Posted on 11/10/2009 8:25:51 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Despite the fact that headline "payroll" job losses are significantly smaller than earlier this year, the unemployment rate spiked to 10.2% in October. This is the highest since the aftermath of the brutal 1981-1982 recession, when the jobless rate peaked at 10.8%.
Many are arguing that the unemployment rate is the better indicator and that the economy is still in a great deal of trouble. So it's time once again to look at how jobs data are calculated. The Labor Department uses two completely different surveys: the payroll (or "establishment") survey and the household survey.
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Instead, we notice that the ratio of payrolls to household employment was remarkably steady between 2003 and 2008. Then earlier this year the ratio plummeted as payrolls dropped much more than household employment. The past few months have simply brought this ratio back into alignment. Now we expect the normal cyclical trend to reassert itself, with self-employment adding to household employment, pushing it up faster (or down slower) than payrolls. Part of this will be due to the nascent turnaround in home building, where many contractors are self-employed.
Given that real gross domestic product growth exceeded 3% in the third quarter and has been accelerating in the fourth--something that did not happen in the early stages of the 1991 or 2002 recoveries--we are likely at or very close to the peak in unemployment. Right now, we are forecasting that real GDP grows at about a 4.5% rate in 2010. If correct, this suggests the jobless rate will decline by a percentage point (or more) next year.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
4.5% growth next year? That’s an explosion of growth. I call BS.
That's a 4.5% growth of government...
The first year of Reagan’s years in office started off the same as Obama? That is kinda weird. I of course don’t remember those days as I was probably out playing sports or something with friends and doing homework to worry about this type of thing.
Utter fiction. If anyone has a subscription to Forbes, cancel it. Unemployment is heading over 11% and there is nothing this economically illiterate Administration can or will do, except to make matters worse and worse.
How is it possible when jobs were being lost at 700,000 a month the unemployment number was only increasing by a tenth percent. Such as from 9.7 to 9.8.
Then a month they (falsely claim) we only lost 190,000 jobs, it went from 9.8 to 10.2%?
Manipulating the numbers then, so they can manipulate them down next year, just in time for congressional elections...
The first years of the Reagan administration were a recession caused by Fed Chairman Volker's tight money policy meant to end the Carter era inflation. Once inflation was wrung out of the system things could return to normal. Essentially it was tough medicine for an economy in trouble.
Those are not the problems of today which run much deeper. If anything, we are witnessing something more similar to the Fed's easy money policies of the mid 70s which lead to Carter's inflation, only much, much worse than then.
Yes my mom was still finding worms, frogs and dirt in my pants pockets. Carter’s term is barely a memory except for sitting in my dad’s hot car waiting for him to get his gas. I do remember as a seven year old because I hated it so much...lol.
The 70s were truly dismal, but at least back then we still made things in the USA. I mean there was a manufacturing sector to eventually provide jobs.
The really bad things didn't hit until Carter was a year or two into his term. Hard to believe but we're only 9 months into the Soetoro administration and things are not only going from bad to worse but everyone in the administration and congress seems completely oblivious to it. Even the person sweeping the floors has a sense that things are getting worse and double digit inflation is coming, yet NOBODY in Washington is doing anything to try and head it off. It's just full speed ahead with more spending, lets see what we can ram through before the house of cards collapses and there really isn't a threat from muslims, ignore what you think you see.
We have double digit unemployment, has Barry even MENTIONED that since the number came out last week?
Yes, on Friday he called the number “sobering.” He caught another break, too: the Fort Hood tragedy left the unemployment news in the dust.
Barry called the number "sobering" Friday, then immediately went on a drunken spending binge on Saturday with the healthcare bill.
Lord please put someone with economic sense in the WH.
That's a 4.5% growth of government...
There are others who examine the details of the numbers and conclude that real unemployment is between 17.5 and 22%. I am confident the inflation numbers are equally distorted.
To paraphrase: Are you going to believe your government or your lying eyes ?
Absolute BS.
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