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2011-06-03 Home Front: Politix

On the Maddeningly Inexact Relationship Between Unemployment and Re-Election

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Posted by Besoeker 2011-06-03 01:58|| || Front Page|| [4 views ] Top

#1 What we should pay closer attention to is not the "unemployment rate", but the "workforce participation rate".

Posted by crosspatch 2011-06-03 03:49|| 2011-06-03 03:49|| Front Page Top

#2 Maddeningly Inexact because unemployed are not a single uniform population. There are, at least two axes: financial & attitude to leisure.

(1) Financial: all the possibilities between two extremes.
(a) People content with material benefits provided by welfare.
(b) People who want a lot more.

(2) Leisure
(a) People who can live without working.
(b) People who can't.

Posted by g(r)omgoru 2011-06-03 04:23|| 2011-06-03 04:23|| Front Page Top

#3 This guy ought to be among the unemployed.

Let me sum up: Zero's re-election might be related to unemployment, but it might not.

Posted by Bobby 2011-06-03 06:00|| 2011-06-03 06:00|| Front Page Top

#4 It's all 'funemployment' anyway.

Not too many places on Earth where you get paid not to work for up to 99 weeks.

Posted by Steve White 2011-06-03 09:03|| 2011-06-03 09:03|| Front Page Top

#5 Yeah, when people couldn't explain the data showing the retrograde motion of planets in the sky and continued to insist upon an earth centric model of the universe they came up with some pretty bizarre rationales for the 'inexact relationship'.

Posted by Procopius2k 2011-06-03 09:32|| 2011-06-03 09:32|| Front Page Top

#6 Crosspatch,

Exactly, there is something wrong when the workforce participation rate for a region is 67.5% and the unemployment rate is 12%. Does that mean 20.5% of the workforce has fallen off the radar by exhausting their unemployment or quit looking for work?

The unemployment rate is a phony statistic, if you look at the way it is calculated, it uses the number of new claims and existing claims, ignores those who exhaust benefits,etc...

The true picture is that in Riverside where I live the employment participation rate is 67.5% which means we have an unemployment rate of 31.5%. The true unemployment rate in the US is at or above the unemployment rate during the Great Depression.

The media will never use the "D" word to describe the economy with the ONE as president. If we had a Republican President, the word "depression" would have been on the front page two years ago.

Posted by Bill Clinton 2011-06-03 10:46|| 2011-06-03 10:46|| Front Page Top

#7 When the Soviet Union collapsed the bureaucrats in the CIA were 'surprised'. That's because they kept reading the reports submitted by the apparatchiks in the Soviet bureaucracy that wrote the 'good story' their bosses wanted to hear. The same behavior is in play now as the party and faithful shills keep this BS up. We can take what little comfort there'll be when they're 'surprised' as our world collapses too.

Posted by Procopius2k 2011-06-03 12:22|| 2011-06-03 12:22|| Front Page Top

#8 This article is a perfect example of a writer ignoring the 800lb baby elephant in the room.

The key is the graphs at the bottom of the article. Several have near horizontal slopes (i.e. change in one variable has almost no effect on the other).

However 2 charts have near 45 degree slopes:
Incumbant party's margin of victory/defeat vs change in unemployment rate.
President seaking re-election's margin of victory/defeat vs change in unemployment rate.

Both of those charts are relevant to 2012, and both should worry the democrats. In fact the 2nd chart indicates that even if the unemployment rate declines slightly, the incumbant still has a less than 50% chance of winning.

In short these charts indicate that Barack needs to get the unemployment rate below 7% to have a better than even chance of winning.

Posted by Frozen Al 2011-06-03 12:28|| 2011-06-03 12:28|| Front Page Top

#9 RE #6: Does that mean 20.5% of the workforce has fallen off the radar by exhausting their unemployment or quit looking for work?

If it's 67.5% of the total poulation, the other 20.5% might be mommies, kiddies, and baby bunnies.

Posted by Bobby 2011-06-03 14:52|| 2011-06-03 14:52|| Front Page Top

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