I was having an economic discussion with my father this past weekend and we got on to the topic of the unemployment rate.\u00a0 I remember hearing John Sumser in talk last year state that having a national unemployment number is pointless.\u00a0 Unemployment is local \u2013 it depends upon the region and, even more, the city in which you are employed.\u00a0 I agree completely with that premise.<\/p>\n
The current national unemployment number is listed at 9.8%, but there is much discussion about what the real number is.\u00a0 I have heard that it is closer to 16% if you factor in the people who have stopped looking and\/or had their unemployment benefits expire.\u00a0 Of course, the unemployment rate varies greatly from Detroit to Fargo.\u00a0 Hence, the national number isn\u2019t necessarily representative of what is happening in your city.<\/p>\n
My father was recalling a persuasive argument he heard from a professor in graduate school.\u00a0 This prof argued that the better statistic would be an employment<\/em> number.\u00a0 What percentage of people are employed?\u00a0 I know it may sound like splitting hairs, but I like the premise.\u00a0 How many people are presently employed?\u00a0 I think that number would be more illustrative, on a national level, than our current, questionable unemployment rate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was having an economic discussion with my father this past weekend and we got on to the topic of the unemployment rate.\u00a0 I remember hearing John Sumser in talk last year state that having a national unemployment number is pointless.\u00a0 Unemployment is local \u2013 it depends upon the region and, even more, the city in which you are employed.\u00a0 I agree completely with that premise. The current national unemployment number is listed at 9.8%, but there is much discussion about what the real number is.\u00a0 I have heard that it is closer to 16% if you factor in the people who have stopped looking and\/or had their unemployment benefits… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"","bgseo_robots_follow":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[49,2],"tags":[1404,1405,1407,1406,757],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5Oho-yf","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2123"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2123"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2123\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2124,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2123\/revisions\/2124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}