I am spending this morning on the other blog. I started the project in shameless imitation of John Michael Greer's "Stars Reach", but ran into a case of serious writer's block. I am now trying to catch up on the writing and reacquaint myself with the characters.
The only current thing that I really have to comment on is the following. A hat tip to the folks over at ZeroHedge. I only changed the formatting to make it easier to understand.
Here are the four most important data points and charts from today's job report:
- the civilian labor force declined from 154,198,000 to 153,883,000, a 315K decline despite the civilian non-institutional population increased (as expected) from 240,269,000 to 240,441,000: always the easiest way to push down the unemployment rate. Percentage wise this was a drop from 64.2% to 64.0%: the lowest since back in 1983.
- Naturally, this would mean that the people not part of the labor force rose, and indeed they did by 487,000 to a record 86,558,000 from 86,071,000.
- This also means that more people are looking for a job: and indeed, the number of "Persons who want a job now" rose by 192K to a record 6.595 million.
- And lastly, confirming the behind the scenes disaster of the US jobless picture, the average duration of unemployment rose to a new record 40.9 weeks from 39.4 weeks previously. And that is your "improving" jobless picture in a nutshell.
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From Wikipedia: "Pollyanna Creep is a phrase that originated with John Williams, a California-based economic analyst and statistician. It describes the way the U.S. government has modified the way important economic measures are calculated with the purpose of giving a better impression of economic development. This is a clear reference, in a sarcastic way, to Pollyanna's proverbial optimism. John Williams and other economic analysts, such as Kevin P. Phillips argue the such manipulations distort the perception of electors and economic factors and have ill effects on political and investment decisions."
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