General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Seriously, did so many people truly believe that president Obama could change the course.... [View all]Yo_Mama
(8,303 posts)Even the alternative measures don't:
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm
The alternative measures provide a more rounded picture, however. U-4 through U-6 all show unemployment peaking last November!
U-6 shows the peak at 17% and now down to 15.6%. We are gaining some jobs, but it seems likely that many of those jobs are either self-created or very low-paying. I look at tax receipts to measure income from jobs, and I am now finally seeing a real uptick in HI receipts (charged on all wages) that is significant enough to indicate that the economy is picking up a little.
You may well be right about the real level of joblessness. We are now gaining jobs:
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t08.htm
The last few months have been good.
But the population has increased too, and I think retirements are masking some level of joblessness. The employment population ratio has improved only over the last couple of months. What happens when holiday jobs disappear and if auto production shifts down?
In November of 2010 the emp/pop ratio was 58.2%. It then rose a bit to 58.5 and fell. By July it was 58.1%. After that it has improved to 58.5% in small increments. So here again, until the last couple of months I would have said that you were correct - that real unemployment kept worsening:
2009 60.6 60.3 59.9 59.8 59.6 59.4 59.3 59.0 58.7 58.5 58.5 58.2
2010 58.5 58.5 58.6 58.7 58.7 58.5 58.4 58.5 58.5 58.3 58.2 58.3
2011 58.4 58.4 58.5 58.4 58.4 58.2 58.1 58.2 58.3 58.4 58.5
What will tell the tale will be what happens in January - March of 2012. This has been an unsteady trend, but we were at 58.5% in July of 2010 and 58.5% in November of 2011 isn't really THAT encouraging, although it is a statistically significant change from July's 58.1%.
I don't think you can say from the employment/population ratio that the jobs situation truly has improved - not when you look at the longer-term sequence. Until the emp/pop ratio improves to at least 58.8, I don't think you CAN make the case that the employment situation is really improving. We have to break out of this oscillation around 58.3 that we have been in for a year and a half before we can truly claim that joblessness is at least easing. The bald fact is that until October, every month in 2011 had an emp/pop ratio worse than the same month in 2010.
About the best case I can support with data now is that aggregate real income from employment is increasing over the last few months, but that is still not helping the bottom line for Americans as a whole because social benefits (esp. unemployment) have dropped so much that in income terms, American workers are still losing ground. Also, I believe that the emp/pop ratio is up about 0.2% from just people losing unemployment and doing whatever odd jobs they can pick up for money, which is not what most Americans would call being "employed". If you are out picking up cans for recycling cash, that makes you "employed" under the Household Survey rules. But it is not "employed" under common sense rules.