Quote:
Originally Posted by TheDoc
The real % has been up around 20% for like 20 years. I wouldn't be surprised if it was higher than that.
The numbers that say 8% are only counting active claims. Once a person drops off unemployment and still doesn't have a job, they aren't part of that percentage - even though they have no job.
So right now we have like 8-10% 'CLAIMS' for unemployment. It has always been about double for the real number.
Things are bad, but they have been far worse.
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I won't get into a big thing about this because honestly I'm tired of having the same argument over and over and over again.
Bottom line is that the actual real number doesn't matter as much as that we calculate the number the same way every time so that we know if things are getting better or worse. (The same thing is true of inflation, which is another number people like to nitpick about, but that follows the same principle)
If the real number is 20 now instead of 10, then when the official number was 5, it was actually 10....so we still know it's twice as high as it used to be. That's the importance of the number....whether it is getting better or worse affects public policy, otherwise, unless you're a stats geek, it's pretty meaningless.
The only employment number that matters to the average joe is his own, and it's either 100% or 0%.
nowutimean?