Is unemployment really going down?????????

[Neubarth]

Each week the 50 states list the number of people who have filed new Unemployment Insurance Claims. The Department of Labor compiles that data and puts out the weekly Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims report.


U.S. Department of Labor: Employment & Training Administration (ETA) News Releases

For the past five weeks the numbers of claims filed have been (from top to bottom):

June 13 554,405

June 20 566,586

June 27 556,863

July 4 577,506

July 11 667,534


If you look at the trend, you can quite clearly see that more and more people are filing for unemployment insurance benefits with only one slight decline on June 27th. That 667,534 last week was frightening. Yet, the Obama administration has the DOL “adjusting the numbers” for seasonal variances. These are the actual claims that people filed in the week. How can you adjust actual claims for seasonal variances and pretend that the people didn’t fill out the claim? That just does not make sense to me. If they filled out the claim, they must have lost their jobs. According to the DOL, the revised numbers of unemployed for the week ending July 4th were 565,000 about 12,000 less than were actually filed. Then on July 11th they reported that only 522,000 filed for unemployment. That was over 45,500 difference. I wonder if those people would be upset if they knew that they were not unemployed and just faking it.

Since so many people really were not unemployed, (even though they filled out the paperwork) the Obama administration loudly announced that unemployment is rapidly going down. Hooray!

That announcement caused the stock market to rally for a week and the market went up over 8% during that time. Meanwhile, I am scratching my head in wonder. If all we have to do to get rid of our economic problems is alter the data and say everything is wonderful, why have we not done this in larger fashion? Hummm?


Tomorrow morning the next weekly report comes out. I wonder how WONDERFUL it will be?

 

[Kevin_Kennedy]

Not remotely. The unemployment rate for my county is 12.1% and rising.

 

[wimpy77]

depends on where you live. the county where i live high unemployment is the norm really.

 

[pinqy]

That just does not make sense to me.

No suprise there...you show no understanding of statistical methodology at all, and no interest in actually learning about it.

 

[Baruch Menachem]

The statistical methods have been around forever. And the methods are published.

If you compare the trends from previous numbers, they would probably have the same patterns, if not the same absolute numbers.

What I am seeing, as one of the unemployed, is the complete and total absence of new job postings.

The administration has earned a reputation for veracity somewhere between dealers in used snake oil and dealers in Everglades real estate. But the reality is we have a huge economy where there is a tremendous turnover in jobs. This is not like Korea or Japan or France where you are expected to get a job and keep it till you retire. Jobs here at at will, both ways. People and employers move around a lot.

But I personally am not seeing any improvement when I look at the want ads.

 

[PixieStix]

Obama has rescued the economy

Obamunism works

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2y-WrBXQYHQ"]YouTube - Boehner to the White House: I Don't Believe the Economy Has Been Rescued[/ame]

 

[Toro]

Who said that unemployment was going down?

Instead, the rate of change in unemployment is declining.

 

[Big Black Dog]

It isn't declining in my part of the country. Who are you trying to kid?