Whenever a new batch of “employment/jobs” data gets released — which happened at the end of last week in the U.S. — I always get kind of frustrated, because (a) no one really understands the unemployment rate and (b) it really… Continue Reading
Admittedly I don’t know a ton about economics — I actually got a D in Micro frosh year of college — so I’m not really that strong on all the different indicators of an economy’s health. I can tell you… Continue Reading
There are actually six different “unemployment rates,” although predominantly when people use that term in cocktail party banter, they mean “the number of people looking for work who can’t actively find it.” But by no means is that the entire picture (I wrote… Continue Reading
The chart above is courtesy of here. It’s in turn via here, which notes that it’s fairly unprecedented, at least in modern times — government employment tends to rise during recoveries, but not so this time. The public sector has about 21.9 million… Continue Reading
Say it with me now: the twin engines of present-day American job growth are knowledge and energy. We’ve talked about this before (with a little more context here), and now theres’s some new data via Atlantic Cities essentially underscoring the idea. Look at this chart: The… Continue Reading