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That's good info. That means the seasonal adjustment was 301k. An error in that can have a big effect on the adjusted employment number.
Seasonal adjustment factors are done in depth and at regular intervals. The results are then statistically aggregated to higher levels. All this is done by teams of highly trained and experienced social statisticians. You know...experts.
Actually, I don't believe the last part is true. The unemployment survey is separate from unemployment insurance benefits.
Let's recap. The unemployment rate of 4.6% came from last month's responses to the so-called household survey (Current Population Survey). It covers more than 60,000 households and about 110,000 individuals each month. The jobs number of +178,000 came from last month's responses to the so-called establishment survey (Current Employment Survey). It covers some 145,000 firms and 620,000 job sites each month.
Data regarding unemployment insurance claims or beneficiaries come from the states and are not used in production of either number noted above. Some historical data from UI world are however used in developing new seasonal adjustment factors for the household survey data.
Most people I know here in Tennessee are employed, but many are making just $10-$15/hr. There hasn't been in sort of boom here or much recovery in professional level work.
I just moved back from Indianapolis and there were more jobs there than people to fill them.
Seasonal adjustment factors are done in depth and at regular intervals. The results are then statistically aggregated to higher levels. All this is done by teams of highly trained and experienced social statisticians. You know...experts.
Yes, I'm sure they do the best job they can. But when the seasonal adjustment is nearly 2x the resulting job #, there is a large potential source of error. They can't know the seasonal effects precisely.
That is not the "real" unemployment rate, and it is hilarious that author references all the BLS definitions and statistics then mixes in her own pet definition of "real" as if it were some commonly accepted idea that U-6 is any more real or significant than U-3.
Even if it is the "real" unemployment rate, back when the employment rate was healthy by government standards, it was still unhealthy then as it is today. Everything is relative. So even if the government's measurement method is not accurate, it has always been inaccurate. It's still a benchmark for measuring unemployment! That's why I kind of laugh at the whistle blowers who say that things are bad.
Yes, I'm sure they do the best job they can. But when the seasonal adjustment is nearly 2x the resulting job #, there is a large potential source of error. They can't know the seasonal effects precisely.
LOL! Nobody is throwing darts. Seasonality is teased out of time series data by intricate mathematical analyses, often X11 or X12-type programs that the Census Bureau has created. You can introduce yourself to some of them here...
Looks like more of the same to me. We've been getting labor reports with similar numbers for almost 2 years. Decent... at least we're not backsliding, but we're not fixing our structural problems either.
Basically, all the data show that we have not improved the economy significantly for the majority of Americans since about the year 2000. We have improved it for select populations only. It was as if general economic progress stopped then.
I will be very interested to see if things get better when Trump becomes president.
Last edited by redguard57; 12-05-2016 at 01:56 PM..
I think higher minimum wage and automation explains the 16 to 24 drop in employment rate. Higher minimum wage benefits the best service sector workers who keep a job but hurts those who were barely employable to begin with.
It's mostly due to going back to school for girls 16 to 20 and some boys 16 to 20. About 85% of the NOT IN LABOR FORCE was under the age of 20. From my recollection from the historical tables, that category doesn't seasonally adjust much (BLS uses a funky method called concurrent seasonal adjustment which tries to catch trend changes rather than focus solely on historical seasonality). All of the changes to the NOT IN LABOR FORCE counts occur in one or two months each year.
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