Confident Voters and Voter Confidence

   Recession is when your neighbor loses a job. Depression is when you lose yours.

   While it's true that many people are out of work in America, a  better perspective is that many more people have returned to work. A harsh reality is that there will always be some unemployment, as young people enter the work force, others relocate and look for a new job in another region, still others resign for a variety of reasons, and women return to employment after young children enter school.
   This is not to say that motherhood is not a full-time job. It is, but in statistical terms such work is not counted as part of the civilian work force. Neither are military personnel, those in prisons, those who are hospitalized or those who have stopped looking for work.
   It's also true that the two data sets -- employment and the unemployment rate -- are gathered separately, from different sources. The easier one, employment, is a real number, and is collected simply by counting the number of people on payrolls. The harder, less reliable one, is the unemployment rate, which is gathered from a telephone survey, in which households are asked how many people in the home are not working now but are able to work and actively looking for work.
   The unemployment rate is then calculated as a percentage of the total work force.
   Recent government reports have shown a continuing rise in total civilian non-farm jobs, easily measured by payroll data. And while it is true that some regions have lost jobs as technology changes or that consumer demand drops -- lower use of coal as an energy source, for example, has put miners out of work -- other regions, both geographical and business, have seen increases in employment as well as higher wages.
   This is no consolation to the guy who's out of work, however.
   Meanwhile, unemployment rates are declining and payroll jobs are increasing throughout America, even as some regions and labor segments continue to struggle.
   Jobless rates in July were down in 279 of the 387 U.S. metropolitan areas, as payroll jobs rose in 331 areas, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Unemployment rates were higher in 87 areas and unchanged in 21, the BLS said, while nonfarm payroll employment was down in 52 areas and unchanged in 4.
  The nationwide unemployment rate has been below 5 percent for several months, and a new report is due out Friday.
   In a separate report. the BLS said consumer spending rose last year by 4.6 percent to an average $55,978. Income, however, did not keep pace with spending, rising by 4.1 percent to an average of $69,629 "per consumer unit." Whatever that is.
   Taken together with various other reports released recently, things are not too bad throughout the American economy. And while it's true that they could be better, there is also the hazard that recovery from the Great Recession could go ever slower than it has.
   In all, if you have a job and you're not in danger of losing it, you are probably confident and are likely to vote accordingly. But if you're already out of work and not confident of finding another one soon, you're likely to vote for someone who promises better times.
   Whether either candidate can deliver on the promise is another issue.