Don’t Freak Out over the Unemployment Numbers
by David Atkins
Joe Weisenthal has a reminder for everyone freaking out over the unemployment numbers:
Has the economy really deteriorated just like that?
Nah, don’t worry.
As The Bonddad Blog pointed out last week, this Gallup data isn’t seasonally adjusted (in fact it says that in the chart right up there).
Since it’s not seasonally adjusted, you have to look at it year over year, and guess what.
And guess what, a year ago Gallup was at 10% and BLS was at 9.0%. So with Gallup now being at 9%, you could surmise that BLS will stand at 8.0%, another solid drop.
That’s not to say that the economy isn’t still fundamentally broken and tilted in favor of Wall Street, or that we aren’t in a comparatively jobless recovery.
But the fact remains that the economy even in its current state is slowly improving, and the latest Gallup data doesn’t disprove that.
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