Unemployment Rate Actually Below Average Not Doom And Gloom As Reported

blimpseeker, perhaps could be correct....
Here's the answer right here....


www.abovetopsecret.com...

Yeah, If you consider working in a fast food restaurant as a quality job. The government now considers a hamburger joint as a manufacturing plant,just to be able to raise some numbers.And why the hell is my key word I have to enter is some contraversial word,it makes me wonder about this site!Are these codes random?

What really gets me is that some people just don't get the way statistics work... It is all in what you measure! If you are looking at people applying for unemployment insurance (which is where these numbers come from) then YES you are completely correct the numbers have decreased over lets say 1984... However this does NOT include people who have "timed out" of unemployment (ie those who have been on for the maximum amount of time and still have not found a job) OR those who were making 60K a year and now have taken a job for 20 or 30K a year because they are technically "employed"! It also does not count people who work for an hourly wage whose hours are cut (this is very popular in retail)! Also unemployment eligibility is different from state to state! Also the increased hourly wage thing is just a joke because that does not factor in inflation SO making over 10$ an hour in 1980 is not the same thing as making 10$ an hour now! Wages have not kept up with inflation in this country! It is sad, my boyfriend and I together make 80K a year but we are struggling and unlike most Americans we do not have a huge amount of debt, but we live in an area of the country where the cost of living is high, our rent alone is 1800K a month and our electric bill is between 250 to 450 a month. We have a child and daycare is 250 a week, please note that is not a top of the line day care I am talking about, I have a friend who pays over 300 a week for child care! This is like ½ of our earnings even before things like food and gas!

Low unemployment rates are only bad for the Democrats, hence why the Media is claiming doom and gloom, the more people working and getting screwed over by their taxes, the less chance Obama will have to be voted in, the Dems NEED high unemployment so that their lies of Socialist happiness given to you by the Government ring true to the "masses"

The Democrats need as many to be "poor" as possible to better spew their hate towards the "rich", or as I call it those that actually work their asses off to make a decent living for their families

reply to post by kupoliveson
oh for obamas sake!...cry me a river baby!
you guys are pulling in 80k and you actually feel sorry for yourselves??????
grow up and quit being so selfish! look around you, there is people that don't even have a job!

80k a year and you are whining like a little baby...waaaah!

reply to post by space cadet


Odd, I know a nurse in Georgia making $70,000 a year - which is only slightly above average for what the data show. This is an excellent example where - if you are telling the truth - the doom and gloom of some people is not at all reflective of the majority. Nursing as a profession is growing by leaps and bounds, and nearly everyone in it can command a very respectable salary due to that. In fact, the lowest 10% make ~$41,000 a year.

I realize the data does nothing for you, because people on ATS prefer to fall into economic hysteria than look at the numbers. But just because you refuse to look at what the facts are doesn't mean the facts dont exist. You are welcome to have a doom and gloom outlook, and I am welcome to look at the reality that its just not that bad.

Again, personal tales of woe have no meaning. There are 300 million people in this country, the woes of you and the people around you is not a representative sample. To compound the problem we know from actual research on perceptions that people always think they have it worse than they really do - its called the "mean world syndrome" - which is why the data are more important in economics than aggregate perceptions. Because if we looked at aggregate perceptions, there would never be a time period were people didn't think they had it horrible (they always do, regardless of what is really going on).

Ive talked to a ton of people who are doing fine. In fact, nearly everyone. I know a few people who are still around from the depression, who lived through it as children (they are getting up there in age), and one gentlemen laughed at me when I asked him how bad he thought the economy was and what he thought of people comparing this to a depression. He told me people today don't know what suffering is really like, and if they thought this was anything like the depression (some people think it is) they need a reality check. So, everyone I talk to is doing just fine - everyone you talk to is doing horribly - why is it your experiences are more valid than mine? Why is it we dont use actual quantitative data to discover the truth - which does not reveal doom?

[edit on 7-6-2008 by ALightinDarkness]

Originally posted by blimpseeker
reply to post by Rockpuck

 

Ok, so lets not trust the graphs and charts from the people that track this for a living, lets just believe Rockpunk who says so.
c'mon! mate! anyone can say this and that but how do you back up your statement?

When I found out they only track people actively getting benefits I stopped even paying attention to the statistics.

the unemployment statistic should be the percentage of unemployed population compared to the total population. thats the only way that makes sense. but when did anything big government does ever make sense.

If you make less than $5 over minimum wage, your drowning in this economy. Im going under and I work 40+ hours a week. Its ludicrous. Im looking for another job or two.

so then you need to consider the underemployed. those of us that dont even make 12500 in a year and the governent cuts us 300 dollar checks instead of 600. cause the poor don't need it, just the middle class. again, big government fails to make any real sense. Now they may send out another economic stimulus check. its stupid, as if we arent already 47 trillion dollars in debt lets throw another hundred billion dollars at the peasants. grr. its stupid.

Originally posted by guyopitz
those of us that dont even make 12500 in a year and the governent cuts us 300 dollar checks instead of 600. cause the poor don't need it, just the middle class. again, big government fails to make any real sense.

yeah this was a stupid rule, doesn't make sense at all.

Now they may send out another economic stimulus check. its stupid, as if we arent already 47 trillion dollars in debt lets throw another hundred billion dollars at the peasants. grr. its stupid.

it is a stupid attempt at keeping the masses quiet. "why should i be angry at the government? they just gave me free money"

NO IT IS YOUR MONEY THEY WITHELD FROM YOU EVERY YEAR YOU WORKED!!!

they are simply returning it to the proper owner. *SNIP*

Mod-Note: Insult Removed. Please Review this Link

[edit on 7-6-2008 by Skyfloating]

reply to post by ALightinDarkness


Ah nurses...

Interesting story.

2 years ago any hospital would give you 5k and a car to sign up with them..

As the new graduating class is coming out now... there are no jobs. They have to fight one another for them.

I know, my fiance is a nurse, and all her friends are nurses and they all just graduated. Only a handful have found jobs.

Originally posted by Rockpuck
reply to post by ALightinDarkness

 

Ah nurses...

Interesting story.

2 years ago any hospital would give you 5k and a car to sign up with them..

As the new graduating class is coming out now... there are no jobs. They have to fight one another for them.

I know, my fiance is a nurse, and all her friends are nurses and they all just graduated. Only a handful have found jobs.

wow...golly gee...do you think it might be time for them to uh...move to a different city? maybe log on to monster.com and uh...maybe find a job in another town?
obama forbid they MAY have to move to find work...

i swear so many whiny people want things just handed to them...
LIFE IS HARD now get over yourselves and get to work!
its out there ...you just have to find it.

freaking generation exxers...

reply to post by blimpseeker


Whining? Not really, my point I am finding it hard.... What about people making 20K a year? What about them??? What about people making above the minimum wage at 10$ an hour? I do not see how they can live, especially in the north east portion of the US. My point is the unemployment rate is a POOR measure to the overall state of the economy!

Also on a personal note, you have no idea how hard I bust butt to make my money or how long I have gone to school! I was a teen-age single mother who put her self through college and medical school so I know what it is like to be poor, believe me! I am happy that I am not hurting more, but there are still people out there who are going to be in a whole lot of trouble if gas and food continue to be high or continue to go up!

Also why are you all blaming the democrats? Who is making out here? The current president and vice president of this county and their ultra-rich families HAVE HUGE STAKES IN THE OIL REVENUES!!!! Why do you think they are so against a "wind fall" taxation of the energy giants? You all call your self free thinking conspirists? I have overall been very unimpressed? Also I do not get the Obama bashing, when the current republican administration has done so many covert and unethical things I can hardly begin to name them all! What about the loss of our liberties or civil rights under the patriot act? GIVE ME A BREAK!

Never ask a barber if you need a haircut. That old saying applies to "official" government statistics. There's always an agenda.

Regardless of which wing of the bird of prey (Rep/Dem) you support, the "official" figures are virtually meaningless "gamed" numbers that the credulous mainstream media regurgitates without comment or critique.

The unemployment numbers do not include commissioned sales people or 1099-earners either. Anybody know someone who sells--or used to sell-real estate? Invisible. Self-employed tradesmen? Invisible.

Kevin Phillips of Harper's Magazine wrote an eye-opening piece recently that examines just how "gamed" the numbers really are:

www.tampabay.com...

[snip]
Ever since the 1960s, Washington has gulled its citizens and creditors by debasing official statistics, the vital instruments with which the vigor and muscle of the American economy are measured.

The effect has been to create a false sense of economic achievement and rectitude, allowing us to maintain artificially low interest rates, massive government borrowing, and a dangerous reliance on mortgage and financial debt even as real economic growth has been slower than claimed.

[snip]
A few have pointed out the understatement of the Consumer Price Index — the billionaire bond manager Bill Gross has described it as an "haute con job." In 2003, a University of Chicago economist named Austan Goolsbee (now a senior economic adviser to Barack Obama's presidential campaign) published an op-ed in the New York Times pointing out how the government had minimized the depth of the 2001-2002 U.S. recession, having "cooked the books" to misstate and minimize the unemployment numbers.

[snip]
Of the "big three" statistics, let us start with unemployment. Most of the people tired of looking for work, as mentioned above, are no longer counted in the work force, though they do still show up in one of the auxiliary unemployment numbers.

The BLS has six different regular jobless measurements — U-1, U-2, U-3 (the one routinely cited), U-4, U-5, and U-6. In January 2008, the U-4 to U-6 series produced unemployment numbers ranging from 5.2 percent to 9.0 percent, all above the "official" number.

The series nearest to real-world conditions is, not surprisingly, the highest: U-6, which includes part-timers looking for full-time employment as well as other members of the "marginally attached," a new catchall meaning those not looking for a job but who say they want one.

[snip]
Based on the criteria in place a quarter century ago, today's U.S. unemployment rate is somewhere between 9 percent and 12 percent; the inflation rate is as high as 7 or even 10 percent; economic growth since the recession of 2001 has been mediocre, despite a huge surge in the wealth and incomes of the superrich, and we are falling back into recession.

I'd say that, if anything, the MSM is almost always behind the curve. When they were busy hyping real estate and the dot.com market it was way past time to get out. Now, they're all about the bad economy--something those of us who think outside the box have seen coming for years now. The media also doesn't vet much of anything they put out; they're just stenographers for the government BS and PR machines. I wouldn't bet the ranch on anything the government reports. In fact "smart money" might do the exact opposite.

reply to post by RaptureMe2



Thank You!!!! Finally someone with enough sense to see (some background in ecnomics may help too!)

Dr. T

reply to post by Rockpuck


Again, this is not what the data show. It is also not what I have seen. I know people who graduated from college with their BSN (and this was a low, low ranked college) this year and they had multiple job offers for outrageous amount of money. And this was without connections, and again, from low ranked schools.

I do not doubt somewhere, nurses are having to fight for jobs in a highly saturated market. This is true of all jobs. I do Public Administration, and any job I could get in DC pays crap and is extremely hard to get. Why? Because DC is the center for my field, so it has a over-saturation of jobs. I looked elsewhere before deciding to get my PhD - and this was just a few months ago - and wound up with 5 job offers from the public and private sector which paid very well. How? I didn't look in saturated markets.

I generally make moves with my finances that represent the opposite of what the mass media says. The mass media says the end is nigh, employment is a sign of doom, etc, etc. - the same doomsday ideology parroted by the majority of ATS. That means all of the recession proof stocks, like gold, oil, and foreign currencies, are about to burst. I run the opposite way of the cattle.

[edit on 7-6-2008 by ALightinDarkness]

Well as I've heard elsewhere;

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody sends out a press release, it didn't happen

It's only when we assume (because of the media) that everyone else is observing or currently focused or thinking about the same thing that we make it a big deal..
like children .. if one child starts making fun of another then the rest all join in (in most cases)

I know that example is a far cry away from the effect media has on "news" ... since the media is so good at capturing attention and opinion by dressing the stories up in such a way that even the people who don't care are entranced by the "material" or the way the material is presented.

Originally posted by blimpseeker

Originally posted by Rockpuck
reply to post by ALightinDarkness

 

Ah nurses...

Interesting story.

2 years ago any hospital would give you 5k and a car to sign up with them..

As the new graduating class is coming out now... there are no jobs. They have to fight one another for them.

I know, my fiance is a nurse, and all her friends are nurses and they all just graduated. Only a handful have found jobs.

wow...golly gee...do you think it might be time for them to uh...move to a different city? maybe log on to monster.com and uh...maybe find a job in another town?
obama forbid they MAY have to move to find work...

i swear so many whiny people want things just handed to them...
LIFE IS HARD now get over yourselves and get to work!
its out there ...you just have to find it.

freaking generation exxers...

I'm done reading any of your posts. I've heard enough. Your social skills need a little polishing, my friend. You are intent on spreading malice....and other "icky" stuff. We all know life is hard. We don't need a lecture.

Speaking as a recently laid off employee who is currently seeking work, I must say that I've been very nervous about my prospects. The employment section in my local paper is at least 50% smaller than it was a year and a half ago when I moved here. For the most part, the jobs there are are either highly specialized or entry level in nature. I was lucky enough to turn up a lead by chance last night, which looks like it will pan out but it has been a stressful month and a half for me, wondering if I could find work that would support my financial needs.

The unemployment rate is a farce.

It doesn't even come close to accurately reflecting the state of the job market.

Long-term unemployment has never been higher, and people are, on average, out of work for much, much longer.

Unemployment numbers are great if you're interested in the government's bottom line, but if you're looking for the actual percentage of American workers who don't have a job, that's a whole different calculation.

Never filed for unemployment? Don't get counted.
Filed for unemployment but benefits expired? No longer counted.
Underemployed? Not counted.
Filed but were deemed ineligible? Fill in the blank?

As I said, it's a farce.

I agree with your underlying point that the media loves doom and gloom - but I think they're playing their part in this charade, same as the government. If the media investigated and reported the REAL unemployment numbers..wooh..watch out.

Thats the media to you

Leon Basin