It’s a familiar refrain in the office each month when we put together our analysis of Iowa’s latest job numbers: There sure are a lot of numbers!
That’s an understandable reaction. Too many numbers can obscure the message, something we consider in our analysis of public policy issues at the Iowa Policy Project.
So, we try to strike the right balance. How many numbers do we need to tell the story — accurately and in context?
Goodness knows these days, too many people out there will torture numbers to extremes if it helps their message. We prefer to review the numbers and then figure out what the message should be.
This month, as IPP Executive Director David Osterberg noted in his comments in our news release, “Good news is hard to find in these numbers.” There was only a 200-job loss in nonfarm jobs in August — but even that good news came with a major downward revision in the previous month’s numbers. July’s job loss, previously reported at 2,400, is now recorded at 4,400.
Furthermore, those numbers show Iowa:
- has lost payroll jobs in 11 of the last 12 months. (See graph at right.)
- has shown a net loss of 49,400 nonfarm jobs in that same period — 28,000 of them in manufacturing.
- has seen its unemployment rate jump to 6.8 percent in August from 4.2 percent a year earlier (an increase of over 60 percent).
And we could go on, with lots more numbers. And as long as they help to tell the story, we will do that.
But they will only tell the story if we always keep in mind that those numbers represent people — Iowans, our friends and neighbors — and the places they can go to work and support their families.
We can’t wait until those numbers start looking better, month after month. That will make it a little easier when we look at our first draft and say, There sure are a lot of numbers!
Posted by Mike Owen, Assistant Director
