Business & Economics: February 2012 Archives
Gas price jumps 10 cents during two-minute news story. Also, gas is crazy expensive in Los Angeles.
Are gas prices high enough for President Obama yet? His energy secretary said "we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe" but the conversions from dollars to Euros and gallons to "litres" make my head hurt.
(HT: Sarah Amos.)
People who can't find jobs are applying for disability insurance when their unemployment insurance runs out.
Since 1995 the number of disabled workers has doubled and expenditures have increased even faster than disabled workers, tripling since 1995. The increase in workers receiving disability insurance has come at the same time as the US working age population has become healthier. A large fraction of the increase in disability has come from increases in hard-to-verify back pain and mental problems (see Autor and Duggan and more recently Autor).After the 2001 recession, disability applications also shot up and they never fell back to their old levels. We may be reaching a new, permanently higher, plateau.
Disabled workers do not count as unemployed, they have been bought out of the labor force.
So can we call Obama the "disability president"?
Google makes 95% of its revenue from advertising, the the largest share of that comes from financial and insurance companies. What are the most profitable search terms?
In 2011 the industry which used Google's advertising the most was the finance and insurance industry with $4 billion handed over to Google. State Farm topped the charts at a whopping $43.7 million spent. The most common search term in this industry with the highest cost per click was "self-employed health insurance," which charged advertisers around $43 for every time someone clicked their advertisement.The retail and general merchandise industry holds second place for most spent on Google ads, with Amazon leading at $55.2 million spent. You would think that number would be so high to accommodate Amazon's recent debut of the Kindle Fire, but the most commonly search for keyword in the retail industry was actually "Zumba dance DVD." If we learn anything from common keywords it's that the economy is down, so people are self-employed and want to dance at home for exercise.
Travel and tourism came in third with $2.4 billion spent on Google advertising. Jobs and education came in fourth, and home and garden in fifth.
$43 for a single click sounds crazy to me... I wonder if the insurance companies think that's a bargain?
Some other cost-per-click highlights:
$36 - "online video conferencing software"
$35 - "accredited online college degrees"
$27 - "high speed internet deals"
$21 - "funeral flowers
$18 - "online nursing degree"
$16 - "cheap hybrid cars"
$14 - "custom business cards"
$9 - "home air conditioners"
$8 - "new york hotels"
$5 - "zumba dance dvd"
(HT: MG.)
