Newest Fox News piece: "Jobs numbers reflect another bleak month for American workers"

My newest Fox News piece starts this way:

Friday’s new job numbers show something workers already knew: they face a very bleak job market. Unfortunately, Americans have been facing tough times for many years now. According to the latest Gallup poll, Obama’s job approval rating on the economy stands atjust 35 percent. 

After over four years, this continues to be, by far, the worst recovery on record. And that goes for income as well as for job growth. 

Too often the media’s gauge of whether the economy is improving rests solely on the number of jobs created or the unemployment rate. And indeed, 169,000 jobs were added in August, but what is rarely mentioned is that at the same time 204,000 more working age people were added to the workforce. 

True, the unemployment rate has also fallen from its peak of 10 percent down to 7.3 percent. But that doesn't mean many new jobs. . . . .

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Continued weak job growth during Obama's recovery

Updated with today's new jobs numbers

Click on figure to make it larger.

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Numbers continue to be Stunning. 96 percent of net jobs added this year have been part-time jobs

Updating the job numbers with the new numbers that are out today continues to show that virtually all the jobs created this year have been part time jobs.

So far this year there have been 848,000 new jobs.  Of those, 813,000 are part time jobs (for both economic reasons and noneconomic reasons).   As can be seen in the above screen shots from the BLS.gov, the total part-time jobs changed from 26.437 million in January to 27.250 million in August.  To put it differently, an incredible 96% of the jobs added this year were part-time jobs.  (It isn't clear to me why we see the differences in part time for economic and noneconomic reasons.)  However, these numbers raise a question about whether the employer mandate that has already been forcing some companies to move to part-time workers so as to avoid government imposed penalties is having a significant impact.  Might the relationship between the recent part time jobs and overall job growth be stronger as we were getting closer to what people thought would be the implementation of Obamacare's employer mandate?  Might we now see a divergence with the very recent one year delay in the employer mandate?  Or was the 2012 election the defining event for firms to begin to study the impact more?  Data from the BLS.gov.

UPDATE 4: Using the sum of the part-time economic and noneconomic reasons.  The relationship that appears to exist this year seems interesting.

Using the numbers from Table A6

UPDATE: The BLS.gov also provides a sum of these two numbers (available here) where they get a total of 532,000 (thanks to the "Department of Numbers" for pointing this out and to Nick for emailing me about their post).  That implies that 63% of jobs added this year were part-time jobs, which is still an amazingly high number.  Department Numbers uses this number Total Part Time Workers (LNS12600000) rather than the sum of the Part-Time for Economic Reasons (LNS12032194) and Usually Work Part Time Noneconomic Reasons (LNS12005977).  At least part of what is going on has to do with the seasonal adjustment of the components produces a different result than seasonally adjusting the total.  I can't see any reason that looking at the total makes more sense than looking at the sum of the two components.  Indeed, a strong case could be made that it is better to seasonally adjust the components and not just the total.  In any case, whether it is 63% or 96% or someplace in between, it is still a large portion of the increase in jobs that is due to part time employment.

Steve Bronars, a friend and a labor economist, argued that the most useful comparison might be to look at only Usually Work Part Time Noneconomic Reasons (LNS12005977).  In that case, there was an increase in part-time workers of 875,000, but only an increase in jobs of 848,000.  Thus, the increase in part-time jobs equals 103% of the increase in jobs from January to August.

UPDATE 2: Ben at the Department of Numbers now says that the percentage using Table A-6 is 59%, not 63%, but that is using a different time period.  It is easy to verify the 63% using the "total part-time" number for the change from the beginning of the year (January through August) (63% = 532,000/848,000).  532,000 = 27,999-27,467.  848,000= 144,170-143,322.  It seems pretty clear to me that the number to compare the 96% to is 63%, not 59%.

UPDATE 3:  Tyler Cowan writes: "As Ben Engebreth points out, based on these BLS charts, the correct number seems to be 59% not 96%, though the higher estimate does still seem to hold in Lott’s (more cumbersome and less transparent) sources."  But he provides no explanation for why this should be correct nor does it appear that he has checked the issues discussed in this post.

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Maryland gun applications soar in advance of new gun control law

Of course, gun sales will fall off the cliff as soon as the new law goes into effect and that is exactly what those who pushed the law with all its fees want.  From Fox News:

. . .The Washington Times reported that state police received 85,141 gun-purchase applications this year through Aug. 31. That’s compared with 70,099 applications in all of 2012 and 46,339 applications in 2011. Maryland State Police have increased staffing to cope.
In August 2012, 38 employees were assigned to conduct background checks, but this year 73 employees are doing that work, according to Sgt. Marc Black. Black said 60 temporary staffers are also rotating hours.
“We’re looking at unprecedented numbers,” Maryland State Police Sgt. Marc Black told the newspaper. “We saw this coming.”
So far, officials have processed 46,942 of this year’s applications.
Meanwhile gun dealers say they have been overwhelmed ahead of the law’s Oct. 1 effective date.
“Because of the gun ban, business has been booming,” said Al Koch, store manager at Bart’s Sports World, a Glen Burnie-based gun shop. “It’s been busy like crazy with people making last-minute decisions.” . . . 

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64-year-old disabled woman uses here permitted concealed handgun, with some help from her dog, to stop attacker

The attacker apparently ran away after a shot was fired.  Here is a case from Cincinnati, Ohio:

A disabled 64-year-old woman, who says she just got her license to carry a concealed weapon in June to protect herself, repeatedly fired her gun at an intruder during an attempted home invasion robbery overnight, Middletown police said.   

No one was hurt, and the intruder, a 21-year-old woman is under arrest and facing several charges including aggravated burglary and drug abuse, police said. . . . 

Fletcher told them an intruder came into her home while she was sleeping.  

Her dog, a white Bichon Frise named Benji, woke her, so she scrambled in the dark for the 9 mm Glock handgun she bought in February. She keeps it in the nightstand next to her bed.   

Fletcher, who has had a stroke and has heart problems and diabetes, said she confronted the intruder with her gun as the woman came into her bedroom.   

The woman kept advancing and attacked her, so Fletcher squeezed off a round in self-defense. . . . 

No one was hit. The intruder ran into the back of the house, where she threw an ironing board at Fletcher.   

“She was very powerful. She was high. She was wild. I didn’t want to shoot her, but I didn’t want to get hurt,” Fletcher said. “I told her to stop, but she kept coming at me.” . . .

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Hurting the little guy: Obama makes it easier for waitresses' tips to get stiffed by patrons

Many restaurants automatically add tips to the tab for large parties.  There are obvious reasons for this.

1) When there is a large amount of money at stake patrons might be more likely to skip out on payment.
2) When you have a large party there is a potential problem of free-riding.  Suppose that you have a party of eight.  Each patron hopes that if the other seven patrons pay a tip, they might hope that them not paying their tip wouldn't be noticed if everyone else paid theirs.

From the WSJ:

. . . Starting in January, the Internal Revenue Service will begin classifying those automatic gratuities as service charges—which it treats as regular wages, subject to payroll tax withholding—instead of tips, which restaurants leave up to the employees to report as income. 

The change would mean more paperwork and added costs for the restaurants—and a potential financial hit for waiters and waitresses who live on their tips but don't always report them fully. 

Darden Restaurants Inc., owner of Olive Garden, LongHorn Steakhouse and Red Lobster, has long included automatic 18% tips on the bill for parties of eight or more at its more than 2,100 restaurants, but is experimenting with eliminating them because of the IRS ruling, said a spokesman. . . .

Good thing that Obama is going after those tax cheating wealthy waitresses and waiters!

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Some evidence that Obama really doesn't want to win the vote on Syria

Obama's political arm, Organizing for America, formerly Obama for America, is so far sitting out the push on Syria.  As anyone who subscribes to their emails knows, when the issue is guns or something else OFA deluges people with emails pushing issues.  But nothing so far on Syria.  Could it be that they don't really want to win the vote?  From Politico:

Barack Obama’s supporters built a political organization to pressure Congress to build public support for him. Yet on one of his biggest efforts since Organizing for Action re-launched early this year — the push to convince Congress to adopt a use-of-force authorization against Syria — the group has so far sat on the sidelines. 

OFA’s silence has been palpable. It didn’t send one of its ubiquitous emails to supporters and volunteers, nor did it signal to top donors how it might help press Obama’s case on Syria — or even whether it would participate in the president’s push at all. 

It’s been a marked departure from how OFA handled Obama’s policy pushes on the environment, gun control, the economy and immigration, all of which came with cross-platform support. And it leaves dormant Obama’s single biggest lobbying army, the group formed with the express purpose of pressuring Congress to pass Obama’s agenda, at a time when House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has said it will be up to the president to whip votes in support of a Syrian attack. . . .

If Obama doesn't really want to win this issue, the question is: why?   Is it because he wants get the issue off his back by blaming Republicans who look likely to vote against authorizing war?  The latest Whip count in the House as of 11 AM from the left wing ThinkProgress is 49 votes "yes" and 200 votes "no."

UPDATE: As of 7 PM tonight, adding in leaners, the nays had picked up 12 votes and the yeas had lost 6.

The Hill newspaper is less certain about these votes.  They also put this out at 7 PM.

According to The Hill’s count, 75 Republicans are opposed to or leaning against the measure. Without Grimm, only 10 Republicans have vocalized support for it. . . .

UPDATE2:  From Politico:

. . . Several Republican leadership aides, who are counting votes but not encouraging a position, say that there are roughly one to two dozen “yes” votes in favor of military action at this time. The stunningly low number is expected to grow a bit. 

But senior aides say they expect, at most, between 50 and 60 Republicans to vote with Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), who support the president’s plan to bomb Syria to stop Bashar Assad from using chemical weapons on his people. That would amount to less than one-third of the House Republican Conference. 

That would mean the vast majority of the 200 House Democrats will need to vote with Obama for the resolution to pass. But Democrats privately say that Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) can only round up between 115 and 130 “yes” votes. . . . 

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