http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2012/04/monitoring-so-called-recovery.html
Numbers like the U3 and even the U6 are manipulated like crazy, and always revised upwards after the big announcement. This number is harder to fudge. Prior to 2008, about 62-63% of the population had jobs. Now 58-59% do. We call this a recovery?
Don't worry, should Romney win the election, the press will suddenly remember that there are numbers that are far less bogus than the ones they customarily report when someone they like is in office.
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6 comments:
I assume every number is poisoned until I have specific evidence it isn't.
This one is a declaration against interest, which is pretty good as such specific evidence goes.
Even this one isn't perfect, just strongly suggestive. Shadowstats numbers also seem reasonably close to reality, as their creator seems to detest both parties.
Personally I've also used the fast food index. Go to a fast food place. Make a fairly complicated order. If they have no trouble following and get it correct, that's a small piece of negative information regarding the economy and vice versa. The better the quality of the workers at bottom end employment jobs the worse the economy actually is. Normalize, of course, for your region, some areas the bottom of the barrel is better than others.
I heard a far more depressing statistic the other day. If you break out net job gains by age, nearly all have gone to the over 55 set. Jobs for the young have actually decreased in the "recovery".
Actually, that's good news. At 55 (ish) I worry daily about the prospect of having to find another job should this one fold.
According to BLS, there are the same number of private-sector jobs in the USA in early 2012 as in early 2000 or 2001.
In the meantime, there are 30 million more people, of immigrant stock, in the USA, probably more than half of whom are in the workforce.
That's true even if you're young. Strategy for getting a job: get older. Elders can't exactly use the reverse strategy.
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