Thursday, August 30, 2012

The Cartoon Physics of Covered Employment


Click to enlarge.

We better hope that the trend line in red is not an accurate prediction of the future.

This post inspired by Thursday Grabbag as seen at MaxedOutMama.

See Also:
Trend Line Disclaimer

Source Data:
St. Louis Fed: Custom Chart

7 comments:

Stagflationary Mark said...

The trend line is a 2nd order polynomial (which can also be used to accurately predict the flight of a ball that's under the influence of the earth's gravity).

Neil said...


Veeedy eeenteresting! The rise and fall of feminism can be modeled with a 2nd-order polynomial.

Seriously, that's what it would take for your projection to come true--massive drop-out of women from the workforce. Of course, the Boomer retirements may give a boost to the projection, as well. That is, if their pensions hold up.

Stagflationary Mark said...

Neil,

Seriously, that's what it would take for your projection to come true--massive drop-out of women from the workforce.

Or men!

February 5, 2012
The Exponential Decay of Male Workers (Musical Tribute)

It is one thing to have an exponential trend failure when there has been exponential growth. It is another thing entirely to have an exponential trend failure when there has been exponential decay. Note how far below the trend line we currently are. That's just sad.

Neil said...


I don't even want to contemplate a world in which essentially every American male is sitting on the couch at home, watching General Hospital and picking Cheetos dust out of his belly button.

Stagflationary Mark said...

Neil,

LOL! I'm livin' the dream. ;)

(In all seriousness, I've been doing a lot of hiking this month.)

Who Struck John said...

Mark, the pessimistic case is that the trend line is an optomistic projection of future employment.

Stagflationary Mark said...

Who Struck John,

The chart implies that our luck is running out.