GALLUP: Unemployment Up To 10.3 Percent. I’ve noticed a divergence between the Gallup numbers and the “official” numbers lately. I wonder why that is? Is it seasonal adjustment, or something else? Underemployment is up to 19.7 percent.
UPDATE: Reader Andrew Hansen writes: “The BLS non-adjusted rate is 9.8%. The Gallup rate of 10.3% has a reported margin of error of 0.7%, so the 95% confidence interval for their data is 9.6% to 11.0%. No reason to think one contradicts the other, but it is a good time to remember that both sources are estimates from survey data and have a margin of error.”