Sunday, December 4, 2011

Unemployment - How To Read the Charts

By now it's pretty well understood that any information or statistics provided by the government are to be taken with a generous dollop of salt. Remember that we were told that Freddie and Fannie were rock solid, and that the banking industry had no problems in the foreseeable future. Keep in mind that at the U.S. weather service, "foreseeable" means 5 days out, and we all know how well that works.

Mike Shedlock at Townhall Finance has a nice piece up explaining where those rosy unemployment numbers come from, and hints on how to interpret any such future proclamations.
  • In November, those "Not in Labor Force" rose by a whopping 487,000. If you are not in the labor force, you are not counted as unemployed.
  • Were it not for people dropping out of the labor force, the unemployment rate would be well over 11%.

    • Toss in discouraged workers and that number rises to around 16%. How many of your friends do you know are currently unemployed?
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    1 comment:

    Anonymous said...

    "How many of your friends do you know are currently unemployed?"

    None.

    If those with money had any use for the unemployed, the unemployed wouldn't be unemployed.

    According to the Gospel of Rand, those who are of no use to the wealth creators are parasitic looters on society.

    And I don't associate with people like that.

    Something really should be done about that surplus population...

    December 6, 2011 at 4:04 AM

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