To hear President Obama and his secretary of labor unions, Hilda Solis, tell it, we have turned the corner on unemployment, much as we turned the corner on Viet Nam and the war on drugs. Yes, indeed. The unemployment rate last month dropped from 8.2% to 8.1%. We also added 115,000 new jobs.
Not so fast, Lawrence. The reason for the drop is that some 350,000 people gave up looking for jobs, jumped off bridges, hanged themselves or went to jail. For some odd reason those numbers are not counted-as they are in Europe. Seems reasonable to me to count someone of working age who is unemployed regardless of whether they are still looking or not (except jailbirds, of course). According to Charles Krauthammer, if those figures were counted, the rate would have been 8.5%.
"Uh wunnerful, ah wunnerful, ah."
Here is a more sober analysis from the Christian Science Monitor:
http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/new-economy/2012/0504/Unemployment-rate-hits-three-year-low.-Hooray-No-boo
And those 115,000 new jobs? Not nearly enough to keep pace with population increase and new people entering the job market. These numbers that the administration are touting are tantamount to finding a nickel on the sidewalk.
1 comment:
You got it all wrong Gary. We've turned the corner on unemployment because I got that new job we were talking about last month. More precisely, since shortly before I lost my last full time job, I have been part of the sample for the Survey of Income and Program Participation of the Census Bureau. So the number of employed people went up by X thousand when the nice lady who interviews me every few months called.
Statisticians tell us this sample is representative of the entire population. They may be right.
Anyway, undecided voters don't check the statistics on election day, nor the pundits arguing about what those statistics mean. They vote based on how they feel about the economy, and the candidates for office. Its intuitive. And how they will feel is not predictable at this time.
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