JOBS LOST IN JUNE: 467,000! Far Higher than 365,000 Forecasted (Craig Smith resides in Pacific Time for 30,000 cume or higher; Bob Chapman and David Bradshaw available for any size station)
A whopping 467,000 jobs were lost in June, far exceeding the projected loss of 365,000, putting the current unemployment rate at a staggering 9.5%, edging nearer to the dreaded double digit levels associated with an outright Depression.
Economists and other ‘experts’ had erroneously believed that the slowdown in job losses in May (to ‘only’ 322,000) proved that the market was bottoming out and the economy was ready to spring back to life. Newsflash: Experts were wrong again!
So, why hasn’t Obama’s $787 billion stimulus done anything to help save jobs? Kind of makes you wonder how much more taxpayer money he will offer in his next ‘urgent’ stimulus needed to bailout past failed bailouts.
Available to be your Talk Show guest on the seemingly endless suicidal cycle of bailouts are two financial/jobs experts:
GUEST #1: Craig R. Smith, CEO of Swiss America Corporation, who said, “After two stimulus packages, $168 Billion-Bush and $787billion-Obama, we are still hemorrhaging jobs at a rate of over 450,000 a month-- over six million since the start of this recession and no end is in sight. It is time to cut taxes, reduce the size of government and allow free markets to do what they do best: create jobs and prosperity. Government can create nothing but wasteful spending and red tape.”
ABOUT CRAIG SMITH…
Craig R. Smith is the Chairman and founder of www.OilSolution.org and author of Black Gold Stranglehold, the book written in 2005 that predicted today’s high oil prices. As an oil and economic analyst, Craig instantly engages audiences with his common-sense perspective on national and global economic trends. Over the past two decades he has been interviewed on over 1,500 radio and TV programs including: FOX News, CNN, CNBC, ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, CBN, TBN, Time, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and Newsweek. NOTE: David Bradshaw also conducts interviews when Craig is unavailable.
GUEST #2: Bob Chapman, editor of International Forecaster, shares with your audience:
“What government doesn’t tell you is that since 1980 they have continued to change the method of reporting many of their statistics, unemployment included. They use a formula to their best advantage, called the birth/death ratio, which totally distorts the figures released by government. Thus, for years unemployment has been much worse than announced by government.”
ABOUT ROBERT J. CHAPMAN:
Bob Chapman is 73 years old. He was born in Boston, MA and attended Northeastern University majoring in business management. He spent three years in the U. S. Army Counterintelligence, mostly in Europe. He speaks German and French and is conversant in Spanish. He lived in Europe for six years, off and on, three years in Africa, one year in Canada and another year in the Bahamas. Mr. Chapman became a stockbroker in 1960 and retired in 1988. For 18 of those years he owned his own brokerage firm. He was probably the largest gold and silver stockbroker in the world during that period. When he retired he had over 6,000 clients. From 1962 through 1976 he specialized in South African gold shares. He and his family lived in Salisbury, Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe) and Johannesburg, South Africa from 1970 to 1973. During that time he did a great deal of further study into the South African mining industry.
THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE MAY BE HELPFUL WITH SHOW PREP:
THE NEW YORK TIMES/ July 2, 2009
Job Losses Rise in June as Unemployment Reaches 9.5%
By JACK HEALY
The pace of job losses quickened in June after slowing just a month earlier, casting a shadow over the Obama administration’s attempts to stanch months of declines in the labor market.
The American economy shed 467,000 jobs last month, and the unemployment rate rose to 9.5 percent from 9.4 percent, the Labor Department reported on Thursday. Job losses were widespread among the construction, manufacturing and business and professional services sectors.
The losses were sharply higher than economists’ expectations of 365,000 lost jobs.
Economists said a decline of 322,000 jobs in May had raised expectations that the market was bottoming out as the economy struggled to right itself, but the numbers on Friday dashed some of those hopes.
The figures also raised questions about whether the Obama administration, which has already passed a $787 billion stimulus plan, needed to step in again to shore up the American worker.
“The stimulus has probably stabilized income, but it has not moved the economy forward,” said John E. Silvia, chief economist at Wachovia Corporation. “It’s a finger in the dike. But in terms of getting the economy going, there’s no evidence of that yet.”
The latest figures highlight a somber new reality for workers, economists said. The numbers were released a day early because of the Fourth of July holiday.
As the recession enters its 20th month, private wages and salaries are falling, working hours are dwindling and more people are without work. In essence, economists say, months of deep, broad job losses are effectively making unemployment a way of life for millions.
The number of people who have been unemployed for more than 27 weeks has more than tripled since the recession began, to 4.4 million. The median time people go without a job has increased to more than four months, from slightly more than two months at the outset of the recession in December 2007.
“We have never seen a duration of that magnitude,” Lynn Reaser, vice president for the National Association for Business Economics, said. “There are a lot of ramifications. A lot of these people become discouraged, and they drop out of the work force. It affects their spending, their whole psychological frame of mind.”
In the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, Jeffrey Jones, 40, is feeling the weight of eight months without work. He has not found anything since losing his job as a cook at a senior center in October, and he worries about paying rent and caring for his four children. His blood pressure is up, he said, and some nights he stays up and watches television to distract himself from the worries that keep him from sleeping.
“I know I’m not supposed to be letting it stress me out,” he said. “The way I’m going now, I won’t be able to make it too much longer. I can’t go this long without doing something for my family.”
While the economy is no longer losing jobs at a pace of 600,000 each month, businesses are still cutting positions and imposing pay cuts and hiring freezes as the economy continues to contract. Job losses in May were revised to 322,000 from an earlier estimate of 345,000.
Consumers are saving 6.9 percent of their disposable income, and spending remains sluggish.
Even the White House has lowered its expectations for the job market, and now says that unemployment will hit 10 percent. Many economists say that job losses and unemployment will continue rising even after the economy begins growing again.
“I don’t see any job growth outside of health, education and government spending through the end of the year,” Mr. Silvia of Wachovia said. Some 6.5 million jobs have now been lost since the recession began, and the number of unemployed people has grown to 14.7 million.
As more people hunt futilely for jobs or give up their searches altogether, they burn through their savings, fall behind on bills and mortgages, and eventually add to the strains on already strapped aid programs, from government unemployment insurance to private food pantries.
“There are going to be massive, massive numbers of people who are out of work for long periods of time,” said Andrew Stettner, deputy director for the National Employment Law Project. “It’s one of the most important aspects of where the economy is right now.”
Although the number of people filing for unemployment insurance has leveled off recently, more workers are falling back on safety nets intended for the most troubled workers. More than 2.7 million people received emergency or extended unemployment benefits in the first week of June — the most recent period for which data was available — compared with 2 million at the beginning of the year.
On Thursday, the Labor Department also reported that the number of newly laid-off workers filing for unemployment insurance dropped last week. Initial jobless benefit claims fell by 16,000 to a seasonally adjusted 614,000.
As months pass without a job offer, people cut back where they can, turning off the cable, canceling vacations and shift their shopping habits to lower priced retailers. Some people give up looking for jobs and join the 800,000 discouraged workers.
Others, like Domminique Werdlow, 37, of Houston, keep sending out résumés and sifting through online job boards. Since she lost her job as a customer-service trainer at Waste Management in January, Ms. Werdlow said her car has been repossessed and that she now lives unemployment check to unemployment check.
“It’s not getting any better,” she said. “I really try to stay positive. If I really start looking at it, I’d be very depressed.”
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company