[lelio]

Good levelheaded article. Thanks for the post.

In the household survey, "People are classified as employed if they [... ] worked without pay at least 15 hours in a family business or farm.

Isn't that going to skew the numbers? IE a teenager sweeps out the family's car service garage a couple hours a week and suddenly he's counting toward employment figures?

He goes to the tax tables at the IRS and notes that self-employed taxes rose only 2.2% for 2002, which is less than GDP and inflation.
...
It is not that there is not in fact a large increase in the number of the self-employed. There is. It is just that there is not a large increase in the profitably self-employed.

Good point. How many of these self employed people are just going through the motions while looking for a job?

I suppose when I was unemployed and selling some old books on half.com (which I highly recommend doing, pocketed $2k in getting rid of books I haven't read in years) I would of counted as "employed" for a couple of weeks due to the time it took to go to the Post Office.

[Leroy S. Mort]

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.

Bureau of Labor Statistics - THE EMPLOYMENT SITUATION: JANUARY 2001: Total employment was essentially unchanged at 136.0 million, seasonally adjusted, in January.

Bureau of Labor Statistics - THE EMPLOYMENT SITUATION: January 2004 (see table): Total employment = 138.566 million

Maybe I'm dense but this seems like a NET gain of about two and a half million jobs in three years on Bush's watch, even using the BLS formula. What am I missing here? Sure theres been a fluctuation up and down, but the net is that there are more jobs now that there were three years ago.

[RockyMtnMan]

The Social Security office and the IRS office should get together and come up with the real employment numbers. The current process is inaccurate and can show whatever the politician wants it to show in either direction.

I can say definitively I have seen an increase in job openings in my field (tech). So currently the trend is positive, at least in my neck of the woods (Colorado front range). I don't know anyone out of work right now, but I wouldn't want to be on the market for at least a few more months. I've heard competition is still very tight in my sector.

[raybbr]

60000 households out of 270 million people represents .0022 % of the United States - hardly a repesentative sample.

[EGPWS]

Show Me The Jobs

Good Lord, with an attitude like that I'm surprised we ARE on a rocketing upward track to more than complacent economic contentment!

When, oh when, will the malcontents finally reach euphoria and stifle their doom and gloom gibberish?

[kcar]

So, if the BLS picks up unemployment stats of people >16, and that means that employment numbers speciously peak during the summer months, and that's when the POTUS race will be in full swing, is it forecastable that the Pubbies would be exaggerating local employment results as the tangible proof that the economy's resurging jobfully, while Rats would be trying to "expose" the lie to a population that doesn't appreciate such nuanced arguements, and the local after-summer downward stats would be aired too late for full capitalization by the Rats?

If so that would be fitting justice. The recession started well before Bush raised his right arm. I was there fore and aft, and so was my job and my retirement money.

[Koblenz]

Until the latter half of 2002, I worked at an investment firm, and everyone there was an employee. Now, I am self-employed, as are 3 others, and there are maybe 8 full time W2 employees. All of us self-employed aren't full time with this company, but we all have ample work elsewhere. I am making significantly more now than when I was an employee.

My 2002 taxes had relatively little self-employment income: you tend to get paid 30 to 60 days after submitting an invoice, and I was only self-employed 2 months in 2002, and most of that income actually came to me in 2003. My 2003 self employment taxes will be a lot higher.

I have been asked by two clients to be full-time, but the self-employment thing is working great for me, and I'm doing much better than as a normal employee. One client gave me a snazzy new laptop and a blackberry...

Not everyone who is self-employed is upset by their status. Some of us are doing quite well, although never intended to be self-employed.