Unemployment falls in a majority of US cities

[phleshdef]

The Obama Recovery continues.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Unemployment rates fell or remained level in three-quarters of the 372 largest metropolitan areas, a sign that the economic recovery is widespread.

The Labor Department says the jobless rate dropped in 69 percent of metro areas last month, rose in 24 percent and remained the same in the rest.

That's an improvement from February, when the unemployment rate decreased in 51 percent of metro areas and increased in one-third.

The report follows other recent encouraging news about jobs. Employers added 162,000 jobs in March, the government said earlier this month, the most significant gain in three years.

Still, the growth wasn't enough to bring down the unemployment rate, which remained at 9.7 percent for the third straight month.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Unemployment-falls-in-a-apf-3686872780.html?x=0

[HereSince1628]

1. Can't tell what survey this is based on...anyone know?

[dmallind]

3. BLS - link attached

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/metro.nr0.htm

[HereSince1628]

5. I don't think it's mentioned in that link

[dmallind]

7. It's derived from table 1- look at the bottom and open that table. NT

[phleshdef]

4. Its from the labor department and seems based on the same data we use to determine all emp. numbers.

[HereSince1628]

6. As mentioned on this site lots of times unemployment based

on the number of people recieveing benefits isn't the real unemployment number, it's only a number of the eligible unemployed that are recieving benefits.

[dmallind]

8. But this is relative not absolute

If it's measured in the same way two months running and shows an improvement, then we can conclude that so did employment. The survey is far more valid than its detrractors pretend anyway, but evenif it weren't think of it like a tracking poll. A job approval poll may have a 2% MOE (the UE survey has far less) but if Obama has a 46% job approval one month and a 51% job approval next month we can conclude his approval went up.

What is the "real" UE number BTW? U6? Same process just includes discouraged and underemployed. It's almost certain it follows a similar trend to the U3 numbers listed, as they are very strongly correlated for obvious reasons.

[HereSince1628]

12. I am not sure that measurement is the issue, rather that the problem

is that the weekly cohorts moving through eligibility aren't even close to equal. These cohorts are a reflection of economic history and government intervention depending on the cohort a person is in.

This isn't the same way that popularity polling works. Popularity polling seeks a sample, with nearly the same number of people in it. If unemployment were measured by randomly quiries to households it would be like popularity polling, and technique would be more important than the dynamics of the underlying demographic. But unemployment guesses based on the number of people applying and recieving benefits is a measure not of unemployment but application and delivery of benefits. Big difference to the long term unemployed and those who for one reason or another aren't eligible.

[damonm]

2. K&R - not outta the woods yet - but moving that direction.

[Cha]

9. Toddler steps now..

Joblessness going down.

[Tarheel_Dem]

10. +1

:thumbsup:

[maxsolomon]

11. joblessness went UP today in this office of this city

by a significant amount - 20% of the firm.

[ClarkUSA]

13. Excellent news. And the WaPo/ABC poll has Pres. Obama's approval number at 54%!!

:kick:

[Beacool]

14. All these unemployment rates are bull.

They just refer to people filing new unemployment claims. It doesn't mean that people who were already unemployed are getting jobs. The true unemployment rate is still very high.

:(