Oktoberfest Inflation

Thought this was an interesting graph: The price of a basket of goods (at Oktoberfest) Vs. the official inflation rate of Germany.

It could be that since the demand for Oktoberfest has steadily increased, so too have the prices.

Federal Reserve Comics

Found these pretty interesting. The New York Fed's way of relating to kids these days.

Alameda Corridor Problems

From the LA Times:

In 2007, the corridor collected $96 million in revenue to cover debt payments. In 2009, its revenue fell to $76 million. Through June, revenue had climbed 10% above the same period a year earlier but was still running 15% below what the corridor earned in 2007. And the surplus amassed during better years is running out.

The corridor authority's payments on debt principal and interest will jump to $117.1 million in 2012 from $102.5 million the year before. The tab keeps rising so that in 2033 the corridor will need to handle twice the cargo it received in 2009 to make $198.6 million in debt payments — an unlikely prospect.

Hopefully, the 50 billion transportation bill would help pay down the debt on this debacle.

The infrastructure plan will help the economy in long run by making it easier to transport goods, Obama said, while creating construction jobs in the near term. It calls for ambitious six-year goals, building or repairing 150,000 miles of roads, 4,000 miles of rail lines, and 150 miles of airplane runways.

The human side of employment stats

August unemployment numbers have already been released, a mere 3 days after the month ended. How they can come to the conclusion that 67,000 jobs were created in a mere half week is beyond me, and I put the odds of some kind of revision at 100%. Anyone familiar with government agencies will know that they do not work this fast, even under the whip.

Private sector jobs increased 67,000, while government sector jobs decreased by 114,000, mostly census workers. So the overall unemployment rate increased to 9.6 percent.

The WSJ has an interesting graphic that shows unemployment by both for the US in a cool thermo-graphic. You can see that our recession ranks right up there with the early 1980's recession.

I thought this was interesting from the article:

The 9.6% unemployment rate is calculated based on people who are without jobs, who are available to work and who have actively sought work in the prior four weeks. The “actively looking for work” definition is fairly broad, including people who contacted an employer, employment agency, job center or friends; sent out resumes or filled out applications; or answered or placed ads, among other things. The rate is calculated by dividing that number by the total number of people in the labor force.

The U-6 figure includes everyone in the official rate plus “marginally attached workers” — those who are neither working nor looking for work, but say they want a job and have looked for work recently; and people who are employed part-time for economic reasons, meaning they want full-time work but took a part-time schedule instead because that’s all they could find.

The disparity in the rates in August was largely driven by an increase in the number of part-time workers who would prefer full-time work. That can be a worrisome indication that the jobs being created in the recovery aren’t the same quality as pre-recession positions.

Now, what about those people looking for work?

The Pew Research Center recently had a report with fascinating results about who is looking for work.

Of the 139 million workers in the US right now, 25% were unemployed in the last 3 years. That means that one in four people lost their job, had new jobs not been created, the unemployment rate would have been 25 percent.

Recently unemployed people are less satisfied with their current job, they tend to see themselves as overqualified, and they do not stay in their new jobs long.

8 in 10 re-employed workers are happy with their new jobs, while 9 in 10 people who never lost their job are happy with their job.

4 in 10 re-employed workers say their new job is better than their old one. 1 in 4 re-employed people went from full time to part time and 55 percent of re-employed people say they are worse off than before the recession (are the rest not paying attention?) and 1 in 3 say their lives are changed forever.

In my own experience we are highering for an entry level position. There were a good number of well-overqualified people who I would not hire. I am doing them a favor by not wasting their time and saving their dignity.

There were a good number of people who listed their present employer as a job reference even though they have only been there for 1-3 months. Why even list this as a reference?

Obviously they feel they could do better, otherwise they would have stopped looking for employment. They took their present job rather reluctantly and why would my low wage entry job be any different?

Looking for a job was one of the most unpleasant experiences of my life; at no other time did I feel that I had no control, that my worth was constantly being judged, and that the stakes for failure were high.

And then I got this job. Because I knew someone who knew someone. Which is how I assume most people find most jobs. I know it is going to factor into who we hire here. Relationships matter more than resumes.