Comments on: Historical Perspective on the November 2008 US Job Losses

By: Stephen

Stephen — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 21:10:18 +0000

Andre: done. See the link at the top of this article.

By: Historical Perspective on the Jan 2009 US Job Losses | Live Granades

Historical Perspective on the Jan 2009 US Job Losses | Live Granades — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 21:09:12 +0000

[...] is an update to my November post about US job losses. For more information about where I got my data, please see that [...]

By: Andre

Andre — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 17:34:44 +0000

Excellent statistics.

Let’s see how the current recession is doing now.. We now have data for Dec 08 and Jan 09.

Total job losses for the now 13 month recession is: 3.6 Million

Stephen, can you update your charts and see where our current recession ranks with the latest data?

– Andre

By: GoodNumbers

GoodNumbers — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 02:15:17 +0000

To Phi.Sanders comment on the shift from farm to non-farm jobs. To make a statistical difference, you would have to go back into the 40′s to see a significant shift from farm to non-farm. By 1960 most of the shift had already been made from farm to factory and office work. To some youngsters, 1960 was somewhere immediately following the Civil War!

By: Stephen

Stephen — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 23:00:33 +0000

That’s an interesting point. I’d want to see the number of farm jobs over that time, as well as their percentage of the total jobs available before I made any guesses one way or the other.

By: Phi.Sanders

Phi.Sanders — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 14:33:22 +0000

You stated early on that these were non-farm jobs, and then talked about how much growth (in number of jobs) has occurred since 1960 as your premise for this being of lower impact than previous losses.

In that same time frame our country has seen a large shift from agrarian lifestyles (live or work on a farm) towards industrial (jobs), so while the statistics show it as being of lower importance as a percentage of jobs, I intuitively believe it may be more relevant.

It seems to me that because there are less people who live or work on farms than in 1960, it would make the recent losses more relevant as a chunk of the overall economy and culture.

By: links for 2008-12-06 - chrishubbs.com

links for 2008-12-06 - chrishubbs.com — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 03:30:10 +0000

[...] Historical Perspective on the November 2008 US Job Losses | Live Granades (tags: cjh_comment) [...]

By: Stephen

Stephen — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 17:54:35 +0000

Bill H,

While the unemployment numbers are counted differently (and there are a multitude of unemployment measures such as U3 to choose from), the number of payroll jobs is, as far as I know, reported the same across the entire time period. I linked to what they mean by seasonal adjustment at the bottom of the post. And seasonal adjustment doesn’t prevent me from comparing numbers across different months.

By: kat

kat — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 16:57:42 +0000

This was a good post, Stephen. All too often, we look at numbers like this and freak out without putting them into perspective. I’m glad to know you put some thought into it and posted something like this. You’re right, also, that we can’t forget that there are still a lot of people without jobs right now.

By: Bill H

Bill H — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 15:59:36 +0000

I note that you are taking numbers from a government bureau which is notorious for jiggling the statistics to sway public opinion. Unemployment measurements are made differently now than they were in 1980, as they included people whose benefits had run out and were no longer seeking work in 1980, and today they do not. Very difficult to trust a bureaucracy which manipulates ststisitics in such a manner.

Second, I see that you are dealing with numbers that are “seasonally adjusted” but are comparing periods of Nov-Apr with Mar-May. How can you compare absolute numbers for different season when they are “seasonally adjusted?”