Thursday, October 28, 2010

The Clueless BLS

The Bureau of Labor Statistics keeps a lot of data, but according to the Huffington Post, they don't know how many people still can't find work after running out of unemployment benefits:

How many people can't find work after nearly two years of searching? How many 99ers are there?

Nobody even knows.
The Department of Labor told HuffPost that it does not have the micro-level or individual claimant data to make an accurate estimate. With federally-funded extended benefits broken into four "tiers," the different number of weeks available in different states, and individual workers' potential stops and starts -- not to mention the congressional lapses in federal benefits -- nobody has figured out a reliable way to track the people who've used 99 weeks of benefits and still haven't found work.

2 comments:

  1. How about... following the money? Or do they not even know how many handouts they're making each month?

    "Hold up, let me run my punch-card through the FORTRAN back at HQ and I'll get to you with a response within the week. Or month, if there's a line like there usually is."

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  2. Dave Rosenberg said yesterday about 1 M 99ers will be cut off in Dec and an add'l 3-4 M by Apr 2011.

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