Asymmetrical Information

Jane, I know you write for the Economist, but this is America. Our forefathers fought the Revolutionary War so we wouldn't have to put extraneous Us in words such as humor and labor. "labour department?" Are you discussing British economic trends?

still luv ya

Sadly, my brain is too small to contain two spellings.

Oh, come on, Jane.

You must know that the common reaction to your writing is, "Wow, check out the huge frontal lobes on that babe!"

Your modesty is not needed - perhaps you could donate it to one of the many deserving folks who revealed their lack during the election cycle?

Maybe a "search and replace" to replace "labour" with "labor" in stuff you post here?

No? Oh, well, I guess I can learn to live with that "furrin'" spelling if I have to. (grin)

# sed s/labour/labor/g < draft.txt > final.txt

I've never understood "discouraged workers" - what do they do to survive? Collect welfare? A trust fund? And they can't find *any* job? I suspect more than a few are working "under the table" or perhaps even in gray- or black-markets.

I have heard an explanation for labor/labour, etc; I have no idea if it is true:

In England the guild-based printers were paid by the character, so long spellings were prefered; in the states, free-market competition favoured shorter spellings.

Good news indeed.

But I still think that there are many discouraged workers. We should see this trend in future months. As companies finalize their accounting for the fall quarter, we should see more and more of them seek workers.

Lev,

Anyone collecting unemployment insurance, collecting welfare, and in other government programs usually show up in the numbers. I see four groups that won't show up.

Group one, young and middle age people that have given up for the time being and just live off of their savings until they see opportunity. Group two, the elderly who are so close to retirement finding another job will be a short term adventure. Group three, the young and middle aged people that have decided to return to school and get higher education. Group four, people that have decided to take odd jobs or work at home(self-employed but not registered yet), but don't see it as a long term endevor.

Hey, I picked up the habit of inserting the extra vowel in "humour" some years back, and once you start it's worse than a four pack a day nicotine jones to quit. For some reason, though, it never caught one with me on "labor". Very odd.

http://www.thecobraslair.com/images/GRADUATES-NAT.gif

Jane,

This uptick could probably be explained by holiday season retail hiring. Most of those jobs are temporary. The January 2005 job figure should be a more accurrate measure of the market, IMHO.

--Cobra

Also potential discouraged workers:
Stay-at-home homemakers (of either sex, with or without children).
Kids who've graduated from school and are living in their parents' basement.

C'mon people... Becker proved that Homo Economicus lives in family groups about thirty years ago. Get with the times.

(self-employed but not registered yet)

I'm self employed (which allows me the luxury of perusing Janes fine frontal lobes), and one of the perks is that, as a sole proprietor, I don't have to "register" in any meaningful way, other than paying my taxes. What I do is not reflected in the statistics, which leads me to suspect the validity of the statistics. Maybe I show up in the Household survey, maybe I don't.

Of course, if I get enough work to need an employee, I have to meet a lot of state requirements and fill out a lot of paperwork. I deliberately walk the line between just enough and too much work. Another example of the dead hand of the state restraining commerce.

lev, have you ever taken an economics class? I only took a 5 credit hour course that combined macro and micro economics but I clearly remember the bit that surprised so many people, which is that even if we had an economy that was 100% efficient we would still have unemployment. Since we don't have a 100% efficient economy, guess where that leaves us? Yes, it is entirely possible to not be able to find a job. I remember quite clearly a long stretch when I lived in Tulsa during a major dip in oil prices where I couldn't get a job in computers since I had some experience (though not a lot) but no degree and employers on the lower level jobs I applied for wouldn't hire me for fear of me walking out soon for a better job. This was almost twenty years ago but I've seen it happening to other people recently.

Peter,

What I meant by registering is of course paying taxes.

Self-employment is very hard to measure, and if you haven't paid taxes or aren't filing a tax report (black market) the government will have no data on that kind of work. The data on the economy is very inaccurate because it misses out on so many activities that are work but don't show up in payrolls.

But it is the best data that we have to gauge it.

And dubious has a good point in that some families have just resorted to living on one income. I wonder what the statistics is for that.

Its very important to realize that many of this months job numbers are because of temp workers involved in cleaning Fla up because of the hurricanes.

Employment/unemployment statistics get calculated from several different data sources.

Specifically, if I remember right, the 'labor force' is calculated from the Current Population Survey (CPS), a monthly survey of about 80,000 households. Basically, it's the number of people who say they are employed or who have actively looked for work in the last 2 weeks.

The labor-force participation rate is typically measured as the 'labor force' as measured above divided by the total number of people of working age who aren't in school.

The unemployment rate is the % of the labor force as calculated above who do not have work, but are actively looking for it.

The jobs-creation numbers come from surveys of business, IIRC.

The unemployment claims come from unemployment offices.

Notice that we have 3 independent data sources, and several different things to measure, all of which are interesting in their own ways.

Holiday retailing doesn't explain the uptick for two reasons, Cobra: the labor department seasonally adjusts its numbers, and these numbers are from October, a leetle early for holiday retailing.

Nor does Florida; hurricanes cause rises in unemployment, as assets are destroyed and small businesses shut down, not falls.

My insights as part of a tech company.

Inventories are low, and we're seeing quality problem because the company needs to produce more product than it is optimally capable of.

A word from a few other companies show the same thing. It sounds like recovery to me.

The comments about the Fla hurricanes and jobs are not my own theory, it was reported by a Florida economist as a guest on Fox news this morning.

Around 20 or so years ago, I had a job that involved a couple months of travel mostly through the plains states. Once I stopped at was a large (for the area) town that had suffered a series of devastating tornadoes a few months previously. It was booming. While i'm sure there were possible long term problems and lots of affected families without homes (you could drive down street after street of destroyed or condemned houses) in the short term, however, disaster aid and cleaning up/rebuilding was pumping a whole bunch of money into the town and people were buying and spending like it was going out of style. I wouldn't be surprised if something like that is happening in Florida now (though hurricanes do more damage to infrastructure than do tornadoes I think).

So what you're telling me here, Begbee, is that by unleashing the forces of global warming, Bush engineered the big hurricane season we just saw, thereby pumping up Florida's economy and ensuring his own re-election! Damn, that Karl Rove fella sure is devious. Bet his frontal lobes are even bigger than Jane's.

I have heard an explanation for labor/labour, etc; I have no idea if it is true:

In England the guild-based printers were paid by the character, so long spellings were prefered; in the states, free-market competition favoured shorter spellings.

IIRC, in recent years it has been a more common trend, particularly words the US spells with 'z' whereas the UK goes with an 's', as a reaction by British linguistic elites to keep the Queen's English differentiated from the more vulgar, base, American type.

Rather like how a French computer will probably contain a cédérom drive, for example.

Joe S learn how to read. Clown.

If Bush ends the year with net jobs positive it negates a big Dem talking point (the 'only Prez since Hoover' one).

And don't get into the labour/labor controversy. It's much weirder than that. Both Yanks and Brits drink tap water if it comes out of some spigot contraption in the kitchen. But only Brits call that contraption a tap. Whither 'faucet water'? Likewise 'dog biscuits'. Why not 'dog cookies'?

Dog biscuits do make sense, since I'm pretty sure they're not sweet (except maybe to the dog)

I think tapwater not tap water (I'm not sure which is 'correct'). I think of tap as a verb in this case, you tap the faucet (or garden hose) to get the water.

I write labor unless I'm referring to that political party in Britain. Then I write Labour, sort as if it were a proper name.

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