The Wholesale Price Index (WPI) went up 1.2 percent last month, a huge jump. It amounts to, at this point, close to 12 percent per year. It will show up in retail prices at various times in the coming weeks and months, depending on the item being manufactured. The increase is likely to be multiplied by the time retail pricing is set.

Some of that is because of fuel prices but not all and, some say, not even a lot.

Prices going up in a big way while wages are stagnant or decreasing and unemployment is increasing? Does that make any sense at all?

The DailyKos seems to me to be to overly critical of our President.  Below the fold I wish to discuss the positive things that the Bush Administration has accomplished.

The 2000s, or the "ut-ohs" as a colleague thought we should name this decade back before it started, has turned out to be not so great on the employment front.

As Heidi Shierholz at the Economic Policy Institute writes:

It took longer to regain pre-recession employment levels: Nearly four years passed before the number of jobs in the economy returned to the level reached prior to the recession of 2001. By comparison, after the recession of the early 1990s, it took just over two-and-a-half years to regain peak level employment.

Employment growth remained sluggish: Over the entire business cycle of the 2000s, job growth averaged only 0.6% per year—well below what was needed to keep up with labor force growth. By comparison, over the business cycle of the 1990s, annual job growth averaged 1.8%.

The employment-to-population ratio deteriorated: For the first business cycle on record, the employment-to-population ratio declined over the 2000s, dropping by 1.5 percentage points. Over the 1990s the employment-to-population ratio increased by 1.7 percentage points.

If those statistics glaze you over, here are some to bring the tears, what with unemployment on the rise, and 8.5 million officially out of work (which is an undercount):

Only 37% of the country's unemployed received benefits in 2007, down from 55% in 1958 and 44% in 2001, according to the Labor Department. The others have exhausted their benefits, haven't applied or don't qualify.

Those who don't qualify include many part-time workers, people who quit or were fired, and workers who didn't earn enough money in a one-year "base period" that often excludes the most recent three to six months. Worker advocates say the New Deal-era system hasn't been updated enough to reflect an age of more-frequent job changes, more part-time work and falling union membership. ...

Unemployment insurance was "intended to largely support traditional male breadwinners in traditional, manufacturing-type jobs," says labor economist Lawrence F. Katz. "It's not necessarily set up for people who have multiple jobs, for people who work in and out of different jobs, for people in part-time work."

In Ohio, people filing for unemployment insurance need to have an average weekly wage of $206 -- 27.5% of the state average -- in their base period in order to qualify. That excludes many low-income workers forced to work part time, such as people at temp agencies with erratic work schedules.

Those part-timers aren't just teenagers, or college students, or moms working to "supplement" the family income. In other words, they aren't all volunteers for reduced hours. Many would like a full-time job.

The number of Americans who have seen their full-time jobs chopped to part-time work because of weak business has swelled to more than 3.7 million - the largest figure since the U.S. government began tracking such data more than half a century ago.

The loss of pay has become a primary source of pain for millions of American families, reinforcing the downturn gripping the economy.

Paychecks are shrinking just as home prices plunge and gas prices soar, furthering the austerity across the nation.

As for women, The New York Times recently reported that "for the first time since the women’s movement came to life, an economic recovery has come and gone, and the percentage of women at work has fallen, not risen." Every previous recovery since 1960 ended with a greater percentage of women at work than when it began.

The need for a new New Deal has been evident for quite some time, and every day it becomes clearer.

Crossposted from Uniongal

DELL, notorious for using labor all over the world (exploitation shipped from country to country) has contracted with UNICOR to recycle their computers (only after they came under fire from environmental advocates for dumping toxic waste).

CBS News posted a story on this (but since it’s from AP, I won’t be linking to those rat bastards at AP).  The most important aspect of this piece is that UNICOR pays their inmates who do recycling as much as $1.26 per hour.  Okay, they also pay as little as about a quarter of a dollar, but, whatever.

More after the bump (hey, anyone able to find a youtube on the 60 minutes piece?  I cam up empty).

Years ago, 60 minutes did this amazing piece on how UNICOR (Federal Prison Industries) doesn’t have to worry about trademarks and patents and has actually put textile mills in the states out of business.

Well done, all the way through, and to a point where no harm can come to him what cooked it.

Now maybe I'm wrong, but weren't Republicans supposed to be the so-called "party of fiscal responsibility?"  Aren't Republicans the same folks who blast "tax and spend liberals" who if elected will raise taxes and ruin our economy?

The gum smacking kids are disappearing

Jared Bernstein and Heidi Shierholz at the Economic Policy Institute write:

^{Job market recession persists}

On average this year, payrolls have contracted by 66,000 per month. Job loss in the private sector has occurred more quickly, however, dropping an average of 83,000 jobs a month since it peaked in November 2007. Private sector payrolls are down 665,000 since then, including the loss of 76,000 last month. Since government employment is less sensitive to the business cycle, the private sector losses are more indicative of the full extent of labor market weakness.

This persistent and deepening slack in the job market, in tandem with accelerated inflation, is leading to significant real wage and benefit losses for most workers. Average weekly hours slipped slightly last month to 33.6 hours per week, the lowest level since November 2004. This put downward pressure on weekly earnings, which rose 2.8%, before inflation in July, the same rate as the previous month and the slowest pace of weekly earnings since September 2005. With inflation running between 4-5%, the buying power of weekly paychecks is dropping sharply.

In a related release yesterday, the BLS reported that the Employer Cost Index—a comprehensive measure of average wages and benefits—fell 1.8% in real terms in June 2008 compared to June 2007. That is the largest real decline in this data series’ history (dating back to the early 1980s).

Along with the decline in weekly hours worked, another important sign of the extent to which our current workforce is underutilized is the increase in part-time workers who would prefer full-time jobs. In July, there were 5.7 million part-timers in this category, 1.4 million above last year’s level and the highest level since the BLS settled on a way of measuring this condition in 1994. Since these involuntary part-timers are included in the underemployment rate noted above, they are partly responsible for its spike last month.

Meanwhile, as Chye-Ching Huang and Chad Stone at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities noted in a new analysis on Wednesday:

Average pre-tax incomes in 2006 jumped by about $60,000 (5.8 percent) for the top 1 percent of households, but just $430 (1.4 percent) for the bottom 90 percent, after adjusting for inflation, according to a new update in the groundbreaking series on income inequality by economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. Their analysis of newly released IRS data shows that in 2006, the shares of the nation’s income flowing to the top 1 percent and top 0.1 percent of households were higher than in any year since 1928. ...

Some 42 percent of total income gains since 2002 have accrued to the top 1 percent of households, and 66 percent have gone to the top 10 percent of households.  As a result, by 2006, the share of income flowing to the top 1 percent of households had surpassed the level it reached in 2000, at the peak of the 1990s expansion.

+ + +

^{The Overnight News Digest is posted, including the story, Ivory Poaching At Critical Levels: Elephants On Path To Extinction By 2020?}

It's becoming clearer and clearer that we need more stimulus.
I'm suggesting a three-part plan.

1. Suspend Social-Security withholding for the rest of the year. If that's too much, suspend some fraction of it. Instead of sending people checks some time in the future, at great expense, let them get more in their next paycheck.

2. Continue unemployment insurance to everyone now getting it until the emergency is over. Nobody goes off unemployment insurance payments unless

2a) they die, or
2b) they get a job, or
2c) the unemployment rate falls under 4%.

3. Federal support for state infra-structure repairs. States are facing a cash crisis; this will result in delays in such things as bridge repairs just when we need the jobs. Let the feds fund some significant share of it -- 50%?

...although I would have preferred later.

So...this is how it ends -- a victim of an economic downturn.  Should I rant and rave?  Probably not.  Accept my fate as a matter of circumstance?  Sounds reasonable.  Get depressed about it and boohoo into a perfectly good alcoholic beverage?  Absolutely not.  Write a diary and vent?  You're damn skippy.  :)

Here's to having to re-enter the job market -- and not by choice.

More below...

and 51,000 jobs lost.

In the latest release from the Labor Department:

The unemployment rate rose to 5.7 percent, and nonfarm payroll employment continued to trend down in July (-51,000), the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today.  Employment continued to fall in construction, manufacturing, and several service-providing industries, while health care and mining continued to add jobs.  Average hourly earnings rose by
6 cents, or 0.3 percent, over the month.

Unemployment (Household Survey Data)

  Both the number of unemployed persons (8.8 million) and the unemployment rate (5.7 percent) rose in July.  Over the past 12 months, the number of unemployed persons has increased by 1.6 million, and the unemployment rate has risen by 1.0
percentage point.

The unemployment rate today hit 5.7%, the highest in 4 years.  This once again shows how the economy is weakening and probably in recession, but  not a severe one just yet.  Below I am going to explain as simply as I can how the job creation numbers/unemployment rate are calculated, as I consistently see misunderstanding here on these issues.

But my life just got even more disjointed and surreal. I've been in the position of trying to make it on $466 per month in unemployment--which first of all caused me to default on June's and this month's mortgage payments. Monday morning I had to go to the post office to pick up a certified letter from my lender on my delinquency. It says they're prepared to initiate foreclosure proceedings.

In 2005, Alabama Congressman Mike Rogers (AL-03) cast the deciding vote on CAFTA as he changed his mind at the last minute after consulting a CEO of a company in his district (also a large donor to his campaigns).

Unfortunately, thousands of sock and apparel jobs have left the districts of those that voted for CAFTA. Many of those also were last minute votes.

This vote is not lost on Josh Segall who is challenging Rogers this fall. In fact this could be one of the deciding factors for voters in this district.

Why are McCain and Bush always saying the same things?
They're both convinced, or want to convince us, that our current economic problems are "psychological."  There's something psycho about it, true, but it's not all in our heads . . .

George W. Bush's legacy won't be what he has done to civil liberties, the environment, the initiation of a war based upon lies, or any dozens of other problems he created. It will be based upon the reality that the economy affects every person, rich or poor, liberal or neo-con, fundamentalist or atheist.

A comment responding to a recent article in Huff Post prompted my daughter to do a Google on Kevin Phillips and she landed on an essay he wrote for Harpers in May.
`Numbers Racket: why the economy is worse than we know`

It's mind-boggling stuff for anyone who had naively assumed that govt. economic stats were authoritative.  (How could they not be?  The country's economists, the media, would surely never lend themselves to such a racket?)

Once in a while one is privileged to catch for a micromoment, an epiphanous glimpse of stark ugly reality.  The kinds of things that pass for normal and go unnoticed until you realize your moral compass isn't dead or de-magnetized.

It happened while channel hopping late night in L.A.  The "markets" in Europe are open and a panel of Fox market watchers was in high gudgeon. Exactly the cue to channel up. But as the television was responding to the channel change I thought I saw something positive about pawn shops in the information bar across the bottom. The one called a chiron I learned in the last two years.

And low and behold: