Via Dr. Black, those RBC models may be missing a variable or two: In April, the rate in the United States rose to 8.9 percent. When the European figures are compiled, it seems likely that the American rate will be higher for the first time since Eurostat began compiling the numbers in 1993…. First, it […]

Brad DeLong sends us to Rex Nutting at MarketWatch: U.S. nonfarm payrolls plunged by an astonishing 533,000 in November, the worst job loss in 34 years, the Labor Department reported Friday. It’s only the fourth time in the past 58 years that payrolls have fallen by more than 500,000 in a month. Since the recession […]

Unemployed persons (seasonally adjusted) appears to be approaching 10,000,000. The other interesting thing about the table is that December 2007 now looks as if it was much worse than was reported at the time: another piece of data that might indicate that we have been in a recession since Q4 2007.

The other day Spencer posted a chart that Cactus had sent and then Cactus posted the link to the data. After looking at the data, and considering the question being asked: Are we seeing a recession? I thought, maybe looking at just median weeks of unemployment or number of unemployed is not going to capture […]

On Monday’s 3/17/08 episode Mr. Stephen Colberts to the opportunity in his “The Word” segment to explain the need for confidence in the economy, the declining unemployment rate and the loss of 63,00 jobs. Titled: The Audacity of Hopelessness The blog would not let me embed the video.

Inflation USA (Ivan Kitov) comments about : Andrew Samwick at VoxBaby posted on unemployment rate “What the unemployment rate misses? “. This post obtained a relatively high visibility and was commented on by Angry Bear and Big Picture. I think that this approach is slightly biased and misleading . What we really need (to consider)is […]