Unemployment drops to 8.3 percent

The good weather we had across the country in January had to help, too, especially in construction.

Mitt Romney just climbed on top of his station wagon to kick his dog.

 

There's nothing worse than being unemployed. I think there are a lot of us who never thought we'd be unemployed for a day during our life who dealt with it over the last few years. I've been at my current gig for almost two years and I am soooo thankful for that.

 

He'll let 'em starve.

 

He'll have to fight Ole Tony for that title, right?

 

The 8.3 percent figure underestimates how many people are unemployed.

The key number you want to look at is new jobs created. Anything over somewhere around 150,000 shows real growth to keep up with population increases. Anything less than that is not enough to keep up with the population. This month's 243,000 is great because it not only covers that, but it also makes up some ground previously lost.

For the first about 15 months of the recovery, we were adding new jobs, but not enough to cover the increased population. It would be similar to getting a 2% raise when your cost of living increased 4%. So, in reality, we were increasing unemployment. So why did the unemployment rate go down? Because so many more people hit the benchmark for consecutive weeks of unemployment each month that the Bureau of Labor Statistics no longer considered them in the "workforce." Essentially, the numbers are inflated because the percentage of working-age adults considered to be in the workforce was dropping each month, and those people out of the workforce don't count as "unemployed." They're treated as if they were retired.

That's my only criticism of the president's job graphic.

But this month and last month are definitely real growth numbers.

 

. . .before he took out his hose to remove the feces that the dog released during the journey.

Nice.

 

That story has been criminally underplayed. Such a hoot.

 

I think anybody who keeps up with unemployment figures understands the thing about underemployment and people who stopped looking for jobs for whatever reason. Democrats have complained about underemployment since Reagan. Republicans have constantly harped on the "no longer looking" adjustment for three years now.

Given that, the trend in unemployment rates is an apples-to-apples thing. 8.3 this month is better than 8.5 last month, considering that they are measured the same way. If last months figures included people who stopped looking for work and this month's did not, you can say the numbers are meaningless.

That's not the case.

 

They'll put the lotion on the skin or else they'll get the hose again.

 

Starman 2012: A cup of rotten rice in every pot.

Can Larry Brown be his VP?

 

I'm not a fan of just looking at the percentages for trends because the number of people who move out of the workforce varies each month, depending upon what happened in the past in the economy. The new-jobs number is a better indicator because there are some months (for example, January 2011) where the unemployment percentage dropped significantly despite a small increase in jobs. The trend was still bad at that point, as there were more new workers than there were new jobs, but the unemployment rate didn't reflect that. Those people who were "out of the workforce" were still looking to be in the workforce.