What Does This Say About Us?

I was listening to a story on NPR the other day, (I tried to find the story but could not figure out what it was) all I remember is that the guy who was being interviewed was an academic who was using google for social research. You know how when you are at the google search box and you type in a question and it starts to auto populate responses...like:

From this he might conclude that we are cat loving, man hating, and exhausted. (The iron was from my search history - good to know.

What will we do without Regis!? lol

Well, I believe his research was about stereotypes but the researcher was basically inferring things about our population based on the results. What does this say about us?

Now to my point, I happened to be googling around and happened to find this Employability Checkup Report from the Department of Labor. I found it to be interesting. It takes your education and wage info and combines it with your location, job, and industry to give you a little report on your employability per the economy in your area.

The results, were interesting; I'm not sure I agree with everything. The local unemployment rate, while it is lower than the national, is only like half a percentage point lower, I don't think that counts. In our area, my education level is about average, and so I wouldn't say that counts either. Based on just their numbers, my employability is about 50%.

I decided to test it out where we used to live in DC and was kind of surprised to get the same thing. There were also some conflicts: local unemployment is low and state unemployment is high!? When I selected DC the "local" and the "DC" were one in the same (it's not that big!)

Regardless, I found the tool interesting, and although somewhat inaccurate, of possible use to career switchers or people who are moving. I would most certainly take everything with a grain of salt because...this doesn't really give you the whole perspective.

One last thing, I found these numbers on my state's job bank website: the jobs to resumes number is pretty sad (assuming the resumes are active seekers.) Our state's unemployment is pretty bad and while it doesn't entirely apply to me at this exact moment, it's enough to keep me motivated to stay on my toes.

Sincerely,
Jordan

P.S. - Thoughts? Find anything interesting in the google autofill?