Thoughts from the Frontline

The Unemployment Quandary

By John Mauldin

February 6, 2004

The Unemployment Quandary
Show Me the Jobs
The Self-Employment Dilemma
Wall Street Meat
Up To My Chest in Snow and Sand

This week we tackle some rather odd discrepancies in the employment numbers - are we adding jobs or losing them? Then is there a relationship between those numbers and the stock market? Are businesses getting ready to hire and spend money? All good questions, and I will try to shed some light on them as we see if we can fit some rather disparate pieces of the information puzzle together to form a picture that we can recognize.

First, there are two different sets of employment numbers. One, the establishment survey of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), shows we have lost about 3,000,000 jobs since the start of the recession. This survey is a result of looking at the unemployment insurance accounts of about 160,000 businesses (establishments, and thus the name of the survey) at over 400,000 different locations, which covers about 1/3 of all employment. If you are a Democrat…

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