After spending 80 days in a coma, Joel woke up and has spent every day since working towards his recovery.

“Numerous times I went through this and it was way too hard, too frustrating. You need to put the drive in man and really push, push, push,” Lydecker says.

“He shows us the one thing we have to cling to is hope,” McKalip says.

On Thursday, Joel Lydecker honored the doctor with a certificate of compassion. It is a symbol of gratitude, while Joel himself stands as a symbol of hope.

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