Unemployment is not as important as we think, when it comes to predicting the next President

Make no mistake: the higher the unemployment rate in November 2012, the less likely President Obama is to win a second term. But we should be careful about asserting that there is any particular threshold at which Mr. Obama would go from favorite to underdog, or any magic number at which his re-election would either …

United Kingdom unemployment matches ours – and they use funny terms to describe it

Read this for news on the world economy, or just enjoy the interesting words the Brits use to describe their unemployment: Jobseekers Allowance (unemployment benefits), shadow work (?)…   UK unemployment total falls to 2.58m The unemployment rate fell to 8.1% in the period, down from 8.3% in the previous quarter. The ONS figures showed that the …

U.S. unemployment drops to 8.0% – Gallup reports, May 2012

U.S. unemployment, as measured by Gallup without seasonal adjustment, dropped to 8.0% in May, a new low since Gallup began measuring employment in 2010, and more than a full percentage-point decline from May 2011. Gallup’s seasonally adjusted number for May is 8.3%, down from 8.6% in April. However, that remains higher than the seasonally adjusted …

Unemployment rate at 8.1% – job growth seen in manufacturing, architecture, engineering, and computers

Hiring continued its slow pace in April as employers added a modest 115,000 jobs to their payrolls. The jobless rate inched down to 8.1% last month, the Labor Department said Friday, but that wasn’t because more people were employed. Rather, the rate fell as more workers dropped out of the labor force (about 342,000 workers). …

Unemployment rate normal for college grads – so why Occupy Wall Street?

For some reason I thought that not having a chance to get ahead was a big part of Occupy Wall Street. That the top 1% is running away with money from the bottom 99%. Unfortunately, the unemployment data below confuses that story. It shows a serious education issue and major problems in the African-American community, …

Do young Americans want to work?

As in, get a job? Despite all the haranguing on our economy and jobs market, why aren’t we talking more about the massive labor imbalance in our country? A recent Rutgers University survey of 571 Americans who graduated from college between 2006 and 2010 found that only 53% held full-time jobs. And yet, it’s not hard to …