Employment: Good News and Bad

The ghost of Romer still haunts the halls of power. The above is the current unemployment, 8.3%, as announced, and her predictions from January 11, 2009. As we have argued for more than three years now our friendly economist seems as if she could not hit the side of a barn with her predictions. But back to California.

The above shows the level of variance which is clearly growing.

This details the growing variance in some detail. Now to the overall stats. We use the SA non-farm stats.

The good news seems to be an increase in percent employed albeit at best a small amount and at worst an anomaly. Secondly the unemployment using the 2006 base has dropped below 12% for the first time. This should be the true measure.

Employment and population seem now to be in lock step. This curve above shows the loss of the 2008 recession but it also shows no recovery.

Unemployed seems to be decreasing bu the concern is still the workforce as a percent of population, a slight dip again.