Saturday, April 17, 2010

Recovery? Hah! Just Oscillating Unemployment Claims.

Recovery? Hah! Just Oscillating Unemployment Claims. « Uncommon Misconceptions
"For the past 5 1/2 months, the initial unemployment claims data have not really changed.
Here’s what I mean:



The data are oscillating about a slowly increasing value, indicating that, if anything, unemployment claims are increasing.
That means that for the past 5 1/2 months, every time the administration has told us that the unemployment situation is slowly recovering, and that the data show “the right trend,” they have been absolutely mistaken.

The media has been doing their typical baby duck analysis: every day is a brand new day, every unemployment claims report is the first one they’ve ever seen.
So we get headlines like, “job situation improving” when the number of claims drops, and “unexpected increase” when the number rises.

For half a year the claims data has just been oscillating – going nowhere.
And nobody seems to have noticed."

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