Friday, June 5, 2009

How's That Working For You: May 2009 Edition

Positive second derivatives are breaking out all over the place. Too bad they can't be used to pay the rent.

Nothing good here. The labor force - the most dubious statistic the BLS publishes, in my opinion - increased, but at a rate below population growth. This means the unemployment number is worse than it appears.

E2P and E2CNIP continue to drift down. As I showed back here America's E2P ratio in 2007 was close to the median for other industrialized countries. Even after the current fall the ratio would would still be above the previous figures for France, Italy, and Belgium. But those countries have different safety nets and social arrangements so I am not confident that the decline in America can be sustained without substantial changes - and in what, I don't know.

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