John Williams’ Shadow Stats site (http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data) looks at various government reported financial estimates and shows how these estimates are skewed and inaccurate. The following chart shows how the government reported unemployment numbers can be interpreted when basing these numbers in reality:
As you can see, the current unemployment rate could be a whopping 16%!
The government numbers, on the other hand are available at: http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics:
To summarize: Employed persons consist of:
All persons who did any work for pay or profit during the survey week.
All persons who did at least 15 hours of unpaid work in a family-operated enterprise.
All persons who were temporarily absent from their regular jobs because of illness, vacation, bad weather, industrial dispute, or various personal reasons, whether or not they were paid for the time off.
Unemployed persons are:
All persons who did not have a job at all during the survey week, made specific active efforts to find a job during the prior 4 weeks, and were available for work (unless temporarily ill).
All persons who were not working and were waiting to be called back to a job from which they had been laid off need not be looking for work to be classified as unemployed.
Many predict that the unemployment rate could rise to 8% during 2009.
Update 12-15-08: Mike: I’ll add pertinent UE information to this post as it comes across:
As U.S. jobs disappear at a rapid clip, the official unemployment figure seems understated. While November’s 6.7% rate is a full 2% higher than the same time last year, the rate remains well below the 10.8% postwar peak, reached in November 1982. One issue is that the official unemployment number captures only a slice of the total joblessness in the U.S. To be counted as unemployed in this statistic, a worker must not have a job, be currently available for work, and have actively sought employment within the last four weeks. In other words, a lot of the jobless are left out of the government’s tally.
via Unemployment: Worse Than it Looks – BusinessWeek.
Mike: The following article highlights how most workers aren’t able collect unemployment. While many of these workers may have been fortunate enough to find employment quicklyin good times, they will have a much more difficult time securing wmployment this time around. I’ll write more about this as I gather the information.
Contractors, such as many 1099s, aaren’t eligible for unemployment benefits, which could lower that 37% further. More as I get some facts:
– Only 37% of those laid off collect unemployment benefits:
On Friday, when the Chrysler plant in Newark, Del., shut its doors, more than 1,000 autoworkers joined the ranks of the unemployed.
At least they will be able to get unemployment insurance.
Most jobless workers can’t.
Across the U.S., only 37 percent of workers who lose their jobs typically collect unemployment benefits, according to Labor Department statistics.
They often miss out because they didn’t earn enough while working, or their work history was not continuous enough to make them eligible under state unemployment laws
via Many laid off get no benefits | Richmond Times-Dispatch.
Mike: Some interesting stats and information concerning various state unemployment bebefit packages:
*The federal average weekly benefit is $293 a week, and about 38% of the jobless receive payments, but state by state the numbers vary wildly. Mississippi joins Puerto Rico on the low end of the spectrum. Its weekly maximum is $210, with weekly payments averaging $180.77 going to about a quarter of that state’s jobless. In South Dakota and Texas, just 18% and 20% of the unemployed receive benefits, respectively. That compares with Massachusetts’ average weekly benefit of $383.77 to 57% of its jobless workers, or Hawaii’s $414.17 average weekly payment and 42% recipient rate.
via Jobless Benefits, State by State – BusinessWeek.
Here are some of the reported job loss headlines over the past couple days:
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1,330 extended mass layoffs occurred in the third quarter, 312 more than in 2007. About 218,000 workers were part of these layoffs, against 160,000 in 2007. These people were separated from their jobs for at least 31 days, but let’s be realistic: a lot of them will never be called back to work.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/business/16count.html?ref=business
Kinro Inc. – which makes aluminum and vinyl windows and doors for recreational vehicles and manufactured homes – will layoff 143 workers here and mothball its plant until business picks back up.:
http://mfrtech.com/articles/1535.html
BOSTON –
Shawmut Design and Construction, in a reversal of its outlook a few months ago, has announced plans to lay off an undisclosed number of employees.
http://www.pbn.com/stories/36292.html
I hope to do a daily update and I hope that readers submit layoff notices and their affect on them, their families and their communities.
Thanks!
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