Guess How Ugly The Unemployment Rate Would Be At 2000 Participation Levels
The decrease in the participation rate in the U.S. economy has left our understanding of what the real unemployment rate is a little cloudy. The latest unemployment report showed huge revisions, but little reality, as to where we really stand.
Albert Edwards of Societe Generale has put together this chart to provide a little context. It shows what the U.S. unemployment number would look life if we were at the peak participation rate of 67%, which occurred around 2000.
At that participation rate, unemployment would be about 4 percentage points higher than the current headline figure of 9%. Edwards says that 4% is the equivalent of 6.7 million more unemployed people.
So if the participation rate increased 3% (from its current 64% to 67%), unemployment would actually be 13%. That gap is partially made up of long-term, structurally unemployed construction workers left behind after the housing bust, and is a significant number.
Lie: “These changes are happening for one simple reason; because you asked for them.” --Michelle Obama claiming the voice of the people was telling her that we need to government to tell us what to eat.
"I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the face. Don´t trust that conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance any day in the week, if anything is to be got by it." -- Charles Dickens [ What politician(s) does this make you think of? I guess we now need to not listen to or watch him and watch only what he does! – JS ]
"Any compromise must shrink the government sector and expand the private sector. The compromise should be where cut spending, not where we raise taxes." -- Senator Rand Paul
No comments:
Post a Comment