Latest Employment figures for Columbia and Greene Counties

If you want more numbers (and who doesn't?) than were on offer in this story, you can look at the Labor Department's State and Area Unemployment Rates here. Otherwise, know this: Columbia County remains among the counties with the lowest unemployment rate in the state at 4.5% in September, while Greene County's unemployment rate was 5.7%. Both counties saw significant reductions in their unemployment rates from the previous September, dropping from 5.9% and 7.4%, respectively. Unfortunately, in both cases, although the number of unemployed fell, so did the number of employed. The former outweighed the latter in both counties, thus the reduction in the unemployment rate. In September there were about 400 fewer unemployed, but also 300 fewer employed in Columbia County, while in Greene County there were also 400 fewer unemployed with only 100 fewer employed. So, once again, lower unemployment rates hide something else: either people leaving the county or just leaving the workforce.

Show #028 Midterm Electionpalooza: Show Notes

This month, I reviewed the economic planks of the platforms of candidates for Governor, Comptroller and US Representative for the 19th District of New York and discussing the impacts of minimum wage increases with Jeannette Wicks-Lim of the Political Economy research Institute of Amherst MA. But first, as always, the news.

More interesting discussions of Ginsberg's

This past Wednesday, October 15, the Columbia County Industrial Development Agency (IDA) held a meeting at which the Payment in Lieu of Taxes arrangement for the facility being proposed by Ginsberg's in Ghent and Claverack was to be discussed. As predicted, it was well attended. A large crowd showed up, many of whom were Ginsberg's employees or people who work with Ginsberg's. Ken Flood in his role as IDA Executive Director, asserted that the project would create $10 in benefits for the county for each dollar of incentives. The main points made by opponents of the PILOT for this project is that it wasn't at all clear that Ginsberg's needed it. David Ginsberg cited an example of a competitor receiving $18.5 million in tax breaks to build a comparable facility. Residents argued that the deal would pace a burden on school and property tax payers. The latter is a little fuzzy, since there's no one paying taxes on the property now. The proposed deal means that that would continue for the first six years, with payments kicking in afterwards. More will be revealed, I guess. No word yet when a final decision will be made.

Official unemployment rate falls to 5.9%, unofficial rate is still above 11%

This Wonkblog post could have been titled "Americans think the Labor Department is tracking the wrong number." The blog discusses a poll asking respondents what they thought the unemployment rate was, the results of which show that 45% of those polled thought the unemployment rate was higher than the official rate, which was reported to decline to 5.9% in September. While the post's author speculates that the discrepancy might be due to personal experiences or that they missed the news it may be that the public is a better guide to some things than official statistics, at least the 'headline' unemployment rate. The Bureau of Labor Statistics does keep track of better measures, of course. In its release, you can find out that, although the number of unemployed persons (those looking not employed, but who looked for work in the last four weeks) fell to 9.3 million, the number of people working less than they want to for economic reasons (involuntary part-time workers) was 7.1 million and those who were marginally attached (who want to and are able to work, had looked for work in the last 12 months but not in the prior four weeks) numbered 2.2 million. The number of people in the latter two categories had not fallen over the last year. The math wizzes among you may have noticed that the involuntary part-time and marginally attached add up to 9.3 million, coincidentally the same as the number of officially unemployed. If you add those people to the unemployed (and the labor force), the unemployment rate you get (which the BLS calls U-6) is 11.1%. So maybe those people who think the unemployment rate is twice as high as the official rate know something about the economy that Washington Post bloggers don't.