Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

---

BLS vs.Gallup Unemployment Rate - Massive Discrepancies Posted: 15 Aug 2015 10:17 AM PDT The Gallup Daily U.S. Employment , poll estimates unemployment at 6.3% and underemployment at 14.5%. Gallup cautions: "Because results are not seasonally adjusted, they are not directly comparable to numbers reported by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which are based on workers 16 and older. Margin of error is ±1 percentage point." Actually the numbers can be compared. All one has to do is use the BLS non-seasonally adjusted numbers. Civilian Unemployment Rate, Not Seasonally Adjusted Gallup estimates the unemployment rate at 6.3% but the BLS says 5.6%. If anything, the BLS number should be higher than Gallup. Why? Because Gallup surveys those 18 and older whereas the BLS surveys 16 and older. Given high youth-unemployment, any BLS bias should be higher, not lower. Underemployment And please check out the massive difference in underemployment. The BLS says 10.7% while Gallup says 14.5%! Sampling Gallup uses a 30-day rolling average, not seasonally adjusted, and samples 30,000 people for their rolling-average numbers. The Gallup numbers are more believable than the BLS numbers. Finally, for comparison purposes, the University of Michigan sentiment survey does a one-time sample a mere 500 people on which it allegedly measures spending habits and the economic health of the entire nation. For my take on sentiment, please see Sentiment as a Measure of Health of the Economy; Sentiment Theory vs. Practice. Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific.

Weekend Humor: Safety First - Image of a German, a Greek, and the IMF Designing a Rescue Posted: 15 Aug 2015 09:35 AM PDT Here's an image I picked up from Guru Huky at Guru's Blog. The translated title of Guru's post is "A German, a Greek, and the IMF Designing a Rescue". This is humorous but not quite Darwin Award material. Double Darwin Award! (2 March 2014, Netherlands) Two intoxicated men dared each other to test their courage against an intercity train at a Rotterdam train station. At 1800 hours on a Sunday evening, the station was crowded with more than 300 fans returning from a soccer-match pitting Feyenoord against Ajax at De Kuip, the most beautiful soccer stadium in Holland. The two men stepped off the platform and strode forth onto the tracks. One superdaredevil lay down between the tracks, intending to prove that the entire train would pass over him. What a story to tell! His friend was less confident and he merely knelt down next to the track and kept his head as close as possible to where he thought the train's profile would be. Turns out that the 130 km/h train that came down the track some seconds later was both lower and wider than they thought. They were killed instantly. The 300+ onlookers on the platform were none too pleased by the spectacle, and train traffic was interrupted for several hours while authorities cleaned up the mess. More Darwin Awards Also consider "The Ring Thing" and "Natural Birth Control", the latter was another double-Darwin award. A nice 2013 Darwin Award winner involves an Elevator Death in which a man forced open the doors of an elevator on the 7th floor, jumped out to the cables to slide down, and died in the ensuing crash. His estate filed a losing lawsuit against the elevator manufacturer after exhuming his body 18 months later. The person in question had voluntarily swallowed a mix of decision-impairing substances bringing his BAC [blood alcohol concentration] to 0.17% with a Xanax chaser. Unfamiliar with Xanax, this writer thumbed through the Urban Dictionary and found Xanax described as one of the more addictive benzos with withdrawal effects including psychosis and epileptic-type seizures. Summary? A DARWIN AWARD is granted to Chad Wolfe, while a STELLA AWARD for legal stupidity is awarded to the Estate of Chad Wolfe. As readers may have guessed, men are far more likely than women to win Darwin Awards. Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific.

You are subscribed to email updates from Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States