Blog Post #1

Kevin Elliott.

The unemployment rate, employment population ratio, and the labor force participation rate are three important labor market statistics. Each of those statistics are studied by economists because they are important in evaluating the current state of the economy. Also these statistics can be used to study how the market will look in the future by looking at trends. These statistics are very important and they should be studied often.

                The unemployment rate is an important indicator of economic performance. The unemployment rate is the percentage of the labor force that is currently unemployed. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics the Unemployment rate remained constant at 5.0 percent. This means that the job market remained recently stable over the past month. The percent has decreased from 5.8 a year ago. There were job gains in construction, professional and technical services, and the health care while there was job losses in mining and information. Other the past 12 months the unemployment rate has dropped by 0.8 percent. Using the seasonally adjusted data it showed that total unemployment (16 or older) and adult (20 or older) remained the same at 5.0 and 4.7 percent. The adult women unemployment rate increase slightly from 4.5 percent in October to 4.6 percent in November. Lastly teenager’s unemployment rate dropped from 15.9 percent in October to 15.7 percent in November.

                Another important indicator of how well the economy is doing is the employment population ratio. The employment population ratio is the ratio of the current employed population to the labor force. The employment population ratio also remained unchanged at 59.3 percent from October to November and has only increased by .1 since November 2014. Since the employment population ratio measures the percentage of people who are working from the labor force, this means that 59.3 percent of the labor force is working.

                The labor-force participation rate is a very important indicator of economic performance. The labor-force participation rate measures the percentage of the total adult population that is in the labor force. The labor-force participation rate for the US is 62.5 percent. The labor-force participation rate has changed very little change in November. From October 2015 to November 2015 the change has only been by .1 percent and has only increased by .5 percent since last year. This little change could be because of increases and decreases of certain seasonal jobs.

                Across the three groups there is very little change among them. The employment population ratio is at 59.3 percent and the labor force participation rate is at 62.5 percent. Also a similarity between the three labor market statistics is that there is very little improvement among the three. This shows that the economy is not improving or residing and that it is stagnant. The employment rate has decreased by .8 percent, the employment population ratio increased by .1 percent and the labor-force participation rate increased by .6 percent. Based on the percentages of the three labor statistics I expect the trend of slight increases in the labor market to continue for a couple more years. Then after those couple of years I expect the market to flatten out again and remain stagnant.

               

                

The Employment Situation: November 2015. (2015, December 4). Retrieved December 10, 2015, from http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf 

Mankiw, N. (2012). Principles of macroeconomics (6th ed.). South-Western.