The good new is that things are getting better according to this chart, but the bad news is how bad it was (and still is).
Hard to tell but whichever country it was, it looks like they conducted a census in the last few years that temporarily boosted the job numbers.
and had a 800 billion stimulus plan for union members .... The census hiring was 400k of the 431k total new hires in May 2010
And don't forget the massive growth in Government employment that Bush created with the Department of Homeland Security. That helped keep the employment numbers up.
Then it was likely the US. Pity they didn't use U-6 instead of U-3, it would have shown the true misery of unemployed, those who stop looking all together, and the under-employed. Funny thing is on how they get the numbers. At one time it was a mixture of state's unemployment numbers mixed in with polling. Today, it's all polling of like 3,000 (6,000?) geographic zones and zero from the states numbers. Who answer's their phones if they don't recognize the caller ID that doesn't have a local number if you are unemployed? It's likely a collections dept.
My comment is the same to you as it was to Red when this was posted. The blue lines are projections. The dots are actuals. (seems to agree on the chart above). The problem is we don't have an 'actual' to check the projections of the without recovery plan. The problem really is that both with and with Recovery Plan projections were sugar coating. The without Recovery plan was, in reality, much much worse than this graph would lead us to believe. Today the jobs are coming back to the private sector and the public sector is firing to help meet the demand of stablizing if not lowering costs. Now if the Republicans would spend time worrying about creating jobs instead of creating imaginary items that need protection (psst In God we Trust was going no where) perhaps we could get things going. Of course the Republicans have publically admitted that they want to stall and bring down the economy in hopes Obama is not reelected. I hope Obama is reelected perhaps it'll help the Republicans wise up that they should be focusing on positive activities to boost the Country instead of trying to play a take all poker game with the nation as the pot.
I would have thought the unemployed were more likely to answer phones (while they still had them). It could be a job calling. However, the chronically unemployed might be less likely to have phones ... and homes.
Based on what? Really it is now hitting as government is cutting union jobs as they should have done three years ago. Construction jobs, if it was over $2M, as per executive order signed by Obama, had to go to companies that paid "living wage" which is code for union since only union companies qualified. Well, those jobs were viable till borrowed money ran out, and there isn't any private sector jobs increases that will generate enough taxes to cover those union jobs from being phased out as state/county/city governments have to live within their means. Best Obama can hope for is 8.5% U-3 unemployment and that won't get him re-elected with him in the low 40s to upper 30s approval numbers.
