Unemployment and Baby Boomers

RUSH: Jerry in Glendale, West Virginia, welcome to the EIB Network. It’s great to have you here.

CALLER: It’s an honor to speak with you, Mr. Limbaugh.

RUSH: Thank you, sir.

CALLER: Greetings from Steeler country.

RUSH: Thank you.

CALLER: I’ve got a question, and I don’t know the answer to this, and I hope you can help me.

RUSH: Yeah?

CALLER: With the numbers out last week of only 36,000 jobs created, the unemployment fell from 9.4 down to 9.0.

RUSH: Right.

CALLER: We got a thing going on in this country where, according to government figures, the Baby Boomers are retiring at an average of 10,000 a day. At a 25-day workweek or work month, that’s a quarter of a million people being put off of work at their own will. Why aren’t these jobs being created? Is that why the unemployment rate’s falling, or is this being hid?

RUSH: Wait a second here. I want to understand your point here. Let’s run the numbers here. You say that Baby Boomers retiring an average of 10,000 a day.

CALLER: That’s according to government figures.

RUSH: Right, well —

CALLER: Ten thousand a day are taking retirement.

RUSH: Right. Doesn’t matter, they’re still checking out.

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: Right? So at a 25-day work month — is that what you’re saying?

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: So you’re saying a quarter of a million people a month are leaving their jobs?

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: You think those are jobs that could be filled?

CALLER: Well, I’m wondering. Don’t get me wrong on this. I’m just curious as to why these figures aren’t in the government’s numbers.

RUSH: Well, I don’t know. I don’t know that they would actually relate to the unemployment numbers. I’m not aware that there’s a specific category for people who retire and how that relates to the overall job market. The unemployment rate is calculated by the number of people looking for work, up against a number that the government says is the total number of jobs available at one time in the country, which has been reduced in the last reporting period by 2.2 million. That may be what you’re talking about.

CALLER: Well, from now on we should be looking at that same amount every month, am I right?

RUSH: So your theory is we should be at full employment by the end of the year because all these Baby Boomers are quitting — with all these people looking for jobs — and their jobs are open?

CALLER: I’ll bet you Mr. Obama’s looking for that.

RUSH: Well, we’ll keep a sharp eye on that. (chuckles) I, frankly, didn’t know the Baby Boomer retirement rate was 10,000 a day?

CALLER: I believe that’s what the government’s saying.

RUSH: I’m surprised there are 10,000 Baby Boomers actually working, but… (laughing)

CALLER: (laughing)

RUSH: I don’t know. It’s an interesting perspective, Jerry, and we’ll look into this. Now, that’s a whole new wrinkle on this that I hadn’t even calculated. But if it’s true, and if they are jobs that could be filled, people are simply quitting… You’d have to say, ‘Okay, why are they retiring?’ Maybe not every job is fillable. Maybe the jobs are being eliminated and that’s why they’re retiring, who knows? Attrition. There’s a lot of variables in this, too. But I wouldn’t look for a rapid rise in the employment rate because of this. (interruption) Well, no. (interruption) No, no. No government official… (interruption) Well, don’t tell me Bernanke said this or Bernanke said that. I’m not above being sandbagged by anybody.

You got Bernanke going out there and everybody in the regime is saying, ‘We’re not gonna get back to employment where we were, 2014, 2015. Well, maybe 2016.’ Well, what happens if there’s huge retirement between now and 2012? Makes Obama look even better, way ahead of expectations on employment numbers. (interruption) What could happen to cause the spike is the numbers we’re getting now aren’t true. Who knows? We’re dealing with manipulators of information. We’re dealing with people that totally control the bureaucracy. We’re dealing with people whose primary objective is getting this regime reelected. So, I don’t know. That’s just another wrinkle into this that I hadn’t really even considered only because I, ladies and gentlemen, was not aware that the Baby Boom retirement rate was anywhere near that high.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I took advantage of the time during the break to look up this whole business of Baby Boomer unemployment. And, lo and behold, there’s a story about it a couple days ago, February 7th, from Bloomberg: ‘Aging Baby Boomers Reduce Jobless Rate — Unemployment in the U.S. may fall faster than expected as Baby Boomers enter retirement, reducing the portion of people in the workforce, according to Drew Matus, senior U.S. economist at UBS Securities LLC.

Labor force participation has fallen to the lowest level since 1984, largely because older people are leaving the worker ranks. If participation remains this low, employers need to create fewer jobs to reduce the unemployment rate, currently at 9 percent. ‘There’s a cyclical downturn in the labor force participation rate, but there’s also a structural one related to the Baby Boomers that a lot of Wall Street economists are missing,’ Matus said. ‘When you add the two up, you’re seeing this very dramatic drop in the participation rate. It might not bounce this time around.”

So the unemployment rate could come down as we were just speculating, Snerdley, redounding positively to Obama simply because the number of jobs serviceable is falling as well. No new jobs being created, they’re just fewer jobs, period. So when the number of jobs in the universe is reduced or declines, then of course the percentage of people unemployed will also decline. Ergo the employment number will appear to be going up. Ergo a picture of a booming economy will thus present itself. (interruption) Right, if we all quit our jobs, Obama’s reelected tomorrow. If we all just quit look at what happens to the unemployment rate. It’ll just shrink. That’s the theory. Now, obviously this is kind of concocted, but you can see where this is headed. You can see where certain analysts want this to go, and this is Bloomberg State-Controlled Media. Very simple to see out there. So I’m glad this guy called. I don’t know how I missed this in the first place. Well, I know how I missed it. I was still trying to figure out what was happening on the field at the Super Bowl. That’s why I missed it, but better late than never. Thanks to Jerry, that was a good catch.