[ClearCase_guy]

almost every family has someone who has been unemployed for over a year

I think your assumption is wrong. I work in the software world. I don't know any unemployed people. Last time I did know an unemployed person was 2 years ago.

Also, please note that self-employed people are not captured by the statistics. There has been a great increase in (happily) self-employed people in the past 5-10 years. My belief is that unemployment is not 5.4% -- it is actually quite a bit lower than that.

[reformedliberal]

I agree.

In my area, I have noticed that all the fast food and chain store businesses have help wanted signs out. The turnover appears to be fairly constant.

I have been self-employed most of my life and I would not change it. My husband has been offered positions in group practices. He declines because he would be taking an income cut.

Self-employed professionals, like lawyers and accountants and others are not included in the job figures, either.

[JimRed]

Also, please note that self-employed people are not captured by the statistics.

As a real estate broker who is an independent contractor, the establishment survey statistics have considered me "unemployed" for the last 19 years!

[lepton]

Last time I did know an unemployed person was 2 years ago.

Most everyone I knew in IT that was unemployed two years ago was still unemployed in January of this year (the market was stagnant). By June, all of them had found a job.

Also, please note that self-employed people are not captured by the statistics. There has been a great increase in (happily) self-employed people in the past 5-10 years. My belief is that unemployment is not 5.4% -- it is actually quite a bit lower than that.

Actually the household survey suggests that there has been a job growth of at least 4 million, and perhaps as high as 6.7 million, since Bush took office. Clinton used it to tout his numbers in 1996, but the media somehow doesn't consider it worth reporting now.

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Taxes/wm416.cfm

Two Surveys, Two Revisions

The story of diverging job growth between the two BLS surveys is now familiar, but here is a refresher: before today the BLS survey of establishments showed a decline of 776,000 payroll jobs during the recovery, while the household survey shows growth of the workforce by over 2.2 million. Today’s revisions had very little impact on that disparity (see chart).

* The population estimate from the Bureau of the Census was reduced, lowering the household measure of total employment by 409,000, while the household survey estimate of employment grew by 496,000. The overall effect was a net gain in this measure of employment.
* Payroll surveys were benchmarked to a complete count of companies, covering 98 percent of the workforce. As a result, original estimates of nonfarm payroll employment over the last year were revised down. Taking into account all revisions, 82,000 more jobs were created from March to December of 2003 than previously estimated.
* The divergence in total employment between the two surveys was not resolved by today’s revisions. Before today, the job growth gap was exactly three million in the raw data.
As of today:
*
o The revised household survey measure increased by 2.2 million workers since the end of the recession in November 2001.
o The revised payroll survey measure declined by 716,000 jobs during that time.
* BLS does not believe that new businesses are being missed by the payroll survey but does acknowledge that “contractors,” as a category of workers, are missed by the payroll survey and are not counted among the self-employed, either.

[lepton]

sorry, forgot to note that the above was from January 2004