RE and economic charts: Unemployment Rate Ticks Below 9% in February + How Many Americans Really Want Jobs?

Saturday, March 5, 2011

Unemployment Rate Ticks Below 9% in February + How Many Americans Really Want Jobs?

[mEDITate-OR:
find that your neighbor has been declared "missing"...
even thou they are really still there, borrowing coffee n sugar...
and not understand..., them, or this economy.
-------------
First, two very good, analytical articles, with charts that are rising to the Sold & CRisk levels.
Second, however, there might be a slight problem here. If your numbers are correct, there were 2ooK jobs created in Dec & Jan combined, and 200K in Feb. OK. According to your chart in the other article, there are around 22 million people that would like to have a job, and do not or cannot get one.
But, if the "workforce" increases by 100K each month, that means that Jan & Dec combined only found jobs for the newbees; and Feb only found jobs for 100K of them. IF we are in such great shape that we are creating 100K jobs for the rest of U.S. = 22 Million; that means we create 1.2 million per year and it will take U.S. decades to fully recover.
As Elton John pointed out, it's the glasses that make things look so rosy.
------------
In both article, Daniel begins by showing U.S. the same, traditional unemployment charts.
THEN, he adds a few new ones that almost nobody else ever shows you.
That is when this gets interesting.
While the third chart of private sector jobs is nice, please read it with the above comment in mind.
The "Discourage Works" chart is notable - discourage works went down, bcuz they STOPPED looking. If they were still looking, and only "discouraged" BLS would keep counting them. Now, they are ignored - they do not statistically exist.
The last two charts are from U-9 and show BLS's estimate of the total number of unemployed. Once again, they have dropped BOTH those whose UI has run out, AND those who gave up looking.
They also have dropped: One, those who went back to school, AND two, those who took early SS retirement at age 62.
As bad as this view is, it ignore huge numbers of U.S.
==========
unemp 2011-02 cht1.png