Economics and Finance: What will the U.S. unemployment rate be at the end of 2010?

[UMBS Go Blue]

Satisfying my own personal whims here now that I'm vBookie :2faced: , I'm going to introduce a variety of non-skating vBets to entertain and tide everyone over throughout the skating off-season.

Many of these will be related to economics, finance, and US/global politics, which are core interest areas of mine and which I have to analyze on a daily basis.

So, here's a vBet on what everyone thinks will be the U.S. unemployment rate at the end of 2010. As of March 2010, the unemployment rate was 9.7%.

For purposes of this bet, we will assume that the year-end U.S. unemployment rate will be the preliminary headline rate (and not the "underemployment" rate) reported by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in the right hand column at this link (http://www.bls.gov/), on Friday, January 7, 2011. We will not take into account any revisions reported after this date.

This bet will remain open until the night before the next monthly announcement of the unemployment rate in the 1st week of May. :)

Also, please limit any discussion related to this topic to the "Politically Incorrect" forum. Thanks. :40beers:

[TDsk8]

I just asked my Partner who is an economist for the US Dept. Of labor

so here's his guess :-)

[UMBS Go Blue]

Must make for some interesting bedside chat.

"Ooooh, you sure cooked my payroll books tonight."

"Let's utilize ALL our capacity... NOW!"

:saint:

[TDsk8]

hahahahaha....LOL

I only ask him about his work/opinion when I get curious, which is 3 out of 10 times a month

[UMBS Go Blue]

It's the end of the 3rd quarter, so briefly reopening this item with updated odds.

Original bets will be preserved at the original odds.

[UMBS Go Blue]

Last chance!

[UMBS Go Blue]

9.4%

Looks like they redesigned their website, so here's the statistical release:
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm