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"U.S. employers added 192,000 workers in February, amid an improving economy and more seasonable weather, and the unemployment rate unexpectedly declined to 8.9 percent, the lowest level since April 2009."
And trust me, unemployment will be the least of our worries once a loaf of bread is $10.
That won't happen for another 15 years.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mark S.
Read the fine print. This "data" is based on a telephone poll, not on actual facts.
Um, excuse me Mr. Wizard, but BLS gets its employment data by conducting a telephone poll of 60,000 households each month, and why yes, they contract that out. I wouldn't be surprised if Gallup had the contract.
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Originally Posted by Bluefly
Be wary of a callous heart. People have been really suffering.
Yes, suffering withdrawal symptoms from a life-style that they were never able to afford to begin with.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bluefly
Or is it more ignorant to take a phone survey rather than data as some valid indicator of the economy? Perhaps you want to believe this figure because it feeds your pre-existing beliefs about Obama's leadership.
Excuse me, Mr. Wizard Jr., the BLS data comes from a telephone survey, and yes it's contracted out.
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Originally Posted by skoro
Your telephone poll or labor statistics.
"U.S. employers added 192,000 workers in February, amid an improving economy and more seasonable weather, and the unemployment rate unexpectedly declined to 8.9 percent, the lowest level since April 2009."
O Wizened One, the BLS data is a telephone poll, which makes you sound quite silly and demonstrates you don't understand the process.
I would point out that because Clinton changed how unemployment was calculated in in 1994 to save his ass in the '96 Election, once someone gets discouraged and stops looking for work, or is forced to take a part time job because no full time jobs are available, they are no longer counted as unemployed.
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Originally Posted by oz in SC
Aren't the BLS stats from a phone survey?
Why yes, you get a cookie. I'll bet you find the ignorance of other people on how BLS gets its data quite frightening.
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Originally Posted by Bluefly
I assume you're talking about the 10.3% being completely unverified?
There's nothing unverified about it. They do the same thing BLS does. They contact 60,000 households and ask the same questions BLS does.
The only thing Gallup doesn't do is "seasonally" adjust the numbers, which means Gallup doesn't pick the seasonally adjusted numbers from an irrelevant year like 2003 in order to skew the data.
Gallup measures unemployment on a daily basis. The government reports on a single week out of the month. Gallup is a non-partisan professional polling organization, they know what they are doing over there.
For the record, Gallup is usually in line with an alternate BLS dataset that uses similar criteria:
There's no magic bullet to dealing with a collapsed economy. You do nothing and let the markets go, unemployment skyrockets and capital freezes altogether. The recovery might be a little faster, but the price to pay is something to consider.
Or, as all developed nations in the world did, you have the one entity capable of borrowing and spending in a collapsed economy do it as a temporary stop gap, and you deal with the debt of it later. That has a whole other set of problems, but at least keeps society stable until the markets can get back on track.
Pick your poison, but your "analysis" is rather disingenous and shortsighted, considering a large portion of ARRA went to tax breaks, keeping local and state governments from having to shut down (not only increasing the unemployment rate dramatically but also cutting off critical services and protections that could have led to chaos).
Is this you admitting you didnt make $333,333 during your brief period of employment?
NEWS FLASH: For $333,333 I could have hired 10 people.. You got ONE..
no.. try following the thread.. I was discussing inflation.. but now that you point out unemployment rate is dropping, we also said that.. we said for ages that the minute you extend the tax cuts, unemployment would drop.. The only reason it was rising is because companies are proactive and will lay people off BEFORE the tax cuts kick in, and when they are passed, they will fill vacancies..
Keep posting links validating I'm accurate.. My threads here are very public, you can go back a year and see that I said this exact same thing.. I've been VERY consistant on the matters..
Conservatives have absolutely no use for the truth, objectivity or open minds.
All they want or need is their ideology.
Is this like you guys proclaiming unemployment was falling during Obamas term, when they werent, and ignoring the fact that tax cuts would lead to lower unemployment, which they have?
"U.S. employers added 192,000 workers in February, amid an improving economy and more seasonable weather, and the unemployment rate unexpectedly declined to 8.9 percent, the lowest level since April 2009."
I think you really need to understand how that index is computed and what is and what is not included.
For example, in an extreme hypothetical, if ALL people polled were"discouraged" or "stopped looking" for work, the unemployment index would read 0%. Would you then say that everyone in this country was employed? On the other hand, if everyone polled indicated that they were actively looking for work and couldn't find it, the unemployment index would rate extremely high, skewing the interpretation to the other extreme.
And finally, how many times have the jobs numbers been "modified", "corrected", etc. 2-3 months down the road? I still do not know why people put stock in these numbers like this, in either direction (gains or losses).
There are about 60,000 households in the sample for this survey. This translates into approximately 110,000 individuals, a large sample compared to public opinion surveys which usually cover fewer than 2,000 people.
...
Every month, one-fourth of the households in the sample are changed, so that no household is interviewed more than 4 consecutive months.
...
Each month, 2,200 highly trained and experienced Census Bureau employees interview persons in the 60,000 sample households for information on the labor force activities (jobholding and jobseeking) or non-labor force status of the members of these households during the survey reference week (usually the week that includes the 12th of the month).
...
Some big, some would say HUGE differences to Gallup and others.
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