August Unemployment? Place Your Bets!

So it's that time of the month again. As Derek Thompson pointed out earlier, Friday the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases the much-talked-about monthly national unemployment statistics. Naturally, the business team here at the Atlantic hopes to provide some analysis on what those number mean once they are announced. But until then we can only speculate -- just like you. So please do so in the poll below.

Last month, our readers didn't do so well in their estimates. A mere 2% of respondents correctly predicted 9.4% for July unemployment. So the bar is pretty set pretty low, and I feel confident that our readers can do better. I would suggest taking two factors into account in your estimations: seasonality and discouraged workers. Both might result in tomorrow's number looking better than a pessimistic guess.