June 2010 Unemployment Numbers: They’re Real and They’re Spectacular! July 2, 2010
Posted by geoff in News.trackback
Yes, the June unemployment numbers were released just minutes ago by the BLS, and, as expected/unexpected (depending upon your party affiliation), they are not so good. Sure the unemployment rate went down to 9.5%. But:
650,000 people left the workforce in June.
Here, for completeness’ sake, is The Chart:
Not very representative of what’s going on. Here’s a better way to get a sense of things – take a look at the number of employed people:
You can see that over the past 2 months we’ve started dropping from the April ‘peak.’ Losing 300,000 jobs and losing more than half a million people from the workforce – that’s the real unemployment news.
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Innocent Bystanders 
[…] Here’s Geoff with his chart. […]
The distribution of the red dots indicates to me that someone is full of shit, and I don’t think it’s you.
I may have exaggerated about the “They’re Real” part. You ever wonder if they ‘adjust’ the labor force numbers to control the unemployment rate? There’d be no way to check it – absolutely no way at all unless you could get the household employment raw data.
UNEMPLOYMENT IS DOWN! EAT IT, WINGERS!
Har.
You ever wonder if they ‘adjust’ the labor force numbers to control the unemployment rate?
Yep, all the time.
I think the employment situation is worse than you realize, which is something we can see when we dig into the demographics of the latest jobs report.
One thing we saw last month, when the number of employed individuals increased thanks to Census hiring, is that the majority of that hiring activity was concentrated in the 20-24 age bracket (as you might expect with the Census’ focus on hiring college students.)
Outside of that age bracket, there was a net overall decline in employment levels. Both teens (Age 16-19) and older workers (Age 25+) saw their total employed numbers fall. Nothing major – the changes more or less fit with natural volatility.
Digging into the numbers for this month though, we see that the Age 20-24 group’s employment level fell, as we might expect from the Census layoffs, as the majority of these jobs added in May were temporary.
We also see a mild worsening for older age groups in the new jobs report, but the real news is that the employment situation for teens dramatically worsened. Prior to the June jobs report, teen employment levels had been either flat or improving since January.
That’s significant because teen employment trends tend to lead the trend for the entire U.S. workforce by about a year, thanks to teens representing the most marginal members of the U.S. workforce (compared to older workers, teens are less educated, experienced and skilled – they are the age group most able to withdraw or be withdrawn from the U.S. workforce.)
With no increase in the minimum wage scheduled to occur in the future, the loss of teen jobs now is likely a direct result of a worsening economic outlook for the businesses that hire teens. Using teen employment as a year-ahead leading indicator, that would put the U.S. economy into contraction mode in the latter half of 2011.
(I’ll have charts posted showing the changes noted above on Monday….)
Orion/arrow/shitty shot
fin
My stepdaughter has been living the anecdotal evidence that agrees with Ironman’s assessment…she lost her job about a month ago, and has quickly come to terms with the reality that she needs to accept “underemployment” for now, to pay rent and keep some milk in the fridge. Even though she has embraced the notion that no job should go unpursued, she is still having a helluva time even finding a burger-flipper position.
For the record, she is not part of these published numbers, because she has not filed for unemployment…mostly due to laziness, but justified by pride. While taking a stab at the number of them out there, it is a reasonable assumption that she is not alone in her “uncounted” status.
Second anecdote – the guy in front of me at Dunkin this morning was looking for a job, too. He walked away unsatisfied with the response that the only positions open at that location were shift-managers. I guess those are the easiest positions to simply leave open indefinitely.
“2. Herr Morgenholz – The distribution of the red dots…”
The thing you have to get to understand the red dots; last month we lost jobs (125K), but more people (650K) left the work force and gave up looking for any work at all… good news?
It’s a lower unemployment rate, but that last red mark isn’t a sign of things getting better, it’s a sign of people completely giving up on finding work.
Or, if you’re Obama looking at 100K+ fewer jobs and 600K fewer workers proving value to the economy; this is “heading the economy in the right direction.”
No really, that’s what he says. Fewer jobs, fewer workers, worse economy, less economic value in the GDP; yet somehow is the right direction. That’s our super-genius leader.
[…] important piece in Business Week on the heavy lifting that lies before us if America is to re-learn what it has forgotten about being an industrial power: Today, manufacturing employment in the U.S. computer industry is […]
Both our college-educated, experienced & skilled kids are in this underemployment. Both are in their mid-twenties.
Both have lost jobs during Obama’s regime and both scurried to get re-employed as quickly as possible.
Both are grateful to have jobs, but they had to really work at it.
Neither has a dream job, but both plugging through and paying bills.
One has no health insurance, paying for health care needs out of pocket WITH CASH having shopped for the medical care bargains.
I think I have come up with the catchphrase for what the history books oughta call the period we are currently in.
The Great Repression
It is way more than a recession.
The MFM absolutely refuses to call it a depression.
The Current Administration sure seems hell-bent on doing as much as possible to prevent economic growth and hinder the basic tenents of free-market capitalism.
Embrace the meme, my fellow Bystanders.
[…] also worth remembering, assisted by an updated version of the indispensable chart from Innocents Bystanders, that the administration predicted that its stimulus plan would return the economy to the […]
[…] Innocent Bystanders and St. Louis Fed/FRED. Hoven’s Index for July 3, 2010 Decline in civilian labor force […]
[…] also worth remembering, assisted by an updated version of the indispensable chart from Innocents Bystanders, that the administration predicted that its stimulus plan would return the economy to the […]
The Great Repression.
Genius!
We can have our own opinions, but we can’t have our own facts.
Unless you’re a Lefty, then YES WE CAN!
This is a link to Kos, sorry. But you gotta see this chart, geoff.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/6/18/877235/-Accelerating-the-recovery
The ratio it is based on is nearly meaningless in terms of gauging the true unemployment situation.
Even the Kos lefties are scoffing at it and showing better charts in the comments.
[…] Social Security is fine; we can lower health care costs using smart medicine; stimulus will increase the number of jobs. And when things go wrong or answers seem to fail – as in the financial crisis, or the oil […]
Certainly the numbers look better ….. with so many droping off the radar …. their checks have run out and no jobs …. may have already lost their homes and cars ….everything ….I know this has happened to me. And I’m certainly not a dead beat I have the education and experience but I cannot find a job …I look 24/7.
Looks like their saying lets just sweep the truth under the rug and to heck with all the thousands of AMERICAN’S out here suffering. Key word here is legal American’s. The one’s that’s are depending on OUR
country to step up and do what’s right and help us…. and to up hold the law in reference to illegals. Send them home!
“Second anecdote – the guy in front of me at Dunkin this morning was looking for a job, too. He walked away unsatisfied with the response that the only positions open at that location were shift-managers.”
What Unsatisfied Man probably doesn’t realize is that the kinds of jobs he was probably looking for–cashier or some other low-demand, low-responsibility job that he could leave at the first sign of more stable employment–wouldn’t be filled because employers know people like him won’t stick around. What’s the point in training someone you know is going to be gone just as quick?
I suspect a lot of these “shift manager” positions remain unfilled because they actually demand a significant portion of a person’s time and take a real personal investment in the success of the business, something your average overeducated, humanities-degree-holding SWPL-types react to like a vampire to sunlight.
[…] The only other figure mentioned for the total expenditure on a stimulus package in this proposal is $600 billion, in a quote from Mark Zandi on the potential breakout of efforts from government stimulus on page 9. Using the “slightly over the $775 billion” model (Democrats got $862 billion from Congress), these were the projections made by Romer and the incoming Obama administration for impact on the unemployment rate — and the actual results, from Innocent Bystanders: […]
[…] billion stimulus package and predicted it would hold the unemployment rate at 8% or below. The updated chart shows just how well Romer guessed in January […]
[…] Here's an updated version of The Chart that haunted Romer throughout her tenure, from Innocent Bystanders: […]
[…] Geoff en Innocent Bystanders nos presentaba la evolución de la tasa de paro hasta junio, comparándola con las predicciones iniciales de la administración Obama, y con esta revisión de marzo: […]
[…] (Graphic source: Michael’s Comments) […]
[…] quantitative terms might seem attractive, I worry it could run into a similar embarrassment as the infamous graph of the projected consequences of the economic stimulus package. Even in the best of times, the […]
[…] quantitative terms might seem attractive, I worry it could run into a similar embarrassment as the infamous graph of the projected consequences of the economic stimulus package. Even in the best of times, the […]
[…] quantitative terms might seem attractive, I worry it could run into a similar embarrassment as the infamous graph of the projected consequences of the economic stimulus package. Even in the best of times, the […]
Got an update planned? Looks like things got a little worse recently.
I have been posting updates at Ace of Spades since August. Head on over to ace.mu.nu and scroll down to today’s update.
[…] rate today of …about 8.2%, almost a full point below what we actually have now. The blog Michael’s Comments adjusted Romer’s original chart when she resigned to show the actual results and the new […]
[…] The regime revised it’s estimates and, even though the MSM largely ignored the revision, it was an explicit admission of the scope of the failure of the stimulus bill (via Michael’s Comments): […]
[…] The regime revised it’s estimates and, even though the MSM largely ignored the revision, it was an explicit admission of the scope of the failure of the stimulus bill (via Michael’s Comments): […]
[…] quantitative terms might seem attractive, I worry it could run into a similar embarrassment as the infamous graph of the projected consequences of the economic stimulus package. Even in the best of times, the […]