Articles and More!: Numbers

Showing posts with label Numbers. Show all posts

Thursday, April 3, 2014

Max Keiser - 13 August 2009 - Debating French & German GDP numbers

Friday, March 28, 2014

The Unemployed, By the Numbers

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The Unemployed, By the Numbers

Saturday, March 15, 2014

Crimea’s economy in numbers and pictures

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Crimea’s economy in numbers and pictures

Thursday, February 27, 2014

Grim scenario for Hawaii"s Obamacare plan: The numbers don"t add up

As the Hawaii Legislature weighs bills that would make sweeping changes to the state’s Obamacare program, the interim director of Hawaii’s healthcare exchange on Wednesday laid out a grim financial picture facing the agency.

With anemic enrollment by individuals and little interest among small-business employers, the state’s nonprofit exchange — known as the Hawaii Health Connector — is unlikely to have enough money to pay its bills, even under the best of circumstances, when federal grant money dries up in 2015.

The exchange had originally planned to stay afloat by collecting a 2% fee on every plan sold through the exchange, but with the slow pace of enrollment and changing federal rules — delaying the employer mandate and allowing canceled plans to continue — Interim Director Tom Matsuda said Wednesday that the math simply does not add up.

Last week, Matsuda and the Health Connector’s board members used expected enrollments by 2016, as well as the average premium costs, to calculate how much the exchange could collect by exacting its 2% fee on each plan.

“That revenue figure is far below what we think our expenses are going to be,” said Matsuda, who has estimated that the agency will need about $ 15 million a year starting in 2015. Health Connector board members also looked at the best-case scenario for enrollment, and “even then, we’re still short on having enough revenue to cover projected expenses,” he said.

When the Affordable Care Act passed, Hawaii appeared to be one of the states best-positioned to benefit. Because of a 40-year-old state law requiring employers to provide coverage, its uninsured population is among the lowest in the nation at 100,000 people, or 8%. But even with $ 205 million in federal grants, the state’s exchange has been mired in technical problems that have kept enrollment the lowest among the 50 states — just 4,300 as of mid-February. Beyond those problems, Matsuda said that low demand for health insurance in Hawaii would make it difficult for the exchange to stay afloat over the long term.

Of the 100,000 uninsured in Hawaii, about half are expected to be eligible for Medicaid — meaning just 50,000 people would buy individual plans through the Health Connector under the best-case scenario. And while Hawaii hoped to sell thousands of plans through the exchange’s small-business marketplace, Matsuda said so few small businesses are eligible for tax credits that officials are simply not seeing the demand. “What people can get on the Connector versus outside the Connector is the same, so there isn’t really a strong incentive for small employers to use the Connector,” he said.

Further complicating matters, only two insurers offer plans on Hawaii’s exchange, so many companies are continuing to rely on their longtime brokers (who, having essentially been cut out of the process, have no incentive to help Hawaiians buy plans on the exchange).

“This is not a problem of the operations,” Matsuda told lawmakers, who have been demanding more information about how the nonprofit has operated. “It’s a problem with the market not fitting exactly what the [Affordable Care Act] mandate is all about.”

Health Connector officials are pleading with officials at the federal government’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid for a waiver that would give them more time to spend the $ 205 million in federal grant funds that must be used or allocated by the end of the year.

That flexibility, Matsuda says, would allow the Health Connector to try to fix some of the technical problems that have stifled enrollments. One major source of the problems is a communication breakdown between the two systems that a consumer must navigate to get signed up for a health insurance plan. Every Hawaiian must get a denial of Medicaid eligibility through the state system — built by one contractor — before they can apply for tax credits to help buy a plan through the Health Connector’s system — built by a second contractor.

Nearly 20,000 applications have been caught between the two systems.

If federal officials agreed to give the Health Connector more time to spend the grant money, Matsuda said, the agency could work on streamlining and integrating those two systems, among other things.

“We’re just going to assume right now that that’s not going to happen,” Matsuda said of the waiver, “but we’re just going to keep pushing to see if we can get a decision.”

As Hawaii healthcare officials try to find a solution for its financial problems, lawmakers are revising a series of bills intended to improve accountability for the Health Connector, which as a private nonprofit does not directly report to legislators.

House Bill 2529, a measure introduced by Health Committee Chairwoman Della Au Belatti and 19 of her colleagues, would have dissolved the nonprofit and brought the healthcare plan under the control of the state. At a legislative hearing in early February, Belatti proposed placing the Health Connector temporarily under control of the governor’s office beginning in 2015.

But lawmakers on the House Commerce and Consumer Protection Committee backed off that change because of concerns that the state would then absorb the exchange’s financial and legal liability problems. Instead they drafted changes that would give a legislative committee the right to monitor the Health Connector’s finances and operations, and would require that the agency submit a detailed budget and sustainability plan to lawmakers each fiscal year.

Legislators are also considering adding a “sustainability fee” to every health insurance plan sold in the state, with the money going to pay for the Health Connector’s operations.

“Maybe in the long run, the market just never will be big enough to sustain this,” Democratic State Rep. Angus L.K. McKelvey said at the end of a two-hour hearing Wednesday. “We need to get these numbers; we need this information. We need to talk about IT and all these other things so we can address them now and have good understanding to work with you and others to create the most responsible, transparent and accountable system.”

maeve.reston@latimes.com

Twitter: @MaeveReston

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED

Grim scenario for Hawaii"s Obamacare plan: The numbers don"t add up

Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Hayes Podcast: Obamacare Jobs Numbers are Trouble for Democrats

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Hayes Podcast: Obamacare Jobs Numbers are Trouble for Democrats

Friday, January 31, 2014

The Week In Numbers: Tuition For Space School, New Peanut Allergy Treatment, And More

$ 45,000: the cost to enroll in this FAA-approved spaceflight training program (that’s only 18 percent of the price of a ticket on Virgin Galactic)

12 days: the time this fruit fly spent in space. Back on Earth, something’s not quite right…

7 years: the age at which humans begin to forget their early childhood, according to new research

120 times per second: the rate at which the wings of the RoboBee flap while in flight (read about the rise of insect drones in our January 2014 cover story)

88 percent: the portion of allergic children in a recent study who could tolerate eating peanuts after this six-month treatment

21 mph: the top speed of this electric Porsche from 1898

$ 500 million: the estimated amount Google recently paid to acquire DeepMind, an artificial intelligence startup

1 in 50,000: the chance that a part of someone else’s fingerprint could randomly match with the iPhone 5′s Touch ID, according to Apple (read why fingerprint security is not the future)

1 week: the length of time the herpes simplex virus can live on a dry surface (compare the lifespans of pathogens with our interactive infographic)

2021: the year Aerion plans to deliver a supersonic business jet to its first customers

10: the number of species of endangered bats discovered in abandoned bunkers on Israel’s Jordanian border

24 hours: the length of time this hardy leech can survive submerged in liquid nitrogen

$ 800: the price of Nikon’s new first-of-its-kind, waterproof, interchangeable-lens camera

56.62 mph: the record-breaking speed of the world’s fastest face-down, head-first, human-powered vehicle

$ 5,300: the price of the Ryno, a one-wheeled motorcycle with no gas pedal or normal brake

Science

The Week In Numbers: Tuition For Space School, New Peanut Allergy Treatment, And More

Thursday, January 16, 2014

House passes bill requiring health care numbers

House passes bill requiring health care numbers
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WASHINGTON (AP) â€” The House on Thursday backed a bill that would require the Obama administration to report weekly on how many Americans have signed up for health care coverage as Republicans maintain an election-year spotlight on the troubled law.

The vote was 259-154, with 33 Democrats breaking ranks and joining the GOP majority in supporting the legislation. It marked the second time in a week â€” and certainly not the last â€” that the House has targeted President Barack Obama’s law, with Republicans confident that Americans’ unease with the overhaul will produce major GOP wins in the November elections.

Some of the most vulnerable Democrats facing re-election this fall from Arizona, Georgia, New York and Florida voted for the bill. Last week, 67 Democrats bucked the administration and backed a bill to bolt new security requirements on the law.

The bill would require the administration to report weekly on the number of visits to the government health care website, the number of Americans who applied and the number of enrollees by ZIP code, as well as other statistics. It stands no chance in the Democratic-led Senate.

The administration has reported monthly on enrollment, announcing last week that 2.2 million signed up through the end of December and nearly 4 million had been deemed eligible for Medicaid.

Those reports are insufficient, Republicans argued.

“We know the president’s health care law is driving up costs for middle-class families, making it harder for small businesses to hire, and hurting the economy – but there’s still a lot we don’t know,” said House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, contending that the administration “hasn’t provided a clear picture of where enrollment stands.”

Democrats countered that the Republicans were adding onerous requests and disrupting administration efforts to sign up millions of Americans for health care coverage.

“This is just an attempt to pile on so many requirements on the administration,” said Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., who pointed to recent administration reports. He said the data disclosed is consistent with what the government releases monthly on Medicare.

Obama has said his administration is the most transparent in history, and Republicans tossed those words back at him.

“This bill is fundamentally about transparency,” said Rep. Joe Pitts, R-Pa., who insisted that the American people have a right to an accurate assessment of the law’s data.

The administration opposes the measure, saying it has been providing information on enrollments and the added requirements would force it to hire new staff as government expense.

Democratic Rep. John Sarbanes, D-Md., said the measure was “really designed to harass the Health and Human Services” Department.

The goal of the Affordable Care Act is to expand coverage to tens of millions of Americans who lack insurance, to lower health care costs, to increase access to preventive services and to eliminate some of the pre-existing condition requirements that insurance companies have used to deny coverage. The health care website got off to a calamitous start on Oct. 1, followed quickly by widespread reports of canceled policies and higher premiums.

Republicans who steadfastly opposed the law have led the charge in the House, which voted more than 40 times last year to repeal, replace or undo parts of the law. The GOP campaigned last year on a promise to repeal and replace the law, but the party hasn’t offered an alternative.

Associated Press

U.S. Headlines

Read more about House passes bill requiring health care numbers and other interesting subjects concerning U.S. News Report at TheDailyNewsReport.com

Monday, January 13, 2014

A Second Look at Medicaid Enrollment Numbers

Last week I examined the Obama administration’s claims that the Affordable Care Act was responsible for 4 million Medicaid enrollments in October and November. I concluded that these numbers were off, and badly so. At the same time, I made clear that my estimate of 200,000 actual new enrollees was just an estimate, and could be off by a substantial amount. I suggested, somewhat arbitrarily, doubling that number to 400,000 for what I thought would be a generous estimate of how many “newly eligibles” signed up for Medicaid due to Obamacare in October and November.

There were two major problems with the administration’s numbers. First, of the 4 million new enrollees, more than half of were in states that did not even undertake the Obamacare Medicaid expansion. So we can be pretty comfortable that the number of enrollees due to the ACA is no more than 1.9 million, using the data provided by the administration. (There are probably some previously eligible folk who decided to apply after hearing about the expansion, but their number is likely relatively small.)

The second issue is that of those 1.9 million, some would have enrolled (or re-enrolled) in the program under the pre-expansion rules. Every state had a Medicaid program in place prior to the expansion, although the eligibility level varied widely from state to state, and therefore would have signed up people in the program absent the new funding. Looking at the changes in the application rates between states that undertook the expansion and those that did not, I estimated that around 200,000 of those applicants were newly eligible under the Medicaid expansion.

Today I want to take a slightly different look at these data, focusing on the great state of Arkansas. Arkansas is interesting — it agreed to the expansion, but rather than placing its newly eligible population on the traditional Medicaid program, it instead offered them private insurance. As part of the agreement with the federal government, it agreed to track how many of its applicants were, in fact, newly eligible under the expansion.

This gives us firmer data than we have for the states as a whole. It isn’t perfect, for reasons we’ll get into later; for now just trust me that it provides a sort of “best case” scenario for the expansion numbers. But it allows us to get at our estimates from a different angle.

According to my knowledgeable sources, just under 70,000 newly eligible people enrolled in Medicaid through the end of November in Arkansas. Again, we are pretty certain that all of these enrollees were not previously eligible for Medicaid, and are wholly attributable to the state’s expansion.

If we look at the overall enrollment numbers supplied by the state to CMS, 103,000 people were determined to be eligible for Medicaid in October, while another 37,000 were determined to be eligible in November. So we have 140,000 new enrollees overall. But we also know that the state numbers were just estimates — the initial estimates for October grew by another 50 percent by the time the November numbers came out. But we’ll be very cautious here, and assume that another 20,000 were found eligible for Medicaid in Arkansas in October by the time the numbers were finalized.

This suggests that if there were 160,000 new enrollees in Medicaid in Arkansas in October and November of 2010, about 44 percent of them were eligible due to the expansion, while 56 percent were enrolling under the old rules.

Now remember, of the 4 million enrollees that the administration claimed were due to the Medicaid expansion, only 1.9 million were in states that expanded Medicaid in the first place. If we assume that 44 percent of these enrollees were eligible under the new rules, that gives us an estimate of 836,000. That’s a lot more than my initial estimate of 200,000, but it is still only 21 percent of the number indicated by the administration.

But Arkansas is something of the best-case scenario for the expansion. It’s highly unlikely that 44 percent of the Medicaid enrollees were due to the ACA expansion in any other state.

We have to understand two things about Arkansas. First, it undertook an aggressive outreach program, mailing everyone on SNAP (a.k.a. food stamps) to inform them about the new eligibility cutoff. So it would be more likely to attract newly eligible enrollees in the first place.

Second, and more importantly, Arkansas had one of the stingiest Medicaid plans in the country to begin with. Take a look at the following chart, which examines one category for Medicaid eligibility: adults (Medicaid also covers younger kids, pregnant women, and a few other categories). The chart lists the pre-expansion eligibility cutoff (as a percentage of the federal poverty level) for families and non-disabled adults in states that expanded Medicaid:

The median state that expanded Medicaid already covered eligibility up to 106 percent of the federal poverty level for families. Arkansas, by contrast, weighed in at 17 percent, although with respect to poor, non-disabled adults, it is at the median — zero percent coverage. So when Arkansas expanded eligibility, it created a newly eligible category that covered working families earning between 16 percent and 138 percent of the federal poverty level. The only other states that came close to undertaking this sort of expansion were West Virginia and Oregon.

When California expanded eligibility, because its baseline was so high to begin with, it only did so for families making between 106 percent and 138 percent of the federal poverty level, although it let in a large number of non-disabled adults. Because of this, newly eligible people in California almost certainly make up a much, much smaller share of the October/November enrollment numbers than they do in Arkansas. Moreover, most of the really big states that expanded eligibility — New York, Illinois, California, and Ohio — already had relatively generous Medicaid programs to begin with. “Newly eligibles” simply aren’t going to be as big of a share there as they were in Arkansas.

To put this differently, there were an estimated 218,000 newly eligible folk to be enrolled in Medicaid in Arkansas — people who made less than 138 percent of the poverty level. That’s 600 percent of the previously eligible 36,000 adults — a massive expansion (although remember that adults are only a portion of the total people eligible for Medicaid). Therefore, we’d expect newly eligibles to be a large share of the October/November enrollment.

The state of New York, by contrast, has seven times the total population, but the expansion of Medicaid actually created fewer newly eligible adults: 170,000 newly eligible adults. Given that there were 641,000 previously eligible adults, we’d expect “newly eligibles” to be a relatively small portion of enrollment on October and November.

It’s very reasonable to assume that Arkansas’s “44 percent” is the upper boundary of the share of Medicaid enrollees in October/November that were newly eligible. How much lower is the rate for states that undertook the expansion? It’s tough to say, though again, given the base line in states like New York and California, it is almost certainly quite a bit lower. We doubled my initial estimate to get to 400,000, which I thought was being generous to the administration. Let’s say here that we halve our estimate. There’s actually something to be said for this approach. Among adults, new enrollees in Arkansas are eventually expected to make up 600 percent of the population, vis-à-vis previously eligible adults. But in the average state expanding Medicaid, weighted by population, new enrollees are eventually expected to make up a little more than half that share, about 350 percent of the population. So if newly eligible enrollees account for 44 percent of the October/November enrollees in Arkansas, 22 percent in the expansion states as a whole seems like a reasonable — if imperfect — estimate (especially after we account for Arkansas’ aggressive outreach).

So around 400,000 seems like a reasonable number to use here. This is still a significant expansion of coverage, and I suspect this number will grow considerably as the exchanges continue to improve and as we reach the deadline for the individual mandate. But it’s nevertheless well below the number the administration is suggesting.

RealClearPolitics – Articles

A Second Look at Medicaid Enrollment Numbers

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Iron Maiden uses piracy numbers to plan "massive sellout" concert tours

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Iron Maiden uses piracy numbers to plan "massive sellout" concert tours

Friday, December 6, 2013

Beneath the Headline Numbers, Not a Good Jobs Report

Beneath the Headline Numbers, Not a Good Jobs Report
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Initial Reaction

Some of the skew in last month’s job report related to the government shutdown was taken back today, as expected. The labor force stats and participation rate were exceptions, and details reveal much weakness.

Last month employment fell by 735,000 due to the shutdown, this month it rose by 818,000.

Averaging the two months, household survey employment only rose by 83,000 (a mere 43,500 per month)

Last month, the change in those not in the labor force was +932,000. This month, the change was -268,000.

Last month the labor force declined by 720,000. This month it only rose by 455,000.

Averaging the two months, the labor force fell by 265,000. This explains the drop in the unemployment rate despite anemic employment growth on average.

Last month the participation rate fell 0.4 percentage points to a new low, this month, only 0.2 percentage points were taken back.

Ignoring the decline and the rise in employment over the past two months, the huge discrepancy between the household survey and the establishment survey persists.

In essence, this was a bad report, with people dropping out of the labor force like mad.

Revisions

This was the fifth straight month of revisions to the establishment survey but the revisions were relatively minor.

The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for September was revised from +163,000 to +175,000, and the change for October was revised from +204,000 to +200,000. With these revisions, employment gains in September and October combined were 8,000 higher than previously reported.

Explaining the Unemployment Rate

Unemployment fell by 0.3 percentage points

Employment rose by 818,000

Those in the labor force rose by 455,000

The civilian population rose by 186,000.

The Participation Rate (The labor force as a percent of the civilian noninstitutional population) rose 0.2 to 63.0%.

Employment rose more than the labor force, so the unemployment rate fell as further explained in my “initial reaction” above.

October BLS Jobs Statistics at a Glance

Payrolls +203,000 – Establishment Survey

US Employment +818,000 – Household Survey

US Unemployment -365,000 – Household Survey

Involuntary Part-Time Work -331,000 – Household Survey

Voluntary Part-Time Work +90,000 – Household Survey

Baseline Unemployment Rate -0.3 to 7.0% – Household Survey

U-6 unemployment -0.5 to 13.2% – Household Survey

Civilian Labor Force +455,000 – Household Survey

Not in Labor Force -268,000 – Household Survey

Participation Rate +0.2 at 63.0 – Household Survey

Additional Notes About the Unemployment Rate

The unemployment rate varies in accordance with the Household Survey, not the reported headline jobs number, and not in accordance with the weekly claims data.

In the last year, those “not” in the labor force rose by 2,418,000

Over the course of the last year, the number of people employed rose by a mere 1,109,000 (an average of 92,417 a month)

In the last year the number of unemployed fell from 12,042,000 to 10,907,000 (a drop of 1,185,000)

Percentage of long-term unemployment (27 weeks or more) is 37.3%, an increase of of 1.2 percentage points from last month.

The mean duration of unemployment is 37.2 weeks, an increase of 1.1 weeks.

Once someone loses a job it is still very difficult to find another.

7,619,000 workers who are working part-time but want full-time work. A year ago there were 8,029,000. This is a volatile series.

November 2013 Jobs Report

Please consider the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) November 2013 Employment Report.

The unemployment rate declined from 7.3 percent to 7.0 percent in November, and total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 203,000, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment increased in transportation and warehousing, health care, and manufacturing.

Click on Any Chart in this Report to See a Sharper Image

Unemployment Rate – Seasonally Adjusted

Employment History Since January 2009

click on chart for sharper image

Change from Previous Month by Job Type

Hours and Wages

Average weekly hours of all private employees rose 0.1 to 34.5 hours. Average weekly hours of all private service-providing employees rose 0.1 to 33.3 hours.

Average hourly earnings of production and non-supervisory private workers rose $ 0.03 to $ 20.28. Average hourly earnings of private service-providing employees rose $ 0.03 to $ 20.09.

Real wages have been declining. Add in increases in state taxes and the average Joe has been hammered pretty badly. For 2013, one needs to factor in the increase in payroll taxes for Social Security.

For further discussion of income distribution, please see What’s “Really” Behind Gross Inequalities In Income Distribution?

BLS Birth-Death Model Black Box

The BLS Birth/Death Model is an estimation by the BLS as to how many jobs the economy created that were not picked up in the payroll survey.

The Birth-Death numbers are not seasonally adjusted, while the reported headline number is. In the black box the BLS combines the two, coming up with a total.

The Birth Death number influences the overall totals, but the math is not as simple as it appears. Moreover, the effect is nowhere near as big as it might logically appear at first glance.

Do not add or subtract the Birth-Death numbers from the reported headline totals. It does not work that way.

Birth/Death assumptions are supposedly made according to estimates of where the BLS thinks we are in the economic cycle. Theory is one thing. Practice is clearly another as noted by numerous recent revisions.

Birth Death Model Adjustments For 2012

Birth Death Model Adjustments For 2013

Birth-Death Notes

Once again: Do NOT subtract the Birth-Death number from the reported headline number. That approach is statistically invalid.

In general, analysts attribute much more to birth-death numbers than they should. Except at economic turns, BLS Birth/Death errors are reasonably small.

For a discussion of how little birth-death numbers affect actual monthly reporting, please see BLS Birth/Death Model Yet Again.

Table 15 BLS Alternate Measures of Unemployment

click on chart for sharper image

Table A-15 is where one can find a better approximation of what the unemployment rate really is.

Notice I said “better” approximation not to be confused with “good” approximation.

The official unemployment rate is 7.0%. However, if you start counting all the people who want a job but gave up, all the people with part-time jobs that want a full-time job, all the people who dropped off the unemployment rolls because their unemployment benefits ran out, etc., you get a closer picture of what the unemployment rate is. That number is in the last row labeled U-6.

U-6 is much higher at 13.2%. Both numbers would be way higher still, were it not for millions dropping out of the labor force over the past few years.

Labor Force Factors

Discouraged workers stop looking for jobs

People retire because they cannot find jobs

People go back to school hoping it will improve their chances of getting a job

People stay in school longer because they cannot find a job

Disability and disability fraud

Were it not for people dropping out of the labor force, the unemployment rate would be well over 9%.

Grossly Distorted Statistics

Digging under the surface, much of the drop in the unemployment rate over the past two years is nothing but a statistical mirage coupled with a massive increase in part-time jobs starting in October 2012 as a result of Obamacare legislation.

Digging beneath the surface, the snap-back from the government shutdown was nowhere near as strong as it should have been in the household survey. More on the the discrepancy between the two reports shortly.

Mike “Mish” Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Mish’s Global Economic Trend Analysis

Read more about Beneath the Headline Numbers, Not a Good Jobs Report and other interesting subjects concerning Economy at TheDailyNewsReport.com

Saturday, November 23, 2013

Census Bureau Faked Employment Numbers During 2012 Election?

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Census Bureau Faked Employment Numbers During 2012 Election?

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

A Typhoon"s Devastation By The Numbers

Enlarge image i

Residents collect gasoline at a damaged gas station in Tacloban, the Philippines, on Wednesday.

Lui Siu Wai/Xinhua /Landov

Residents collect gasoline at a damaged gas station in Tacloban, the Philippines, on Wednesday.

Lui Siu Wai/Xinhua /Landov

Typhoon Haiyan made landfall in the Philippines last Friday, packing winds of close to 200 mph. Haiyan, known as Yolanda in the Philippines, devastated the city of Tacloban and the surrounding areas. At the time of impact, it was being called the “strongest tropical cyclone on record.”

Here are some numbers on the storm’s impact (Wednesday’s numbers are from Philippines’ National Disaster Risk Reduction And Management Council unless there’s a hyperlink to another source):

People displaced: 600,000

Number affected: 8 million, according to the government; the U.N.’s estimate is 9.8 million.

Homes damaged (totally/partially): 188,225 / 92,866)

Total cost of damage: $ 89 billion (mostly to agriculture)

Casualties: 2,344 dead, 3,804 injured and 79 missing. President Benigno Aquino III said previous estimates of 10,000 dead were too high, adding the figure was more likely to be between 2,000 and 2,500.

Evacuations: More than 750,000 people

Aid: The U.N. has asked for $ 300 million. Several countries have announced aid and other forms of assistance. Here are some of them:

Britain, $ 16 million package; Japan, $ 10 million in aid; U.S., $ 20 million; China, $ 100,000.

News

A Typhoon"s Devastation By The Numbers

Friday, September 6, 2013

Really the Jobs Numbers say "Blech!"

The headlines seem pretty good. Unemployment fell a tick to 7.3 percent. And jobs growth continued, with payrolls expanding by 169,000 in August, which is just shy of the 175,000 new jobs that analysts were expecting.

But beneath the headline: blech!

The most important news was the revisions to what we had previously thought was a healthy and perhaps self-sustaining recovery. Instead, jobs growth in July was revised from 162,000, to a weak 104,000, and June was also revised downward. Taken together, this month’s revisions means we’ve created 74,000 fewer jobs than previously believed. And the previous jobs report subtracted another 26,000 jobs through revisions. Moreover, for reasons that remain a mystery, revisions have tended to be pro-cyclical, meaning that the healthy recovery we thought we were having might have been expected to yield further upward revisions. All this means that analysts are hastily revising their views.

The other bad news comes from the household survey, where employment fell 115,000, leading the employment-to-population ratio to decline by 0.1 percentage points. So the decline in the unemployment rate isn’t due to folks getting jobs; instead, it’s due to people dropping out of the labor force.

I have two simple metrics I use to measure the “underlying” pace of jobs growth. The first puts 80% weight on the (more accurate) payrolls survey, and 20% weight on the noisier household survey. That measure suggests employment grew by only 112,000 in August. The alternative is to focus on the 3-month average of payrolls growth, which suggests we’re creating slightly around 148,000 jobs per month.

Bottom line: This report says that we’re barely creating enough jobs to keep the unemployment rate falling from its current high levels. Policymakers have been looking for a signal that the recovery has become self-sustaining. This report doesn’t provide it. And until we’re confident that the recovery will keep rolling on, we should delay either any monetary tightening, further fiscal cuts, and definitely postpone the legislative shenanigans that Congress is threatening.

RealClearPolitics – Articles

Really the Jobs Numbers say "Blech!"

Monday, July 22, 2013

The Week In Numbers: New Dinosaur Discovered, The World"s Largest Virus, And More

By Rose Pastore Posted 07.19.2013 at 6:00 pm

Jang Bogo Space Group and KOPRI. Ice Lab commissioned by British Council and curated by The Arts Catalyst.

2014: the year this aerodynamic, flying saucer-like research station is set to open in Antarctica

15 feet: the length of a new cow-like dinosaur discovered in Utah

Nasutoceratops: Lukas Panzarin

1 week: the time it would take Earth’s average global surface temperature to drop below 0 degrees Fahrenheit if the sun went out

Solar prominence: NASA/Solar Dynamics Observatory

$ 1,350: the price of this bio-inspired tarantula robot, which will crawl out of a 3-D printer and into your heart

520 billion: the number of gold nanodots per square inch on the thinnest light absorbers ever built

Thinnest Light Absorbers: Consisting of billions of gold nanodots, these four squares are the thinnest light absorbers ever built. Courtesy of Mark Shwartz

$ 495: the price of an “invisibility wetsuit” that hides you from sharks while you swim

Shark-Proof Suit: Shark Attack Mitigation Systems via Radiator

12 miles: the diameter of a new moon discovered orbiting Neptune

New Moon For Neptune: NASA, ESA, and A. Feild (STScI)

44 pounds: the weight of the giant life-hunting bullets astronomers want to fire into Jupiter’s moon Europa

$ 150: the price of a pair of 3-D printed custom shoes

Custom-fitted Shoes: Sam Kaplan

$ 100: the bounty this Colorado town might pay you for shooting down a government drone

Deer Trail Mayor Franks Fields aims at a hypothetical drone: Amanda Kost, 7NEWS

1.5 to 1.8 liters: the amount of liquid the average active person sweats in an hour (so… how much can a human body sweat before it runs out?)

$ 130: the price of a new portable head-up display from Garmin

Garmin portable head-up display: Garmin

2,556: the number of genes carried by a newly discovered megavirus, the world’s largest known virus. By volume, it is 200 times bigger than the flu.

Hello, Pandoravirus: Chantal Abergel and Jean-Michel Claverie

The Week In Numbers: New Dinosaur Discovered, The World"s Largest Virus, And More

Sunday, July 21, 2013

The Week In Numbers: New Dinosaur Discovered, The World"s Largest Virus, And More

By Rose Pastore Posted 07.19.2013 at 6:00 pm

Jang Bogo Space Group and KOPRI. Ice Lab commissioned by British Council and curated by The Arts Catalyst.

2014: the year this aerodynamic, flying saucer-like research station is set to open in Antarctica

15 feet: the length of a new cow-like dinosaur discovered in Utah

Nasutoceratops: Lukas Panzarin

1 week: the time it would take Earth’s average global surface temperature to drop below 0 degrees Fahrenheit if the sun went out

Solar prominence: NASA/Solar Dynamics Observatory

$ 1,350: the price of this bio-inspired tarantula robot, which will crawl out of a 3-D printer and into your heart

520 billion: the number of gold nanodots per square inch on the thinnest light absorbers ever built

Thinnest Light Absorbers: Consisting of billions of gold nanodots, these four squares are the thinnest light absorbers ever built. Courtesy of Mark Shwartz

$ 495: the price of an “invisibility wetsuit” that hides you from sharks while you swim

Shark-Proof Suit: Shark Attack Mitigation Systems via Radiator

12 miles: the diameter of a new moon discovered orbiting Neptune

New Moon For Neptune: NASA, ESA, and A. Feild (STScI)

44 pounds: the weight of the giant life-hunting bullets astronomers want to fire into Jupiter’s moon Europa

$ 150: the price of a pair of 3-D printed custom shoes

Custom-fitted Shoes: Sam Kaplan

$ 100: the bounty this Colorado town might pay you for shooting down a government drone

Deer Trail Mayor Franks Fields aims at a hypothetical drone: Amanda Kost, 7NEWS

1.5 to 1.8 liters: the amount of liquid the average active person sweats in an hour (so… how much can a human body sweat before it runs out?)

$ 130: the price of a new portable head-up display from Garmin

Garmin portable head-up display: Garmin

2,556: the number of genes carried by a newly discovered megavirus, the world’s largest known virus. By volume, it is 200 times bigger than the flu.

Hello, Pandoravirus: Chantal Abergel and Jean-Michel Claverie

The Week In Numbers: New Dinosaur Discovered, The World"s Largest Virus, And More

Saturday, July 20, 2013

The Week In Numbers: New Dinosaur Discovered, The World"s Largest Virus, And More

By Rose Pastore Posted 07.19.2013 at 6:00 pm

Jang Bogo Space Group and KOPRI. Ice Lab commissioned by British Council and curated by The Arts Catalyst.

2014: the year this aerodynamic, flying saucer-like research station is set to open in Antarctica

15 feet: the length of a new cow-like dinosaur discovered in Utah

Nasutoceratops: Lukas Panzarin

1 week: the time it would take Earth’s average global surface temperature to drop below 0 degrees Fahrenheit if the sun went out

Solar prominence: NASA/Solar Dynamics Observatory

$ 1,350: the price of this bio-inspired tarantula robot, which will crawl out of a 3-D printer and into your heart

520 billion: the number of gold nanodots per square inch on the thinnest light absorbers ever built

Thinnest Light Absorbers: Consisting of billions of gold nanodots, these four squares are the thinnest light absorbers ever built. Courtesy of Mark Shwartz

$ 495: the price of an “invisibility wetsuit” that hides you from sharks while you swim

Shark-Proof Suit: Shark Attack Mitigation Systems via Radiator

12 miles: the diameter of a new moon discovered orbiting Neptune

New Moon For Neptune: NASA, ESA, and A. Feild (STScI)

44 pounds: the weight of the giant life-hunting bullets astronomers want to fire into Jupiter’s moon Europa

$ 150: the price of a pair of 3-D printed custom shoes

Custom-fitted Shoes: Sam Kaplan

$ 100: the bounty this Colorado town might pay you for shooting down a government drone

Deer Trail Mayor Franks Fields aims at a hypothetical drone: Amanda Kost, 7NEWS

1.5 to 1.8 liters: the amount of liquid the average active person sweats in an hour (so… how much can a human body sweat before it runs out?)

$ 130: the price of a new portable head-up display from Garmin

Garmin portable head-up display: Garmin

2,556: the number of genes carried by a newly discovered megavirus, the world’s largest known virus. By volume, it is 200 times bigger than the flu.

Hello, Pandoravirus: Chantal Abergel and Jean-Michel Claverie

The Week In Numbers: New Dinosaur Discovered, The World"s Largest Virus, And More