Yesterday, I wrote about the idiocy of the cheerleaders who keep making speeches about how wonderful everything is in the economy so they’re not going to do anything different. Then today, ADP released their Jobs Report on private sector job creation for July 2010.

Private-sector employers added jobs for the sixth month in a row in July, according to a report by payroll processing firm Automatic Data Processing (ADP). ADP said private-sector employers added 42,000 jobs to their payrolls during the month, following an upwardly revised 19,000 increase in June.

Forty-two thousand jobs sounds good right?. Well, when you consider the economy needs to add 100K to 150K jobs each month just to absorb all the new folks coming in, no it doesn’t sound all that good.

Then you combine this with a second report out early today (from the same CNN story linked above)

In a separate report, planned job cuts rose for a third straight month in July, fueled by continued weakness in the government and non-profit sector, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. Employers announced plans to eliminate about 42,000 jobs last month, Challenger said. That was up 6% from June, when job cuts rose to 39,000.

The Challenger, Gray report does not surprise me all that much. The weekly report of new jobless claims for last week showed 457K new jobless claims (with concurrent puffery about how it was progress since the number of new claims had dropped all of 11K from the previous week)

Initial claims for state unemployment aid dropped 11,000 to 457,000, the Labor Department said on Thursday.

Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast claims slipping to 459,000 from the previously reported 464,000 the prior week, which was revised slightly up to 468,000 in Thursday’s report.

The four-week average of new jobless claims, seen as a better measure of underlying labor market trends, fell 4,500 to 452,500.

I just do not see how it is considered a "positive" when the weekly new jobless claims for each week stays above 450K. Of course, I obviously know nothing other than there are roughly 15 million unemployed people currently looking for work as well as another 10 million or so underemployed, working in part time minimum wage jobs.

Also today was a NY Times The Caucus blog post on how the Obama administration is using Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner as the point person on economic issues. The same Tim Geithner who authored this ludicrous opinion piece in yesterday’s NY Times. Today, Geithner is giving a speech where he is supposed to attack Republicans for wanting to extend the Bush tax cuts.

The speech is to be given at a bipartisan event whose hosts are the Center for American Progress, a Democratic research and advocacy organization, and the American Action Forum, a Republican-oriented group recently formed to emulate the Center’s success. Mr. Geithner also will have a discussion with the Center’s president, John Podesta, formerly a chief of staff in the Clinton White House, and with Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum, who formerly was an adviser to Senator John McCain’s presidential campaigns and a director of the Congressional Budget Office.

Of course, Geithner won’t commit the administration to a veto of an extension of these tax cuts. And we’ve seen this dance before haven’t we? The administration makes noises of being for or against something (Public Option in the health care dance?) yet won’t promise a veto.

In a little good news/bad news though are two other stories from the NY Times. From today’s edition, is a story about businesses and governments offering pay cuts rather than job furloughs. That’s actually the good news story! Although the second story might be seen as good news for some as well. A story already up on the Times web site for publication in tomorrow’s edition is probably more bad news (though it does offer a laugh or two.) It seems that some law firms and businesses are outsourcing parts of their legal work to India:

India’s legal outsourcing industry has grown in recent years from an experimental endeavor to a small but mainstream part of the global business of law. Cash-conscious Wall Street banks, mining giants, insurance firms and industrial conglomerates are hiring lawyers in India for document review, due diligence, contract management and more.

So, just what jobs are left that MUST be done in the US?

And because I can:

Cross Posted from Just A Small Town Country Boy

Well, the Weekly Report of New Unemployment claims is out and it looks like there has been a drop for the second week in a row. Of course, when the new claims are still over 450K for the week, that isn’t all that good since the four week average is still at 459K.

Surprisingly enough, the problems of folks in similar straits as myself, that is, long term un/underemployed is beginning to get a little visibility. Even when the TradMed would apparently prefer we pay more attention to shiny object stories like the separation of Al and Tipper Gore or the hunt for Joran Van Der Sloot.

At the moment, I think that the BP Oil Disaster and the Gaza Flotilla attack have overwhelmed even the TradMed’s abilities to distract folks.

With all of the critical news stories happening, it is still a bit of a surprise that TradMed folks are actually reporting on the long term un/underemployeds. At the MSNBC web site, Allison Linn has had articles yesterday and today on the long term un/underemployed. Yesterday she covered the "99ers" (those who have exhausted 99 weeks of Unemployment Compensation.) For those who are mathematically impaired, a year is 52 weeks so 99 weeks of Unemployment payments is five weeks short of two years. And these folks have exhausted that level of benefits. (For the record, I collected 26 weeks of unemployment in 2004 into early 2005). Today Ms Linn covers "older workers," that is, those of us who have worked most of our adult life, who bought in to the myths that by working hard we could earn a living wage and be treated with respect only to discover that instead of being appreciated for our knowledge and experience, we are actually too expensive to keep around.

Digby has also been covering the long term jobless story with this from Tuesday and this from Wednesday on the topic.

A small flicker of good news from this Reuters via MSNBC article on job increases in the "private sector."

The folks that are apparently least likely to be paying attention to our problems though are our elected "representatives." The House of Representatives passed an extension of Unemployment Benefits before leaving for their Memorial Day recess but the Senate left without doing anything so there are folks who will once again run out of benefits before the Senate can get around to doing something. Of course, it’s not just the older folks who are disrespected by elected "representatives" since Congress has also failed to pass a Summer Youth Jobs Bill.

I almost want to propose that Congress not be allowed to go into a recess unless the official Unemployment Rate is at 5% or less and the Underemployment Rate is less than 10% (roughly half of what each are today). But rather than allowing them to hide in Washington and away from the voters, I think a better deal would be that sitting members of Congress not be allowed to hold any type of fund raising activities or campaign activities until the jobs have returned. This way, they can’t beg for money and try to hold onto their jobs until the rest of us out here have jobs. Of course, my proposal has absolutely no chance of happening as people in my situation don’t have the money to make a difference so the corporations can continue to buy their pet politicians.

And because I can:

Cross posted from A Small Town Country Boy