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Why you can't trust those jobs figures
- russell 17y agoIt's a short but decent discussion of why unemployment figures dont reflect the real unemployment rate. It mentioned discouraged workers, who are not counted because they stopped looking. Also the underemployed are not counted. If you find 10 hours a week sweeping out a church, you are employed, even if you really are an unemployed corporate lawyer. Unemployment figures will tend to lag the recovery because formerly discouraged workers will start looking again and be counted again.
- socillion 17y ago"it’s not about to rebound, as many stock investors apparently assume." WHAT? You tell me that after I bought the bridge and Ford shares? "Williams is a bit of renegade among economists, and certainly no household name." Good for him. If everyone stayed in the herd, we wouldn't have anyone left after the stampede off the cliff.
- dkarl 17y agoIt's the same as accounting. If people are allowed discretion to use their judgment to pick the most accurate reporting methods for each time and situation, or the statistics that best reflect reality, then inevitably you end up with nothing but lies. If you standardize reporting, then sometimes you end up reporting meaningless numbers, but everyone is in the same boat, and there's less long-term distortion (as long as the people who wrote the standard have an interest in accurate information.)