On Tue, 2009-01-13 at 07:42 -0800, Jim Devine wrote: > Great Depression jobs parallel may not be far flung > Thu Jan 8, 2009 9:37pm EST > By Pedro Nicolaci da Costa > > NEW YORK (Reuters) - When economists tell us the current U.S. slump > could never turn into another Great Depression, they all point to one > thing: one of four Americans was out of work in the 1930s. > > But since the definition of joblessness has changed over the years, > this expert assessment might be too rosy. > > As many as 25 percent of Americans were unemployed during the days of > bread lines that symbolized the Depression, but that figure is more > than three times the current 6.7 percent unemployment rate, the > economists say. Even the most pessimistic estimates only foresee the > rate rising barely above 10 percent. > > "We are in a very, very different place than the U.S. economy was in > the 1930s," James Poterba, president of the National Bureau of > Economic Research told a recent Reuters Summit. > > Or are we? Figures collected for Reuters by John Williams, from the > electronic newsletter Shadowstats.com, suggest that, while we are not > there yet, the comparison is not as outlandish as it might initially > seem. > > By his count, if unemployment were still tallied the way it was in the > 1930s, today's jobless rate would be closer to 16.5 percent -- more > than double the stated rate.
Hey, I know this song :) For 2007 for male aged 25-54 according to ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/lf/aat3.txt (annual average in thousands) Civilian noninstitutional population (1): 62,081 Employed: 54,328 => Direct jobless rate 12.5% For fun, the "unemployment" total joke statistic: 3.7% For the same period and population group according to: ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/lf/aat8.txt Full time (>= 35 hours per week) employed: 46,879 => Direct jobless + part time (< 35 hours per week): 24.5% And this was an average over 2007. Not far from 25% isn't it? For 2007 to 2008 According to: ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/suppl/empsit.cpseea3.txt For men 20 years and older (unfortunately I couldn't find 25-54 statistic, anyone?) "unemployment" total joke statistics went from 4.4% to 7.2% from december 2007 to december 2008. Population gained 886, number of employed went down 2,211 so 3,097 more out of job starting with 104,197 population in december 2007. Since detailed data is not available I won't do funky projections but at least the direction is clear... Anyone with detailed data on men 25-54 during the GD? It's very likely the only demographic group where direct comparison makes sense. And of course I'm still interested by anyone able to provide me with one paper studying what all those men are doing instead of working while not being "unemployed". Just one paper. Laurent (1) According to http://www.census.gov/popest/topics/terms/national.html Civilian Noninstitutionalized Population - The civilian population excluding persons residing in institutions. Such institutions consist primarily of nursing homes, prisons, jails, mental hospitals, and juvenile correctional facilities. According to http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/prisons.htm 2,293 US adults were in jail or prison in 2007 According to http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/ascii/csfcf05.txt More than 90% of prison population was male in 2005 So yet more statistics manipulation. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list pen-l@lists.csuchico.edu https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
