Part 2: The demographics of the unemployed for August 14th:
Bottom Line: The demos of the unemployed tell a much more instructive story about what's really going on in our labor market. As I do monthly, here are the government reported unemployment rates and my adjusted rate based on demographics:
- Asians: 3.8% (+.2)
- White: 3.8% (flat)
- Hispanic: 5.1% (+.3%)
- Black: 7.4% (+.3%)
Here are the adjusted rates:
- Asians: 7.9%
- White: 7.9%
- Hispanic: 10.7%
- Black: 15.5%
Here we see a bunch of devils in the details. Last month the government reported unemployment rate actually dipped to 4.3%. However the real employment rate actually rose from July. How does that happen? Once again, more Americans became long-term unemployment and are no longer counted towards the base rate but show up when we look at the real unemployment rate. We're also seeing more Americans attempt to re-enter the workforce as well. As a result we saw increases in unemployment in all non-white demographics last month despite decent employment gains. This shows how important it is to look beyond the base rate & also into the demographics. Most economists & analysts report the 4.3% unemployment rate and talk about how we're at full employment, etc. Try telling that to the 15% of black adults who need work. It's not acceptable to take millions of unemployed Americans for granted because of antiquated government reporting standards. In the third part of today's story we'll explore how much money we're making...