ANALYSIS
16
Unemployment Will Probably Miss 10%: Silver
By Kevin Spak
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Posted Aug 10, 09 11:52 AM CDT
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(Newser)
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Lots of economists are predicting that unemployment, which at last count hung at 9.4%, will hit 10% before the calendar changes, but Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com disagrees. For that to happen, the economy would need to lose another million jobs or so, and "the jobs picture is steadily brightening." Unfortunately, the math becomes complicated if the workforce expands.
Unemployment didn’t fall last month because the economy added jobs. It actually lost jobs, but the workforce decreased even more, as people stopped looking for work, or found alternatives like going back to school, retiring, or even enlisting. As the economy improves, they’ll return. Silver sees unemployment peaking in November at 9.6%, followed by "a steady, and actually fairly robust decline, with about 400,000 jobs being created each month by next summer."