told you to get your calls in place!, page-36

re: crashes through 8500 .. 9000? Hi Mal,

A serious analysis of unemployment v employment requires an active consideration of the following:
1)
unemployment rates (whether or not they are limited due to restricted data catchment assumptions);
2)
participation rates;
3)
employment rates;
4)
population rates;
5)
payroll rates (actual, and surveyed results, including those of the household survey);
6)
overtime rates;
7)
earnings;
8)
sectoral analysis;
9)
duration of unemployment, etc.

I well remember from my University days being taught of the vagaries associated with considering any individual economic statistic. Of course, there is a level of "hidden unemployed" associated with any officially published unemployment statistic. This is one of the reasons why commentators (particularly, technical economists) tend to concentrate on the participation rate as one of their primary points of consideration.

Since 1977, the USA participation rate has increased from 61.5% to the current 66.8%. Until 1989, it had never approached the 67% ceiling. In 1989, it approached 67%, finishing up the year at 66.9%. It then dipped away to a near 66% low, before again approaching the 67% mark in 1995. In mid 1997, it finally breached this mark, rising slightly above to 67.1%. It then peaked in early 2000 at ~67.3%, before dipping back under 67% during mid-2001, and more recently to 66.8%.