Octopus Overlords

Isgrimnur wrote:

U-6 Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force

Oh, and the number for September is 14.2, down 1.5% year over year.

I don't get your point. Do you not understand U-6 or are you actually saying "hey these people are actually employed! I mean sure some of them may only be making $10 a week because they're only employed an hour, but technically I am right!"?

We don't want people to be part time for economic reasons. We don't want people marginally attached to the labor force. Those are bad things. 15% is a bad rate for those things. 14.2% is better, and is only 5.9% higher than before Obama took office.

cheeba wrote:

Isgrimnur wrote:

U-6 Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force

Oh, and the number for September is 14.2, down 1.5% year over year.

I don't get your point. Do you not understand U-6 or are you actually saying "hey these people are actually employed! I mean sure some of them may only be making $10 a week because they're only employed an hour, but technically I am right!"?

We don't want people to be part time for economic reasons. We don't want people marginally attached to the labor force. Those are bad things. 15% is a bad rate for those things. 14.2% is better, and is only .7% higher than before Obama took office.

FTFY

No, we dont want people working part time (apart from those that actualaly want to work part time). But those people are employed, even if they are underemployed - which is better than being unemployed.

Defiant wrote:So it's unemployed and underemployed. Which is useful to consider, but not if we consider it to be the "unemployment" number.

It's a better number than the unemployment rate because it counts people who have given up looking for jobs, whereas the unemployment number does not.

cheeba wrote:

Defiant wrote:So it's unemployed and underemployed. Which is useful to consider, but not if we consider it to be the "unemployment" number.

It's a better number than the unemployment rate because it counts people who have given up looking for jobs, whereas the unemployment number does not.

It's not a better number if we can't place it in historical context.. Its also useful to be able to differentiate between the unemployed and the underemployed,

My point is that you keep saying 15% unemployment, and it's demonstrably false. It's ~15% un- and under- employment.

Do you not know my rep for research and making sure things are right?

So do you keep using the U-6 number which includes underemployment because you honestly don't understand the difference, or because the U-5 number that doesn't include the underemployed isn't as scary when it's sitting at 9.0%, the lowest it's been since 8.3% in December 2008?

Defiant wrote:FTFY

I counted the wrong year, but I avg'd the year, so it'd be 10.6.

Defiant wrote:

Isgrimnur wrote:

cheeba wrote:

Apollo wrote:15% unemployment? So now we're making up new ways to measure unemployment so as to make the incumbent look bad?

U-6.

Table A-15

U-6 Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force

Oh, and the number for September is 14.2, down 1.5% year over year.

So it's unemployed and underemployed. Which is useful to consider, but not if we consider it to be the "unemployment" number.

Is there a timeline of this value over the long term, so we can place this number in context?

That's why actual discussions about unemployment deal specifically with the U-3 number. In the last few months, Republicans have tried to conflate the U-3 and U-6 numbers. Fox News was caught several times putting up an "infographic" about unemployment under Obama that listed the January 2009 U-3 number and the current U-6 number to show how unemployment has "skyrocketed."

Point cheeba. And it's unemployment has been an angering misrepresentation of who is working and who isn't ever since about 2002, IMO, when the real down turn started. It's the same misrepresentation Obama and Hilary used as weapon against McCain in 2008 as a way of saying he would continue the failed policies of the current administration.

I'm fairly certain Obama will continue the same failed policies of the current administration, but that's me.

cheeba wrote:

Defiant wrote:So it's unemployed and underemployed. Which is useful to consider, but not if we consider it to be the "unemployment" number.

It's a better number than the unemployment rate because it counts people who have given up looking for jobs, whereas the unemployment number does not.

Yes, U-6 contains the people that have given up. So does U-4 and U-5.

U4: U3 + "discouraged workers", or those who have stopped looking for work because current economic conditions make them believe that no work is available for them.

Defiant wrote:It's not a better number if we can't place it in historical context.. Its also useful to be able to differentiate between the unemployed and the underemployed,

Only if you want to miss the forest for the trees, I guess... which I know many here love to do .

cheeba wrote:

Defiant wrote:FTFY

I counted the wrong year, but I avg'd the year, so it'd be 10.6.

Why average the year, when we know it was 13.5 in December '08?

Defiant wrote:

cheeba wrote:

Defiant wrote:FTFY

I counted the wrong year, but I avg'd the year, so it'd be 10.6.

Why average the year, when we know it was 13.5 in December '08?

Because a year of data is better than a month of data?

cheeba wrote:\
Only if you want to miss the forest for the trees, I guess... which I know many here love to do .

No it isn't. Context is important. 15% is a scary number, but that's relative to the 5-10% unemployment we generally see - which isn't what 15% refers to. We need to place it into context. Otherwise it's just a number.

Averaging a year's worth of data completely strips it of any trends, deviation, or any meaningful statistical information.

Isgrimnur wrote:Averaging a year's worth of data completely strips it of any trends, deviation, or any meaningful statistical information.

And back to the good ol' OO minutiae arguments. Look, I wanted to take a look at the u-6 rate in the year before Obama took office. It was 10.6%. Average does not "strip" any trends or deviation, it includes them. It's a big picture. If we're looking at unemployment data I don't think it does much good for us to compare December of 2009 vs. September of 2012.

I agree with you. Looking at snapshots is worthless. To me, as worthless as looking at averages. You're free to place value in whatever you want to look at. But looking at things like rate of change, trend lines, and standard deviations is a lot more informative than looking at an average.

I don't care if you're looking at unemployment numbers or call center abandon percentages. Just averaging the numbers doesn't give you anything close to a full picture from which to draw reasonable conclusions and determine policy.

cheeba wrote:

Isgrimnur wrote:Averaging a year's worth of data completely strips it of any trends, deviation, or any meaningful statistical information.

And back to the good ol' OO minutiae arguments. Look, I wanted to take a look at the u-6 rate in the year before Obama took office. It was 10.6%. Average does not "strip" any trends or deviation, it includes them.

*blink* *blink*

It was 12.2 in November '08, 13.5 by December '08 and 15.4 in 1/09. How is 10.6% not missing out on that dramatic upward trend?

Isgrimnur wrote:Just averaging the numbers doesn't give you anything close to a full picture from which to draw reasonable conclusions and determine policy.

Rest assured, Isgrimnur, even though I am an excellent spy in TF2, I very, very rarely determine policy.

Isgrimnur wrote:I agree with you. Looking at snapshots is worthless. To me, as worthless as looking at averages. You're free to place value in whatever you want to look at. But looking at things like rate of change, trend lines, and standard deviations is a lot more informative than looking at an average.

Err, snapshots are what we use to determine rate of change, trend lines, etc.

They are one of the elements. You can't take a one-dimensional point and tell me the slope of a line, as an infinite number of lines at every slope run through it. I need a curve that the point is on to determine a tangent line to determine rate of change and a trend line.

Defiant wrote:It was 12.2 in November '08, 13.5 by December '08 and 15.4 in 1/09. How is 10.6% not missing out on that dramatic upward trend?

I'm assuming an audience that understands what an average is. Should I not be making that assumption?

Zzzzzz...

cheeba wrote:

Defiant wrote:It was 12.2 in November '08, 13.5 by December '08 and 15.4 in 1/09. How is 10.6% not missing out on that dramatic upward trend?

I'm assuming an audience that understands what an average is. Should I not be making that assumption?

You do realize that there's a difference between the rate having held steady at 10.6% for all 12 months, and one that trends upwards, increasing 50% (and even one that trends downward, decreasing by 50%)?

And yet, they could all possess the exact same average.

All right enough dumb talk.

Me: unemployment is higher under Obama than before Obama
You: it's all Bush's fault, Obama just inherited his mess

To which I respond that I don't care if it was a mess that Obama inherited. I don't care if it was trending up when he took office. Unemployment has been drastically high during his regime. The national debt has increased dramatically. There has been nothing from the Obama campaign indicating any new policies that will help our financial situation. If your argument for Obama is "well Bush sucked too" then you have a weak candidate.

cheeba wrote:If your argument for Obama is "well Bush sucked too" then you have a weak candidate.

Well right. Most of them are voting against Republicans, not for Obama.

I want the government to spend money to try and keep the economy from completely imploding. That's when you use credit to help even things out. If he hadn't, things would have been catastrophically worse.

My problem is when we get back to an economic boom and neither party wants to pay down the debts once revenue improves.

Unemployment was 8.3% in Feb 2009 and reached a high of 10.0% in Oct 2009. Since then, it's dropped to 7.8% in a bad to sluggish economy.

Romney has a worse jobs record than that during his time as governor of MA, and that was during a good economy.

El Guapo wrote:I take his economic policies to be some mixture of cut taxes in a non-progressive fashion, cut spending, and encourage privatization and de-regulation.

Are there any numbers attached to this plan, or is that all we get?

Freezer-TPF- wrote:Unemployment was 8.3% in Feb 2009 and reached a high of 10.0% in Oct 2009. Since then, it's dropped to 7.8% in a bad to sluggish economy.

Romney has a worse jobs record than that during his time as governor of MA, and that was during a good economy.

The part that typically gets overlooked here is the number of people who are no longer counted as being unemployed because they've stopped looking.

Feel free to read up-thread about U-4. For September, the U-4 rate was 8.0%, which means the discouraged worker numbers is 0.4% for that month.

Smutly wrote:

Freezer-TPF- wrote:Unemployment was 8.3% in Feb 2009 and reached a high of 10.0% in Oct 2009. Since then, it's dropped to 7.8% in a bad to sluggish economy.

Romney has a worse jobs record than that during his time as governor of MA, and that was during a good economy.

The part that typically gets overlooked here is the number of people who are no longer counted as being unemployed because they've stopped looking.

Including discouraged workers makes the numbers go from 8.9 in 1/09 (and 9.3 in 2/09, since feb 09 was included), reach a high of 11.2% in 1/10 (it was 9.9 on 9/09) and drop down to 8.0% currently. (I don't know what Romney's numbers would be like)

On hold for a Mittster townhall. They have had Dan Jansen, Bonnie Blair and the captain of Miracle on Ice buttering us up with recorded messages while on hold. It's a parade of Olympians! They say I can ask direct questions, any suggestions? I was thinking of trying my luck with FEMA, other ideas?

What is also hidden is the unemployment due to state/local government layoffs and the number of people out of the workforce due to forced early retirement (would like to work but don't get hired due to age). Not much Obama can do about either factor.

Not sure I will get called on, but I am in line listening to the townhall call now (pretty sure I was identified for this call off of answering an internal Mitt poll and identifying as independent). Mitt just said companies off-shore/outsource professional IT jobs because our energy is so gosh-darned expensive in America. Besides being a fairly bizarre answer for why we are bleeding IT jobs, I thought we had some of the lowest costs per energy unit in the industrialized world.

Bah, he only took three questions.

Not to mention, if that's the case, why are there flooded data centers based in Manhattan?

Isgrimnur wrote:Not to mention, if that's the case, why are there flooded data centers based in Manhattan?

Everyone knows the power never goes down in NYC. Oh wait...

GreenGoo wrote:

El Guapo wrote:I take his economic policies to be some mixture of cut taxes in a non-progressive fashion, cut spending, and encourage privatization and de-regulation.

Are there any numbers attached to this plan, or is that all we get?

I think that's all we get. Though to be fair, I don't take any candidates campaign promises (outside of one or two "signature issues" that they campaign on) to be all that serious as policy proposals. Even the most genuine candidate is going to have their agenda completely mangled and re-worked by subsequent events and by Congress. So campaign proposals are mostly useful to divine candidates policy preferences and the direction that they want to take things, such that you have some sense of how they'll guide policy when they have the chance.

El Guapo wrote:

GreenGoo wrote:

El Guapo wrote:I take his economic policies to be some mixture of cut taxes in a non-progressive fashion, cut spending, and encourage privatization and de-regulation.

Are there any numbers attached to this plan, or is that all we get?

I think that's all we get. Though to be fair, I don't take any candidates campaign promises (outside of one or two "signature issues" that they campaign on) to be all that serious as policy proposals. Even the most genuine candidate is going to have their agenda completely mangled and re-worked by subsequent events and by Congress. So campaign proposals are mostly useful to divine candidates policy preferences and the direction that they want to take things, such that you have some sense of how they'll guide policy when they have the chance.

I'm just curious why Romney has any credibility in the economy part of this equation. If people want to vote for Romney because Obama has had 4 years and I don't like what he's done with them, fine. Voting for Romney because he's going to "fix" the economy is basing your vote on vague notions and a lot of hope. And again, that's fine, but Romney doesn't seem to be very inspirational or instill any hope whatsoever. Which leads me to the idea that voting for Romney for the economy is basing your vote on some vague comments. Again, even that is fine. I just don't know why people would be so angry or forceful about it. I mean, that's not a lot to go on. I think I'd quietly vote and pray for the best. Romney is not someone I'd hitch my political wagon to, but you do what you can with what you have I guess. It's the championing him that has me scratching my head.

GreenGoo wrote:

El Guapo wrote:

GreenGoo wrote:

El Guapo wrote:I take his economic policies to be some mixture of cut taxes in a non-progressive fashion, cut spending, and encourage privatization and de-regulation.

Are there any numbers attached to this plan, or is that all we get?

I think that's all we get. Though to be fair, I don't take any candidates campaign promises (outside of one or two "signature issues" that they campaign on) to be all that serious as policy proposals. Even the most genuine candidate is going to have their agenda completely mangled and re-worked by subsequent events and by Congress. So campaign proposals are mostly useful to divine candidates policy preferences and the direction that they want to take things, such that you have some sense of how they'll guide policy when they have the chance.

I'm just curious why Romney has any credibility in the economy part of this equation. If people want to vote for Romney because Obama has had 4 years and I don't like what he's done with them, fine. Voting for Romney because he's going to "fix" the economy is basing your vote on vague notions and a lot of hope. And again, that's fine, but Romney doesn't seem to be very inspirational or instill any hope whatsoever. Which leads me to the idea that voting for Romney for the economy is basing your vote on some vague comments. Again, even that is fine. I just don't know why people would be so angry or forceful about it. I mean, that's not a lot to go on. I think I'd quietly vote and pray for the best. Romney is not someone I'd hitch my political wagon to, but you do what you can with what you have I guess. It's the championing him that has me scratching my head.

I guess you'd have to ask a Romney supporter for that. I mean, the economy's bad, and I understand voting for the challenger based on that, but I'm not convinced either that Romney is the man for the job (I suppose I would be voting for Romney if I did).