Saturday, July 17, 2010

Number unemployed vs. unemployment rate

While collecting the unemployment data I also ran some reports on the time that people are unemployed. The data is available showing up to 5 weeks, 5 to 14 weeks, 15 to 26 weeks and longer than 26 weeks. One of the signs of the depth of this recession is not just the number of people unemployed but also the length of time they have been unemployed. The charts below show the number of people unemployed for a given number of weeks in a bar chart which builds the categories on top of each other. I have overlaid the rate of unemployment which corresponds to the right axis. (click for larger)

The chart below just shows the faction in the various unemployment categories adding up to 100%, instead of the actual number. (click for larger)

If I have time, I want to overlay dates of unemployment extensions and see if there is any correlation. I still don't think that would be completely relevant because it is obvious that if an extension was passed then the time people receive unemployment insurance will be longer. Will I be able to see whether this in fact means they stayed unemployed longer or do extensions occur when Congress sees that people are already unemployed longer and the extension is to address that issue?

(Once again the data is available in this spreadsheet on Google Docs. - How Long unemployed vs rate unemployed )

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