Sue, who is the Goddess of Excel, tracks California unemployment statistics. Here’s the latest for southern California. That’s not a misprint for Imperial County, which is primarily agricultural. Unemployment there really is 28%.
You can download the entire spreadsheet (a mere 72k) which has data for all of California grouped by region then county, with a graph and tabular data for each.
For most counties, quarter over quarter, the unadjusted unemployment rate is still rising.
I like looking at the unadjusted unemployment stats because they don’t include attempts to account for seasonal jobs, retirees, new employees, or political whims.
Of course, these data still exclude those who’ve dropped off the unemployment rolls (the “discouraged”).
In other words, you aren’t counted as unemployed if you’ve been jobless for six months or longer. Which makes a mockery of the numbers.
As I’ve become more comfortable with the measurements, I’ve come to the realization that the “official” unemployment numbers are about one third or the real numbers. Hence, for example, here on The High Desert we have an “official” 10.2% unemployed, but when I look around and factor in the U6 – those deemed to have “dropped out”, etc… I see 33 to 35% unemployed.
I was informed recently when my unemployment ran out that I was no longer considered “unemployed”.
It’s Alice in Wonderland. “The numbers mean what we want them to mean.”
There is an old joke in which a company decides it needs to hire a manager, and they narrow down the applicants to three finalists. They interview each of them to decide who they will hire.
The first finalist is an engineer. They ask him a single question: “How much is 2+2?” he answers, “Four.
The second finalist is a mathematician. He is asked the same question, and answers, “Generally it will be four except under certain circumstances.”
The third finalist is an accountant. They ask him, “How much is 2+2?” The accountant looks around, gets up from his chair, closes the door, and whispers, “How much do you want it to be?”