Lay your bets down - who can get closest to predicting the unemployment rate on election day 2010?

[grantcart]

Jobs bill, stimiulus bill kicking in, pent up demand, my guess is:

7.9%

[KillCapitalism]

1. Do you want the REAL #, or...

the government cooked stats.

The government rate might fall to 8.5%, but the real rate will continue to hover around 20%.

[laughingliberal]

3. That was my question

Not a safe bet when the House can change the numbers.

[Craftsman]

5. My thought exactly.

[grantcart]

11. The 'real' rate declined from 17.4 to 16.5 this month

The survey number is more widely used, especially for political purposes so it was that number that the thread was referring to.

[NightWatcher]

2. screw that, I'll go so far as to bet on individuals who are unemployed the day after

[blue_onyx]

4. Ok...I'll go with 9.4%

There's no job growth right now and any job growth that results from new legislation will increase employment slowly.

[whattheidonot]

16. manufacturing ready

manufacturing is pared down and ready to produce. They need customers. a jobs bill creates some customers. These customers will not be like in the past. Many are broke for starters. You do this too fast and inflation kicks in. 8.9% at best. If there are no customers there is no sense in getting a loan for a business. This the problem. Many people are totally broke now. No job, no equity, no health care. a huge jobs bill should have been 1st thing Obama did. socialism has to prop up capitalism until a flow of money starts. Then the government jobs give way to the market once money is moving. For all practical purposes money could be handed out to go spend but that would not sit well. so build a road and do again.

[Romulox]

6. 11%. nt

[gcomeau]

7. 8.3% -nt

[hughee99]

8. The cooked #'s will show it as under 10%

After the election, the "revised" numbers(still cooked, but not as much) will jump over 10% when they announce them again a month later.

[Craftsman]

12. And since these numbers are so blantantly cooked, what other stats

the .gov puts out are also faked?

[hughee99]

14. Real GDP, for one.

When someone announces their numbers, then revises them down, then revises them down again, to where they were SIGNIFICANTLY different than the original stats, what do YOU call that? Maybe they're not "cooking the books", maybe they just announcing their most optimistic projections as the "official" estimate.

The initial estimate - 10/29/09
"Real gross domestic product -- the output of goods and services produced by labor and property
located in the United States -- increased at an annual rate of 3.5 percent in the third quarter of 2009, (that
is, from the second quarter to the third quarter), according to the "advance" estimate released by the
Bureau of Economic Analysis."
http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/national/gdp/2009/pdf/gdp3q09_adv.pdf

Then they took another shot at their estimate on 11/24/09
Real gross domestic product -- the output of goods and services produced by labor and property
located in the United States -- increased at an annual rate of 2.8 percent in the third quarter of 2009, (that
is, from the second quarter to the third quarter), according to the "second" estimate released by the
Bureau of Economic Analysis.
http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/national/gdp/2009/gdp3q09_2nd.htm

Okay, Q3 GDP was really closer to 2.2% but Q4 was 5.7%! (from 1/29/10)
Real gross domestic product -- the output of goods and services produced by labor and property
located in the United States -- increased at an annual rate of 5.7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009,
(that is, from the third quarter to the fourth quarter), according to the "advance" estimate released by the
Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the third quarter, real GDP increased 2.2 percent

http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/national/gdp/gdpnewsrelease.htm

[grantcart]

13. Well today's numbers are already under 10%

All of the government key indicators are gathered by career non political employees so I am not sure what you refer to as "cooked".

[hughee99]

15. Gathering the stats isn't the problem

it's interpreting and announcing them. I've heard of "better than expected" results (as in, "the results came in better than we predicted with our wild guess"), but when was the last time the government revised their numbers because they underestimated employment? When they announce unemployment, it seems like when they revise it, they always revise it upward and not even counting all those who are no longer looking for jobs. Again, this isn't something the Obama Administration started doing, it's been around a long time, but it happens.

[grantcart]

24. The stats are gathered by non political government workers in the department of labor

who then publish the data in hundreds of pages directly to the public.

you can see a sample here:


http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.toc.htm


The White House, Congress and other government agencies are consumers of this information and have no involvement in preparing its public decimination at all.

[hughee99]

28. Odd, because when * was in charge

these same stats, from the same agency, were suspect. So if these stats are as matter-of-fact as you say, how is it that the numbers can be (and often are) revised over and over? Is it a coincidence that the initial information always seem to paint a better picture then the one that eventually turns out to be true? Is it politics? Is it just the methodology? Is there something built into the system (unrelated to any human intervention) that always seems to result in getting a more optimistic projection to start, and then many, many months later the accurate picture turns out different?

Today, they announced that 617,000 more jobs were lost in 2009 that previously reported. Cooked intentionally? perhaps not, I'll concede, but accurate? that's a stretch too. They are just now saying that they missed March 2009 by 100K lost jobs (more than 15% of the total for that month). Do you really wonder why people don't trust the numbers they put out?

[AllentownJake]

19. Well the model was changed

and you have three conflicting data sets saying two different things.

The weekly survey says that jobs were loss, and the monthly survey says jobs were gained and the NSA survey says unemployment increased.

Let's just say there is reason for people's speculation the number is cooked when one day 20,000 job losses are announced for the month and in another day they announce they have reduced unemployment by .4% from December and another report says it increased without statistical adjustment.

Right after a political loss by the executive branch as well..

:hi:

[berni_mccoy]

9. 8.5%

Only because while it may really be 7.9% by Election day, we'll still be going on the previous quarters numbers. Dems only have two quarters to make a difference.

[alfredo]

23. My guess too.

[taught_me_patience]

10. 5%

who can believe the BLS anymore?

[AllentownJake]

17. The meaningless U3 number

depends, how many people do you want to discourage to get it there? What are you going to do with the seasonal adjustment? What is the model going to look like?

The second half of this year is not going to be pleasant my friend.

How about we make a bet, I'll make the bet that there are less people really employed in November than there are right now.

[quiller4]

18. I think that is too high given growth in GDP and increase in temp hiring

I think we'll hit 7.9 by mid-summer and be closer to 7.2 or 7.4 by late fall.

If we do something about healthcare, I think the numbers will improve faster by encouraging retirements thus reducing the labor pool.

[hughee99]

21. I don't think health care legislation will have any significant impact

on retirements this year. Even if the law passes, people with jobs in this economy aren't going to retire until it goes into effect and they have a chance to look at it. It would happen, just not right away, IMHO.

[AllentownJake]

22. People are still making up for their losses in their 401(k)s

and the last two days, have not been helpful. Particularly since most people do the silly thing and sell at the bottom and buy at the top.

Nope, retirements won't be happening unless they are forced. HCR or no HCR, and it is increasingly looking like HCR is pretty dead.

[Change Happens]

20. 9.3%

[TexasObserver]

25. I hope your 7.9% prediction is right, but fear it's low.

If the president was passing a second stimulus package now, tied to a JOBS program, I'd be a lot more hopeful.

[cherokeeprogressive]

26. Directly proportionate to his pre-election poll numbers.

If he's polling badly against the republican challenger, the unemployment number will dip to whatever it needs to be to stem the tide.

If he's polling well, the numbers won't be so important so they'll be slightly higher.

If he's polling BEHIND the republican challenger, the numbers will reflect a growing workforce.

In other words, the numbers will be cooked and spun in whatever way they need to be to support his re-election.

[galileoreloaded]

27. NSA U-3 12.1% U-6 27% Gonna be a long hot summer. n/t