Archives for February 2009

The Richmond Palladium-Item is reporting that Judge Thomas Snow, currently in Wayne Superior Court 1, will be appointed chair of the Alcohol & Tobacco Commission. Normally this wouldn’t mean much, but Judge Snow is the father of one of my sister’s best friends growing up. So, from that perspective, it’s a good appointment. And, by all accounts, Judge Snow is “the kind of person who makes any institution he joins a great deal better, and that which he leaves, saddened.”

The Associated Press had an article entitled “Indiana seeing a rise in military recruitment,” which is ostensibly due to the problems with our economy. This made me think of the historical notion that bad economic times lead to military conflict. If nothing else, countries have a surplus of able-bodied citizens and have to direct their energy one way or another in a way that keeps the existing government in power. I’m not especially concerned that unemployment in the U.S. will lead to increased saber rattling by us — we have an uncommonly stable government — but look for increased hostility around the world as other economies go in the tank.

Former Representative and Democratic Lt. Governor candidate Dennie Oxley was arrested on a DUI charge Friday, allegedly with a BAC over 0.15.

I have no idea of the details of Oxley’s incident, but every time I see a public figure arrested for a DUI, it suggests to me that hammering on the “don’t drink” side of the equation is insufficient. We need alternatives to driving our own vehicles to get around – whether that’s better public transit or zoning for corner pubs or something else, I don’t know.

IPOPA has a nice rant on the brouhaha over Michael Phelps and the devil’s weed marijuana. Bottom line: the reaction to Phelps is as ridiculous as our demonization of marijuana as opposed to our approach to cigarettes and alcohol.

Meteor Blades has a nice explanation up about how the Bureau of Labor Statistics computes those unemployment numbers you always hear about on the news. Turns out that they’ve been rejiggered over the years so that “5%” now doesn’t necessarily mean what “5%” meant 15 or 20 years ago. Also, there are various categories. U3 is what the media usually reports.

The BLS definition of U3 is “Total unemployed, as a percent of the civilian labor force.” The BLS categorizes U6 as “Total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers.”

Employed part time for economic reasons covers workers who would love to have a full-time job – who may need full-time work to pay all the bills – but can only find something part time. Marginally attached workers are those available for work, who have looked for work sometime in the past 12 months, but who aren’t included in the unemployed count because they have not searched for work in the four weeks preceding the most recent BLS survey.

Which one might be “right,” depends on what you’re trying to learn from the statistics. U6 probably makes the most sense if you’re trying to figure out how the economy is treating people who want to work.

Finding out about the different categories was a light bulb moment for me. I had been doing collections and getting the feeling that people were having a rougher time than before, but the unemployment numbers were hovering around 4% or whatever. I was down on the ground without a good perspective, but even knowing that, the stats didn’t reflect the reality I thought I was seeing. The U6 numbers were probably a better correlation for me.