Saturday, October 6, 2012

Why Jobs Surveys Don't Always Tell the Same Story

Employers added a relatively modest 114,000 jobs in September, but the unemployment rate registered its biggest drop in nearly two years. What explains the disparity? Link

After posting yesterday about the lowest unemployment rate in years, many of the comments focused on the unreliability of these numbers. This article focuses more on what these numbers could really mean and why the unemployment rate falling doesn't show as much optimism for the future as one would believe. How do you feel about what this article says about the economy? Do you find these arguments to be convincing or is there still even more to the unemployment rate?

1 comment:

  1. Different surveys give different results. One asks employers for information; another surveys households. Remember your statistics class: all surveys yield estimates of population parameters so there is always a margin of error in the estimate.

    ReplyDelete