Alan Reynolds discusses measures of income inequality on C-SPAN
Showing posts with label Data. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Data. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Saturday, January 8, 2011
US jobs report an ‘utter mess’
EXCERPTS:
"The problem is that the monthly payrolls report contains two different measures – a survey of households and a survey of employers – and in December they pointed in different directions.
The employment survey, the normal focus of attention, showed overall growth in payrolls of only 103,000. That was well below expectations, especially after a disappointing November report and a remarkably high estimate from private- sector payroll processor ADP earlier this week.
Yet the household survey, from which the unemployment rate is calculated, sent a completely different message. It showed an extra 297,000 people in jobs and 260,000 fewer people in the labour force. The combination of the two was enough to cause a drop in the unemployment rate from 9.8 to 9.4 per cent.
...
Most analysts attribute the fall in labour force participation and therefore the fall in the unemployment rate, to the expiry of long-term unemployment benefits in December.
If you no longer receive unemployment benefits, the theory goes, then you no longer have any reason to tell a survey you are actively looking for work. The number of “discouraged workers”, who say that they are no longer looking for a job because they do not think they can find one, was 1.3m in December.
Congress has since renewed long-term unemployment benefits. A likely consequence is that the size of the labour force will bounce back in January, reversing the fall in the unemployment rate.
A further disappointment was in the average duration of a spell of unemployment, which rose from 21.7 to 22.4 weeks, suggesting that those people who are finding jobs have not been out of work for long.
"The problem is that the monthly payrolls report contains two different measures – a survey of households and a survey of employers – and in December they pointed in different directions.
The employment survey, the normal focus of attention, showed overall growth in payrolls of only 103,000. That was well below expectations, especially after a disappointing November report and a remarkably high estimate from private- sector payroll processor ADP earlier this week.
Yet the household survey, from which the unemployment rate is calculated, sent a completely different message. It showed an extra 297,000 people in jobs and 260,000 fewer people in the labour force. The combination of the two was enough to cause a drop in the unemployment rate from 9.8 to 9.4 per cent.
...
Most analysts attribute the fall in labour force participation and therefore the fall in the unemployment rate, to the expiry of long-term unemployment benefits in December.
If you no longer receive unemployment benefits, the theory goes, then you no longer have any reason to tell a survey you are actively looking for work. The number of “discouraged workers”, who say that they are no longer looking for a job because they do not think they can find one, was 1.3m in December.
Congress has since renewed long-term unemployment benefits. A likely consequence is that the size of the labour force will bounce back in January, reversing the fall in the unemployment rate.
A further disappointment was in the average duration of a spell of unemployment, which rose from 21.7 to 22.4 weeks, suggesting that those people who are finding jobs have not been out of work for long.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
A 90% Certainty Unemployment Rose. Or Fell - WSJ.com
EXCERPTS:
"The ranks of unemployed individuals grew by 134,000 last month from February, to 15 million, the Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics says. But it also is plausible, the agency says, that the number of unemployed rose by 500,000. Or, it could have fallen by 200,000.
In fact, at a time when high unemployment tops many people's worries about the economic recovery, the BLS can say only that it is 90% confident that the true change in the number of unemployed in March was somewhere between a drop of 243,000 and an increase of 511,000. In other words, it isn't even clear whether the number of unemployed rose or fell last month. The ranges are similarly broad for seven of the last 10 months—and for more than 75% of the time in the past decade.
This isn't a failing of government or of statisticians, say economists. Instead, it is the inevitable result of trying to measure small changes in a sprawling, complex economy. There is no doubt that the unemployment rate remains near the highest it has been in decades. But the government doesn't really know how much that rate has been changing from month to month, which can be vexing for economists attempting to identify signs of a nascent recovery.
The difficulty, says Patrick O'Keefe, director of economic research for accounting firm J.H. Cohn in Roseland, N.J., "is in providing the public a real-time sense of what is going on." He adds: "Most of the month-to-month changes are not only nonsignificant in a statistical way, but they are very often straddling zero, so you can't even infer the direction of the change has been accurately represented."
"The ranks of unemployed individuals grew by 134,000 last month from February, to 15 million, the Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics says. But it also is plausible, the agency says, that the number of unemployed rose by 500,000. Or, it could have fallen by 200,000.
In fact, at a time when high unemployment tops many people's worries about the economic recovery, the BLS can say only that it is 90% confident that the true change in the number of unemployed in March was somewhere between a drop of 243,000 and an increase of 511,000. In other words, it isn't even clear whether the number of unemployed rose or fell last month. The ranges are similarly broad for seven of the last 10 months—and for more than 75% of the time in the past decade.
This isn't a failing of government or of statisticians, say economists. Instead, it is the inevitable result of trying to measure small changes in a sprawling, complex economy. There is no doubt that the unemployment rate remains near the highest it has been in decades. But the government doesn't really know how much that rate has been changing from month to month, which can be vexing for economists attempting to identify signs of a nascent recovery.
The difficulty, says Patrick O'Keefe, director of economic research for accounting firm J.H. Cohn in Roseland, N.J., "is in providing the public a real-time sense of what is going on." He adds: "Most of the month-to-month changes are not only nonsignificant in a statistical way, but they are very often straddling zero, so you can't even infer the direction of the change has been accurately represented."
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Greg Mankiw's Blog: Unemployment Update
"Unemployment Update"
Interesting graph showing the Obama administration's unemployment forecast versus actual rates.
Interesting graph showing the Obama administration's unemployment forecast versus actual rates.
Monday, October 5, 2009
The Young and the Jobless
"The September teen unemployment rate hit 25.9%, the highest rate since World War II and up from 23.8% in July. Some 330,000 teen jobs have vanished in two months. Hardest hit of all: black male teens, whose unemployment rate shot up to a catastrophic 50.4%. It was merely a terrible 39.2% in July.
The biggest explanation is of course the bad economy. But it's precisely when the economy is down and businesses are slashing costs that raising the minimum wage is so destructive to job creation. Congress began raising the minimum wage from $5.15 an hour in July 2007, and there are now 691,000 fewer teens working.....
Economic data and Treasury security prices - WSJ Oct. 3, 2009
The following reports the effect of a disappointing employment report (increase in the unemployment rate, decrease in payroll employment) on the market for U.S. Treasury securities.
Coming Auctions Weigh On Treasury Prices
"Another strong week for Treasurys ended on the skids, as investors turned their attention from disappointing U.S. economic data to the $71 billion of auctions ahead.
The market registered no more than a temporary burst on Friday's poor jobs figures, having exhausted its ability to capitalize on conflicting economic data.
Heavy buying in long-dated Treasurys after the nonfarm payrolls report pushed yields, which move inversely to prices, down sharply. The 10-year note hit 3.10% and looked as if it might be headed for the year's April low.
Late Friday in New York, the 10-year note was down 10/32 point, or $3.125 for each $1,000 invested, at 103 10/32. Its yield rose to 3.230% from 3.194% late Thursday. The 30-year bond fell 1 2/32 points to yield 4.018%.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Saturday, March 7, 2009
U-6: An alternative measure of unemployment
We saw in lecture that the unemployment rate counts only workers who are without a job and are actively looking for work. The government also calculates several alternative measures of how the labor market is doing.
One of the more interesting measures is called U-6. U-6 is "total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers."
Marginally attached workers are "persons who currently are neither working nor looking for work but indicate that they want and are available for a job and have looked for work sometime in the recent past. Discouraged workers, a subset of the marginally attached, have given a job-market related reason for not currently looking for a job. Persons employed part time for economic reasons are those who want and are available for full-time work but have had to settle for a part-time schedule."
For more information see the BLS site.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Drop in food consumption
"In 2008's fourth quarter, consumer spending on food fell at an inflation-adjusted 3.7% from the third quarter, according to data from the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis. That is the steepest decline in the 62 years the government has compiled the figure."
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