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Ruh-Roh. Unemployment now lower than February 2009
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2012 Jan 6, 3:35am 2,720 views 3 comments
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Here's the problem with this report -- the non-institutional working-age population went from 240.441 million to 240.584, a gain of 143,000 people of working age. But the number of employed people went down from 141.070 million to 140.681 -- a loss of 389,000. Adding the two, which is the correct way to look at it, the economy on a population-adjusted basis lost 532,000 jobs.
But the number of employed people went down from 141.070 million to 140.681
Maybe I am missing something here, but when I reference the BLS A tables, I see number of people employed went from 140.614MM in November to 140.790MM in December.
It appears he is using the non-seasonally adjusted numbers. Why would we ignore seasonality for this?
February 2009 was Obama's first full month in office.
Not even Reagan returned unemployment to levels lower than his first month by December of 1983. In fact, unemployment was the same in November 1984 as it was in February of 1981.
In other news of November 1984, Reagan won in the largest electoral landslide in modern Presidential Election history.
If this trend holds, (positive GDP growth, unemployment trending down towards the mid 7s, plus killing bin Laden and ending the war in Iraq) I'd think it was fair to say that Romney, Newt, Paul, et al. are fighting for the right to be this years Walter Mondale.
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