Ryan Raphael
Macroeconomics
Blog Write Up #2
Employment
Situation Report
Some of
the major labor market statistics in this report include unemployment rate, unemployed
persons, labor force participation rate, employment population ratio, and
discouraged workers. This data is collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics
based on a survey of 60,000 households.
The
unemployment rate is one of the major labor market statistics, defined as the
percent of the labor force that is unemployed. This is the number employed
divided by the labor force. The labor force includes the total number of
workers including the employed and unemployed. The report indicates that the
current unemployment rate is 6.7 percent, and the number of unemployed persons
is 10.5 million. Since January, there hasn’t been much fluctuation in the
unemployment rate. In January, it was at 6.6, then in February it was at 6.7,
and now it is currently at 6.7. These numbers are based on the total
unemployment rate, 16 years and older. When looking at the data, there are
higher rates of unemployment among certain races/ ethnic groups. For example African
Americans have had a rate around 12 percent for the past three months. The rate
for Latinos has slowly been decreasing from 8.4 to 7.9 in the past three
months, but this is still higher than the overall unemployment rate. Another
high category for unemployment is teenagers. They have an unemployment rate of
20.9 percent, which has been pretty consistent over the past three months. For
the rest of 2014, I predict that the unemployment rate will fall slightly,
staying in the 6th percentile.
One of the major problems of the unemployment
rate is that it doesn’t account for discouraged workers. Discouraged workers
would like to work, but gave up looking for a job, so they are classified as
not in the labor force. This causes the unemployment rate to fall, making it
seem like employment conditions are improving, when they really aren’t.
Another
key labor market statistic is the labor force participation rate. This is
defined as the percentage of the adult population that is in the labor force.
It can be calculated as he labor force divided by adult population. The current
labor force participation rate is 63.2 percent. The trend of the data is very
consistent. In November 2013 the rate was at 63 percent, December 2013 was at
62.8, January 2014 was at 63, and February 2014 was at 63. Participation rates
do not vary much by ethnicity or gender. The most significant difference in
participation rates are between white men over 20, and everyone else. White men
over 20 have participation rates in 72nd percentile, while everyone
else have rates near 60 percent. The only other significant difference in
participation rates are those between 16 and 19 years old. They fall under the
30th percentile for labor force participation rates. Since there
hasn’t been any significant fluctuations in the data, I predict that the labor
force participation rate will stay close to the 63rd percentile in
2014.
One
other important labor market statistic is employment population ratio. This has
a very close trend to the labor force participation rate. The current
employment population ratio is 58.9 percent. White males had the highest
ratios, in the 68th percentile, while white and African American women
were in the 54th percentile. I predict that the data will remain
fairly similar in 2014 because there hasn’t been much variation in the past few
months.
Overall,
the labor market categories I examined had fairly consistent data. The data
mostly varied between ethnic groups and genders, but within those groups, the
data had a consistent trend.
Bibliography
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