Survey Says!

So I go into my e-mail for the first time in something like four days (24 days in 'Dog Days').  Upon opening my mail I find a note asking me for a blog a wrote 'a while ago' that had something to do with how Unemployment is calculated.  Yeah, I remember the blog post, but I had no idea what I named it, when I posted it, or if it had even survived the Cayote 'Poof' Rampages of 2010.

I just found it.  As it turns out, it was called 'Survey Says!' 

Why was it called this? 

Well, why not? 

I could have called it 'Bob' or something, but that would have made even less sense than the name I actually chose for it.

One thing NOT addressed in the following post is a nifty Math trick I didn't consider last year (February 19th, 2010, to be exact):  When the most recent unemployment rate was announced (dropping the Unemployment from 9.4% to 9.0% with VIRTUALLY no job growth) you may have wondered, "How could this BE?  How could the economy not add jobs but the unemployment rate went DOWN???" 

Well, it's a 'Math Thing' again.  It works like this:

EXAMPLE A:  Assume that you have 1,000 jobs available in the economy (not as hard to imagine as it once was, but what the heck, it's an easy number to work with).

If you have 900 people employed, your unemployment rate is 10%.


EXAMPLE B:  Now assume that the number of 'total jobs' available DROPS to 925.

If you have 850 people employed, your unemployment rate is 8.1%

So, even though you have FEWER people working, your unemployment rate goes DOWN.

This, and the following, accounts for our most recent reduction in the percentage of unemployed.

Confused yet?  Oh, you will be...

Trust me.