Tag: jobs

KOHL’S & THE REST OF THE RETAILERS ARE IN DEEP DOO DOO

“Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are pliable.” ― Mark Twain

I never believe government manufactured numbers. They will always be adjusted, massaged, and manipulated to achieve a happy ending for the propagandists attempting to control and fleece the sheep. Yesterday, the government produced retail sales numbers for August that were weak and the corporate MSM propaganda machine immediately threw up bold headlines declaring how strong these numbers were. Positive stories were published on the interwebs and Wall Street hack economists were rolled out on CNBC, where the bubble headed bimbos and prostitutes for the status quo like Jim Cramer and Steve Liesman declared the recovery gaining strength. Woo Hoo.

If everyone else is whipping out that credit card, why aren’t you? Credit card debt has reached a new post recession high. They tell me consumer confidence is soaring. Forget about the 92 million working age Americans supposedly not in the labor force. Forget about real household income hovering at 1999 levels. Forget about median household net worth still 30% lower than 2007. Forget about what you see with your own two eyes in malls, strip centers and office parks as you motor around our suburban sprawl empire of debt. Those Store Closing, Space Available, and For Lease signs mean nothing.

I didn’t get a chance to peruse the commerce department drivel until this morning. They put out unadjusted data and adjusted data. Shockingly, the adjusted data is always rosier than the unadjusted data. I wonder why? I can understand the rationale for adjusting month to month data due to holidays and calendar events. But I still don’t trust the adjustments. There should not be a major difference when comparing year over year data. The adjusted data should reflect the same relationship to the unadjusted data on a year over year basis. Well guess what? It appears our friendly government drones may be pumping the current data to give the appearance of recovery. Here are my observations after taking a look at the government propaganda report:

  •  The unadjusted retail sales were only 3.2% higher than last August. Considering government reported inflation of 2%, that is a pretty shitty result. But have no fear. The “ADJUSTED” retail sales for August were 5.0% higher than last August. WTF? Guess which number gets reported to the sheep?
  • Hysterically, your government drones consider lending deadbeats $40,000 for seven years with no money down to drive away with a GM deathtrap SUV as a retail sale. The billions in subprime auto loans led to an 8.8% YoY surge in “ADJUSTED” auto sales. It seems the unadjusted number only went up 5.3%.
  • When you back out the Federal Reserve/Wall Street pumped auto sales, which will ultimately result in billions of written off bad debt (you’ll pick up the tab), unadjusted retail sales were only 2.7% higher than last August. With real inflation of 5% or more, real retail sales are negative on a year over year basis.
  • Despite financing deals of 4 years with no interest, furniture and electronics retail sales were flat versus last August. If there really is a housing recovery and 2.1 million more Americans are employed versus last August how could these discretionary sales be flat, and negative on an inflation adjusted basis?
  • Grocery store sales were up only 2.1% over last year. Even the government is reporting 2.7% food inflation in the last year. We all know it is closer to 10%, so people are actually reducing the amount of food they are buying. That is a sure sign of an economic recovery.
  • Clothing store sales were flat and department store sales were negative versus last August. So much for the back to school storyline. I do believe August is back to school time. The Sears and JC Penney Bataan Death March trudges toward bankruptcy.
  • What did surge was sales at restaurants and bars. They soared by 6.8% versus last August. We already know Darden, Yum Brands and McDonalds have reported dreadful results, so either the government is lying, soaring food prices are being passed on to customers, or people are so depressed by this awesome economic recovery they are drinking themselves into a stupor.

As a side note on the accuracy of this government data, in a previous role at IKEA, when I was a much younger man, I was responsible for filling out the monthly government retail surveys for the Census Bureau. The government drones collecting this data do not check it. They do not require proof that it is right. It is self reported by retailers across the country. Filling out this crap for the government was about as low on my priority list as whale shit. If I was really busy, I’d make the numbers up, scribble them on the form and put it in the mail. The numbers the government are accumulating are crap. And then they massage the crap. And then they publish the crap as if it means something. It’s nothing but crap.

When you see the headlines touting strong retail sales, you need to consider what you are actually seeing in the real world. RadioShack will be filing for bankruptcy within months. Wet Seal will follow. Sears is about two years from a bankruptcy filing. JC Penney’s turnaround is a sham. They continue to lose hundreds of millions every quarter and will be filing for bankruptcy within the next couple years. Target and Wal-Mart continue to post awful sales results and have stopped expanding. And as you drive around in your leased BMW, you see more Space Available signs than operating outlets in every strip center in America.

My anecdotal proof of this relentless slow motion retail trainwreck is twofold. We received our second 30% off discount coupon from Kohl’s in the last three weeks. We are so indifferent to these constant offers that we didn’t even use the first one. I have to wear dress clothes to work every day, so I went over to Kohl’s this morning when they opened at 8:00 am to get some dress shirts and pants.

The parking lot was an oasis of empty spots and there were maybe 5 customers in the entire store. I went to the mens’ section and was shocked to see about two dozen 60% to 80% off racks. There are usually two or three racks. The store was overflowing with summer merchandise. Summer is over. The store should have been overflowing with Fall merchandise. They are clearly in the midst of an inventory disaster. I found excellent dress shirts on the 70% off rack. Everything I bought was at least 50% off, even before my 30% coupon and another $10 menswear coupon.

I live in a relatively upscale suburban area and still this Kohl’s is an absolute disaster. Their gross margin is going to be hammered. Profits are going to implode. Kohl’s has always been a favorite retailer of the middle class. Decent quality at reasonable prices. Their comp store sales were between positive 5% and 15% for years, until the 2008 financial collapse. Their struggles since then coincide with the decline of middle class incomes and the fake jobs recovery. The fact that they are spiraling downward flies in the face of the propaganda being spewed by the government and media.There is no recovery for the average American.

My second data point happened on Thursday. An accident on the Turnpike forced me to take Lincoln Drive and Germantown Pike home from work (1 hour and 55 minutes of agony). I hadn’t taken this route in about six months. Germantown Pike winds through the Chestnut Hill section of Philly. This is an artsy fartsy area with boutique retail, chic outlets, and fancy restaurants. The upper middle class frequents the area. The retail stores were always open, occupied and busy.

Not anymore. I saw dozens of empty storefronts, Space Available, and For Lease signs. The open stores had no customers. The trendy eating establishments had few patrons. Even the yuppie latte drinking areas are beginning to crumble. Every office park I passed had Space Available signs in front. The amount of vacant retail and office space in this country is too vast to comprehend and is being under-reported by the real estate whores whose job it is to rent space. Ignoring the facts and the truth doesn’t change the facts and the truth.

Do you believe the government and the corporate media, or do you believe your own two eyes?

You can ignore the government reported happy talk. When retailers and restaurants report their actual sales and profits, the truth shall be revealed. It will set you free.

TWO CANARIES IN THE CONSUMER COAL MINE

First we have good old Darden Restaurants, purveyor of processed slop to the obese endless bread stick addicted middle class. They pre-announced that they will lose $20 million this quarter. It seems the problem was not just their recently shit canned Red Lobster division. If there really has been excellent job growth as we have been told by Obama and the MSM, why does traffic continue to plunge at the formerly popular Olive Garden and Longhorn Steakhouse? All those great jobs must translate into wage increases and disposable income. Right? The results of this middle class dining chain, along with the continued decline in McDonalds sales are a canary in the coal mine. The middle class has run out of disposable income and is no longer disposing of something it doesn’t have.

Look at the numbers in those charts. Look at how much lower the traffic is than total sales, particularly for Longhorn. Do you know what that means? Longhorn is a steakhouse. Beef prices are at all-time highs. These restaurants are jacking up prices big time. So not only has the middle class run out of disposable income, but real inflation in the real world is raging.

I had never heard of Conn’s until this morning. They are evidently a Texas based retailer with 86 stores selling appliances, furniture and electronics. They have been growing rapidly and opening stores at a healthy clip. They grew their sales by an amazing 29% over last year, with an 11% increase in same store sales. Wow!!! They must be a real sales juggernaut. Well not quite. Their stock dropped 29% this morning.

You see they are another canary in the coal mine of how hard goods retailers and car companies have generated fantastic sales in the last couple years. Subprime and 0% interest debt peddled at prodigious rates to anyone that can breath and scratch an X on a loan document can really juice the top line for awhile. But guess what? The ignorant masses with no jobs actually have to make the payments for it to work out in the end.

It seems Conn’s has generated all of their fabulous sales with 0% deferred plans made to questionable credit worthy customers. Their portfolio of credit receivables grew by 40% while sales grew by 29%. It seems when you make loans to people incapable of paying you back, they eventually default. The delinquency rate is soaring on their $1.2 billion portfolio. Bye Bye profits.

This is the same sale strategy used by the big automakers over the last two years. Those fantastic sales have been a fraud. The bad debt avalanche has just begun. You need income to eat out and you need income to make the debt payments on those 52 inch HDTVs. The middle class is tapped out and more debt will not cure what ails them. The canary is dead.

 

Darden Announces Expected Fiscal First Quarter Results

ORLANDO, Fla., Sept. 2, 2014 /PRNewswire/ — Darden Restaurants, Inc. DRI, +1.61% today reported that it expects diluted net loss per share from continuing operations for its fiscal first quarter ended August 24, 2014 to be approximately 13 to 15 cents.

Darden also reported that preliminary U.S. same-restaurant sales for the fiscal first quarter by month for Olive Garden and LongHorn Steakhouse were as follows:

Olive Garden June July August
Same-Restaurant Sales -1.0% -4.2% 0.8%
Same-Restaurant Traffic -0.9% -4.3% -2.3%

 

LongHorn Steakhouse June July August
Same-Restaurant Sales 3.3% 1.5% 3.2%
Same-Restaurant Traffic -1.1% -1.6% 0.2%

 

Conn’s, Inc. Reports Second-Quarter Fiscal 2015 Financial Results

THE WOODLANDS, Texas, Sep 02, 2014 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Conn’s, Inc. CONN, -28.62% a specialty retailer of furniture, mattresses, home appliances, consumer electronics and provider of consumer credit, today announced its financial results for the second quarter ended July 31, 2014.

Credit segment operating income declined $7.7 million to an operating loss of $0.2 million;
• The percentage of the customer portfolio balance 60+ days delinquent increased 70 basis points sequentially to 8.7% as of July 31, 2014;
• Credit segment provision for bad debts on an annualized basis was 13.9% of the average outstanding portfolio balance in the current quarter and 11.1% on an annualized basis for the first six months of fiscal 2015;
• Diluted earnings was $0.48 per share, compared to $0.52 per share in the prior year;
• Adjusted diluted earnings was $0.50 per share, compared to $0.52 per share a year ago; and
• Full-year fiscal 2015 guidance was updated to a range of $2.80 to $3.00 adjusted earnings per diluted share. The new full-year guidance reflects primarily the impact of higher expected provision for bad debts and the issuance of $250 million in 7.25% senior unsecured notes in July 2014.

“Overall results were not satisfactory. Our credit operations ran into unexpected headwinds, resulting in portfolio performance deterioration. Despite tighter underwriting, lower early-stage delinquency and improved collections staffing and execution, delinquency unexpectedly deteriorated across all credit quality levels, customer groups, product categories, geographic regions and years of origination. Tighter underwriting and better collections execution did not offset deterioration in our customer’s ability to resolve delinquency.

“Delinquency rates improved through May and increased modestly in June, consistent with typical seasonal trends. However, over sixty-day delinquency rates unexpectedly deteriorated a combined 90 basis points in July and August. We now expect future 60-plus day delinquency to increase to levels above our historical highs in the third and fourth quarter of fiscal 2015. Early stage delinquency remains lower than historical averages through August.

“We have made additional minor changes to tighten underwriting in August. Over time, more of the total portfolio will have been originated under the tighter underwriting policies implemented in late fiscal 2014 and early fiscal 2015. Declining sales of electronics as a percentage of total sales, slower expected originations growth and an expected reduction in the percentage of originations to new customers should also benefit future portfolio performance. Longer term, we believe the changes necessary to optimize portfolio performance are in place, although we may not return to credit loss rates of prior years.

“In response to higher delinquency, we are reducing the level of no-interest programs and raising the interest rates in some markets to increase portfolio yield.

IF CONSUMERS ARE SO F%#KING CONFIDENT WHY AREN’T THEY SPENDING?

The sheep have been told their confidence is at a 7 year high by the propaganda peddlers working at the behest of the oligarchy. The sheep are also told that 10 million jobs have been added since the GOTUS played his first round back in 2009. The sheep have been told the record highs in the stock market prove that all is well. If the .1% are doing fantastic, some of the wealth must be trickling down. The sheep are told that QE and ZIRP were really to save Main Street and not the bonuses of Wall Street (at record highs by the way). The sheep are told to fear ISIS, Iran, Assad, Putin, and China. The sheep are told U.S. energy independence is just around the corner and to ignore the fact that gas prices have tripled in the last ten years. The sheep are told drones will keep them safe and the DHS militarizing the police is just for their safety and security. The sheep are told guns are dangerous in their hands, but not in the hands of the government. The sheep passively eat their iGadgets and barely bleat while being led to the slaughter house.

The propaganda machine is working at hyper speed as the wheels fall off this out of control bus. But all the messaging, packaging, and lies can’t change the facts. Ignorance about the facts doesn’t change the facts. The oligarchs are getting pissed. You mindless consumers simply won’t consume as much as you used to, even with 7 year 0% interest subprime auto loans, $1 trillion of government loans to generate consumption disguised as student loans, and five credit card offers per week from the Too Big To Trust Wall Street cabal. WTF is wrong with you?

You’ve ruined the storyline used for months about horrific winter weather being the cause of non-spending in the 1st quarter. Once it stopped being cold you were supposed to spend like drunken sailors again. Just like the old days. How could you spend less in July than you did in June? You’ve only increased your spending by a mere 1.8% so far this year. With real inflation on stuff you need to live running above 5%, you’re actually spending far less than last year. No wonder confidence is skyrocketing.

 

A little examination into the facts behind the Commerce Department report might shed a little light on the truth about the good old American consumer:

  • 25% of all personal income in the country is either a transfer from the government to someone or from a government job. That is $3.7 trillion taken from producers and given to takers. In 2000 this figure was 21%. The relentless increase in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Veterans Benefits and Other will drive this percentage to 30% by 2020.
  • Real personal income (excluding government transfers) has gone up 2.6% over the last year and this is using the false CPI figure of 1.6% to reach that pitiful number. Using a true inflation figure of 5% yields lower real personal income than last year.
  • These numbers also fail to recognize the 2.2 million increase in population. On a per capita basis, real personal income is up 1.9% in the last year.
  • Senior citizens and conservative savers are earning $120 billion less today than they did seven years ago. All the grandmothers eating cat food thank you Ben and Janet. If interest rates were allowed to adjust to market levels consistent with inflation, savers would be generating $500 billion to $700 billion more interest income that could be used to propel economic growth. Per capita real disposable income was $37,582 in May of 2008. It is currently $37,553. Again, this is using the fake BLS inflation numbers, so it is even far worse.

Is it really a shocker that Americans are spending less? The MSM is so captured by the organizations providing their advertising revenue that their faux journalists don’t even attempt to examine the facts and reach logical conclusions. Their job is to cheer lead and make excuses for why their storyline of improvement never plays out. The snow storyline is history. The surge in consumer confidence storyline has been proven false by the actual spending data. Now we move onto the surge in jobs storyline that is proven false by the personal income data. I’m sure back to school season will be a resounding success. Just wait until the holidays. The consumer will surely be back this year. And the beat goes on.

The chart below tells you all you need to know about why this recovery is false. The people who are supposed to be in their peak earnings and spending years have seen their real household incomes decline dramatically since the END of the recession in June 2009. Think about that for a moment. The only people who’ve seen their real incomes rise are those who no longer spend. I wonder if it is a coincidence that government transfers since June 2009 are up 18% and the grey hairs have seen their incomes rise?

The consumer is not back. They are not coming back. The decades long debt fueled orgy of consumption has long since peaked and we are on the long road to perdition. Confidence can’t cure our disease. More debt to cure a disease caused by too much debt will not save the patient. Our disease is terminal.

CALLING ALL ENGINEERS

You want a job? Become an engineer.

Back in 1986 over 14% of all undergraduate degrees were in engineering. Today, only 8% are in engineering.

In 1986 38% of all degrees were in engineering or business, where you could expect to earn a living to support a family. Today, it is down to 28% in those majors. The 10% shifted to Ethnic studies, Gender studies, English Literature, Psychology, Social Sciences, Communications, Homeland Security, Law Enforcement, and Parks & Recreation. See for yourself:

http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d13/tables/dt13_318.20.asp

Math is hard. It’s really hard when you have mediocre union teachers teaching a dumbed down government curriculum to under-motivated, i-gadget distracted, participation trophy infected kids.

If a kid wants a decent shot at landing a decent paying job, they should study like mad and earn a degree in a math based major.

I CAN’T UNDERSTAND WHY PEOPLE ARE PISSED OFF

Oh yeah. One look at this chart might explain it. And this is using the bullshit CPI propaganda number put out by the government. Real wage growth is NEGATIVE 10%.

They should hand out tee-shirts that say:

THE KEYNESIANS SPENT $10 TRILLION OF MY MONEY & ALL I GOT WAS THIS SHITTY ECONOMY & A CHINESE MADE T-SHIRT

THE OBAMA JOBS RECOVERY

The Obama loving mainstream media have gushed about the “strong” ongoing job growth over the last two years. Oh yes. The Obama jobs recovery has been fantastic. The country lost 8.8 million jobs in the space of two years and has managed to gain back 8.7 million jobs over the next four years. Woo Hoo!!!!

To the talking heads and moronic pundits who are put in front of teleprompters to read whatever storyline they are instructed to sell, a job is a job. One little itsy bitsy problem – The jobs created by Obama have been shit jobs – McDonalds pickle ploppers, Ruby Tuesday waiters, clueless clerks at IKEA, illegal immigrant lettuce pickers, and the ever popular self employed Ebay entrepreneurs.

The quality of jobs has declined precipitously under our savior in chief. The jobs paying $50,000 to $60,000 per year have not come back. They continue to be shipped to China and Vietnam. Even the $30,000 to $40,000 per year jobs haven’t come back. There are 1.9 million less people employed in the higher paying job classes, while there are 1.8 million more people making $25,000 or less per year.

The Obama “solution” to this development is to raise the minimum wage to $10.70. Seattle’s “solution” has been to raise the minimum wage to $15. Why don’t we raise it to $50 and we’ll guarantee prosperity for all? The debasement of our currency by the Federal Reserve is the real problem, never addressed by Obama or the feckless corporate media.

If you think the chart above is bad news, you ain’t seen nothing yet. As the know it all control freaks successfully raise minimum wages around the country, less low wage jobs will be created, less businesses will open, more small businesses will close, and prices for goods will rise.

Most of the Obama jobs created have been in the hospitality, restaurant and retail industry. Their customers were the people making $50,000 to $60,000 per year. They grew because these people had access to easy debt. That ship has sailed. Without good paying jobs, they can’t make their monthly debt payments on the house, cars, and credit card.

The result of the Obama jobs recovery is plunging profits at retailers and restaurants. They will continue to decline. The mom and pop retailers and restaurants have already thrown in the towel and closed up shop by the thousands. The national chains will be next. Radio Shack will be gone in a matter of months. JC Penney, Sears, and a myriad of other retailers and restaurant chains will be shuttering stores by the thousands over the coming years.

Even those shitty Obama jobs will be disappearing. Keep believing that economic recover story. It never gets old.

I SHOULDA BECOME A GAS PASSER

 I’m an excellent gas passer, but sadly they don’t pay me to do it. Why is AWD always in such a bad mood? Look at those wages for doctors.

If you go to the very bottom of the chart you find the Obama jobs. These are the jobs being added in the Obama “Recovery”. When you see the headlines every month about the 180,000 of new jobs, they are mostly low level fry cook, retail clerk, and waitress jobs paying shit wages. That is why the real median household income keeps falling and is lower than it was in 1999.

https://i.imgur.com/NbYbNrs.png

https://i.imgur.com/NbYbNrs.png

 

ARE AMERICAN TEENAGERS JUST LAZY?

These charts are head scratchers. I had a paper route when I was 12. I started a part-time job when I was 16 and have worked ever since. The number of teens working has been falling for the last 20 years.

The number of teens with summer jobs has fallen roughly 30 percentage points since the late ‘70s. In 1978, nearly three in four teenagers (71.8%) ages 16 to 19 held a summer job, but as of last year, only about four in 10 teens did, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for the month of July analyzed by outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas . It’s been a steady decline, seen even during good times: During the dot-com boom in the late 1990s, when national unemployment was only about 4%, roughly six in 10 teens held summer jobs. Even recently, with the economy recovering, fewer teens opted for jobs: Last year’s summer job gain was down 3% from the summer payrolls in 2012, the report revealed.

The first chart shows the dramatic plunge from 1995 onward. Have parents become too soft and are coddling their little babies? It certainly isn’t because people’s financial situation is better than it was in 1995. Real household income is lower than it was in 1998. College tuition has skyrocketed, so you would think teenagers would need to work in order to save for college and pay for their incidentals. Has the peddling of student loans by the government made teenagers think they got found money?

The chart below would indicate that teenagers are just lazy. They don’t want to work. They just want to play video games, text, facebook and twitter. Are they just the most spoiled, coddled generation ever? We know they all get trophies no matter where they finish.

Or does this chart tell the true story? Are baby boomers refusing to leave the workforce and clogging up the traditional entry level jobs for teenagers? If you go to fast food joints these days there sure are a lot more gray hairs behind the counter. Boomers lived for today and never saved for tomorrow, so now they are taking the jobs from millenials.

I think I know the answer I’ll get from the old fogeys on this site. My teenagers are working. Based on my observations, if a kid really wants to work, they can get a job.

Getting A Real Education– Why Becoming Self-Sufficient Is Better Than Going To College

Via Survivalblog.com

Everywhere you turn experts are predicting that the world is heading into some very troubling times. At every level, they say we are heading into a period of history that will see major upheavals in economics, politics, education, food production, housing, jobs, and basically everything. These major changes will effect everyone on earth. That is why so many people are trying to prepare for these changes before they happen in full force, and most experts agree the best way to prepare to meet the challenges of living in this kind of future is to have a skills-based education rather than following the traditional model of theory-based education.

That is why it is better to learn to become self-sufficient rather than spend your precious time and money going to college, at least for now. In fact, if you follow this alternate path of education, in order to be best prepared for the new reality, in four years time you will be well on the way to financial independence; you’ll also be healthier, have a nest-egg to invest, and have well-developed multiple skills. You will be at least a decade ahead of your high school pals who went directly to college.

Recent college graduates are looking at spending the next 10 to 15 years of their lives working just to pay off the Federal student loans they took out to pay for their expensive college educations. Graduating into an economy that has 25% unemployment for college grads, most are not finding jobs in their chosen field of study and instead are consigned to work that pays $10 an hour or less. Is there any wonder why so many are forced to move back into the homes of their parents? It is currently estimated that fully 1/3 of college grads are living at home with Mom and Dad. How can they afford to live on their own and have an apartment, as well as pay for rent, utilities, food, transportation, and still have a life, when student loans must begin being repaid immediately after graduation?

According to CNN, in 2012 the average student loan debt is $29,400 and is expected to take 10 to 15 years to repay. By the time the loans are paid off, current college graduates will be entering middle age. How will many of them ever be able to save enough to pay for a home of their own, marry, or have children, let alone afford a new car and have any extra disposable income to pay for vacations, dining out, movies, or pursuing hobbies?

Here’s what you should be doing during the next four years, to be better prepared to meet the emerging “New Realty”:

  1. Learn to find or create a job to earn money,
  2. Negotiate a place to live until you can move into your own home,
  3. Plan how to invest the money you are saving,
  4. Learn to grow food,
  5. Learn to buy real estate, and
  6. Develop multiple means of income. (I will explain this later on.)

The goal of accomplishing the list above is to:

  1. Work and save as much as you can,
  2. Find a property you can purchase with some of your savings to own it free and clear,
  3. Learn to garden or provide other legitimate means to drastically reduce your grocery costs,
  4. Develop your property to its highest and best purpose, which will enable you to be financially free,
  5. Having accomplished all this, you will have learned multiple skills and the means to provide yourself and others with food and shelter. This will give you more choices, and allow you to become financially free, while you are still able to enjoy it.

The best way to accomplish all of this is to think of it as your “real education” and to commit to working your plan for four years as if you were attending college, only this is your practical education. Without a real commitment to accomplishing each step of the plan, you won’t reap the benefits it will deliver. So resolve right now to commit to the process.

Committing to the process means you will not allow yourself to be sidetracked! There will be many who will want to sidetrack you. You will have to discipline yourself to stay focused on the prize of becoming financially free and not let anyone talk or shame you out of it. Don’t listen to the naysayers or those who love to poke holes in your dreams. They only do this because they don’t have what it takes to accomplish it. So, rather than watching you suffer while you get there and accomplish something great through sacrifice and self-discipline, they will do all they can to bring you down and get you to abandon the idea altogether. Don’t allow this to happen! Commit to the work, do the work, and stay focused on the goal!

At the end of your real education you will:

  1. Be living in a home that you own free and clear, eliminating major housing costs,
  2. Be able to save more money by growing your own food,
  3. Be healthier, because you’ve been eating healthier food instead of the GMO’d food sold in the grocery stores,
  4. Be able to have a nest-egg to invest,
  5. Be in a position to help others, financially and materially,
  6. Possess the real skills needed to successfully meet the challenges of an uncertain future, and
  7. Ultimately have more choices and greater control over your life!

Step One– Learn to Find or Create a Job

Let’s assume you just graduated from high school. Your immediate task will be to get a job to earn money. It may seem to be a hard thing to do, given that many of you are living in households where parent(s) are having trouble finding work! However, you have more options in job selection then they do, because you can afford to not be picky.

Some of the best jobs are the jobs nobody wants. Jobs, such as working as a dishwasher at a restaurant, or cleaning rooms at a motel, or being a farm or ranch hand might be available to you. In fact, some of the least sought-after jobs can be the best ways to achieve your four-year goal. How’s that? Well, there are jobs that will pay you money, in addition to providing you with room and board. An example is being a farm or ranch hand. Many farms and ranches need workers who can do the manual labor required on a farm or ranch, such as milking the cows, mending the fences, feeding and watering livestock, stacking the hay bales, driving the machinery, tending the chickens, and gathering eggs. According to estimates released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, farm animal caretakers, such as ranch hands, earned an average wage of $11.56 an hour (as of 2012). Many ranches include giving workers a free place to sleep and all meals. Some ranchers may adjust pay to their workers to cover these items, but because good hands are very hard to find and keep, wages remain competitive. Since you won’t have to pay for room and board, you can save all the money you earn.

Do the math: Figuring a 30-hour work week, and after all taxes and FICA taken off your wages, at the end of four years, you could save $40,000–$60,000.

What if you want to stay closer to home? The best jobs are the ones that will pay you more, based on your own effort, sooner rather than later. Being a wait person at a restaurant is one such job. Food service type jobs, where you wait on tables and take orders, pay at least minimum wage as a base income, but when you give great service with a smile, you can earn tips from your customers that will boost your earnings! If you work where the minimum wage is $8 an hour and you work 30 hours a week, that equals $240 a week, but you could average tips of an additional $10 an hour more.

Do the math: Base wages are $8 an hour plus approximately $10 more per hour for tips equals $18 an hour equals $540 a week equals $2322 gross wages a month. After state, local, and federal taxes are taken off your pay, at the end of four years you could save $60,000-$90,000!

What If You Can’t Find Work?

If you can’t find a job, then create a job for yourself. Here are a few ideas: There is always a need for someone who can clean houses, clean and re-organize garages, do yard work like mowing lawns, trimming bushes, picking up yard debris. Are you good in math? Then hire yourself out as a math tutor. You can earn more money by organizing a Math Tutor class, with two to four students in each class.

Another way to go is to find things people don’t want and sell them to people who do want them, making a profit for you through the transaction. I’ve heard of people making a very good living finding broken things, repairing them, and then putting them up on Craigslist and selling them. If you are a gear head and can do oil changes or auto tune-ups, advertise in the Nickle Ad Shopper or Penny Saver newspapers, and offer to do these services at people’s homes, instead of them coming to you. If you charge less than what retail outlets charge for this service, your phone will be ringing!

Offer to babysit, pet sit, farm animal sit, or plant sit. Offer to clean the bathrooms at every gas station in town and get them under contract for this service. Do it for $20 a week. You can earn an extra $100-$200 a week! Offer to deliver food for several restaurants. Do it for 15% of the total order. Many times you will get an extra tip at the door when you deliver the meals!

Can you sew on a sewing machine? Offer to re-size clothes, do minor repairs, and alterations. Sew hems on cut-off jeans, or make long-sleeved shirts into short-sleeved ones.

If you can create simple websites, offer your services to new businesses. You can get the list of all the new businesses who registered and paid their license fees with the city. Just call City Hall to get the list. Then contact each new business owner and pitch them your service. Offer to keep the cost under $300. (Most new businesses can’t afford pricey websites.) Just keep it simple and classy. Then make sure you deliver the website on time and for the price agreed to. Do a good job, and you will get favorable word of mouth advertising and a lot more experience. This will lead to more jobs and more earnings.

One job you create is better than no job at all! Of course, while you work your created job, keep looking for full-time work. Eventually you will get hired.

Where Will You Live?

While you are looking for a job, talk with your parents about continuing to live at home. Offer to pay rent each month or to help with more housework in payment for room and board. It’s vital you negotiate a fair but cheap rent! Remember you are saving every penny you earn above your living expenses. Whatever you agree to do, do it! If you negotiated a lower rent in exchange for doing more housework and you don’t do the housework, then you are simply practicing being a liar. Pay attention boys! Boys are particularly notorious about promising to keep the room clean and then, due to laziness, end up trying to schmooz Mom or Sis to do it for you. It’s time to grow up and start doing what you say you will! It’s great practice for your first paying job.

What If I Know What I Want to Do?

If you know what you want to learn to do, then try to find ways to save money there, too. For example, if you are a gear head and you want to become an auto mechanic, then offer to work for a Master Mechanic as a shop gopher to start. Try to work as many hours a week as possible, even if for minimum wage. You can learn to become a mechanic very fast being essentially a paid apprentice. Don’t immediately think to attend a turn-key college that will teach you to be a mechanic, because those types of colleges, while every bit as valid, are still expensive and make more money off you as a student, if they can get you in by Federal Student Loans. That means more heavy debt for you. Don’t go there! Get in as a gopher-worker-apprentice somewhere with a Master Mechanic and save the tuition. You’ll be paid to learn.

Same thing works with wanting to be a chef. Offer to start as a dishwasher at a restaurant. Always be on time. Always be a conscientious employee. Then progress to food prep and side dishes. Observe the head chef and every one under him or her. Ask questions. Show an interest. People love to share what they love with others who are interested! You will learn to be a chef in four years or less this way. Why pay a culinary academy $25,000 a school year when you can be paid to learn the same things?

How many other professions can you think of where you can be a paid apprentice while you learn the trade? Apprentices can work in heating & air conditioning, electrician, plumbing, home building and remodeling, printing press operator and quick copying, meat processing, commercial delivery-driving, and commercial driving a long haul truck. If you want to design clothes, offer to make the costumes for the local theater production. There are so many ways to gain experience! Experience leads to higher paid work.

What if you can’t get into a trade apprenticeship? Then create a job! Don’t be idle. There are many ways to earn money, if you are willing to do the work. Be creative in thinking up ways to earn money while costing next to nothing to start. Try window washing. It costs almost nothing for buckets, squeegees, and window cleaner– $3 total at a dollar store. Use free newspapers to dry the window once cleaned. Start on a street filled with businesses, and go store to store. At each store, offer to do all their windows for $20 dollars. Even if it takes you an hour to do the windows at each store, that is only 5 hours a day of work for a full-time income.

Tell them you want to come back each week (or every other week) to clean the windows again. Try to pick up five customers a day, who will be repeat customers. At $20 a store, that equals $100 a day and $500 a week in profit. This is a gross income of $26,000 a year! You should be able to save at least $20,000 of this each year. In four years that will be $80,000. There are many communities where this amount will more than pay for a house. Ask yourself, are you willing to clean windows for four short years so that you can buy a house free and clear?

You might decide that you want to reach your four-year goal in three years. That may mean working more than one job. Do whatever it takes, and stay focused and committed! If you can earn money while learning a trade, go for it! If you can earn money while also being given free room and board, go for it! The money you save will help you achieve your goal that much faster!

I’ve Got My Housing, Food, and Job(s) Squared Away. Now What?

This is where it gets really fun.

When you get your first paycheck, sit down and do some figuring. Take your paycheck and figure out what you will earn per month. Then deduct for your room and board, if you have to pay for this. Allow a little bit as fun money, but when I say “little” I mean it! If you have a car, budget for the gasoline for the car, to get you to and from work. Once all of your obligations are written down including your fun money, deduct them from your net monthly pay. What’s left is what you are going to save, religiously and without fail, each and every week.

Check out all the local banks and credit unions and decide which one is the best for you, with respect to opening and managing a personal account. Research the costs involved. Is there a minimum balance required? What are their bank fees and debit card and overdraft fees? Credit unions usually have less fees for their members. Once you have decided which financial institution to use, go there and open an account. This is something to do in person. Introduce yourself to the banker. Get his or her business card. This will be a valuable relationship to you, especially in just a few more years when you buy your real estate property. They’re not for you to borrow any money from but to use as references. So, get to know them now. Often, in large real estate transactions, using bankers as references can help you. Keep the business cards and make note when someone gets promoted at the bank or someone new is hired. Always introduce yourself to the new people and get their business card. Cultivate these business relationships!

I advise you open only a savings account at first. Checking accounts are too easy to tap, and once you start tapping that money, the faster you lose everything you’ve saved. This is going to be a real test of how self-disciplined you are. This is the time in your life to master money. The sooner you do this, the better for your financial future. Seriously, don’t be tempted to blow the money on a depreciating asset. (A depreciating asset is one that loses value over time, like a car or motorcycle.) And for heaven’s sake, DO NOT buy anything on credit! Making monthly payments is DEBT, and you end up paying more than whatever it’s really worth. So, just open a savings account. Once you feel you can trust yourself to not touch any of your savings, you may open a checking account and only place your “fun money” there. Use the credit card that comes with the account to spend the fun money, which will help build your credit score. You want to start on the right foot and build your credit! Just don’t overdo it. Purchase only what you have the money in the account to cover immediately. Remember: Do not go into debt for anything. Paying immediately for something you charge will help you gain a high credit score. A high credit score will help you when you are ready to buy your real estate. Just stick to the savings account as the place where you put most of your earnings.

There’s something magical about seeing the amount in a savings account increase over time. What starts as just a few hundred dollars, quickly turns into more than a few thousand dollars. You have big plans for this money. If you take any out and think you’ll replace it later, forget about it. It won’t happen. You will only be practicing stealing from yourself, so don’t go there. Stay the course, and don’t touch that money! Concentrate on the large amount you will need in just a couple more years and what you will be able to do with that money. Keep your eyes on that prize! Learn to master money; don’t let it master you!

Here is Wisdom

If you can discipline yourself to save money and not be tempted to spend it, even when others are encouraging you or guilt-tripping you to spend it, then you will be successful! Remember that you have really big plans for this money. In fact, your plans will make you rich beyond your dreams, but if you can’t discipline yourself to save the money and spend only what you allow yourself to spend, you will never realize your goals or finance your dreams. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. You will not get anywhere if you rob Peter to pay Paul.

Here’s the Prize

Your goal is to find a job and save money so that, in four years, you can buy real property to live in. Notice I said “real property”, not a “house”. I want your to think in terms of owning something outright and not “financing” it. Financing it means you go into debt. You don’t want to be in debt. Avoid debt like the plague! You want to buy something outright– free and clear. In other words, once you pay for it, the only thing you will need to pay will be your property taxes and upkeep. Once you know what that amount will be annually, divide it by 12; then you will know what your “housing” costs will be each month and can then budget accordingly. Why do you want to own something outright? Because if you can greatly reduce or eliminate this expense, you can spend what you would’ve spent on housing on other things. Your cash flow will improve. You will have more money to save and invest! You can have financial freedom when you own a home free and clear. This is your ultimate goal.

What If I Only Can Save $20,000 or $30,000 in Four Years?

That’s okay. Buy what you can buy, in that price range, so that you own it free and clear. You may only be able to buy a small piece of undeveloped land. Don’t despair! You will be able to live there; it will just take a little longer. Alternatively, it may be that you will need to re-think what you consider housing in the short term, in order to reap a great financial benefit in the long term.

Here’s what I mean. You have worked and saved for four years, but you can only afford to buy a piece of land for $20,000 outright. That’s alright. You did your homework. You know there are no codes or covenants that force you to build a certain type of house on the land; therefore, you are free to live in a tent there, if you want. However, you may want to park a used RV on your land, until you’ve saved enough to build a house. Remember, the RV you buy to place on the land is to be purchased free and clear. There are many used RV trailers for sale under $1000 on Craigslist everyday. In fact, it’s possible to find RVs and travel trailers someone would be willing to give away for free, so long as you haul it away!

Now you have 1) land, and 2) a dwelling to live in for free. You’ve now eliminated the biggest item in most people’s monthly budget– the cost of housing. Your monthly expenses will be utilities, food, and annual taxes. That’s it! For most people, (and depending where you buy), those costs could be under $400 total every month. A good rule of thumb is this: Try to keep your cost of living below 1/4th of your monthly net income. Save the difference between your monthly income and your expenditures, and you will be able to make improvements on your land in no time. Remember to pay for everything with cash as you go. Always make sure to own it free and clear. If you do that, you can’t go wrong.

How Important Is This, Really?

Learning to save for and then buy something you want, so that you do not go into debt to pay for it, may be the hardest thing to do, but it is absolutely the most rewarding way to go. In fact, it was THE way most Americans did things as little as 75 years ago.

Seventy-five years ago, World War II was just starting in Europe. People in America were still living with the effects of the Great Depression, where 25%-30% of the working-age population were unemployed. Back then, there was no safety net provided by the government. People helped each other. Churches and benevolent associations took care of the poor and needy. People found ways to create their own work. They spent less on groceries, by planting and cultivating gardens. They learned to barter with farmers for fruits, vegetables, and meats. They had backyard chickens and a cow for milk. They learned to can what they didn’t immediately eat and store the extra for future consumption. This is a mind-set and a skill-set different from today, where people are used to going to the grocery store for food one to three (or more) times a week.

Today, grocery stores do not keep as much inventory on the premises as before. The logistics of food distribution has become so sophisticated that stores can replenish their shelves in one to three days. The large trucks on the nation’s highways are actually warehouses on wheels, bringing goods and perishables to stores on a “just in time” basis. In America, this process has become so efficient we have become lulled into believing it will always keep going.

It is difficult for us today to imagine a time when people grew most of their own food, created and repaired their own clothes, and even built their own houses. In fact, the modern mortgage banking system, where you save for a down-payment and then are loaned the balance of the purchase price at an interest rate based on your credit score for a term of 30 years, is a fairly recent phenomenon. Prior to this model, most folks negotiated a home purchase with the owner directly and maybe with the help of an attorney drawing up the agreement. People routinely paid all-cash for land and then set about building their own homes. Most able-bodied men in America at that time were capable of laying a foundation and completing the construction of a house. This was done to stay out of debt and make it easier to live. If you owned a home and some land, you did not have a mortgage payment to meet every month. You had a roof over your head already paid for. You had a yard for a garden to grow food to feed your family. You may have enough land for a chicken coop, or a small grazing pasture to keep a cow or small herd of cows. By owning your own home, you had no monthly mortgage payment. There wasn’t anyone, who owned the mortgage note, who you had to pay or risk losing your home. No one would think of purchasing a home unless they had the money to buy it outright. It wasn’t done, because it wasn’t prudent. It wasn’t good for the homeowner to go into massive debt to have a home, precisely because a situation could arise where you could lose the home.

Today, housing costs take up the largest monthly outlay in people’s budgets. Whether you rent or have a mortgage, you pay roughly 30-40% of your take-home income on housing and housing-related expenses. Failure to make those payments will get you evicted from your home. If evicted, ALL the money spent on keeping that roof over your head was spent for nothing, including the interest on the home loan you were paying. Interest alone adds nearly three times the purchase prince, paid over time. So a home price of $150,000 will actually cost three times that, or $450,000 over 30 years, all due to interest payments! The difference between $450,000 and $150,000 is money that you could have spent on other things for yourself, instead of enriching a banker. If you buy a house this way, you are agreeing to mortgage your own future and are robbing from your future self to pay for it! You are making yourself a slave to that debt. You are a slave to whoever loaned you the money. You must pay it back. There are no other options, other than bankruptcy, which is worse. ANY large debt you agree to pay back later makes you a slave to whoever gives you the loan. This includes the college students who have made themselves slaves to the Federal Government, because they are on the hook for all of the student loans they are taking to pay for college. They are making themselves vassals of an overlord who has draconian means to force them to pay the student loans back, via the IRS. New federal laws actually empower the IRS to get involved and confiscate your future earnings in order to pay back your student loans. This all begs the question: Do you really want to do that to yourself? Why would you willingly make yourself a slave, especially since a degree does not guarantee a job? This is why it is better to learn self-sufficiency now, while you can still do something about your future. If you’re right out of high school, spend the next three or four years getting yourself financially established, mastering money, saving, and saving some more. Then get your housing squared away. Pay cash. Don’t go into debt. Try to find free or low-cost ways to learn any desirable skill. Once you have the housing cost eliminated, THEN you can think about college, if you still want to go.

OBAMA JOBS

The two charts below and the op-ed from the CEO of Carl’s Jr. explain everything you need to know about Obamanomics. Obama’s fiscal policies and Bernanke’s monetary policies are entirely Keynesian based. It doesn’t matter to them that theory hasn’t worked. Reality for real Americans living in the real world is shit jobs, shit pay, and inflation in their living expenses for food, energy, tuition, and healthcare. Don’t be fooled by the decline in government jobs. That includes the military and we have withdrawn from Iraq and Afghanistan over this time frame. If you subtracted the military reduction you would see that government hired more drones with your tax dollars.

The proof that Obamanomics has failed is in the real wages of Americans. The only way people can get ahead in life is if their real income outpaces their real expenses. It really is that simple. Adding student loan, auto loan and credit card debt is not getting ahead. Real average hourly earnings are lower today than they were when Obama took office. Gas prices are 125% higher than when Obama took office. Obama has converted America from a productive society to a food stamp society. And the best is yet to come.

Finally an honest CEO, speaking the truth. How refreshing.

Authored by Andrew Pudzer, CEO of CKE Restaurants which includes Carl’s Jr, and originally posted at The Wall Street Journal

In President Obama’s speeches this year, a steady theme has been creating jobs and economic opportunity for Americans. In his State of the Union address in January he said that “what I believe unites the people of this nation . . . is the simple, profound belief in opportunity for all—the notion that if you work hard and take responsibility, you can get ahead.” And in his weekly address on Saturday, he repeated his strong appeal to young people: “As long as I hold this office, I’ll keep fighting to give more young people the chance to earn their own piece of the American Dream.”

Yet during the more than five years Mr. Obama has been in office, young people have been especially hard-hit by the slow and virtually jobless recovery. Given the destructive effect this has on individual initiative and the prospects of a productive and rewarding working life, the continuing struggle of young Americans to find jobs, start building families and contribute to society is no longer simply a matter of politics or policy. On a deeply human level, it’s profoundly sad.

Consider these grim employment numbers:

• In February the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) recorded the lowest percentage of 16- to 19-year-olds working or actively looking for work (32.9%) since the bureau started tracking the data in 1948. The BLS recorded the second-lowest labor-participation rate for this group in April (33.2%) and the third-lowest in January (33.3%). May’s rate was the sixth lowest (33.8%).

 

• Over the past two years, the BLS has recorded some of the worst labor participation rates for 20- to 24-year-olds since 1973, when the Vietnam War was beginning to wind down. In August 2012, the 69.7% rate was the lowest since ’73. The second-lowest (70%) came in March last year. This year, the third-lowest rate came in April (70.2%). May’s rate was a still-miserable 71%.

 

• Looking at the seasonally unadjusted data—which is what the BLS makes publicly available—for 25- to 29-year-olds, the April 2014 labor-participation rate was the lowest the BLS has recorded since it started tracking the data in 1982 (79.8%). May’s rate was the second-lowest (79.9%). January, February and March tied with the fourth-lowest (80.3%).

These disturbing numbers raise a simple question: Where are the entry-level jobs?

Five years of 2% average yearly GDP growth simply doesn’t produce enough jobs to absorb the natural increase in the labor force, and over the past eight quarters GDP growth has averaged only 1.7%. Between May 2008 and May 2014, BLS data show that the employable population increased by 14,217,000 while the number of people employed actually decreased by 94,000 and the number of people unemployed increased by 1,404,000. It remains a bad time for young people to be looking for jobs.

Nonetheless, various states and municipalities have increased their minimum wage, thereby increasing the cost of employing inexperienced workers. Minimum-wage jobs have always been a gateway to better opportunities. In making hiring decisions, businesses must weigh the quality and value of work that entry-level employees produce against the cost of employing them. For many businesses in high-minimum-wage states or municipalities—Seattle leads the list, having approved a move to a $15 minimum wage—that trade-off is no longer working.

The bottom line on labor: Make something less expensive and businesses will use more of it. Make something more expensive and businesses will use less of it. The Congressional Budget Office has forecast a loss of 500,000 jobs should the president’s proposal to increase the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour become law.

The CBO also forecast that this increase would lift a number of people who already have jobs above the poverty threshold. For 500,000 unemployed people, however, that’s 500,000 opportunities American businesses will never create.

ObamaCare is also increasing the cost of hiring inexperienced workers. The health-care law requires that businesses with more than 50 full-time employees offer medical insurance to employees working 30 or more hours a week. The administration knows that the employer mandate will kill jobs and has twice delayed implementing it. With an election on the horizon, American businesses know that these delays were political and that the mandate’s economically damaging impact is in the pipeline, coming their way.

ObamaCare gives businesses an incentive to either eliminate entry-level jobs or keep the workers’ hours to under 30 a week. It also gives businesses a reason to reduce the hours of experienced employees to under 30 a week. These experienced employees are now working second jobs to compensate for their lost hours—resulting in fewer positions for less-experienced workers.

To get on the ladder of opportunity, America’s young people need jobs. Creating disincentives to hire them diminishes the notion that “if you work hard and take responsibility, you can get ahead.” The reality is that you can’t get ahead if you can’t find a job.

I’m not speaking primarily as a business CEO. My company will adjust to new laws. I’m speaking as someone from a working-class family. I started work scooping ice cream for the minimum wage at Baskin-Robbins. To put myself through college and law school while supporting my family, I cut lawns, painted houses and busted concrete with a jackhammer. I know how important these jobs are. For one thing, they taught me—as no lectures from my parents ever could—that I needed a good education so I wouldn’t have to settle for low-paying work the rest of my life. Too many young people today are being deprived of even that basic lesson.

US Workers In The Prime 25-54 Age Group Are Still 2.6 Million Short Of Recovering Post-Crisis Job Losses

Tyler Durden's picture

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/07/2014 19:43 -0400

Pundits may be trying to spin this Friday’s jobs report as indicative of an ongoing recovery, emphasizing that as of May, all the jobs that were lost since December 2007 have now been recovered, or this chart…

 

However the same pundits fail to mention is that while it took the Fed some $2.7 trillion in incremental liquidity to regain all the lost jobs (and concurrently push the S&P to absolutely ridiculous record numbers), at the same time the US population, which grew by 14.8 million since December 2007, has lost a record 12.8 million people form the labor force, which remains at an all time high 92 million!

 

Further digging into the data, here are two other things you won’t hear from the permabulls: while the May job gain of 217K was respectable, breaking down the jobs by age group as shown by the household survey, shows that not only did the majority of the jobs go to the lowest paying wages for yet another month, but for Americans in their prime working years, those aged 25-54, May was a month in which some 110K workers either lost their jobs, or were moved into the oldest, 55-69 age group.

Furthermore, while the total number of jobs may have recovered its post December 2007 losses, for Americans aged 25-54, there is still a long, long time to go, with the prime US age group still over 2.6 million jobs short of recovering all of its post December-2007 losses.

Finally, continuing the qulitative breakdown of the jobs breakdown in the US, one group that has gotten the decidedly short end of the stick are stay at home dads, which according to a recent Pew research study have increased by a whopping 100% to 2 million from the 1.1 milion in 1989:

The number of fathers who do not work outside the home has risen markedly in recent years, up to 2 million in 2012. High unemployment rates around the time of the Great Recession contributed to the recent increases, but the biggest contributor to long-term growth in these “stay-at-home fathers” is the rising number of fathers who are at home primarily to care for their family.

Visually:

Bloomberg has more:

The number of fathers at home with their children reached a high of 2.2 million in 2010 in the wake of the recession, which ended in June 2009. While the figure fell to 2 million in 2012 as unemployment declined, it was still almost double the 1.1 million stay-at-home dads in 1989, according to the report.

 

Fathers account for a growing share of stay-at-home parents in the U.S., with almost a quarter of the men reporting they’re at home because they can’t find a job. Dads represented 16 percent of all parents not working outside the home in 2012, up from 10 percent in 1989, a report released today by the Pew Research Center in Washington shows. There are more than five times as many stay-at-home mothers.

 

“The share of dads specifically there to care for those at home has been growing steadily across time,” said Gretchen Livingston, the report’s lead author. “We still see a steady increase in this number.”

 

The report follows a study Pew released two months ago that showed American mothers are reversing a historical trend and increasingly staying home, a change driven by demographic, social and economic forces. The increase in stay-at-home fathers is also related to economic forces, this study found.

Don’t blame it on the economy… blame it on disabilities.

As is the case among mothers, stay-at-home fathers are less well-off financially and have lower educational attainment than their working counterparts, the report said. At-home fathers are twice as likely to lack a high school diploma as working fathers — 22 percent to 10 percent — and almost half are living in poverty compared with 8 percent who work outside the home.

 

The largest share of stay-at-home fathers — 35 percent — say they are there because of their own illness or disability, the report said. This contrasts with stay-at-home mothers, just 11 percent of whom cited those reasons.

 

And while the overall average age of working-age Americans continues to rise ever higher (with the 25-54 age group consistently depressed), one subset of Americans that is leaving the workforce are the same disenfrachised fathers, caring for their children:

Stay-at-home dads also tend to be older than such mothers, which may partially explain why so many more are ill or disabled. While 43 percent of stay-at-home fathers are 45 years or older, only 21 percent of stay-at-home mothers are in that age group.

 

About one in five stay-at-home fathers say the main reason they are there is to care for their home or family, representing a fourfold increase from 1989 when only 5 percent of them said that. Among mothers, the number is 73 percent.

It gets worse:

Stay-at-home dads get less respect, the study found. About half of Americans said children are better off if their mother is home and doesn’t hold a job, compared with just 8 percent who said that about fathers, according to a 2013 Pew survey. That finding shows Americans “still very much differentiate between a stay-at-home mom and a stay-at-home dad in terms of the value to children,” Livingston said.

Well, reverse feminism may not be particularly strong in the US, and neither is the so-called recovery. But at least demand for propaganda spin masters has never been greater, regardless of age or domestic father status.

IT DOESN’T TAKE A ROCKET SCIENTIST TO SEE MOST COLLEGE DEGREES WILL HAVE A NEGATIVE ROI

Mish calculates that only 17% of the jobs over the next ten years will require a college degree. Emptying piss from bedpans, changing shit stained sheets, flipping burgers, burning fries, and running a vacuum cleaner don’t require an advanced degree.

Guest Post by Mike Shedlock

 

BLS Employment Projections Through 2022: How Many Jobs Require a College Degree?

Inquiring minds are taking a look at the BLS Occupation Forecast Through 2022.

Occupations with the Most Job Growth, 2012 and Projected 2022 (Numbers in Thousands)
2012 National Employment Matrix Title Code Employment Change, 2012-22 Median annual wage, 2012
2012 2022 Number Percent
Total, All Occupations 00-0000 145,355.8 160,983.7 15,628.0 10.8 $34,750
Personal care aides 39-9021 1,190.6 1,771.4 580.8 48.8 19,910
Registered nurses 29-1141 2,711.5 3,238.4 526.8 19.4 65,470
Retail salespersons 41-2031 4,447.0 4,881.7 434.7 9.8 21,110
Home health aides 31-1011 875.1 1,299.3 424.2 48.5 20,820
Combined food preparation and serving workers, including fast food 35-3021 2,969.3 3,391.2 421.9 14.2 18,260
Nursing assistants 31-1014 1,479.8 1,792.0 312.2 21.1 24,420
Secretaries and administrative assistants, except legal, medical, and executive 43-6014 2,324.4 2,632.3 307.8 13.2 32,410
Customer service representatives 43-4051 2,362.8 2,661.4 298.7 12.6 30,580
Janitors and cleaners, except maids and housekeeping cleaners 37-2011 2,324.0 2,604.0 280.0 12.1 22,320
Construction laborers 47-2061 1,071.1 1,331.0 259.8 24.3 29,990
General and operations managers 11-1021 1,972.7 2,216.8 244.1 12.4 95,440
Laborers and freight, stock, and material movers, hand 53-7062 2,197.3 2,439.2 241.9 11.0 23,890
Carpenters 47-2031 901.2 1,119.4 218.2 24.2 39,940
Bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks 43-3031 1,799.8 2,004.5 204.6 11.4 35,170
Heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers 53-3032 1,701.5 1,894.1 192.6 11.3 38,200
Medical secretaries 43-6013 525.6 714.9 189.2 36.0 31,350
Childcare workers 39-9011 1,312.7 1,496.8 184.1 14.0 19,510
Office clerks, general 43-9061 2,983.5 3,167.6 184.1 6.2 27,470
Maids and housekeeping cleaners 37-2012 1,434.6 1,618.0 183.4 12.8 19,570
Licensed practical and licensed vocational nurses 29-2061 738.4 921.3 182.9 24.8 41,540
First-line supervisors of office and administrative support workers 43-1011 1,418.1 1,589.6 171.5 12.1 49,330
Elementary school teachers, except special education 25-2021 1,361.2 1,529.1 167.9 12.3 53,400
Accountants and auditors 13-2011 1,275.4 1,442.2 166.7 13.1 63,550
Medical assistants 31-9092 560.8 723.7 162.9 29.0 29,370
Cooks, restaurant 35-2014 1,024.1 1,174.2 150.1 14.7 22,030
Software developers, applications 15-1132 613.0 752.9 139.9 22.8 90,060
Landscaping and groundskeeping workers 37-3011 1,124.9 1,264.0 139.2 12.4 23,570
Receptionists and information clerks 43-4171 1,006.7 1,142.6 135.9 13.5 25,990
Management analysts 13-1111 718.7 852.5 133.8 18.6 78,600
Sales representatives, wholesale and manufacturing, except technical and scientific products 41-4012 1,480.7 1,612.8 132.0 8.9 54,230

The above table is by the BLS. In the following table, I stripped out all the occupations that I believe should not realistically require a college degree. Here are the results.

Degree Requiring Occupations with the Most Job Growth, 2012 and Projected 2022 (Numbers in Thousands)
2012 National Employment Matrix Title Code Employment Change, 2012-22 Median annual wage, 2012
2012 2022 Number Percent
Total, Degree Requiring Occupations 17,500.3 20,231.0 2,730.7 15.6
Registered nurses 29-1141 2,711.5 3,238.4 526.8 19.4 65,470
Secretaries and administrative assistants, except legal, medical, and executive 43-6014 2,324.4 2,632.3 307.8 13.2 32,410
General and operations managers 11-1021 1,972.7 2,216.8 244.1 12.4 95,440
Bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks 43-3031 1,799.8 2,004.5 204.6 11.4 35,170
Medical secretaries 43-6013 525.6 714.9 189.2 36.0 31,350
Licensed practical and licensed vocational nurses 29-2061 738.4 921.3 182.9 24.8 41,540
First-line supervisors of office and administrative support workers 43-1011 1,418.1 1,589.6 171.5 12.1 49,330
Elementary school teachers, except special education 25-2021 1,361.2 1,529.1 167.9 12.3 53,400
Accountants and auditors 13-2011 1,275.4 1,442.2 166.7 13.1 63,550
Medical assistants 31-9092 560.8 723.7 162.9 29.0 29,370
Software developers, applications 15-1132 613.0 752.9 139.9 22.8 90,060
Management analysts 13-1111 718.7 852.5 133.8 18.6 78,600
Sales representatives, wholesale and manufacturing, except technical and scientific products 41-4012 1,480.7 1,612.8 132.0 8.9 54,230

Results

Of the projected 15,628,000 jobs that will be filled by 2022, only 2,731,000 of the jobs in the first table should require a college degree.

However, given the emphasis on getting a degree (and brutally overpaying for it), and given the sheer number of people with degrees who are jobless, many employers will only hire those with degrees simply because they have ability to be picky.

There is another gotcha for the unemployed. Other employers do not want overqualified applicants fearing they will leave at the first opportunity.

Thus, applicants need to correctly figure out whether to dumb-down or trump-up their resume to improve their own chances, even though overall chances for higher paying jobs is poor.

Those who don’t make good use of their college degree will be stuck competing for low-wage jobs as personal care aids, retail sales clerks, food prep workers, and as various assistants.

Education for Education’s Sake

My friend “BC” explains …

In effect, the US is “educating”/socializing a large share of our young people coming of age to be hopelessly indebted and unemployed or unemployable.

With record debt to wages and GDP, withering costs of “health care”, and fully mature and costly urban/suburban/penturban infrastructure build out and associated high fixed costs, a growing majority of millennials simply cannot afford to begin or sustain the urban/suburban, auto-, oil-, and debt-based lives as “consumer units”.

And neither will a majority of Boomers be able to sustain their lifestyles into late life. The situation is made worse in that the US economy has not created a net new full-time private sector job per capita in 30-35 years.

Automation of services sector employment now occurring at an accelerating rate will exacerbate conditions for paid employment and purchasing power, especially for women who make up a disproportionately larger share of employment in medical services (80-85%), “education” (80%), gov’t (60%), and financial services (60%).

Consequently, women face loss of paid employment as a share of the work force and population on a scale that men have experienced in the goods-producing sector since the 1970s-80s.

The relative payoff to a bachelor’s degree peaked in the 1990s and will continue to decline hereafter for the rest of millennials’ lifetimes, especially those in the bottom 90% of households who cannot actually afford a post-secondary credential.

Many argue that the jobs lost in the aforementioned sectors will be replaced by even better jobs in the helping, human touch, and other occupations that we cannot predict; but this presupposes, incorrectly in my view, that the loss of tens of millions of jobs will allow an economy that still produces sufficient level and growth of after-tax, real purchasing power, discretionary income, and tax receipts to support what are more often than not public sector or costly private sector services for the top 1-10% .

Education Model Broken

The US education model is fatally broken because the cost of education is far too high. Soaring student debt with no way to pay it back is one consequence.

In turn, high student debt guarantees low family formation rates with kids moving back in with their parents. Here is a shocking chart that shows what I mean.

The above chart was part of my Wine Country Conference II presentation, which will be out shortly.

Note that approximately 12% of women and 17% of men aged 25-34 now live with their parents. The implications on household formation, child raising, and home buying are obvious.

Mike “Mish” Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

RETAIL DEATH RATTLE GROWS LOUDER

The definition of death rattle is a sound often produced by someone who is near death when fluids such as saliva and bronchial secretions accumulate in the throat and upper chest. The person can’t swallow and emits a deepening wheezing sound as they gasp for breath. This can go on for two or three days before death relieves them of their misery. The American retail industry is emitting an unmistakable wheezing sound as a long slow painful death approaches.

It was exactly four months ago when I wrote THE RETAIL DEATH RATTLE. Here are a few terse anecdotes from that article:

The absolute collapse in retail visitor counts is the warning siren that this country is about to collide with the reality Americans have run out of time, money, jobs, and illusions. The exponential growth model, built upon a never ending flow of consumer credit and an endless supply of cheap fuel, has reached its limit of growth. The titans of Wall Street and their puppets in Washington D.C. have wrung every drop of faux wealth from the dying middle class. There are nothing left but withering carcasses and bleached bones.

Once the Wall Street created fraud collapsed and the waves of delusion subsided, retailers have been revealed to be swimming naked. Their relentless expansion, based on exponential growth, cannibalized itself, new store construction ground to a halt, sales and profits have declined, and the inevitable closing of thousands of stores has begun.

The implications of this long and winding road to ruin are far reaching. Store closings so far have only been a ripple compared to the tsunami coming to right size the industry for a future of declining spending. Over the next five to ten years, tens of thousands of stores will be shuttered. Companies like JC Penney, Sears and Radio Shack will go bankrupt and become historical footnotes. Considering retail employment is lower today than it was in 2002 before the massive retail expansion, the future will see in excess of 1 million retail workers lose their jobs. Bernanke and the Feds have allowed real estate mall owners to roll over non-performing loans and pretend they are generating enough rental income to cover their loan obligations. As more stores go dark, this little game of extend and pretend will come to an end.

Retail store results for the 1st quarter of 2014 have been rolling in over the last week. It seems the hideous government reported retail sales results over the last six months are being confirmed by the dying bricks and mortar mega-chains. In case you missed the corporate mainstream media not reporting the facts and doing their usual positive spin, here are the absolutely dreadful headlines:

Wal-Mart Profit Plunges By $220 Million as US Store Traffic Declines by 1.4%

Target Profit Plunges by $80 Million, 16% Lower Than 2013, as Store Traffic Declines by 2.3%

Sears Loses $358 Million in First Quarter as Comparable Store Sales at Sears Plunge by 7.8% and Sales at Kmart Plunge by 5.1%

JC Penney Thrilled With Loss of Only $358 Million For the Quarter

Kohl’s Operating Income Plunges by 17% as Comparable Sales Decline by 3.4%

Costco Profit Declines by $84 Million as Comp Store Sales Only Increase by 2%

Staples Profit Plunges by 44% as Sales Collapse and Closing Hundreds of Stores

Gap Income Drops 22% as Same Store Sales Fall

Ann Taylor Profit Crashes by 75% as Same Store Sales Fall

American Eagle Profits Tumble 86%, Will Close 150 Stores

Aeropostale Losses $77 Million as Sales Collapse by 12%

Big Lots Profit Tumbles by 90% as Sales Flat & Exiting Canadian Market

Best Buy Sales Decline by $300 Million as Margins Decline and Comparable Store Sales Decline by 1.3%

Macy’s Profit Flat as Comparable Store Sales decline by 1.4%

Dollar General Profit Plummets by 40% as Comp Store Sales Decline by 3.8%

Urban Outfitters Earnings Collapse by 20% as Sales Stagnate

McDonalds Earnings Fall by $66 Million as US Comp Sales Fall by 1.7%

Darden Profit Collapses by 30% as Same Restaurant Sales Plunge by 5.6% and Company Selling Red Lobster

TJX Misses Earnings Expectations as Sales & Earnings Flat

Dick’s Misses Earnings Expectations as Golf Store Sales Plummet

Home Depot Misses Earnings Expectations as Customer Traffic Only Rises by 2.2%

Lowes Misses Earnings Expectations as Customer Traffic was Flat

Of course, those headlines were never reported. I went to each earnings report and gathered the info that should have been reported by the CNBC bimbos and hacks. Anything you heard surely had a Wall Street spin attached, like the standard BETTER THAN EXPECTED. I love that one. At the start of the quarter the Wall Street shysters post earnings expectations. As the quarter progresses, the company whispers the bad news to Wall Street and the earnings expectations are lowered. Then the company beats the lowered earnings expectation by a penny and the Wall Street scum hail it as a great achievement.  The muppets must be sacrificed to sustain the Wall Street bonus pool. Wall Street investment bank geniuses rated JC Penney a buy from $85 per share in 2007 all the way down to $5 a share in 2013. No more needs to be said about Wall Street “analysis”.

It seems even the lowered expectation scam hasn’t worked this time. U.S. retailer profits have missed lowered expectations by the most in 13 years. They generally “beat” expectations by 3% when the game is being played properly. They’ve missed expectations in the 1st quarter by 3.2%, the worst miss since the fourth quarter of 2000. If my memory serves me right, I believe the economy entered recession shortly thereafter. The brilliant Ivy League trained Wall Street MBAs, earning high six digit salaries on Wall Street, predicted a 13% increase in retailer profits for the first quarter. A monkey with a magic 8 ball could do a better job than these Wall Street big swinging dicks.

The highly compensated flunkies who sit in the corner CEO office of the mega-retail chains trotted out the usual drivel about cold and snowy winter weather and looking forward to tremendous success over the remainder of the year. How do these excuse machine CEO’s explain the success of many high end retailers during the first quarter? Doesn’t weather impact stores that cater to the .01%? The continued unrelenting decline in profits of retailers, dependent upon the working class, couldn’t have anything to do with this chart? It seems only the oligarchs have made much progress over the last four decades.

Screen-Shot-2014-03-29-at-9.23.25-PM.png

Retail CEO gurus all think they have a master plan to revive sales. I’ll let you in on a secret. They don’t really have a plan. They have no idea why they experienced tremendous success from 2000 through 2007, and why their businesses have not revived since the 2008 financial collapse. Retail CEOs are not the sharpest tools in the shed. They were born on third base and thought they hit a triple. Now they are stranded there, with no hope of getting home. They should be figuring out how to position themselves for the multi-year contraction in sales, but their egos and hubris will keep them from taking the actions necessary to keep their companies afloat in the next decade. Bankruptcy awaits. The front line workers will be shit canned and the CEO will get a golden parachute. It’s the American way.

The secret to retail success before 2007 was: create or copy a successful concept; get Wall Street financing and go public ASAP; source all your inventory from Far East slave labor factories; hire thousands of minimum wage level workers to process transactions; build hundreds of new stores every year to cover up the fact the existing stores had deteriorating performance; convince millions of gullible dupes to buy cheap Chinese shit they didn’t need with money they didn’t have; and pretend this didn’t solely rely upon cheap easy debt pumped into the veins of American consumers by the Federal Reserve and their Wall Street bank owners. The financial crisis in 2008 revealed everyone was swimming naked, when the tide of easy credit subsided.

The pundits, politicians and delusional retail CEOs continue to await the revival of retail sales as if reality doesn’t exist. The 1 million retail stores, 109,000 shopping centers, and nearly 15 billion square feet of retail space for an aging, increasingly impoverished, and savings poor populace might be a tad too much and will require a slight downsizing – say 3 or 4 billion square feet. Considering the debt fueled frenzy from 2000 through 2008 added 2.7 billion square feet to our suburban sprawl concrete landscape, a divestiture of that foolish investment will be the floor. If you think there are a lot of SPACE AVAILABLE signs dotting the countryside, you ain’t seen nothing yet. The mega-chains have already halted all expansion. That was the first step. The weaker players like Radio Shack, Sears, Family Dollar, Coldwater Creek, Staples, Barnes & Noble, Blockbuster and dozens of others are already closing stores by the hundreds. Thousands more will follow.

This isn’t some doom and gloom prediction based on nothing but my opinion. This is the inevitable result of demographic certainties, unequivocal data, and the consequences of a retailer herd mentality and lemming like behavior of consumers. The open and shut case for further shuttering of 3 to 4 billion square feet of retail is as follows:

  • There is 47 square feet of retail space per person in America. This is 8 times as much as any other country on earth. This is up from 38 square feet in 2005; 30 square feet in 2000; 19 square feet in 1990; and 4 square feet in 1960. If we just revert to 2005 levels, 3 billion square feet would need to go dark. Does that sound outrageous?

  • Annual consumer expenditures by those over 65 years old drop by 40% from their highest spending years from 45 to 54 years old. The number of Americans turning 65 will increase by 10,000 per day for the next 16 years. There were 35 million Americans over 65 in 2000, accounting for 12% of the total population. By 2030 there will be 70 million Americans over 65, accounting for 20% of the total population. Do you think that bodes well for retailers?

  • Half of Americans between the ages of 50 and 64 have no retirement savings. The other half has accumulated $52,000 or less. It seems the debt financed consumer product orgy of the last two decades has left most people nearly penniless. More than 50% of workers aged 25 to 44 report they have less than $10,000 of total savings.

  • The lack of retirement and general savings is reflected in the historically low personal savings rate of a miniscule 3.8%. Before the materialistic frenzy of the last couple decades, rational Americans used to save 10% or more of their personal income. With virtually no savings as they approach their retirement years and an already extremely low savings rate, do retail CEOs really see a spending revival on the horizon?

  • If you thought the savings rate was so low because consumers are flush with cash and so optimistic about their job prospects they are unconcerned about the need to save for a rainy day, you would be wrong. It has been raining for the last 14 years. Real median household income is 7.5% lower today than it was in 2001. Retailers added 2.7 billion square feet of retail space as real household income fell. Sounds rational.

  • This decline in household income may have something to do with the labor participation rate plummeting to the lowest level since 1978. There are 247.4 million working age Americans and only 145.7 million of them employed (19 million part-time; 9 million self-employed; 20 million employed by the government). There are 92 million Americans, who according to the government have willingly left the workforce, up by 13.3 million since 2007 when over 146 million Americans were employed. You’d have to be a brainless twit to believe the unemployment rate is really 6.3% today. Retail sales would be booming if the unemployment rate was really that low.

  • With a 16.5% increase in working age Americans since 2000 and only a 6.5% increase in employed Americans, along with declining real household income, an inquisitive person might wonder how retail sales were able to grow from $3.3 trillion in 2000 to $5.1 trillion in 2013 – a 55% increase. You need to look no further than your friendly Too Big To Trust Wall Street banks for the answer. In the olden days of the 1970s and early 1980s Americans put 10% to 20% down to buy a house and then systematically built up equity by making their monthly payments. The Ivy League financial engineers created “exotic” (toxic) mortgage products requiring no money down, no principal payments, and no proof you could make a payment, in their control fraud scheme to fleece the American sheeple. Their propaganda machine convinced millions more to use their homes as an ATM, because home prices never drop. Just ask Ben Bernanke. Even after the Bernanke/Blackrock fake housing recovery (actual mortgage originations now at 1978 levels) household real estate percent equity is barely above 50%, well below the 70% levels before the Wall Street induced debt debacle. With the housing market about to head south again, the home equity ATM will have an Out of Order sign on it.

  • We hear the endless drivel from disingenuous Keynesian nitwits about government and consumer austerity being the cause of our stagnating economy. My definition of austerity would be an actual reduction in spending and debt accumulation. It seems during this time of austerity total credit market debt has RISEN from $53.5 trillion in 2009 to $59 trillion today. Not exactly austere, as the Federal government adds $2.2 billion PER DAY to the national debt, saddling future generations with the bill for our inability to confront reality. The American consumer has not retrenched, as the CNBC bimbos and bozos would have you believe. Consumer credit reached an all-time high of $3.14 trillion in March, up from $2.52 trillion in 2010. That doesn’t sound too austere to me. Of course, this increase is solely due to Obamanomics and Bernanke’s $3 trillion gift to his Wall Street owners. The doling out of $645 billion to subprime college “students” and subprime auto “buyers” since 2010 accounts for more than 100% of the increase. The losses on these asinine loans will be epic. Credit card debt has actually fallen as people realize it is their last lifeline. They are using credit cards to pay income taxes, real estate taxes, higher energy costs, higher food costs, and the other necessities of life.

The entire engineered “recovery” since 2009 has been nothing but a Federal Reserve/U.S. Treasury conceived, debt manufactured scam. These highly educated lackeys for the establishment have been tasked with keeping the U.S. Titanic afloat until the oligarchs can safely depart on the lifeboats with all the ship’s jewels safely stowed in their pockets. There has been no housing recovery. There has been no jobs recovery. There has been no auto sales recovery. Giving a vehicle to someone with a 580 credit score with a 0% seven year loan is not a sale. It’s a repossession in waiting. The government supplied student loans are going to functional illiterates who are majoring in texting, facebooking and twittering. Do you think these indebted University of Phoenix dropouts living in their parents’ basements are going to spur a housing and retail sales recovery? This Keynesian “solution” was designed to produce the appearance of recovery, convince the masses to resume their debt based consumption, and add more treasure into the vaults of the Wall Street banks.

The master plan has failed miserably in reviving the economy. Savings, capital investment, and debt reduction are the necessary ingredients for a sustained healthy economic system. Debt based personal consumption of cheap foreign produced baubles & gadgets, $1 trillion government deficits to sustain the warfare/welfare state, along with a corrupt political and rigged financial system are the explosive concoction which will blow our economic system sky high. Facts can be ignored. Media propaganda can convince the willfully ignorant to remain so. The Federal Reserve can buy every Treasury bond issued to fund an out of control government. But eventually reality will shatter the delusions of millions as the debt based Ponzi scheme will run out of dupes and collapse in a flaming heap.

The inevitable shuttering of at least 3 billion square feet of retail space is a certainty. The aging demographics of the U.S. population, dire economic situation of both young and old, and sheer lunacy of the retail expansion since 2000, guarantee a future of ghost malls, decaying weed infested empty parking lots, retailer bankruptcies, real estate developer bankruptcies, massive loan losses for the banking industry, and the loss of millions of retail jobs. Since I always look for a silver lining in a black cloud, I predict a bright future for the SPACE AVAILABLE and GOING OUT OF BUSINESS sign making companies.

WHO NEEDS A JOB WHEN YOU HAVE UNCLE SAM?

It seems 24.3% of all black families have no one working. NO ONE.What do they do all day? Are they volunteering? Are they picking up trash in their neighborhoods? Not in West Philly, as the streets are littered with garbage. In West Philly they line up for hours on Thursday mornings to get free food from the city. Then they drive back to their low income housing gated community in their new Chrysler 300.

Only 11.1% of Asian families have no one working. Even Hispanics only have 14.9% of families with no one working.

Based on my observations, the number is at least 50% in West Philly. I’d love to see the figures broken down between the urban Democrat run shitholes and the rest of the country. Or would that be racist?

 

The Real Unemployment Rate: In 20% Of American Families, Everyone Is Unemployed

Submitted by Michael Snyder of The American Dream blog,

According to shocking new numbers that were just released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 20 percent of American families do not have a single person that is working.  So when someone tries to tell you that the unemployment rate in the United States is about 7 percent, you should just laugh.  One-fifth of the families in the entire country do not have a single member with a job.  That is absolutely astonishing.  How can a family survive if nobody is making any money?  Well, the answer to that question is actually quite easy.  There is a reason why government dependence has reached epidemic levels in the United States.  Without enough jobs, tens of millions of additional Americans have been forced to reach out to the government for help.  At this point, if you can believe it, the number of Americans getting money or benefits from the federal government each month exceeds the number of full-time workers in the private sector by more than 60 million.

When I was growing up, it seemed like anyone that was willing to work hard could find a good paying job.  But now that has all changed.  At this point, 20 percent of all the families in the entire country do not have a single member that has a job.  That includes fathers, mothers and children.  The following is how CNSNews.com broke down the numbers…

A family, as defined by the BLS, is a group of two or more people who live together and who are related by birth, adoption or marriage. In 2013, there were 80,445,000 families in the United States and in 16,127,000—or 20 percent–no one had a job.

To be honest, these really are Great Depression-type numbers.  But over the years “unemployment” has been redefined so many times that it doesn’t mean the same thing that it once did.  The government tells us that the official unemployment rate is about 7 percent, but that number is almost meaningless at this point.

A number that I find much more useful is the employment-population ratio.  According to the employment-population ratio, the percentage of working age Americans that actually have a job has been below 59 percent for more than four years in a row…

Employment Population Ratio 2014

That means that more than 41 percent of all working age Americans do not have a job.

When people can’t take care of themselves, it becomes necessary for the government to take care of them.  And what we have seen in recent years is government dependence soar to unprecedented levels.  In fact, welfare spending and entitlement payments now make up 69 percent of the entire federal budget.  For much more on this, please see my previous article entitled “18 Stats That Prove That Government Dependence Has Reached Epidemic Levels“.

And what is even more frightening is that more families are falling out of the middle class every single day.  As a recent CNN article explained, approximately one-third of all U.S. households are living “hand-to-mouth”.  In other words, they are constantly living on the edge of financial disaster…

About one-third of American households live “hand-to-mouth,” meaning that they spend all their paychecks. But what surprised the study authors is that 66% of these families are middle class, with a median income of $41,000. While they don’t have liquid assets, such as savings accounts or mutual fund holdings, they do have homes and retirement accounts, with a median net worth of $41,000.

“We don’t expect them to be living paycheck to paycheck,” said Greg Kaplan, study co-author and assistant professor of economics at Princeton University.

The American Dream is rapidly becoming an American nightmare.

When I was growing up, I lived in a pretty typical middle class neighborhood.  Everyone had a nice home, a couple of cars and could go on vacation during the summer.  I don’t remember ever hearing of anyone using food stamps or going to a food bank.  In fact, I can’t even remember anyone having a parent that was unemployed.  If someone did leave a job, it was usually quite easy to find another one.

But today, the middle class is being ripped to shreds and according to one new report there are 49 million Americans that are dealing with food insecurity in 2014.

How can anyone not see what is happening to us?  America is in the midst of a long-term economic decline, but the mainstream media and most of our politicians seem to think that things are better than ever.  They continue to try to convince us that “business as usual” is the right path to take.

But one-fifth of the families in the entire nation are already totally unemployed.

At what point will we finally admit that what we are doing right now is simply not working?

30 percent of all families unemployed?

40 percent?

50 percent?

If we stay on the road that we are on now, things are going to continue to get worse.  Millions more jobs will be shipped overseas, millions more jobs will be replaced by technology and crippling government regulations will kill millions more jobs.  The middle class will continue to shrink and government dependence will continue to rise.

Most people just want to work hard, put food on the table, pay their mortgages and provide a nice life for their families.

But the percentage of Americans that are successfully able to do that just keeps getting smaller.

Wake up America.

Your middle class is dying.

OBAMA’S JOB HERE IS DONE

When Obama sauntered into office in January of 2009 there were 28 million people on food stamps and 43 million women working full time. Today there are 44 million women working full time and 47 million on food stamps. This is the same president blathering about equal pay for women as if he is their champion. The majority of the 19 million new food stamp recipients are women. Maybe if his economic policies encouraged businesses to expand, women could actually get jobs rather than be forced into the SNAP program. Obama is nothing but a divisive liar with a low IQ and a sociopathic need for glory and praise. He will go down in history as the worst U.S. President.

Hat tip Boston Bob

Food Stamp Recipients and Women Who Work Full-Time

 

In the average month of 2012, according to the Department of Agriculture, there were 46,609,000 people participating in the food stamp program (formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program). That contrasts with the 44,059,000 women who worked full-time, year-round in 2012, according to the Census Bureau’s report on Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States.

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/food-stamp-recipients-outnumber-women-who-work-full-time