Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Nick on Meredith Whitney
Definitions for newbies:
U1: Percentage of labor force unemployed 15 weeks or longer.
U2: Percentage of labor force who lost jobs or completed temporary work.
U3: Official unemployment rate per ILO definition.
U4: U3 + “discouraged workers”, or those who have stopped looking for work because current economic conditions make them believe that no work is available for them.
U5: U4 + other “marginally attached workers”, or “loosely attached workers”, or those who “would like” and are able to work, but have not looked for work recently.
U6: U5 + Part time workers who want to work full time, but cannot due to economic reasons.
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2 comments:
I am worried about becoming a U statistic, and a number of my readers already are U statistics or are just emerging from it.
I've always gotten the sense that the high un/underemployment rate nowadays is largely due to the convoluted manner in which jobs are "doled out" nowadays.
It seems to me that even just 20 years ago, finding work was a relatively simple affair where the prime consideration for the employer was the ability of the applicant(s) to do the job in question. That was it. Engineering job -- you have a B.S. in _____ engineering? You have decent experience? You get the job.
Nowadays, finding work is almost a convoluted nightmare -- job fairs, applying for 100's of positions to hear back from 2 people, "too underqualified", "too overqualified", too many applicants for every position. It almost seems that obtaining work today depends more on everything *except* ability to do the job in question -- now it's "sure you have a bachelor's degree, but we'll be running a credit check". And we'll be testing to see if you use drugs. And we'll be running a criminal background check. Most of this is just plain counterproductive, IMO, and rewards people who are more adept at "jumping hoops" rather than doing the work in question.
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