Friday, January 07, 2011

What Counts In the Unemployment Reports

There's ONE chart that counts--and it is not particularly encouraging. The participation rate hung around 63% until 2008, and dropped like a rock. Ticker does NOT mention whether the population is normally-employable (that is, not over the age of 65)--but it's not good.

U-6 remains high at 16.7%, but it DID improve from 17.0%.

HT: Ticker

4 comments:

J. Strupp said...

Agreed on that chart.

Moving forward, the payroll numbers are going to get very distorted as people move in and out of the labor force.

In short, our mass unemployment tragedy continues to unfold with little or no concern from our leadership.

neomom said...

Throw in food and energy inflation...

So much for Dems caring about the poor. They just seem to want all of us to be poor.

J. Strupp said...

Some people baffle me.

Beer, Bicycles and the VRWC said...

All of this is intentional. I realize that one should never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity, but all of this is really beyond the pale. Energy prices are being intentionally driven up by government and will be exacerbated by EPA regulation of CO2. Since there is more and more evidence of fraud in Climate "Science", the only reason to regulate CO2 is to make energy prices "necessarily skyrocket". The use of ethanol can't NOT make food prices increase. This has all the makings of a man-made disaster of Stalin/Ukrainian proportions.