Tex Norman

Employment: what goes Down must first go UP



Posted: Friday, January 15, 2010

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There is a quote that adds some insight into the unemployment issue:

Statistics are like a drunk with a lampost: used more for support than illumination. Sir Winston Churchill British politician (1874 - 1965)

Give the masses a statistic and you turn the simmering masses, turning the masses into boiling, over reactive churning asses. We have this knee jerk tendency to hear the statistic and to believe whatever the statistic citer wants us to believe. Often we feel that believing the statistic must be believed, must be accepted because statistics are facts -- aren't they? After all, to have a statistic means something was counted with actual numbers, and some mathematical magic was applied to the numbers and that is all factually stuff right?

I have a love/hate relationship to statistics, and, being a part of the masses I am not alone in my love and distain for statistics. We are surrounded by polls, submerged by surveys, engulfed by research, and buried under avalanches of the latest focus group results. A statistic seems like a conclusion. If you count stuff and calculate an average that is an irrefutable fact isn't it?

We have this inclination to believe statistics without question. I believe Prim Minister Churchhill got it right. Statics can be illuminating and helpful, but we should maintain a healthy dose of doubt, and seek to understand the way a statistic was gathered and how the results have been interpreted. There are stupid statistics out there.

47.3% of all statistics are made up on the spot...quoted from www.gullible.info/

I once read in Parade Magazine that 100,000 dogs die each year from falling out of the beds of pickup trucks. If you love dogs as much as I do, this statistic is shocking. But if you start to examine the numbers the persuasive point quickly dulls. If each and every year 100,000 dogs die this way that would mean that 247 dogs would have to die this way every day, 11 dogs would have to fall out of pickup trucks every hour. If this statistic is correct then 2,000 dogs a year per state would have to fall out of pickup trucks and senselessly die. But I am 59 years old and I have never once heard about someone who's dog died from falling out of the back of their F-150. I'm fairly certain that dogs do fall out of pickup trucks, and dogs do die from this stupid way of hauling the one life form that loves them unconditionally, but the statistic is shocking, convincing, and ridiculous. Looking a little closer to the Parade Magazine article and you'll see a source citation. The statistic came from the Humane Society.

Those that hate progressives, and those people that hate having a black President are eager to find any statistic that shows that Obama's efforts to stimulate the economy are failing. When some statistic factory produces the latest employment figures and those figures are low, the naysayers joyfully point to the numbers and say, "He is failing!"

The problem with unemployment statistics is not just numbers counted it is the numbers of unemployed and underemployed people who are NOT counted. The definition of unemployment excludes a huge number of unemployed and underemployed people. The counters ONLY count people actually, actively looking for work. The counters do not count the unemployed people who have given up. The data gatherers do not count the unemployed people who have grown so discouraged that they have given up and stopped looking for work. There are huge numbers of unemployed people who would like to work but have stopped looking because they are just so tired of rejection. Unemployment figures do not include the people who have hunkered down and are waiting for the economy to turn around. There are a lot of people who lost good jobs, couldn't find jobs that paid what they had been making. Unemployment figures don't count big equipment salesmen who lost their jobs and now work at Burger King. These underemployed people have jobs, so they are NOT counted, but these people can't live forever on minimum wage. When the economy turns around, when the stimulus starts working again, these people will start looking for jobs like the once they had before the great recession.

When the economy starts to improve, when the stimulus begins to stimulate the economy the discouraged unemployed people turn into hopeful unemployed people and they start looking for work again. Guess what happens next? The number of unemployed people goes UP. The truth not included in unemployment figures is that when the economy starts to improve, the first sign of improvement is not unemployment going down it is unemployment going UP. For the economy to improve the numbers MUST go UP before they can come DOWN. Having MORE unemployed people makes it look like the economy is still circling the drain, but "it ain't necessarily so."
Tex Norman is a social worker, currently working at the Oklahoma DHS Abuse and Neglect hotline. He interviews people reporting abuse and/or neglect of children and vulnerable adults and writes a narrative. The narratives (and demographics) are used to initiate investigations of the allegations. He says it is like writing 8 to 10 stories a day. In August 2012, he will have been married to Kathie for 40 years. He has a son Ryan who earned a PhD from Princeton and he is now a scientist doing research in molecular biology. Tex spends his free time working as an artist and writer. He has one art site, and a blog that might be of interest: http://tex-norman.artistwebsites.com/ and http://collagepoetrybytex.blogspot.com/
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)
» left by Gregory Lewis
 1 year 362 days ago.
138 fans. Follow Gregory Lewis on twitter!
Count me in! I mean OUT! I know full well what these statistics mean, I have been among the uncounted since 2004, you can count on it.
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