| akuma587 said:
@ HappySqurriel: So you are saying a slowing pace isn't significant at all. I agree that it can be given too much significance, but that doesn't mean it has no significance. If unemployment is increasing at 1% every month but then after a few months starts increasing by only .2%, are you saying that has no significance whatsoever in terms of when unemployment will start dropping? I mean these aren't really abstract, complicated models we are talking about here. Its just looking at rates of change on graphs. You will be hard-pressed to find periods of high unemployment where this phenomenon didn't happen even though you claim it has no significance. And I would love for you to show me some. And the rest of what you are talking about always happens when there is high unemployment. No one is claiming that unemployment numbers reflect the whole picture. But this isn't the first time we have had high employment numbers, so I don't really think you can claim nothing like what is happening now has happened before. |
I was actually quite clear in what I said and yet you didn't understand ...
One of the first things I was taught in one of my first economics courses was that there were many statistics which you should not put too much weight into on their own, because quite often movement in them is contrary to what they're trying to measure. The primary example that was used was the unemployment rate because it only considers people who are unemployed and actively looking for a job; and when the job market is getting worse there is often a drop off in the number of people who are actively looking for a job (presenting as a drop in the unemployment rate), and if the job market is getting better more formerly discouraged workers will start looking for a job again (presenting s a rise in the unemployment rate).
Last month the job market was so awful that the unemployment rate only increased by 40% of its previous monthy values because 50% to 60% of the rise in unemployment was offset by people becomming discourage and giving up.
I don't see a 500,000+ person rise in unemployment in a month when everyone has hope in finding a job as being some how worse than a 500,000 person rise in unemployment when 300,000 people have given up hope of finding a job in a month.
