Pacific Views

Nostalgic Job #s

These are some figures from the May Employment Situation Summary. The 2003 data is added in from the archives. All numbers in the tables are in thousands, unless they indicate percentages.

Category	Quarterly averages					Monthly Data			Apr. - May change
	2003				2004 1/	2004
	I	II	III	IV	I	Mar.	Apr.	May
Household Data	Labor force status
Civilian labor force	145,829	146,685	146,628	146,986	146,661	146,650	146,741	146,974	233
-Employment	137,430	137,638	137,647	138,369	138,388	138,298	138,576	138,772	196
-Unemp.	8,399	9,047	8,981	8,616	8,273	8,352	8,164	8,203	39
Not in labor force	74,280	74,090	74,885	75,290	75,695	75,900	76,016	75,993	-23
	Unemployment Rates
All workers	5.8	6.2	6.1	5.9	5.6	5.7	5.6	5.6	0.0

Persons not in the labor force are defined in part as, "individuals wanted and were available to work and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed, however, because they did not actively search for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey." The report states that the number of discouraged workers has stayed roughly the same over the past year.

After dividing the the number of employed people by the total number of people counted (labor force + not in labor force), another row can be added to the table, representing employment as a percentage of the work eligible population. The following is me playing with the numbers, not an official table:

Category	Quarterly averages					Monthly Data
	2003				2004	2004
	I	II	III	IV	I	Mar.	Apr.	May
Household Data	Labor force status
% Employment overall	62.4	62.3	62.1	62.2	62.2	62.1	62.2	62.2

Here's the 1997-1998 data, aggregated from the archives, with my extra row added to represent percentage of employment overall:

Category	Quarterly averages
	1997				1998
	I	II	III	IV	I	II	III	IV
Household Data	Labor force status
Civilian labor force	135,934	136,157	136,379	136,813	137,524	137,351	137,656	138,285
-Employment	128,728	129,462	129,723	130,421	131,080	131,349	131,419	132,166
-Unemp.	7,206	6,695	6,656	6,392	6,444	6,002	6,237	6,120
Not in labor force	66,462	66,678	66,988	67,123	66,871	67,554	67,827	67,813
	Unemployment Rates
All workers	5.3	4.9	4.9	4.7	4.7	4.4	4.5	4.4
% Employment overall	63.6	63.8	63.7	63.9	64.1	64.1	63.9	64.1

The overall average percentage of jobs/work eligible people for the two years, 1997 and 1998, was 63.9%. The average for the five quarters of Bush data here is 62.2%. From what I'm looking at, it isn't trending upward dramatically, but rather creeping back towards what it was in the first quarter of last year and essentially flat for months now.

The difference between the 1997-1998 average and the 2003-4 average is 1.7%. Based on the total work eligible population in the first quarter of 2004, that measly 1.7% represents around 3.78 million jobs. In terms of the May work eligible population, that's around 3.79 million jobs.

Bill, we're really, really sorry. Please come back.

Posted by natasha at July 2, 2004 09:35 AM | Economy | Technorati links |