AUTOREFRESH 
The US Unemployment Rate –
By tonysan || February 2, 2010 at 05:18 GMT
|| 16 comments || Add comment
Do you think we can have a separate poll to predict what the US unemployment rate will be this Friday: The WSJ says we need to add 150K jobs just to keep it at 10% – What do you think?
I think seasonal hiring is over with. The temporary stall in UE rising was merely cyclical and this friday i’d be willing to say 10.2 is a solid estimate.
A well massaged 10.3%
I’m not expecting a surprise to either side, 10.1%
Although I can’t find a direct comparison of BLS and ILO US unemployment figures on the ILO web site, it might be worth a look at their database pages if you are keen on digging around.
ILO:- http://www.ilo.org/
BLS:- http://www.bls.gov/
Rules of the Game: a brief introduction to International Labour Standards (pdf):- http://www.ilo.org/global/What_we_do/Publications/lang–en/docName–WCMS_108393/index.htm
“Blackday on Your comment is awaiting moderation. February 2nd, 2010 10:57 GMT”
there you go poppet……
all better now
Thanks pops
I love digging but I am not sure what I am looking for ? Calculation differences between the US and the UK on the unemployment rate ?
You’ll need to read the Rules of the Game to find that out but in essence, the ILO offer a standard international definition for comparisons between countries.
I wouldn’t be much help with this either as the concepts of unemployment are alien to me … claimant, seasonal, frictional, structural, residual … there’s enough in there to massage the figures quite easily.
The first difference is that US stat boys don’t know how to calculate things ( cf all recent revisions) , a seasonal adjustment is something that confuses them greatly, even more than me it seems !
I will not guess. I had traded long enough to understand that I should avoid having positions on Non Farm Payroll announcement.
I played poker with a friend of mine Sunday that works for Verizon. He said they just whacked 8,000 jobs and were going to whack another 8 or so thousand. There are a lot of companies still cutting back from the expansions that occured during the housing build, so I wouldn’t get all giddy on seeing great employment numbers this year or the next few. The stimulus more than likely will barely offset the losses at this point. But then again, you also have to take into account the Census Bureau’s hiring, too. It would be really difficult to pen point the employment numbers with all of this stuff going on. Having access to tax receipt information would be a good tool.
As of 27 January month to date tax receipts were down only 4.4% vs the same period last year – a big improvement from a couple of days earlier – but still a decline when you consider the consensus is that a recovery is taking hold. EOM final tally can change significantly, but if the numbers should turn positive, it would be the first time since the whole hideous ordeal began. And it would be especially impressive since there was one less business day last month than last January.
I had closed all my positions, waiting for the big moves tomorrow from NFP announcement.