Capital Commerce

Is The Unemployment Rate As Bad As It Looks?

Posted: July 8, 2009

In his monthly newsletter, Jim Paulsen of Wells Capital Management has a point about the rising unemployment rate that doesn't get made very often:

even though the unemployment rate rose by 1 percent to 9.5 percent in the second quarter, about 55 percent of this rise was due, not to job losses, but rather from new entrants to the labor force. Of the 1.568 million rise in the unemployed roles during the second quarter, 878 thousand came from new searchers which is often a good sign the labor market is returning to health.

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Highly subjective

It is as bad as it can get if you are unemployed.

HillbillyBill of TN @ Jul 10, 2009 08:44:26 AM

New entrants

Not to suggest the labor market isn't improving, but wouldn't most of those new entrants be coming from recent grads? The same thing that happened around this time last year. And there's that pesky minimum wage increase at the end of this month to consider...

Mike Hinton of OH @ Jul 08, 2009 13:17:10 PM

The important issue

is not just "unemployment", but rather under-employment. If you can find a new job paying $8.00 - $9.00 an hour, but two of those jobs together won't support housing, food, utilities, a car and pay-your-own health care for a family of 2---much less a family of 3 or more, and much less any forward savings---both you and the country are in trouble.
Yes, we may have more jobs. What kind of jobs?

Muser of NM @ Jul 08, 2009 10:59:38 AM

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