US economy adds 263,000 jobs in November, better than expected as hiring remains solid

[Bkk Brian]

3 minutes ago, EVENKEEL said:

U.S. refining capacity has fallen by 5.4%, or 1.03 million bpd to 17.9 million bpd since it peaked in 2019 at 18.98 million bpd. Capacity in 2021 dropped 4.5% to 18.13 million bpd.

 

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-oil-refining-capacity-drops-2021-2d-straight-year-eia-2022-06-21/

JUNE 29, 2022

U.S. Oil Refinery Utilization at Near-Peak Levels

https://lipperalpha.refinitiv.com/2022/06/u-s-oil-refinery-utilization-at-near-peak-levels/

[placeholder]

5 hours ago, EVENKEEL said:

No, you told me to move to Saudi Arabia if I don't like it...........deflection

 

We the USA was so better situated pre biden to deal with high gas prices around the world.

 

Your only reason is well other's have it worse so I'm supposed to feel relieved is to laugh at. 

Gasoline prices in the USA are determined by the world market price of petroleum

[nigelforbes]

8 hours ago, placeholder said:

As pointed out above, the informal economy, which constitutes half the workforce is not represented in these figures. And the workers in this sector are reckoned to be hit far worse.

 

Informal workers most affected by COVID-19: UN Thailand
23 June 2020

Workers in the informal economy are most affected by the COVID-19 crisis, while the number of working poor is expected to rise to at least 11 per cent, according to the research by International Labour Organization (ILO), a member of the United Nations in Thailand.

https://thailand.un.org/en/50833-informal-workers-most-affected-covid-19-un-thailand

 

what's more, how useful can Thai unemployment figures be when even 1 hour of work a week means someone is not employed? Unless the ratio of underemployed workers to employed workers remains the same, which seems unlikely, not very.

 

When workers say, I don't want to pay tax and I don't want to pay Social Security every month, they are saying that they don't want to be part of the work force, they want to remain invisible. The government in turn says fine, we wont count you, go do your own thing. Just don't come crying to us for support when things get bad (as they did during covid) and don't expect the government to do anything about creating job opportunities or benefits for you. So the numbers stand, if you're in the system you get counted, if you're outside you don't, easy peasy, everyone's happy. Just nobody cry foul and say the system is unfair and not accurate, the grey market crowd made their bed, let them lay in it....they can cross over back, any time they want, up to them.

 

And...one hour a week is one hour of work per week, thems the rules and the same consistent rules get applied every time. Next!

[candide]

1 hour ago, EVENKEEL said:

U.S. refining capacity has fallen by 5.4%, or 1.03 million bpd to 17.9 million bpd since it peaked in 2019 at 18.98 million bpd. Capacity in 2021 dropped 4.5% to 18.13 million bpd.

 

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-oil-refining-capacity-drops-2021-2d-straight-year-eia-2022-06-21/

Ok but the most important is that it meets the current demand. Businesses have no need for unused overcapacities. In the article you linked, they expected a decrease in demand. And they are also able to increase exports with the current capacity.

On top of it, nearly 90% of the capacity decrease occurs under Trump's mandate. I am not saying it was Trump's fault, as the obvious culprit was the Covid crisis, but you cannot blame Biden for it.

[steven100]

but hang on a minute  !   I read where Amazon, Twitter, Facebook and others are laying of thousands of staff due to lack of customers for there advertisements and products. 

[placeholder]

1 hour ago, nigelforbes said:

When workers say, I don't want to pay tax and I don't want to pay Social Security every month, they are saying that they don't want to be part of the work force, they want to remain invisible. The government in turn says fine, we wont count you, go do your own thing. Just don't come crying to us for support when things get bad (as they did during covid) and don't expect the government to do anything about creating job opportunities or benefits for you. So the numbers stand, if you're in the system you get counted, if you're outside you don't, easy peasy, everyone's happy. Just nobody cry foul and say the system is unfair and not accurate, the grey market crowd made their bed, let them lay in it....they can cross over back, any time they want, up to them.

 

And...one hour a week is one hour of work per week, thems the rules and the same consistent rules get applied every time. Next!

Your claims about what benefits workers are entitled to are utterly irrelevant to figuring out the state of the economy in Thailand. What is relevant is how badly workers in the informal economy were affected by the pandemic. According to the experts it went worse for them.

 

As for one hour per week, the problem with having such minimal hourly requirements for what it means to be employed is that it takes no account of total worker hours. If worker hours collapsed during covid so that instead of 1 million people working 1 hour per week, now 10 million are working 1 hour per week, how useful a statistic is that in determining the state of the economy? I'd day, not very, you'd say it makes no difference "thems the rules". I'm interested in what statistics tell us about economic reality , you're interested in statistics as a kind of formalist exercise and reality be damned.

Edited December 3, 2022 by placeholder

[placeholder]

1 hour ago, steven100 said:

but hang on a minute  !   I read where Amazon, Twitter, Facebook and others are laying of thousands of staff due to lack of customers for there advertisements and products. 

What is the percentage of employees being laid off by these companies?. Do ya think it's anywhere near the neighborhood of Twitter's 50% or more? Also, Amazon is laying people off because following the huge increase in business during the pandemic., there's been a huge decline now that people are going out to shop.. Facebook is laying off people because of the failure of its multiverse ridiculousness and the fact that Apple's change in privacy policy damaged its advertising access to users. The fact remains that Amazon is still profitable and so is Facebook.  No major internet company is hemorrhaging cash like Twitter.

[nigelforbes]

17 hours ago, placeholder said:

Your claims about what benefits workers are entitled to are utterly irrelevant to figuring out the state of the economy in Thailand. What is relevant is how badly workers in the informal economy were affected by the pandemic. According to the experts it went worse for them.

 

As for one hour per week, the problem with having such minimal hourly requirements for what it means to be employed is that it takes no account of total worker hours. If worker hours collapsed during covid so that instead of 1 million people working 1 hour per week, now 10 million are working 1 hour per week, how useful a statistic is that in determining the state of the economy? I'd day, not very, you'd say it makes no difference "thems the rules". I'm interested in what statistics tell us about economic reality , you're interested in statistics as a kind of formalist exercise and reality be damned.

The issue was the rate of unemployment, about which you said,  "unemployment data are obviously untrustworthy". My reply above was in response to your comments, not to the new deflection you've just managed to weasel in. I mean really PH, you're all over left field trying to win points at any cost. I think I'll have to leave you alone for a while, until you develop debate skills rather than points scoring skills.

[placeholder]

9 minutes ago, nigelforbes said:

The issue was the rate of unemployment, about which you said,  "unemployment data are obviously untrustworthy". My reply above was in response to your comments, not to the new deflection you've just managed to weasel in. I mean really PH, you're all over left field trying to win points at any cost. I think I'll have to leave you alone for a while, until you develop debate skills rather than points scoring skills.

Everything I wrote was Jermaine to the issue of the reliability and usefulness of Thai unemployment statistics. Whereas you went off the rails with some bloviation about how workers in the informal section don't deserve to get benefits.

[nigelforbes]

1 hour ago, placeholder said:

Everything I wrote was Jermaine to the issue of the reliability and usefulness of Thai unemployment statistics. Whereas you went off the rails with some bloviation about how workers in the informal section don't deserve to get benefits.

Is that Jackson, Dupri or O'neal!

[DaveCW]

On 12/3/2022 at 1:04 AM, RichardColeman said:

Who'da thought extra staff were hired for X-mas after 2 years of covid anti-xmas shutdowns !

Exactly - and of these "New" jobs, how many are part-time or quality jobs with decent earnings? - Also, how many folk having to work two jobs to keep household finances going? 

[Credo]

On 12/2/2022 at 6:04 PM, RichardColeman said:

Who'da thought extra staff were hired for X-mas after 2 years of covid anti-xmas shutdowns !

I doubt the Christmas staffing increases would show up in the November statistics.