I'll be cooking up time series of ratios of employment to pop and to
working-age pop by state.
Anyone who wants them, let me know. Probably by the end of next week,
what with
other stuff on my plate.
Laurent GUERBY wrote:
On Tue, 2009-01-13 at 07:42 -0800, Jim Devine wrote:
Great Depression jobs parallel may not be far flung
Thu Jan 8, 2009 9:37pm EST
By Pedro Nicolaci da Costa
NEW YORK (Reuters) - When economists tell us the current U.S. slump
could never turn into another Great Depression, they all point to one
thing: one of four Americans was out of work in the 1930s.
But since the definition of joblessness has changed over the years,
this expert assessment might be too rosy.
As many as 25 percent of Americans were unemployed during the days of
bread lines that symbolized the Depression, but that figure is more
than three times the current 6.7 percent unemployment rate, the
economists say. Even the most pessimistic estimates only foresee the
rate rising barely above 10 percent.
"We are in a very, very different place than the U.S. economy was in
the 1930s," James Poterba, president of the National Bureau of
Economic Research told a recent Reuters Summit.
Or are we? Figures collected for Reuters by John Williams, from the
electronic newsletter Shadowstats.com, suggest that, while we are not
there yet, the comparison is not as outlandish as it might initially
seem.
By his count, if unemployment were still tallied the way it was in the
1930s, today's jobless rate would be closer to 16.5 percent -- more
than double the stated rate.
Hey, I know this song :)
For 2007 for male aged 25-54 according to
ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/lf/aat3.txt
(annual average in thousands)
Civilian noninstitutional population (1): 62,081
Employed: 54,328
=> Direct jobless rate 12.5%
For fun, the "unemployment" total joke statistic: 3.7%
For the same period and population group according to:
ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/lf/aat8.txt
Full time (>= 35 hours per week) employed: 46,879
=> Direct jobless + part time (< 35 hours per week): 24.5%
And this was an average over 2007. Not far from 25% isn't it?
For 2007 to 2008 According to:
ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/suppl/empsit.cpseea3.txt
For men 20 years and older (unfortunately I couldn't find 25-54
statistic, anyone?) "unemployment" total joke statistics went from 4.4%
to 7.2% from december 2007 to december 2008. Population gained 886,
number of employed went down 2,211 so 3,097 more out of job starting
with 104,197 population in december 2007. Since detailed data
is not available I won't do funky projections but at least the direction
is clear...
Anyone with detailed data on men 25-54 during the GD? It's very likely
the only demographic group where direct comparison makes sense.
And of course I'm still interested by anyone able to provide
me with one paper studying what all those men are doing instead
of working while not being "unemployed".
Just one paper.
Laurent
(1) According to
http://www.census.gov/popest/topics/terms/national.html
Civilian Noninstitutionalized Population - The civilian population
excluding persons residing in institutions. Such institutions consist
primarily of nursing homes, prisons, jails, mental hospitals, and
juvenile correctional facilities.
According to
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/prisons.htm
2,293 US adults were in jail or prison in 2007
According to
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/ascii/csfcf05.txt
More than 90% of prison population was male in 2005
So yet more statistics manipulation.
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