On Wed, Mar 03, 2004 at 09:35:55AM -0600, Dan Minette wrote: > > From: "Erik Reuter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > average > > unemployment > > rate > > years % > > ================== > > 2001-2004 5.3 > > 1997-2000 4.5 > > 1993-1996 6.3 > > 1989-1992 6.1 > > 1985-1988 6.6 > > 1981-1984 8.6 > > 1977-1980 6.5 > > 1973-1976 6.5 > > 1969-1972 4.7 > > 1965-1968 4.1 > > 1961-1964 5.9 > > The last time there was a significant period with unemployment below the > > "natural" rate of 5%, it was the late 60's/early 70's, which was a big > > boom time. Which was followed by a big bust, with over a million jobs > > lost and a period of lower employment. > > I don't see where you got this. I made a couple assumptions and calculated assuming unemployment went from 4.7% to 6.5%. If unemployment went up because more than a million people out of the "uncounted" entered the job market looking for work net of those who left the market, then my conclusion may be wrong. Let me quote my statistics for those years > jobs > year x1000 > 1968 66805 > 1969 69438 > 1970 71176 > 1971 70866 > 1972 72445 > 1973 75620 > 1974 78104 > 1975 77297 > 1976 78506 > 1977 80692 > 1978 84595 > 1979 88811 > 1980 90800 > > Over no two year period is there a job loss. Betwen jan 1974 and jan 1975, > about 800 thousand jobs were lost, but in between 75 & 76, about 1.5 > million were gained. So these data say my 1M estimate was too high, and should have been 800K. Let us look at the recent years: > > > 2000 130730 > 2001 132388 > 2002 130494 > 2003 130190 > 2004 130155 > > All numbers are January numbers BTW, that's why 2001 looks so good. We see > about 1.9 million jobs ere lost between jan 2001 and jan 2002, another 300 > thousand between '02 and '03, and another 35 thousand between '03 and '04. > This is unprecidented. If you leave out the spike in 2001, then your conclusion looks a lot different -- less than 600K jobs lost. I don't mean to dispute your suggestion of looking at the employment vs. unemployment numbers, I actually think that is a good idea. Perhaps we have both been too cavalier with drawing conclusions from the limited data set we were looking at. I don't really like looking at numbers that show monthly changes, since the data looks so noisy, but that seems to be what is most readily available. I'm looking around for more data myself, and I'll have more to discuss later, probably this weekend. If I can't find smoother data, I'll do some averaging myself and make some graphs on my web page for discussion. -- Erik Reuter http://www.erikreuter.net/ _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
