Friday, February 05, 2010

The Math Don't Work

If you follow the published version, the recession began in December of 2007. Which puts us two years and roughly eight weeks into this.

Now. Divide 112 weeks by 8.4?

And it works out to roughly 130.000 jobs "per month" as the average loss of jobs over the period.

DATA SNAP:US Jan Jobless Rate Falls To 9.7%;

I seem to remember "first time filings" for unemployment benefits running at least 420,000 and as much as 650,000 each month during the same period.

How is that reconcilable to reflect that only 8.4 million jobs have been lost during the past two years? Something just doesn't jibe with the figures if you ask me. We cannot continue to post numbers week after week of almost a half million Americans a week losing their jobs and still maintain that the recession is over or that we have only lost 8.4 million jobs over the past two years.

"There are lies, there are damn lies and there are statistics."

Twain nailed it IMO.

2 comments:

XtnYoda said...

Just a couple of days ago it was reported that there was an unexpected rise in filings for unemployment... now there is an unexpected drop in the number of unemployed?

Guess I need to go back to elementary school and do the add/subtract thing again... then again... so I want to go to a government school?

Prime said...

I'm sorry, but the math simply doesn't work. No matter how you slice it.