Talk About A Snow Job
Mar 2, 2010 Political
Presidential adviser Larry Summers is saying that we need to look past the next set of job numbers because unemployment will be affected by the blizzards we had in February. He said the construction industry would be hit particularly hard. Right.
It seems to me that the snowstorms would not cause unemployment. It just does not sound correct that the number of jobless would go up. Workers might have been told to stay home (like they did all week in DC) but I can’t imagine that bosses said “Well, blizzard, you are all laid off. No, it is more likely that they stayed home without pay or were allowed to use vacation time to get a paycheck.
This is a snow job and it is designed to soften the blow if the jobs numbers are worse than expected. And keep in mind, with this administration everything is not what they expected. Every bit of news is reported as [some statistic] not what expected. Jobless claims not what expected, GDP rises more than expected. They are always caught off guard.
In any event, if the numbers are bad the snow will be blamed and if they turn out to be better Summers will claim they are actually pretty good because people lost jobs because of the blizzards.
So here is the deal. I want Larry Summers to tell us all right now that we need to dismiss the increases in jobs that will happen starting now and working through at least March and April.
During this time the government will be bringing on several hundred thousand people to annoy those of us who do not completely fill out the Census form. So there will be a bunch of people who get paid to come to our houses and ask us the questions we refused to answer in the first place.
It will be a total waste of money to send a census worker here so why waste the money?
Anyway, these jobs will be temporary and provide a boost and I want Summers to let us know now that we will need to look past them.
Want to bet he never mentions it and they take credit for any bump?
What a snow job. The best thing the blizzards did was keep politicians out of DC. We were safer for the entire time.
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Tags: jobless, larry summers, snow job, unemployment