Can media ignore DOL stat UE rate drop due to long term UE's dropping out?

[papau]

How many ways can the media ignore DOL saying UE rate drop is due to long term UE's being dropped?


The DOL http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm Friday, July 8, 2005 THE EMPLOYMENT SITUATION: JUNE 2005

"Nonfarm employment increased by 146,000 in June, and the unemployment rate continued to trend down, reaching 5.0 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today" is pushing stocks higher today and indeed the job growth on its face without analysis is good news - Employers added 146,000 jobs last month, and upward revisions to employment gains in April and May totaled 62,000, yielding an overall job increase of 208,000.

But even ignoring the effect of the pretend and never benchmarked "birth/death adjustment" in those job growth numbers, how does the media justify ignoring:

1. Over the past four months, the economy has added an average of 166,000 jobs per month while during the expansion of the 1990s, from 1993 through 1999, the economy added an average of 251,000 jobs each month.

2. Average weekly hours held steady at 33.7 hours per week in June, after falling from 33.8 in April.

3. When you drop long out of work folks from the calculation you get the share of unemployed workers who have been out of work and searching for a job for at least six months falling, from 20.1 to 17.8 percent, just like we did in this report. Indeed the average number of weeks that workers spend unemployed showing a large drop, from 18.8 to 17.1 weeks, is more proof that the DOL dropped the long unemployed out of their calculations

4. Meanwhile wage growth is less than inflation at 2.8% annualized rate of growth vs, inflation of 4.4%. Since when does this happen in a tightening labor market?

5. And the best summary of our "tightening labor market" - the labor force participation rate - fell by 0.1 percentage points last month.

Where the hell is our media?

[justinsb]

1. The primary reason

that unemployment in Canada is generally higher than in the states is all unemployed people are included, even those who's benefeits have experied and those who have stopped looking for work.

[papau]

2. Also true of the UE rate calculation in the EU

But we like to pretend.

[fasttense]

3. The US reported unemployment rate has absolutely no meaning

or value anymore. It is a bogus number made up by repuke apologists to cover up the truth. That said.

I have a question about number 5. Are you saying, or is DOL, saying that .1% of the workers just decided not to work anymore????

[papau]

4. yes - you have to want to work to be part of work force.- women entering

have pushed that percentage up, but it has fallen since the Clinton years.

[fasttense]

5. Thanks, That is very interesting. I know some of it has to be

retirements but some of it is probably lack of hope for successful job hunting or adequate pay. I would be working right now if I could find a job that paid what I'm worth. I gave up after 4 job offerers wanted to pay me half the salary I was getting before I moved.

Here is another reason the number of people who aren't working (and aren't looking for work) is not due to retirement. There was a thread posted about a week ago that said most retirees are working past retirement age. Of course it was from the corporate media and they polished that turd to make it sound like a good thing. But the real reason retirees are working past retirement age is they ain't got enough money to pay for both food and medicine. It's work till you die mentality of the brush regime.