Saturday, September 10, 2011

Unemployment Statistics are Misleading

Job statistics are misleading because they don’t accurately give current employment figures. It seems their only purpose these days is to provide content for the media and data on which politicians can contrive messages to confuse an economically illiterate voting public.

Many job seekers give up looking when there is a prolonged recession. Thus the truly unemployed figure always looks better than it is.

The unemployed tend not to look for employment energetically until unemployment insurance is ready to run out. So extending the periods of insurance during recessions may appear compassionate, but makes unemployment statistics lower than they would ordinarily be.

In addition , many jobs may be part time or just temporary during recessions. Employers are unable to hire permanent help, or fear hiring because of rising costs and taxes.

So we constantly measure apples and oranges and produce questionable numbers that the media loves to repeat over and over as gospel. (See the Earl J Weinreb NewsHole® comments.)

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