Gallup Survey shows increases in Unemployment

The official unemployment rate numbers are from a survey done for the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Gallup has produced its own survey that shows that things are getting much worse than the official numbers indicate.

Friday's Unemployment Rate Report Likely to Understate

The government's final unemployment report before the midterm elections is based on job market conditions around mid-September. Gallup's modeling of the unemployment rate is consistent with Tuesday's ADP report of a decline of 39,000 private-sector jobs, and indicates that the government's national unemployment rate in September will be in the 9.6% to 9.8% range. This is based on Gallup's mid-September measurements and the continuing decline Gallup is seeing in the U.S. workforce during 2010.

However, Gallup's monitoring of job market conditions suggests that there was a sharp increase in the unemployment rate during the last couple of weeks of September. It could be that the anticipated slowdown of the overall economy has potential employers even more cautious about hiring. Some of the increase could also be seasonal or temporary. . . .

Results are based on telephone interviews conducted as part of Gallup Daily tracking Sept. 1-30, 2010, with a random sample of 18,146 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, selected using random-digit-dial sampling.

One must also not forget that but 250,000 of those "saved or created" jobs in 37 states from the Stimulus just disappeared on October 1.