Where is the US economy headed?

The Employment Numbers Out Today. "A Glimmer of Hope?" Bull...

The most closely watched BLS unemployment number out today (U-3) remains stuck at 9.1%. Many of us follow U-6 which hovers at 16%.
Reportedly, 103K net jobs were created in September but there needs to be an *. Included are some Verizon workers who had been on strike.
There was some private sector growth but nothing to get excited about. Local governments shed 35K jobs and the USPS eliminated 5K. That extends a trend of losses in the government sector, which many think is good news.

There are some interesting numbers regarding the length of unemployment, and a bit of an enigma I can't explain. Please think about it.
The "Average Unemployed Person" has been out of work for 40 weeks. That is the the longest since the BLS started compiling that in 1948. In the mid-1980's the number was between 10-15 weeks and grew to 21 weeks in May, 2009.
The number of people out of work 27 weeks (the threshold for "Long Term Unemployment") is at 6.24M vs 6.71 in May, 2010 - which was a peak.
Here is where I get confused: the Median Average re the length of time of unemployment is 22 weeks vs the Average listed above of 40 weeks.

pretty soon, those folks will be off the rolls, and the numbers will look much better...

they will then just be jobless folks that are poor.

The median is the 50th percentile. That value which indicates the middle of all individuals in the tally. The average is the arithmetic average which means that three folks at 500 will drive the average way up even though there are 100s in the teens. The median is a better number for central tendency when the data are not normally distributed.

are they counting the folks that have run out of benefits, then?

I believe they are counted in U6 but not U3.

I know the different kinds of averages, Jaye. My question is how would you get a series of, say, 5 numbers which would yield an average of unemployment duration of 40 weeks and a median average of 22 weeks.

12, 12, 22, 74, 80 the median is 22 and the avg is 40

Yes, they are. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, "[p]ersons are classified as unemployed if they do not have a job, have actively looked for work in the prior 4 weeks, and are currently available for work." Whether they receive benefits or not is irrelevant to the definition.

but they have to keep reporting?

Loosely defined-
U-3 is people who are unemployed while U-6 includes people who are underemployed. They might be working 20 hours but want to work 40. People out of benefits is not included. I think that is right.

I'm just asking because I don't know.

I am in the demographic, but not part of their numbers.

I never applied for benefits, but am going on 3 years of mostly not being employed.

I wonder how many other people are not part of the survey...

No, they don't. If you look at my link above, you will find that the US measures unemployment rates through surveys, not through claims. Consequently, when unemployed persons lose their benefits, they still get polled by whoever is surveying them, and they continue to be as likely as before to respond to the survey.

In that case, you probably are U-6. But there is another category beyond U-3 and U-6 that includes people who have stopped looking for work and are or are not receiving any benefits.

A lot! That's the point of running a survey rather than a full census every month. By surveying a large-enough sample size, the government saves itself a lot of money compared to polling everyone, and yet your number is still pretty close to what a full census would yield.

Are you actively looking for work? If so, you're part of U-3, and simply haven't been polled.

In 46 years I've never been polled.

how do they choose the poll members?

That wasn't my question. My question was, are you actively looking for work? Are you sending your resume to companies? Have you had interviews? Have you told employment agencies that you're looking? Have you told friends that you're looking? If your answer to any of these question is "yes", you are unemployed by the "official", U3 definition---whether you have been polled or not.


They don't. Basically, they send questionnaires to a large number of random households---I'm going to guess something like 300,000, or one American in a thousand. In each of those questionnaires, they ask things like: "Are you currently employed? Part-time or full-time? If part-time, would you like to work full time? If you're not currently unemployed, are you actively looking?" (And so forth.) From the responses, statisticians then calculate the various unemployment rates.

This is the one-paragraph version of what they're doing. If it really interests you, go to the BLS site andcheck out the link I posted earlier. They go into much more detail.

just wondering how random random is...

having never met anyone that received one.

sorry.

I'll shut up now...

That's all very well if Thomas has a scientific definition of "work" and of "unemployment". If he hasn't it's a load of crap from a scientific point of view and Thomas is noted for his scientific rigor.

You got a set of numbers that worked, Jaye, but can you do that with higher numbers of long-term unemployed earlier on. No big deal; I am just curious based on the BLS data.