Monthly Archives: December 2003

politics

The misery of war index

A friend overseas wondered to me recently why Americans don't seem to be more upset by the war in Iraq and Bush's various other exercises in adventurism. I have a theory on that, but it will require some research to back it up.

My guess: that the war has not yet touched anybody's wallet noticeably enough (or at least more than the general recession has) to get them upset about it. This has been, for most Americans, a sacrifice-free war; only those in the military or called up for active duty by the National Guard or the Reserve (and their families) have been directly affected thus far (and the Guardsmen and reservists' families have been the ones who've had to deal with the worst financial impact, as breadwinners have taken big pay cuts for mandatory active service).

This is the “Guns Plus Butter” plan of the Bush administration: minimize the financial impact of the war now, by borrowing to the hilt while interest rates are low and inflation is dead; finance the war while cutting taxes on those who complain the loudest; leave the financial rubble for some other administration to clean up.

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General Chaos

Lies, damn lies, and unemployment statistics

US jobs market continues steady pick-up. Business: US unemployment in November fell to its lowest level since March, official figures showed today. [Guardian Unlimited]

The Guardian story puts an upbeat spin on things; but other views of the data were less than rosy.

And the numbers here don't add up for some reason. Okay, unemployment numbers dipped a tenth of a percent on the creation of 57,000 jobs. Obviously, the numbers were aided by more people dropping out of the “workforce” as their benefits ended and they gave up looking for work.

That would place the entirety of the US “workforce” at 57 million people. That's, erm, only 20% of the US population. So, if only 54 million (94.1% of the “workforce”) are “employed”…

If we were to take only the US population between 18 and 65 (about 173 million), that would still be only 31% of adults in the US are employed.

Okay, even if only half of the adult-age people in the US were in the workforce, how does 62% of them having jobs equal only 5.9% unemployment?

Let's look at those numbers again: there are 173 million adults betweek 18 and 65 in the US. Only 54 million are on employers' payrolls, based on the survey numbers.

So, what's the real unemployment rate? And what's the underemployment rate–the rate of people taking jobs significantly below their wages prior to unemployment?

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