Monday, December 14, 2009

Finally: a Scientifically Valid Hockey-Stick Graph

Consider the following, relatively complete picture of the nation's unemployment situation:

Lately there has been much back and forth over the definitions of (un)employment, of improving (deteriorating) trends therein, and of just what is going on with the labor pool in the U.S. Due to the lack of a definitive data series that tracks comprehensive unemployment over time, the possibility for loose interpretation exists and is (ab)used by many. In order to hopefully mitigate a lot of the debate on the margin, here is probably one of the more comprehensive charts available, which tracks Initial Claims, Continuing Claims and Emergency Unemployment Compensation (the last being somewhat notorious lately, and a datapoint that has to be considered due to the skyrocketing exhaustion rate) since 1967. Pretty simple. The result does not need much commentary.


I'm truly shocked that the Democrats' central planning efforts haven't worked. I mean they worked in Cuba. And Zimbabwe. And the Soviet Union.

Welcome to the Obamaconomy!


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