Semi-Daily Journal

You can have ten percent unemployment in a million ways inclduing the xtremes (a) every body unemployed ten percent of the time (like extended vacation for all) and (b) ten percent of folks unemployed all the time -- that's bad, that's long term unemployment.

Bill Clinton, if I sensed it right, given a certain level of unemployment, tried conciously to have labor market work more on the (a) rather than (b)extreme.

Bush administration does not seem to have any notion of that kind of thing.

How would this be different if all the people that lose their benefits, and are therefore no longer "unemployed", were still counted?

Why would those dips happen so regularly around the turn of a decade?

"How would this be different if all the people that lose their benefits, and are therefore no longer "unemployed", were still counted?"

Are they not? The unemployment number is based on a survey where people have to label themselves as employed, unemployed, seeking work, etc. According to the BLS, it has nothing to do with whether they receive benefits.

"Why would those dips happen so regularly around the turn of a decade?"

Without offering much of a real explanation, because the political/economic system has feedback loops, and in a "cybernetic" sense resembles a control loop, which swings around some (not precisely defined) goal function. Economic performance, political and social environment, and people's activities are not independent from each other, and have causal effects with delays on each other.

One parameter is that a presidential term is 4 years, but that seems at odds with the 10-year cycle.

The early and mid nineties look sort of strange in this graph as well. What would happen if Congress didn't keep voting to extend unemployment benefits?

Where can the figures you state in yr equation actually be found? With so many numbers being cooked by so many forces, eg. can we rely on the Bureau of Labor Statistics in an Administration whose primary product seems to be spin?

The beginning of the decade is when population controls are changed in the household survey due to new information from the census.

Population controls in the household survey are updated soon after the census data is available every decade giving the unbenchmarked data in the survey some sort of anchoring which soon losses accuracy. (As this is done only once and then is updated by estimates in-between, everyone should be familiar with hideous census data estimates)