Comments on: Undercounting Under-Employment

By: Greg0658

Greg0658 — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 14:46:57 +0000

Winston that was awesome.

Catching up this morning. I took the 2010 Census Enumerator test yesterday, Management last week.
FYIs
Enumerator – 28 questions in 30 minutes
Management – 29 questions in 60 minutes
Both tests for this 50yo were something, especially the management test. Mind bending questions. What a crew can come up with in a 365 day a year socialist job. Not a slam. I appreciate good government. Its nothing more than a dig at this whole system of Caiptalism / Socialism / Utopianism.
GPS address sync in my area begins in Feb09. The questions to be asked are passing thru Congress now. The actual Census will be in 2010. Initially I went to investigate. Our area is having trouble with applicants showing up to test. I am wondering if “the nanny state is too good” or criminal records or transportation requirements are the problem.
http://www.census.gov

Back to this thread.

I was screeming at the CNBC segment a day or 2 ago. It just reported that Chineese will work for $170 a month in US dollars.
(sometimes I think I should have a security camera running just to upload that stuff to YouTube)
Do you people on Wall Street and Washington GET THAT. Your trickle down policy has trickled out into foreign lands. Years of our savings are invested overseas now. It is going to 25 YEARS for those lands to arrive at an American Standard of Living and BALANCE TO OUR ECONOMY.

By: Jojo99

Jojo99 — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 05:21:06 +0000

One point related to unemployment not mentioned here so far is ageism in the IT world. If you are +45 or worse, in your 50’s, the probability of getting new employment has always been difficult. Now it is near impossible. And as has bene mentioned, most job listings I’ve seen HAVE been very specific, requiring experience in the same field, often with specific competitors named. Years of skills in related areas are not generally considered transferable these days.

See here for a layoff tracker:
Techcrunch layoff tracker

By: stillarealreaganrepublican

stillarealreaganrepublican — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 02:52:40 +0000

Barry, let me ask you a question. When was the last time you saw Elaine Chao on CNBC defending the administration’s employment numbers? She must be in the same undisclosed location as Dick Cheney was before, oh I don’t know, 3 days before the election when he showed up in his home state to endorse McCain. Where in the hell has she been?? If there is one soul left in this country who actually believes ANY stat the government puts out to defend Bush’s statements before the REAL crisis began, let them show up on CNBC, MSNBC, CBS, NBC, FOX or anywhere and defend it. If President Bush can say in March and May and July and September “Our fundamental economy is strong” and get away with it, then surely the BLS can say that the unemployment stats really aren’t that bad, right? Look, I believe a president should be optimistic, but also truthful. When Reagan said “We are a shining city on a hill”, I believed it. But when Bush said everything was fine, I cringed. Why? Because I knew the truth, just like you did. If the truth ever REALLY gets out about what has been going on the last two years, I think President Bush will be seen as the puppet he really was……….Someone was pulling his strings, just like someone has been pullling Obama’s since his campaign began. But at least Obama can really claim that this wasn’t his fault and he truly has a mandate, just like Reagan did to get us out of the Carter malaise…….

By: Dr. Kenneth Noisewater

Dr. Kenneth Noisewater — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 22:25:12 +0000

From what I can tell in IT… Employers want wage slaves with between 3-5 years of XP, or folks willing to work for those wages. Folks with more XP either have to go into management or specialized consulting, folks with less are crowded out. NYC was particularly bad, lots of interviews I had were for MLM internet scams or “stupid” large IT orgs (which pay lots of money for garbage software and poor support).. I can’t imagine it’s gotten much better since I left in 2006, and most folks I know have fled NYC for just about anywhere else (London, LA, SF, Seattle, Vancouver, Austin TX).

At this point I’m just banking as much as I can in case I get forced into “consulting” again… Nothing I love more than nagging clients over receivables…

By: Mythiot

Mythiot — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 22:10:25 +0000

The first unemployment insurance data for November came out today. Comparing the advance Not Seasonally Adjusted (NSA) estimate of 463,932 initial claims for November 1 to the average of the weekly intial claims data in November 2007, we see that initial claims are up 39.7% year-over-year (YoY) in November. Note that the YoY rate of change (RoC) peaked in September at 48.8%, declined to 43.6% in October, and then declined further in November.

I’m looking at a plot of the trailing three-month (T3M) YoY RoC in NSA initial claims, and the resemblance to both the 1991 and 2001 recessions is clear. In 2001, the T3M YoY RoC of initial claims peaked at 45.0%, and it’s now at 43.6% and turning the corner. There could be some wiggles, but we can expect that the YoY RoC of initial claims will continue slowing down from here.

Nonfarm payrolls (NFP) usually lag initial claims by several months, so the YoY RoC of NFP, which is still accelerating, should peak in, say, three to six months. That is, the employment situation will get worse in the near term, but we can see, more or less, how it’s going to play out. If you wait for the robins…!

By: bart

bart — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 21:38:13 +0000

The U6 unemployment measure has been around at least since 1970.

NSA
http://www.nowandfutures.com/images/unemployment.png

SA
http://www.nowandfutures.com/images/unemployment_sa.png

By: willid3

willid3 — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 21:08:02 +0000

i wonder if the numbers were changed to make it all look better for some other reason like social security? and we have been saying for a long time that wages weren’t acting normal. they should have gone up based on what we were told about unemployment. But they didn’t.

By: Bob A

Bob A — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 21:04:00 +0000

Ironic isn’t it, that those who scream the loudest and longest about their “entitlements” are the rich folks?

By: leftback

leftback — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 20:13:12 +0000

Second test of 900 after a textbook bounce off support. I am still in my SKF here. Would a successful bounce off an intra-day double bottom be bullish?

@dead hobo, 850 would not surprise me in the least tomorrow.

By: I-Man

I-Man — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 19:55:14 +0000

@ Montaigne:

“Infrastructure and green technology. It’s New Deal 2.0.”

Agreed. The gov’ment will spend its way to job creation, and (badly needed) investment into infrastructure and clean tech will be the outlet.