Some Scary Stats - Employment Edition

Today, I pulled some data around employment, or lack thereof.

The data are pretty scary. From July, 1967, through to just prior to the recession starting in January of 2008, the average number of median weeks of unemployment was 7.1. Since November, 2009, we have only seen one month where the median was below 20 (February, 2010, at 19.6 weeks).

Furthermore, we're still seeing a slightly positive (which is bad) trend in the number of weeks even now.

To put this another way 50% of unemployed people remain unemployed for nearly half a year.

Another data set I thought particularly poignant was that of the employment ratio. As we all hear, the unemployment rate is hovering around 9 percent and change. But, viewing the recovery in terms of the official unemployment rate is a little biased since people who aren't looking for work aren't counted in the figures... and, with unemployment lasting so long, it's likely that people are becoming disenchanted and falling out of consideration.

A different way to look at how we're doing on the job front is through the Employment Ratio. This measures the number of people employed in the civilian sector as a percent of the number of civilians.

Here we see the positive trend from the mid-'70s through early '00s with the rise in women within the workforce and the drop corresponding with the latest recession. Taking the average employment and unemployment rates for the two years prior to the recession (2006-2007) and comparing to the level in June we find that the Unemployment rate has increased by 4.6 and the employment rate decreased by 4.8 points.

Interestingly, while the unemployment rate has dropped by around half a point since the first half of 2010, the employment rate has also dropped by 0.4 points. My guess at the point discrepancy would be those who are no longer searching for work.