It's Still The Economy, Stupid


Friday, August 01, 2003  

Good News, Right?

On the wire: "The Labor Department reported the nation's unemployment rate declined to 6.2 percent in July from 6.4 percent in the previous month." But before you get excited, read the next sentence:

The figure was slightly better than analysts' estimates, but much of the drop came from 470,000 disenchanted people who abandoned job searches.
Remember that the unemployment rate is computed as
(# people actively seeking work)/(#people in the labor force),
so when would-be workers get discouraged and stop looking for a job, they are not counted as part of the labor force and the measured unemployment rate falls.

AB

posted by Angry Bear | 1:41 PM |


Thursday, July 31, 2003  

Juicing the Growth Rate

General Glut makes an interesting point here: by the General's calculations, without the extra $40 billion in military spending, the projected growth rate for this year would be under 1%.

AB

posted by Angry Bear | 12:26 PM |


Monday, July 28, 2003  

I've been really remiss about posting over here, as I've been just trying to get past the Blogathon and setting up a few other groups blogs. But now I have no such excuses, and although still somewhat sleep-deprived, I wanted to initiate some discussion over here on the state of the recovery.

This morning, over at Wampum, I expressed some concern regarding two factors, state budget deficits and spiking natural gas prices, which I think may have an impact upon the strength, or even the existence, of the pending economic recovery. I expect that others out there have additional concerns. This weekend, while digging back in the 1991 archives, I noticed a lot of blame being directed at the purported tight lending environment, and I recall Matt S. asserting a similar argument in my old Wampum comments many months back.

Anyone care to add issues the think may derail the recovery, as well as ways the current administration, or a future Democratic one, may avert such a problem?

posted by MB | 8:04 AM |
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