The U.S civilian unemployment rate reached new lows of 3.6% in April – numbers last seen 51 years ago in 1968: There are a number of ways to use the national unemployment rate to signal recession, but almost all of them are co-incident to slightly lagging in the warning they provide. We have the most […]
Unemployment more widespread than thought
The Total Non-farm Payrolls data made another solid print for the month of July 2016, leading to the assumption that all is good with employment in the U.S: Similarly, if we examine the countrywide Civilian Unemployment Rate, we also get reassuring signs: However, if we dig deeper and examine the per-state unemployment rates for 52 […]
Over 30% of States with rising unemployment
The March 2016 figures are in for state-wide unemployment and the percentage of states with growing unemployment has risen to over 30% now: The useful thing with this breadth metric is that deterioration in unemployment is made visible long before it shows up in the average national unemployment rate. Whereas the national unemployment rate is […]
Animation : The incredible US employment recovery
Below is an animation of the annual average unemployment rate per U.S state from 2011 onward. It’s quite incredible to see how unemployment was erased state-by-state over the years: However statewide improvements in employment have probably peaked-out as shown in the chart below, which depicts the aggregate (equal weighted) inverse 6-month unemployment rate growth for […]