My morning checklist

I've been trying to use the checklist idea to streamline and improve my routine tasks. One of the key improvements has been creating a checklist for my morning to-dos. Starting after getting out of the shower (I would, but it wouldn't work in the shower very well!) and until I leave for work, I have a printed list that I refer to for every rote action, and it's been great so far (~2 months).

So weird, right? Yes, yes it is... but I think it has improved my life in tangible ways:
1) My mornings are much more efficient- I can get through a lot of the "running the house" stuff much more quickly than before, and get to work earlier.
2) I don't forget to do routine but infrequent stuff- e.g. change the cat's water/food bowls, water the plants, charge my phone, turn off the A/C.
3) I don't worry about "running late" to work - I know how long it will take me to be ready.

One of the strengths of this approach (which it shares with the GTD system) is that it frees up my mind to do other things besides think "what do I do next?" or worry about how many days it's been since I watered the plants. So my mind is free to wander in the morning - and I actually do think of important things in my semi-conscious state - to do's from last night, "cool" ideas, and the like.

NC Employment by Industry: broad-based improvement in April

After updating the charts to include April NC employment data last week, I decided to also consider employment by industry in NC. That is, since job losses are slowing, where is the improvement? Was the job loss of the past year concentrated in a few industries, or was it more broad?

First, consider which industries are the biggest employers in NC (as of Dec. 2007, the beginning of the downturn):


Now, let's look at the percent decrease in employment in each of these industries since April 2008 ("Other" omitted):


Wow - declines of greater than 5% in Professional & Business Services, TTU, and Manufacturing, and a shocking 23.4% decline in Construction, including a 10% drop from November to December. "Education and Health Services" and "Government" are the only sectors that are growing. It also seems that the recent moderating of job loss was consistent across industries.

Although this drop in Construction employment is incredible, remember that Construction was only 6% of total employment in Dec. 2007. So how much did these declines in each industry contribute to total job loss?

I created the following graph as a way to visualize jobs lost in each industry by month. The y-axis is jobs lost per month - if the industry gained jobs, the data point is omitted:


Some points that stand out to me:
1. With the depth of the banking crisis, I expected the Financial Activities industry to have experienced significant job losses, hurting employment in the state, but this is decidedly not the case.
2. The number of jobs lost in each industry has declined significantly from March to April - that is, every industry but Manufacturing, which lost 4,600 more jobs in April.
3. Between 63% and 88% of jobs lost each month from November - March were in four industries: Construction, Professional & Business Services, TTU, and Manufacturing.

Note: "Other" includes "Other Services", "Information", and "Natural Resources and Mining".

April NC Employment Data - things are looking up

Well, after returning from vacation, I see that, on May 22nd, the North Carolina Employment Security Commission released new NC employment data for April (and revised their previously-released numbers for March).

The title of the release is a relatively subdued "Unemployment Rate Remains Unchanged In April: North Carolina Experiences Slight Employment Increase."

I think the data, however, is cause for much more hope in NC than is belied by this rather boring title. See the following graphs, similar to those in my previous post, which tell the story:

Well, it is true that the NC unemployment rate did stay steady at 10.8% - good enough news:


You see, however, that in some other recessions, the employment rate stayed rather high after reaching a peak. The next graph gives reason for optimism:

It seems to be rather rare for this trend, once reversed, to revert to losses again. So, this increase is very significant for NC. This does look like a very strong rebound at this point, and at the least, it means we are not "cliff diving" as quickly as we had been.

So, what is causing the change in the unemployment rate? Is it that people are leaving the labor force?



Not really - it looks like labor force participation increased slightly in April. Is it instead that more people in the population are employed?



This is also turning up - a very good sign. More people are in the labor force, and more people are employed. Here are the last two graphs, combined:



Beautiful. The percent of the NC population that is employed is increasing. A very good sign.

NC Employment in Perspective (as of April 1)

After hearing about the updated employment numbers released today (see "US Sheds Fewest Jobs in 6 Months"), I thought I would post my charts I've been keeping of NC employment data.

The NC Employment Security Commission will release their employment data for April sometime in the next week or so, therefore for state-level employment, these charts are a month behind today's big national numbers. But here they are as of the end of March. Please note that this is all publicly available data from the ESC and the BLS, and it is all seasonally adjusted.


Unemployment Rate

The first graph I created was a simple chart of the NC unemployment rate over time in recent recessions:












Notice that in that chart, the rate of job loss appears to be slowing significantly - in March, the NC unemployment rate only changed from 10.7% to 10.8%. There is another way to look at this that appears less promising, though.


Percent Job Loss

A few months ago, I created a chart inspired by other bloggers' graphs of "Percent Job Loss by Month from Peak Employment" (see Curious Capitalist and Calculated Risk for US charts). Here is the most recently updated version, in which you can see that the rate of job loss doesn't actually seem to be moderating:













So what the heck is going on here? It has to do with people leaving the labor force (as you know, the unemployment rate is employed / "labor force").


Employment Ratio

Another way to look at employment is using employed people as a percent of population (this is sometimes called the employment ratio).

Note that I am using the entire population, not just working-age population here. Why? Too much effort for now. Maybe in next month's update.

Notice that using this measure, NC job loss is still not losing speed:











It's fascinating to see how different recessions affect this ratio. I suppose that the naming of the post-2000 recovery the "jobless recovery" was apt. It certainly didn't look abnormal (only abnormally long) from the unemployment rate charts - but it looks like the reason that the unemployment rate started declining during the recovery starting in 2002 was that people removed themselves from the labor force. Also, notice that the employment-to-full population ratio is lower now than at any time since the deepest of the 1981 recession.


Labor Market Distribution

And finally, here are some other charts that I created to compare the labor market distribution in NC in the 2007 recession with the 2000 and 1981 recessions. These charts are based on the idea that the population fits in three general categories: not in the labor force, unemployed, and employed. I suspect that movement between these three categories goes "Not in labor force" -> "Unemployed" -> "Employed", and also the reverse. These charts are meant to show movement between these three categories over time. Also note they are "zoomed in" to between 40% and 55% to show detail.

2007:











2000:











1981:











And no, I have no idea what happened in the 2nd-4th months of the 1981 recession to move so many people from NILF to Unemployed. I'll investigate before the next update of these charts.

Meaning in work?

Richard Feynman on Cargo Cult Science:

It is interesting, therefore, to bring it out now and speak of it explicitly. It's a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty -- a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you're doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid -- not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you've eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked -- to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.

Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can -- if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong -- to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it.