Gedanken Experiment

The Myth Of A Good Jobs Number

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 13:13:00 -0800

Look at these headlines!

Job growth surges, jobless rate drops to 8.3 percent (reuters)
Unemployment rate falls to 8.3%; fifth straight monthly decline (LA Times)
Obama team trumpets good jobs numbers (USA Today)
US Jobless Rate Falls to 3-Year Low, Report Shows (NY Times)
Snap analysis: Job creation accelerates broadly (Reuters)

WOW! Things really must be getting better! 243,000 jobs, 8.3% rate.

Or are they? Hmm.. well that all sounded good right? But what about the data behind those numbers? Things like labor force, participation rate, employment/population ratio... Shh.. those are too complicated for the newspapers and TV news! Besides, you're a good American right? Can't be talking things down in an election year!

HOUSEHOLD DATA
Summary table A. Household data, seasonally adjusted
[Numbers in thousands]
Category Jan.
2011 Nov.
2011 Dec.
2011 Jan.
2012 Change from:
Dec.
2011-
Jan.
2012

Employment status
Civilian noninstitutional population
238,704 240,441 240,584 242,269 -

Civilian labor force
153,250 153,937 153,887 154,395 -

Participation rate
64.2 64.0 64.0 63.7 -
Employed
139,330 140,614 140,790 141,637 -

Employment-population ratio
58.4 58.5 58.5 58.5 -
Unemployed
13,919 13,323 13,097 12,758 -
Unemployment rate
9.1 8.7 8.5 8.3 -
Not in labor force
85,454 86,503 86,697 87,874 -
Source:BLS.gov

HOUSEHOLD DATA
Summary table A. Household data, seasonally adjusted
[Numbers in thousands]
Category	Jan. 2011	Nov. 2011	Dec. 2011	Jan. 2012	Change from: Dec. 2011- Jan. 2012
Employment status
Civilian noninstitutional population	238,704	240,441	240,584	242,269	-
Civilian labor force	153,250	153,937	153,887	154,395	-
Participation rate	64.2	64.0	64.0	63.7	-
Employed	139,330	140,614	140,790	141,637	-
Employment-population ratio	58.4	58.5	58.5	58.5	-
Unemployed	13,919	13,323	13,097	12,758	-
Unemployment rate	9.1	8.7	8.5	8.3	-
Not in labor force	85,454	86,503	86,697	87,874	-

So what really has happened in the past year? Well the civilian noninstitutional population rose 3.6 million. The civilian labor force rose 1.1 million. The participation rate FELL 0.5 percentage points. The employment to population ratio rose 0.1 percentage point to an abysmal 58.5%. Finally, those "not in labor force" rose nearly 2.3 million, an astounding 1.1 million in the last month alone.

So for the math challenged, the trick here has been to reduce the size of the labor force at a rate greater than the increase in number of persons employed. Presto chango you get a declining unemployment rate which makes the lede on every news report.

Of course, the reality is far different. What would the top line unemployment rate had been for Jan. 2012 if the participation rate were the same 64.2% as Jan. 2011? Hmm... 8.9%. How about if the participation rate were what it was in Jan. 2009 (65.4%)? 10.6%. Jan 2002 (66.2%)? 11.7% !

And of course, there is the other game that is played - seasonal adjustments. The fudge factor. One can avoid this too by looking at year over year unadjusted figures. For instance, Dec 2010/Dec 2011 and Jan 2011/Jan 2012. Using that method we have Dec'10 9.1%, Jan'11 9.8%, Dec '11 8.3% and Jan'12 8.8%
Splitting the difference, a drop of 0.9%. Wait.. did you say a drop? But...

The partipation rates also dropped - 0.3 pts Dec/Dec and 0.5 pts Jan/Jan. In fact, Jan 2012 is the LOWEST labor force participation rate in the past decade at 63.4%. This is reflected by the 2.6 million increase in 'not in labor force' over that same time frame. In fact, you must go back to pre-1984 to find similar rates. However, the trend at that time was upward from the 57.5 to 58.0% of the late 1940s to late 1960s when women were a smaller part of the work force. the peak at 66.1% in July 1997. On an annual basis 67.1% was the peak rate and ocurred in 1997-2000. From 2004-2008 the rate was 66.0. The other ratio, employment to population peaked at 64.4% in 2000 after spending the late 40s through 1970 either side of 56%. January 2012 saw this figure drop to 57.8%, last seen in 1983 and not far off from those Nifty Fiftie's rates.

Sorry to rain on the parade, but yes, things still really do suck.

Copyright 2004-2011 by Gedanken Experiment (previously Rant Street), all rights reserved. Full terms of use at www.gedankenexperiment.dk

SM Higgs: Underwhelmed and Not Convinced

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 12:40:00 -0800

Just a quick note on the "results" put out this morning with much fanfare by the Atlas and CMS collaborations at the LHC. Call me completely underwhelmed. Talk the previous week had been that at least one of them was in the high 3 sigma range yet in fact, we get 3.6 from Atlas and 2.4 from CMS before including LEE (look elsewhere effects). They do report p values which are consistent with expectations if a SM Higgs were aboiut 125 GeV but honestly, why was this result published? When including LEE, Atlas drops to 2.4 sigma and CMS to 1.9. Yes we can play the game of trying to combine the statistics from two different detectors to boost the reported confidence but at these low starting points is that not just GIGO? (Atlas data also show a spurious signal near 100 GeV where Higgs has already been excluded.) Ok, perhaps that is a bit harsh but you get my point.

Unfortunately, the mainstream press is so wound up about this whole Higgs thing (and please don't ever refer to it as the "G" particle!) that they will make an even bigger deal out of the CERN presser than did the LHC groups. I think this is a bad day for HEP and tarnishes what have been traditionally for more stringent cuts on what is a major event and what is not (yet).

It may yet be that the SM Higgs is found about 125 GeV but I think it will take significantly more data, on the order of 10 fb^-1

Copyright 2004-2011 by Gedanken Experiment (previously Rant Street), all rights reserved. Full terms of use at www.gedankenexperiment.dk

Why Are We Still Building Roads?

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 16:35:00 -0800

Via ABC's Nightline, this video of another great example of why it is long past time for the US to leave Afghanistan:

video platform video management video solutions video player

Shouldn't the Afghans by this point be able to provide their own security to those building roads? How can anyone from this or the prior administration look those families in the eye and say 'building these few miles of road was worth the life of your son (or daughter)"

Copyright 2004-2011 by Gedanken Experiment (previously Rant Street), all rights reserved. Full terms of use at www.gedankenexperiment.dk

A Pathetic Endorsement

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 13:21:00 -0800

The NH Union Leader endorsed Newt Gingrich in the Republic presidential primary today. Our issue is not so much that they select one candidate over another - but we do have problems when they make statements like this to justify their selection:

Readers of the Union Leader and Sunday News know that we don't back candidates based on popularity polls or big-shot backers. We look for conservatives of courage and conviction who are independent-minded, grounded in their core beliefs about this nation and its people, and best equipped for the job.

Courage and conviction? Newt? Are they serious? Next to Romney there is no candidate who has flipped-flopped more on the issues and there is certainly none who is more tainted by scandal (House, FNM/FRE). Gingrich has shown anything but strong convictions on key conservative issues - just look at his public dissing of the Ryan plan last spring as the most recent egregious example. And if sitting down to do an advert with Nancy Pelosi on climate change is courageous, thanks, we'll pass.

Which leads us to another statement in their editorial endorsement:

We don't have to agree with them on every issue. We would rather back someone with whom we may sometimes disagree than one who tells us what he thinks we want to hear.

Really? You couldn't find one other candidate who you may have disagreed with on one issue, who may have told you something you did not want to hear and had both courage and rock solid conservative convictions?

Copyright 2004-2011 by Gedanken Experiment (previously Rant Street), all rights reserved. Full terms of use at www.gedankenexperiment.dk

Cold War Intrigue

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 13:21:00 -0800

Spy Wars: Moles, Mysteries, and Deadly Games by Tennent H. Bagley ISBN 978-0300121988

This fascinating book proved great medicine while we were laid up with a cold over the recent holidays. The author was a counterintelligence officer at CIA in the 1950s and 60s, eventually rising to chief of counterintelligence for the Soviet Russia ("SR") Division and Division Deputy Director. While the book looks into many historical Tsarist and Soviet intel operations, the prime focus is on the case of a notorious KGB Soviet defector, Yuri Nosenko which the author was directly involved. The author also spends considerable time on the efforts (cover up?) by the CIA and others to rehabilitate Nosenko's bona fides as a genuine and valuable defector.

The bottom line is this - if you take the author at his word concerning the interviews and documents he was involved in, as well as those of others, there is no way one can see Nosenko as anything but a false defector. However, the question in my mind is why they would willingly send someone so blatantly unprepared - certainly they thought better of CIA than that? I have to wonder if the actual decision to 'defect' was in fact Nosenko's - he was a drunk and womanizer and going no where fast at KGB. His 1962 Geneva trip was probably a real KGB operation, but the subsequent trip could have seen Nosenko go off reservation figuring he had a ticket to a better life (ultimately) in the US if he defected rather than work in place as a 'double' as per KGB orders. This would have put KGB in quite the difficult situation.

Anyone interested in intelligence operations, especially those of the cold war period should read this book. We can only hope now that Nosenko is dead that the CIA will release *all* the files, at least those that were not destroyed in the late 1960s.

Copyright 2004-2011 by Gedanken Experiment (previously Rant Street), all rights reserved. Full terms of use at www.gedankenexperiment.dk

QDB

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 00:48:00 -0800

If you have ever spent some time on IRC then you will appreciate the Quote Database, qdb.us The site can at times be a bit slow and does toss out the odd php or database error but nothing can bring back your memories of IRC better. QDB is a repository of funny IRC conversation snippets submitted by users and gives viewers the option of rating each one as good or bad. Many of them are a bit off-color (too much so for here!) but here is one example:

(myst) so what about you? anything interesting?
(Joshua) i'm writting a book and i just left a naked lady in her bed seconds before her roommates came home.
(Joshua) it was like *pulls on pants* *roommates walk in*
(myst) what's your book about?
(Joshua) lol!
(Joshua) yup, you're a chick
(myst) lol
(myst) rofl

Copyright 2004-2011 by Gedanken Experiment (previously Rant Street), all rights reserved. Full terms of use at www.gedankenexperiment.dk

On Nuclear Terrorism

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 00:34:00 -0800

On Nuclear Terrorism by M. Levi ISBN 9780674026490

If you are not a wonk, move on as this book is not for you. Thoroughly referenced, Levi's book goes into detail on the subject of nuclear terrorism and its defense. What might be surprising is that we now find ourselves somewhat more at ease than before reading it. The physics of nuclear weapons was not new to us yet much of the engineering aspects were and when viewed along side the various controls and defenses now in place, one begins to realize just how difficult a task building a very small rudimentary weapon would be to even the 'best' terrorist group. While not the fastest read due in part to the need to check the extensive footnotes, anybody who either needs to know or wants to know about this subject should read this book and not risk being lost in journalistic hyperbole or worse, government proaoganda.

Copyright 2004-2011 by Gedanken Experiment (previously Rant Street), all rights reserved. Full terms of use at www.gedankenexperiment.dk

Vacuum Diagrams

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 00:12:00 -0800

Vacuum Diagrams by S. Baxter ISBN 9780061059049

Being a fan of hard Sci Fi and not the touchy-feely rubbish publishers push on the genre these days, Baxter's books looked very interesting. Checking quickly on-line for sequencing of his novels (there appeared to be an underlying theme related to an alien race called the Xeelee), we came across this quote from the author:

I�m not a great fan of books that end with cliff-hangers. So you could go in anywhere. One way would be to start with �Vacuum Diagrams�, a collection that sets out the overall story of the universe. Then �Timelike Infinity� and �Ring� which tell the story of Michael Poole, then �Raft� and �Flux� which are really incidents against the wider background, and finally �Destiny�s Children.�"

Taking his advice, we are now about one-third into Vacuum Diagrams and we like it.

Copyright 2004-2011 by Gedanken Experiment (previously Rant Street), all rights reserved. Full terms of use at www.gedankenexperiment.dk

Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics

Wed, 21 Feb 2007 23:41:00 -0800

Just found quite the treasure trove of physics/astronomy related podcasts. The Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at U. California Santa Barbara has a very nice site up including podcasts of many of their conferences, public lectures and colloquia. If the handful of podcasts we have opened so far are any indication, there are a limited number of still photos of blackboards and the like embedded with the audio. Good stuff!

Copyright 2004-2011 by Gedanken Experiment (previously Rant Street), all rights reserved. Full terms of use at www.gedankenexperiment.dk

3D Ski Maps

Sun, 18 Feb 2007 00:44:00 -0800

Here is an interesting site for the snowboard and ski crowd: 3dskimaps.com It is surprising nobody has managed to do something like this before now (maybe they have and we just don't know). 3dskimaps shows the mountain map(s) not just with the trails but in 3d perspective with color coding to indicate trail steepness. This is a great thing to print out and bring with you on your trip and tuck in your jacket pocket to answer the inevitable 'how steep do you think that really is?' Only a limited number of mountains so far but hopefully more soon.

Copyright 2004-2011 by Gedanken Experiment (previously Rant Street), all rights reserved. Full terms of use at www.gedankenexperiment.dk