Stats

During the campaign, the government often suggested that the economy was better than the people thought and the reason was the government did not explain things in a way that people could properly understand. In other words, it was the messaging not the policy. They were satisfied with this explanation and failed to look elsewhere. Since the election government statistics have come under scrutiny and some flaws have been uncovered in the way stats are reported. Unemployment is one case. The figure reported in November 2024 was 4.2%. Employed included homeless who occasionally worked. The biggest group were people who worked part time because they could not find full time work and this included people who earned less than $25,000 per year. If all of these had been included the unemployment rate would be 24%. These are reasons why the governments way of calculating unemployment needs to be refined to give a more accurate picture. The same is true with wages. Weekly earnings track full time and excludes part time. The average was $61,900 but if you track everyone the average is $52,300 which is 16% less. They count the part time worker in one stat but not in the other. This tends to give misleading results.