Tag Archives: U.S.

What’s not surprising about the Unemployment Rate

IN doing some research for my piece on the weaknesses masked by Maine’s unemployment rate (UER), I noticed two interesting things about the UER.  These two things should be kept in mind during the current campaign season. The state’s economy is certainly one of the central issues in the campaign season, and with that candidates […]

According to the NYT, to boost incomes, the U.S. should be more like Russia, less like Germany

AS noted here yesterday, the statistics thrown around by those concerned that a workforce is lagging in education are sometimes misleading.  In the case of my post yesterday, newly appointed UMaine President Sue Hunter made some curious remarks: A part of it is when you look at educational attainment in New England … the rate […]

BLS: U.S. Economy Adds 209,000 Jobs, Unemployment Rate Up Slightly

JUST released from the BLS. First from the household survey: Both the unemployment rate (6.2 percent) and the number of unemployed persons (9.7 million) changed little in July. Over the past 12 months, the unemployment rate and the number of unemployed persons have declined by 1.1 percentage points and 1.7 million, respectively.  And from the […]