The Stimulus Is A Failure

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Can't wait for the 3.2 GDP growth in 2010 and 4.0+ in 2011.

[KrazyHorse]

GDP is almost certainly already growing again. 3.2 is high, but not wholly unrealistic

[Ramo]

What what what? You mean the media isn't reporting the folk that have given up on finding employment. But but but they so faithfully reported that meme back in 2003.

I'm shocked shocked I tells ya.

U6 decreased from 16.5% to 16.3%.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t12.htm

[Drake Tungsten]

What's the 150k?

Overall employment.

[KrazyHorse]

I get the weird feeling that the whole labour market was more elastic this time around than it was during previous recessions, for some unknown reason.

Anecdotally it seems like workers are more willing to take nominal pay cuts, and more certainly firms aren't hoarding workers as much (the employment declines are significantly higher than GDP drops, as opposed to the usual downslope trend).

I don't know. Is this why things got worse quicker than expected, but also appear to be turning around quicker than expected?

[KrazyHorse]

What's the 150k?

Overall employment.

I can't keep track of all the BLS series. What's the diff? Farms + self-employment?

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

That's the biggest headline number each month

What's the 150k?

Seems a little odd, since we actually lost 155,000 jobs in July (and we lost 247,000 jobs on non-farm payrolls). The only way we can lose jobs and still have the unemployment rate go down is if the labor pool goes down even faster. And in fact that’s what it did, dropping by 422,000 workers. But the “Want a Job” category only increased by about 100K, so where did the other 300K workers go?

http://michaelscomments.wordpress.com/2009/08/07/july-unemployment/

[Drake Tungsten]

What's the diff? Farms + self-employment?

I think so. They just list it as "employment" in their reports and don't really tell you what the additional components are.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

edit: It appears they just add employment in agricultural industries, including self-employed and unpaid family workers. Self-employed workers in non-agricultural industries are already included in the non-farm payroll stats.

[KrazyHorse]

I don't see what the problem is. 300k people deciding to go back to school or take some time off isn't particularly shocking to me. I generally trust the BLS to get things right, even if I can't be arsed to remember which series measures what...

[Drake Tungsten]

*****ing about statistics is annoying.

[KrazyHorse]

When they come from nat'l stats agencies in the developed world, yes. When they come from China, India et al, some quibbling seems to be in order.

[Drake Tungsten]

True.

[Heraclitus]

@OP: This is a suprise?

[Wezil]

This is also one of the only months where Canada did worse than the US. 45k, unemployment unchanged

The good news is the slide in Ontario has slowed. We've had two positive months in a row (barely, but positive).

[Heraclitus]

*****ing about statistics is annoying.

You have no idea how much I should agree with you.