Umeployment down to 9.7%
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  Umeployment down to 9.7%
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Author Topic: Umeployment down to 9.7%  (Read 1707 times)
memphis
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« on: February 05, 2010, 10:44:40 AM »

But we still haven't seen any substantive job growth. Riiiiiiiiiiiiight.
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Filuwaúrdjan
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« Reply #1 on: February 05, 2010, 10:46:08 AM »

The trouble with American unemployment figures is that they don't count the long-term unemployed. Its possible that a reduction in the U.S unemployment rate is 'genuine', but its also possible that...
But I don't know. Someone here probably does.
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Lief 🗽
Lief
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« Reply #2 on: February 05, 2010, 01:30:38 PM »

U6, the "real" unemployment rate that counts unemployed and underemployed dropped sharply from 17.3% to 16.5%. Good news.
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TeePee4Prez
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« Reply #3 on: February 05, 2010, 02:22:00 PM »

Probably more people decided to take early retirement or some sort of SSI income.  That would be my guess.  This is what happens with no manufacturing base.
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Filuwaúrdjan
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« Reply #4 on: February 05, 2010, 02:38:04 PM »

Probably more people decided to take early retirement or some sort of SSI income.  That would be my guess.  This is what happens with no manufacturing base.

Nah, there's still a base. Just not really anything more than that...
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Beet
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« Reply #5 on: February 05, 2010, 03:22:03 PM »

Probably more people decided to take early retirement or some sort of SSI income.  That would be my guess.  This is what happens with no manufacturing base.

We have a huge manufacturing base. It's just

1) is not being utilized



2) doesn't really take many people to get going



The internals of this report actually aren't too bad. Hours worked increased to 33.3, suggesting we are finally getting some sustainable increase in this figure, which had bottomed at 33.0. We need this to continue to increase as a leading indicator of real job growth.
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jmfcst
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« Reply #6 on: February 05, 2010, 03:29:22 PM »

conflicting reports today....a net job loss was reported, but the much wider survey that calculates the % unemployment showed a 500k net job gain.

other positives were an increase in temp hiring and an increase in the length of the work week.  also, several companies announced a resumption in their stock dividends.
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opebo
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« Reply #7 on: February 05, 2010, 04:57:43 PM »

Beet, your figures remind us that although the removal to other countries has been devastating to the lower classes in america, the damage to the 'manufacturing base' or industry has been as much - perhaps more - due to improper macro-economic application over the last 30 years as from slave-labour.
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Bo
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« Reply #8 on: February 05, 2010, 08:38:07 PM »

Big deal. 20 K jobs were still lost. Based on the previous two recessions and jobless recoveries, the unemployment % typically peaks about a year after the recession has been declared over, and since this recession was declared over in September, the unemployment rate should peak in the fall of 2010, right before (or after) the midterms.
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Mr.Phips
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« Reply #9 on: February 06, 2010, 02:20:34 AM »

Big deal. 20 K jobs were still lost. Based on the previous two recessions and jobless recoveries, the unemployment % typically peaks about a year after the recession has been declared over, and since this recession was declared over in September, the unemployment rate should peak in the fall of 2010, right before (or after) the midterms.

The likely peaked in October 2009.  In deeper recessions(1974-75, 1981-82), the rate usually starts dropping more quickly than in shallow recessions(1990-91, 2001). 
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Sam Spade
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« Reply #10 on: February 06, 2010, 11:01:51 AM »

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf

As always, read the full report before posting.

Lief - without the seasonal adjustment, the U-6 rate was actually 18.0%.  FYI.
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CARLHAYDEN
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« Reply #11 on: February 06, 2010, 12:53:18 PM »

Sam makes a good point.

The U-3 is actually 10.6% (unadjusted).

Look folks, when the number of employed doesn't increase by at least 200,000 in a month, you should not believe a reduction in the unemployment rate is anything more that statistical noise (at best).

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Bo
Rochambeau
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« Reply #12 on: February 06, 2010, 01:17:39 PM »

Big deal. 20 K jobs were still lost. Based on the previous two recessions and jobless recoveries, the unemployment % typically peaks about a year after the recession has been declared over, and since this recession was declared over in September, the unemployment rate should peak in the fall of 2010, right before (or after) the midterms.

The likely peaked in October 2009.  In deeper recessions(1974-75, 1981-82), the rate usually starts dropping more quickly than in shallow recessions(1990-91, 2001). 

I'm not sure you could make that analogy between deep and shallow recessions. I think that after globalization and outsourcing became the norm, the unemployment rate will follow the model of the 1990-1991 recession or the 2001 recession rather than the earlier recessions.
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opebo
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« Reply #13 on: February 06, 2010, 02:16:48 PM »

Look folks, when the number of employed doesn't increase by at least 200,000 in a month, you should not believe a reduction in the unemployment rate is anything more that statistical noise (at best).

While I don't dispute you, who's to say the 'increase in employment' isn't also just 'noise'?
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jfern
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« Reply #14 on: February 06, 2010, 02:28:17 PM »

They changed the population estimate, so this isn't good news.
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Bo
Rochambeau
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« Reply #15 on: February 07, 2010, 09:45:06 PM »

Big deal. 20 K jobs were still lost. Based on the previous two recessions and jobless recoveries, the unemployment % typically peaks about a year after the recession has been declared over, and since this recession was declared over in September, the unemployment rate should peak in the fall of 2010, right before (or after) the midterms.

The likely peaked in October 2009.  In deeper recessions(1974-75, 1981-82), the rate usually starts dropping more quickly than in shallow recessions(1990-91, 2001). 

I'm not sure you could make that analogy between deep and shallow recessions. I think that after globalization and outsourcing became the norm, the unemployment rate will follow the model of the 1990-1991 recession or the 2001 recession rather than the earlier recessions.

Also, the recessions of 1945-1946, 1949, 1954, 1958, 1960-1961, and 1970-1971 were pretty shallow and the unemployment rate began decreasing (and there became positive net job creation) almost immediately after these recessions were officially declared to be over. This is similar to what occured during the recessions of 1973-1974 and 1980-1982 and different from what occured in the recessions of 1990-1991 and 2001.
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Frodo
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« Reply #16 on: February 07, 2010, 10:54:23 PM »
« Edited: February 07, 2010, 10:59:35 PM by Frodo »

Big deal. 20 K jobs were still lost. Based on the previous two recessions and jobless recoveries, the unemployment % typically peaks about a year after the recession has been declared over, and since this recession was declared over in September, the unemployment rate should peak in the fall of 2010, right before (or after) the midterms.

Where did you find this information?  You almost certainly did not get it from the National Bureau of Economic Research, since they haven't said a word about whether the recession has ended or not.    
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Bo
Rochambeau
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« Reply #17 on: February 08, 2010, 01:34:56 AM »

Big deal. 20 K jobs were still lost. Based on the previous two recessions and jobless recoveries, the unemployment % typically peaks about a year after the recession has been declared over, and since this recession was declared over in September, the unemployment rate should peak in the fall of 2010, right before (or after) the midterms.

Where did you find this information?  You almost certainly did not get it from the National Bureau of Economic Research, since they haven't said a word about whether the recession has ended or not.    


Here you go:

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/bernanke-declares-the-recession-over-2009-09-15

I feel that this is a reliable enough source.
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jmfcst
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« Reply #18 on: February 08, 2010, 09:00:09 AM »

Look folks, when the number of employed doesn't increase by at least 200,000 in a month, you should not believe a reduction in the unemployment rate is anything more that statistical noise (at best).

there are two separate surveys reported here, folks.  The narrow survey measured a loss of 20k jobs, the much wider survey measured a gain of 500k jobs, hence the drop to 9.7% (the unemployment rate is based off of the wider survey)...so there is plenty of fodder for both sides of the argument.

but, more undeniable is the fact we did have a gain in the average workweek and a pickup in temp hiring, both of which point to employment gains in the coming months.

so, on balance, I think the sum of the reports were mildly positive.
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KeeptheChange
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« Reply #19 on: February 09, 2010, 05:08:37 PM »

But we still haven't seen any substantive job growth. Riiiiiiiiiiiiight.

Where is the job growth?  It's non-existant.  Unemployment is still around 10 percent.  The only way this is news is that Obama has been an epic fail President and this is some of the best proof of that.

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HoffmanJohn
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« Reply #20 on: February 09, 2010, 06:21:01 PM »

But we still haven't seen any substantive job growth. Riiiiiiiiiiiiight.

Where is the job growth?  It's non-existant.  Unemployment is still around 10 percent.  The only way this is news is that Obama has been an epic fail President and this is some of the best proof of that.



lol you are so uncivil and full of hate, and thus it is kind of hard to take such harsh words seriously.
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CARLHAYDEN
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« Reply #21 on: February 10, 2010, 02:46:57 AM »

Look folks, when the number of employed doesn't increase by at least 200,000 in a month, you should not believe a reduction in the unemployment rate is anything more that statistical noise (at best).

there are two separate surveys reported here, folks.  The narrow survey measured a loss of 20k jobs, the much wider survey measured a gain of 500k jobs, hence the drop to 9.7% (the unemployment rate is based off of the wider survey)...so there is plenty of fodder for both sides of the argument.

but, more undeniable is the fact we did have a gain in the average workweek and a pickup in temp hiring, both of which point to employment gains in the coming months.

so, on balance, I think the sum of the reports were mildly positive.

Let me see.  The Not Seasonally Adjusted percentage of the population employed in December, 2009 was 58.2% and in January of 2010, 57.8%.

http://data.bls.gov/PDQ/servlet/SurveyOutputServlet
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CARLHAYDEN
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« Reply #22 on: February 10, 2010, 04:43:30 AM »

From the Washington Times:

Fudging jobless statistics

Conflicting government measurements skew jobless rate

By THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Last week's new unemployment numbers were bittersweet. At the same time the Bureau of Labor Statistics was declaring that the unemployment rate had declined slightly, to 9.7 percent, the government also was announcing that the economy had lost about 824,000 more jobs during the recession from April 2008 to March 2009 than Americans previously had been told. If this sounds like bureaucratic doublespeak, it is.

The government doesn't really know the exact number of people with or without jobs. The number reported each month is based on surveys, and surveys often can have methodology issues. As it turns out, the surveys estimating the number of people with jobs reported over the past couple of years suffered from some really big problems. That's where government falsely claiming 824,000 more jobs than actually existed comes into play. Unfortunately, those adjustments have so far been made only through March 2009, and there are strong reasons to believe the survey data since then also need to be adjusted downward.

Economists measure the number of jobs two different ways: the establishment survey that asks about 370,000 employers how many people they are employing and the household survey that asks about 110,000 people each month whether they are working. The establishment survey is often given more weight because about 40 million Americans work for the companies surveyed, a lot more than the 110,000 people interviewed in the other survey. But 110,000 people still make up a huge sample (a large survey for a presidential election might involve 2,000 to 3,000 people), and it is hard to ignore the results. The household survey is also what is used to calculate the unemployment rate.

The problem is that the two surveys have reached different estimates, with the household survey showing a significantly greater drop in the number of jobs than the establishment survey. It turns out that there might be a simple reason for that. For the survey of firms, the list of firms surveyed doesn't change very often. Thus, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which puts these numbers together, can only guess at the number of jobs created by new firms because it doesn't even know how many new firms have been created each month. To get around this gap in the data, the bureau makes an assumption that the jobs created at new companies are about equal to the jobs lost at companies that go out of business.

That assumption hasn't come close to being right during the current recession. The error in estimating the number of jobs from April 2008 to March 2009 was 10 times greater than the average error over the preceding eight years. Typically, the government error would underestimate the number of new jobs by 80,000, but this time, it overestimated the number of jobs by more than 800,000.

No one will know what the error rate has been with the establishment survey from April to December 2009 until the numbers are revised again in February 2011, three months after the 2010 midterm elections. But a great deal of skepticism seems warranted. The establishment survey assumes that new firms generated almost a million new jobs over those nine months. At the same time, the household survey just happens to show that about a million more jobs were lost than the survey of firms indicates.

The Obama administration has focused continually on the establishment survey in making its claims about changes in the jobs numbers, but this data can be quite misleading. The bottom line is that job losses are likely to be worse than reported, not better. Future jobs claims from the White House should be taken with a grain of salt.
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KeeptheChange
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« Reply #23 on: February 10, 2010, 10:24:19 AM »

Carl,

I am new to the forum.  Thank you for being a voice of civility and logic here.  That article you posted is a solid example of the kind of journalism we need more of in this country.
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HoffmanJohn
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« Reply #24 on: February 10, 2010, 02:25:47 PM »

I understand that the official figures for U3 unemployment can be argued as being fudged, but before the report came out the unemployment rate was expected to stay flat. i was surprised to see the 9.7% number, but it is still most likely true that the unemployment rate has bottomed out.
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