Comments on: Unemployment At Highest Level In 15 Years: Or Is It Even Worse?

By: * Build An Emergency Fund To Avoid Financial Crisis

* Build An Emergency Fund To Avoid Financial Crisis — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 17:30:57 +0000

[...] Unemployment [...]

By: Build An Emergency Fund To Avoid Financial Crisis | Free-Trial-Shop.com

Build An Emergency Fund To Avoid Financial Crisis | Free-Trial-Shop.com — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 10:11:12 +0000

[...] Unemployment [...]

By: Build An Emergency Fund To Avoid Financial Crisis | Personal Finance - Thecreditcardfiles.com

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 17:10:50 +0000

[...] Unemployment [...]

By: Friday Link Love And Carnival Roundup - Amateur Asset Allocator

Friday Link Love And Carnival Roundup - Amateur Asset Allocator — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 20:21:39 +0000

[...] thanks to Penelope at Pecuniarities for including my post on unemployment numbers in this week’s carnival of personal [...]

By: Pecuniarities

Pecuniarities — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 14:02:01 +0000

Carnival of Personal Finance No. 188: The Jane Austen Edition…

Welcome to the 188th Carnival of Personal Finance! Our theme for this week’s edition is Jane Austen, as I am a admirer of both her novels and the films based on her novels, which are graced throughout with witty commentary on society — and in …..

By: PFI Weekly Updates - January 13 (2009) — Passive Family Income

PFI Weekly Updates - January 13 (2009) — Passive Family Income — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 12:37:15 +0000

[...] – Amateur Asset Allocator breaks down the current unemployment rates that recently came [...]

By: Weekend Reading, 1/11 | Earn What You Spend

Weekend Reading, 1/11 | Earn What You Spend — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 18:08:13 +0000

[...] Kyle asks whether the data in the BLS is manipulated. (His answer is an emphatic no – the data is there for you to [...]

By: Kyle

Kyle — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 19:57:27 +0000

Data is meaningless without interpretation.

a.) Much of the Shadowstats crowd is arguing exactly that, alleging outright manipulation of data.
b.) I don’t follow. Part-time and underemployed workers ARE accounted for in the BLS numbers via the average-hours-worked metric, not the 7.2% metric. You can’t use one in isolation. They are all essential.

By: William

William — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 19:25:56 +0000

Interesting, from the BLS:

“Is there a measure of underemployment?

Because of the difficulty of developing an objective set of criteria which could be readily used in a monthly household survey, no official government statistics are available on the total number of persons who might be viewed as underemployed. Even if many or most could be identified, it would still be difficult to quantify the loss to the economy of such underemployment”

By: William

William — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 18:43:24 +0000

re: “that’s not a valid argument.” … I don’t follow your thought here. I don’t see anyone arguing anywhere that a) the information isn’t publicly available, or that b) the 7.2% includes the ‘underemployed’. For point a, we have quite robust reporting from a variety of sources (look at ADP’s numbers released a few days ago) and point b, it’s just a matter of reading the fine print. The 7.2 number that got the headlines does *not* include the underemployed.

The data is there, and, so the saying goes, it doesn’t lie. It’s the interpretation of it that matters.