Truth from the MSM? True-unemployment-rate-already-at-20%.

[jtabeb]

This on the front page of msn.com this morning under the money section.

What? The MSM gets a clue? No way!

http://blogs.moneycentral.msn.com/to...ady-at-20.aspx

Not to scare you, but the situation is actually worse than it seems. Over the years, the government has changed the way it counts the unemployed. An example of this is the criticized Birth-Death Model which was added in 2000. The model is designed to account for the birth and death of businesses and the resultant lag in survey data. Unfortunately, the model doesn't work that well during economic contractions (like we have now) and consistently overstates the number of jobs being created each month.
John Williams of Shadow Government Statistics specializes in removing these questionable tweaks to the government's statistical data to better align current numbers with the methodology used to gather historical data. After reviewing the data, Williams believes that "the June jobs loss likely exceeded 700,000." David Rosenberg of Gluskin Sheff notes that the fall in the number of hours worked in June (to a record low of 33 per week) is equivalent to a loss of more than 800,000 jobs.


(Don't tell Finster!)

[WildspitzE]

Re: Truth from the MSM? True-unemployment-rate-already-at-20%.

This on the front page of msn.com this morning under the money section.

What? The MSM gets a clue? No way!

http://blogs.moneycentral.msn.com/to...ady-at-20.aspx

Not to scare you, but the situation is actually worse than it seems. Over the years, the government has changed the way it counts the unemployed. An example of this is the criticized Birth-Death Model which was added in 2000. The model is designed to account for the birth and death of businesses and the resultant lag in survey data. Unfortunately, the model doesn't work that well during economic contractions (like we have now) and consistently overstates the number of jobs being created each month.
John Williams of Shadow Government Statistics specializes in removing these questionable tweaks to the government's statistical data to better align current numbers with the methodology used to gather historical data. After reviewing the data, Williams believes that "the June jobs loss likely exceeded 700,000." David Rosenberg of Gluskin Sheff notes that the fall in the number of hours worked in June (to a record low of 33 per week) is equivalent to a loss of more than 800,000 jobs.


(Don't tell Finster!)

Hey, let us know if traffic perks up because of that MSM link! Would be interesting to see the effects that such MSM vouch has on traffic.

[D-Mack]

Re: Truth from the MSM? True-unemployment-rate-already-at-20%.

Williams was on CNN last year when M3 was the issue

[D-Mack]

Re: Truth from the MSM? True-unemployment-rate-already-at-20%.

What is the real rate of unemployment? If you add the unemployed and the discouraged and the underemployed, what would it be? And I read that Bush changed the way unemployment is calculated in order to make it seem less awful. If so, is it still being calculated in the same corrupt way? — Kenneth Stretcher


I don’t think it changed specifically under Bush, but you raise an important point. There are a lot of people out of the labor force including, for example, a huge increase in the number of people on disability who, according to researchers, would have been part of the unemployed in the old days. There are also more people now counted as employed who are involuntarily part-time workers or “under”-employed workers, so we need to be careful making apples-to-apples comparisons across decades in the unemployment rate. It’s hard to compute the exact number because some of these data did not exist in older decades. It’s sort of like trying to compare batting averages now to the 1960’s when the pitcher’s mound was higher. You just have to be aware of the differences.

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.co...our-questions/

Austan Goolsbee just amazes me