An estimated 1.8 million jobs were created in 2014 in the US due to unemployment benefit cuts

[dismal]

So if I want Yasmine Bleeth to rub oil on me for $20 per hour that creates "a job"?

Oh for fuck's sake, weren't you the one complaining about semantic arguments a moment ago? The job is the work, and to justify the name, it has to be at least somewhat reasonable. I merely distinguish the two to take into account the idea that there might be 'job vacancies,' where no one is available to do the job that is available. In your system, there's no 'job' unless there's someone to do the job, therefore, there can be no such thing as a job vacancy, which is manifestly absurd. Therefore, your definition is faulty, absurd, and probably deceptive.

Now be serious or fuck off.

Yeah, it's not really a just semantic nitpick to suggest that a job requires both someone willing to pay someone something to do something and another party willing to accept what that person is willing to pay.

If you are reduced to arguing otherwise it just may be that you are the unserious one.

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So imo the "job" is created when the employer decides they need someone additional on their payroll. The job is filled when the employer hires someone for that job.

So when I decide I an willing to hire Yasmine Bleeth to rub oil on me for $20 per hour a job is created?

 

[ksen]

90s Yasmine Bleeth or 2015 Yasmine Bleeth?

 

[dismal]

90s Yasmine Bleeth or 2015 Yasmine Bleeth?

May as well go for 90s Yasmine Bleeth but it's not clear to me it matters for the purposes of this discussion.

 

[Sarpedon]

Ah, now its too trivial to discuss. But not when you brought it up.

 

[coloradoatheist]

So at the end of each month, or whenever they release the jobs report? Do they say, "200K jobs created this month" it is really saying, "100K jobs filled and 100K job postings"?

 

[dismal]

Ah, now its too trivial to discuss. But not when you brought it up.

There's trivial and there's outright stupid.

Arguing a job is created when someone decides they want to hire someone to do something at some price is outright stupid.

BTW, I just decided I want to hire everyone in China to cut my lawn for $0.000001.

Bam, that created like a billion jobs. Take that Obama.

 

[arkirk]

How are you defining "job created"? Is seeking a person to fill a position a "job created" at the time the seeking begins? Does one just need to post a Craigslist ad to create a job regardless of whether it gets filled or not?

If there's no position already existing there's nothing to fill. Seems pretty basic to me. So imo the "job" is created when the employer decides they need someone additional on their payroll. The job is filled when the employer hires someone for that job.

Back to the claim about UE benefits, how, specifically, does stopping UE benefits create a new job? The only thing I can think it does is that it puts pressure on the former recipient to take a job that pays less than what he was willing to take before. IOW, stopping UE benefits givers employers even more bargaining power over potential employees. After all, the business won't starve if person X isn't hired. But person X may very well starve if he doesn't get hired.

I'm not sure how that's two equal parties negotiating over labor prices but your side seems to like it that way.

Come on, Ksen: Get with the program! When you cut UE benefits you create desperation to get a job...any job eventually...just to keep eating and keep your kids eating. Cutting UE makes the perfect situation for someone looking to get a "job" done at the LOWEST POSSIBLE PRICE. You tie this to taking away the minimum wage and you have a perfect EMPLOYER'S ECONOMY. Listen to the wisdom of Ayn Rand and stop coddling the fucking slaves!

 

[coloradoatheist]

If there's no position already existing there's nothing to fill. Seems pretty basic to me. So imo the "job" is created when the employer decides they need someone additional on their payroll. The job is filled when the employer hires someone for that job.

Back to the claim about UE benefits, how, specifically, does stopping UE benefits create a new job? The only thing I can think it does is that it puts pressure on the former recipient to take a job that pays less than what he was willing to take before. IOW, stopping UE benefits givers employers even more bargaining power over potential employees. After all, the business won't starve if person X isn't hired. But person X may very well starve if he doesn't get hired.

I'm not sure how that's two equal parties negotiating over labor prices but your side seems to like it that way.

Come on, Ksen: Get with the program! When you cut UE benefits you create desperation to get a job...any job eventually...just to keep eating and keep your kids eating. Cutting UE makes the perfect situation for someone looking to get a "job" done at the LOWEST POSSIBLE PRICE. You tie this to taking away the minimum wage and you have a perfect EMPLOYER'S ECONOMY. Listen to the wisdom of Ayn Rand and stop coddling the fucking slaves!

Yes and no, because the intensity of a job search would be a U function. For a period of time after getting let go people look for a job and then it slips and then it picks back up as the period of benefits runs out. So to find the exact tradeoffs what they would need to do is compare what the level of job paid compared to what the government was paying them.

 

[Sarpedon]

Within Reason, dismal. Always within reason.

Your position is equally stupid, in that it assumes that there is no such thing as a labor shortage. It is possible for a position to exist, offering REASONABLE wages, and not get filled.

Now, can we have a REASONABLE objection or a counter definition without resorting to childish make-believe?

 

[laughing dog]

Ah, now its too trivial to discuss. But not when you brought it up.

There's trivial and there's outright stupid.

Arguing a job is created when someone decides they want to hire someone to do something at some price is outright stupid.

BTW, I just decided I want to hire everyone in China to cut my lawn for $0.000001.

Bam, that created like a billion jobs. Take that Obama.

Until you can explain how the concept and measurement of "job vacancy" fits your position, your argument is literally counterfactual.

 

[coloradoatheist]

Within Reason, dismal. Always within reason.

Your position is equally stupid, in that it assumes that there is no such thing as a labor shortage. It is possible for a position to exist, offering REASONABLE wages, and not get filled.

Now, can we have a REASONABLE objection or a counter definition without resorting to childish make-believe?

And I asked, when they release the report that that says 200K jobs were created in Dec, what are they referring to?

 

[Sarpedon]

That's a reasonable objection, in that case, they probably are referring to positions filled, and not counting positions vacant, as that is not the problem these days. However, that doesn't mean that there aren't vacant jobs. I keep hearing they have a major shortage in North Dakota, for example.

 

[dismal]

Within Reason, dismal. Always within reason.

Your position is equally stupid, in that it assumes that there is no such thing as a labor shortage. It is possible for a position to exist, offering REASONABLE wages, and not get filled.

Now, can we have a REASONABLE objection or a counter definition without resorting to childish make-believe?

Right. There is no such thing as a "labor shortage".

There is just people not being willing to pay enough to clear the market.

 

[ronburgundy]

In standard economic discourse, a job doesn't exist until someone is actually performing it. Prior to that it is merely a potential job. When a person quits or is fired, a job is lost and no longer exists. If the employer desires to replace that person, then there is a job opening, which is the void that exists when there is no actual job (no one performing it) but there is an employer willing to pay someone to perform it.

All those nitpicking over the phrase "job creation" are equating the concept of job opening or potential job with an actual job, which is the like as equating a mothers desire for a child with an actual child. Until there is a father who combines his genes to create an actual child, there is no child. Until there is a person who is actually performing the job desired by the employer there is no job. In everyday language were are fast and loose with our words, including "job". We say "Do you have a job?" to mean two completely different things: 1) are you employed; 2) can you employ me? This is why everyday definitions are typically useless for any rational scientific analysis of an issue, which require specific operationally defined (i.e., directly observable) definition of all concepts. The OP study used the definition of "job creation" that is standard in formal economic research, which is merely an increase in the number of people employed (whether they are employed in a job whose opening was listed for the last 5 years or just yesterday with the start of a brand new industry is irrelevant to that definition).

Critics of the OP are essentially arguing for a definition that is the number of new and previously non-available theoretical slots in which people are or could be employed if there enough people willing to perform the job. Using the latter definition, the only way to show that X "created jobs" would be to show that an person added to the employment roles is performing a job that no one wanted them to perform before but now do. That is not the definition in economics because it is nearly impossible to measure in any scientifically reliable and valid way.

The root of this nitpicking about "job creation" seems to be a sensible but still emotional reaction to the notion that many of these newly employed people are far worse off than they were, thus not wanting to confer upon the effects the positivity that we subjectivity and non-scientifically impose upon the notion of "job creation". These former unemployed folks are taking jobs they could have taken before but didn't because they are jobs that cannot meet basic needs and are only better than an income of zero with no public assistance. This is clearly true. The study authors should have taken a measure of the income from jobs at each time point, and they would have shown that after adjusting for economic growth not tied to the policy change, the avg income declined as the number of jobs increased due mostly to an increase in the number of jobs at the lowest end. This would support the claim that the added jobs were very low pay.
This is a valid point about the limits of the study, quibbling over the phrase "jobs created" is not.

 

[arkirk]

Something is being missed here. With all this talk about clearing the market and jobs created and openings created...etc. That is any connection of what we as a people spend our time doing or trying to accomplish. There actually is little physical significance to the notion of "job" if it is treated as an undifferentiated activity. Let us look at some examples to make this clear. A worker on the Keystone Pipeline would be in the physical sense a negative economic impact in the longer scheme of things, regardless of how much of his income recirculated in the economy. The pipeline would be pumping poison out onto the surface of the earth and into our air. His actual pay for the job would be insignificant relative to his completion of his job.

Some "jobs" should not even exist as they are environmental negatives and reduce the overall potential of our race to survive on the planet. Same for builders of nuclear weapons, and those paid to man them. We need a way to establish beneficial mutualities, between people and then the "job" makes human life better over all. This winner/loser system needs to be scrapped. There is such a thing as social and environmental responsibility. Lacking these, all the charts and arrows amount to so much smoke and mirrors...and no real benefit to our race.

Weekly totals of undifferentiated "work done" or "wages paid" or notes redeemed or issued never pays sufficient attention to the cumulative effects of an economy. We see the profits pile up in the war industries. At the same time there are uncounted dead bodies piling up on the other side of the globe and we will not recognize this in our economy till the stench gets all the way back home. The war industries parley their winnings and are off on another sales campaign...but meantime the bodies pile deeper and that "industry" is an overall negative in humanistic terms...no matter how many million dollar homes it buys for its workers.

 

[coloradoatheist]

Something is being missed here. With all this talk about clearing the market and jobs created and openings created...etc. That is any connection of what we as a people spend our time doing or trying to accomplish. There actually is little physical significance to the notion of "job" if it is treated as an undifferentiated activity. Let us look at some examples to make this clear. A worker on the Keystone Pipeline would be in the physical sense a negative economic impact in the longer scheme of things, regardless of how much of his income recirculated in the economy. The pipeline would be pumping poison out onto the surface of the earth and into our air. His actual pay for the job would be insignificant relative to his completion of his job.

Some "jobs" should not even exist as they are environmental negatives and reduce the overall potential of our race to survive on the planet. Same for builders of nuclear weapons, and those paid to man them. We need a way to establish beneficial mutualities, between people and then the "job" makes human life better over all. This winner/loser system needs to be scrapped. There is such a thing as social and environmental responsibility. Lacking these, all the charts and arrows amount to so much smoke and mirrors...and no real benefit to our race.

Which is fair. However there are reports that long term unemplyment leads to higher mental health issues and physical issues. So should it be a goal to government to try and alleviate that?

 

[arkirk]

Something is being missed here. With all this talk about clearing the market and jobs created and openings created...etc. That is any connection of what we as a people spend our time doing or trying to accomplish. There actually is little physical significance to the notion of "job" if it is treated as an undifferentiated activity. Let us look at some examples to make this clear. A worker on the Keystone Pipeline would be in the physical sense a negative economic impact in the longer scheme of things, regardless of how much of his income recirculated in the economy. The pipeline would be pumping poison out onto the surface of the earth and into our air. His actual pay for the job would be insignificant relative to his completion of his job.

Some "jobs" should not even exist as they are environmental negatives and reduce the overall potential of our race to survive on the planet. Same for builders of nuclear weapons, and those paid to man them. We need a way to establish beneficial mutualities, between people and then the "job" makes human life better over all. This winner/loser system needs to be scrapped. There is such a thing as social and environmental responsibility. Lacking these, all the charts and arrows amount to so much smoke and mirrors...and no real benefit to our race.

Which is fair. However there are reports that long term unemplyment leads to higher mental health issues and physical issues. So should it be a goal to government to try and alleviate that?

Of course...with employment that improves conditions...social and environmental. There is more than enough work to be done. We have chosen to put off starting for just a few more quarters of economic prosperity for the rich. Our economy is racing toward a dead end. It is unforgivable that we carry on as if there is nothing the matter with our economic system...and it is not up to us to forgive. It is up to nature and she has not shown much of a tendency to forgive our mistakes. So that leaves it up to us to NOT KEEP MAKING THEM.

 

[laughing dog]

In standard economic discourse, a job doesn't exist until someone is actually performing it. Prior to that it is merely a potential job. When a person quits or is fired, a job is lost and no longer exists. If the employer desires to replace that person, then there is a job opening, which is the void that exists when there is no actual job (no one performing it) but there is an employer willing to pay someone to perform it....

You are simply wrong. Using your reasoning, there is no such thing as applying for a job or a job vacancy or a job opening.

Critics of the OP are essentially arguing for a definition that is the number of new and previously non-available theoretical slots in which people are or could be employed if there enough people willing to perform the job. Using the latter definition, the only way to show that X "created jobs" would be to show that an person added to the employment roles is performing a job that no one wanted them to perform before but now do. That is not the definition in economics because it is nearly impossible to measure in any scientifically reliable and valid way.

Let me get this straight. You can see that paper does not even bother to attempt to quantify the jobs created yet you are criticizing the critics for pointing that out.

The root of this nitpicking about "job creation" seems to be a sensible but still emotional reaction to the notion that many of these newly employed people are far worse off than they were, thus not wanting to confer upon the effects the positivity that we subjectivity and non-scientifically impose upon the notion of "job creation". ...

I pointed it out first and that have nothing whatsoever to my criticism. Whether or not these people who were induced back into a paying job are better off than before is a logically separate issue from the claim from the paper. In fact, the authors of the paper make no claim whatseover about the quality of the jobs, because that was not part of the goals of the study.

It is a honest and reliable description of the study to say that it shows that reductions in the duration of unemployment benefits induce unemployed people and people who have left the workforce to accept jobs. It is honest and accurate to say the findings indicate that the recent reduction in the duration caused 1.8 million more people to accept jobs. It is not accurate to say that the reduction caused 1.8 million jobs to be created and filled, because the study does not control for any of the other factors which may have caused firms to create more jobs than before.

The "nitpicking" is important because there are plenty of idealogues and morons who might use this study to justify reducing the duration of unemployment benefits even further in the name of job creation.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The summary of the paper is inaccurate. There is nothing in their analysis that suggests that reduction in the duration of unemployment increases the number of available jobs. Their paper addresses employment of vacant jobs, not job creation.

I guess "jobs created" sounds better than 'made to take existing dead-end jobs in which they're no better off than on welfare, and probably still need it.'

Yup, and it says nothing about whether the same logic applies to everyone.

Some people can successfully masquerade as low-skill and get those dead-end jobs. Older people with nothing but high skill jobs on their resume generally can't. Someone who has worked a desk for the last 20 years isn't going to get hired for a brawn job, nor are they likely to be able to an acceptable job if hired. They will fare better at non-brawn jobs but they're still not going to be hired if the companies have better prospects and they will.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

It's the definition from the Cambridge Dictionary

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/job-creation

job creation: the process of providing new jobs

new: recently created or having started to exist recently

If a job goes away in 2007 and returns in 2009 it's going to be considered a new job in 2009.

While I am not working for the same employer I had back then I'm doing basically the same thing for pretty much the same people and very soon now in exactly the same location. Top management is different but it's a small outfit that has been growing into the vacuum left by the failure of my former employer and the partial recovery of the market. These are "new" jobs, though, even though a big-picture analysis shows that they are replacements of the old positions.