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Employment Population Ratio, Participation and Unemployment Rates (calculatedriskblog.com)
The big news of the day is the jobs report and from a purely political perspective it is very positive development for President Obama’s campaign. From the Bureau of Labor Statistics:
The unemployment rate decreased to 7.8 percent in September, and total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 114,000, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment increased in health care and in transportation and warehousing but changed little in most other major industries.
Household Survey Data
The unemployment rate declined by 0.3 percentage point to 7.8 percent in September. For the first 8 months of the year, the rate held within a narrow range of 8.1 and 8.3 percent. The number of unemployed persons, at 12.1 million, decreased by 456,000 in September. (See table A-1.)
Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men (7.3 percent), adult women (7.0 percent), and whites (7.0 percent) declined over the month. The unemployment rates for teenagers (23.7 percent), blacks (13.4 percent), and Hispanics (9.9 percent) were little changed. The jobless rate for Asians, at 4.8 percent (not seasonally adjusted), fell over the year.
The official unemployment rate dropped primarily because the job growth in the previous months have been revised upward, not because of negative factors such as a large number of people giving up on finding work.
The economy remains the top issue with voters, and perceptions about Obama’s handling of economy is a very important factor in this election. This jobs report shows that there is real growth, albeit anemic growth, under Obama.
The other reason this is good news for Obama is that the headline number has crossed an important psychological barrier. The official unemployment number is now below 8 percent for the first time since Obama took office. While the actual difference between 7.8 percent and 8 percent is small, there is real PR value in the Obama team being able to say unemployment is below 8 percent.
I can assume the Romney campaign and conservative groups are unhappy this morning that they can no longer legitimately use the line “unemployment still above 8 percent” in their ads.
32 Comments
Ignoring the politics… the job growth tends toward low wages… and a lower standard of living.
And, unfortunately, this trend will continue in this way regardless of which one represents the MOTU to We The People.
I found it particularly telling that when asked about the economy, they both ignored the Federal Reserve and monetary policy (tho I didn’t see the entire
debatekabuki theater).I call BS. Stories like this need to come with a warning because they have no basis in the reality of the 99%.
This report has made me very happy. The more people realize that the BLS data is a pack of blatantly and easily manipulated lies, the less I’ll have to see these bogus numbers at the beginning of every month.
Yes. The other way to see how good the news was is to imagine the reaction to a rise of .3% to 8.4% That would have been impossible to recover from, IMHO.
In 1984 the GOP”s patron saint, Ronald Reagan, boasted that it was Morning in America. At that time, October of 1984, the unemployment rate was 7.3%. That is close to our current 7.8%
A good objective analysis of this morning’s unemployment numbers has been done by Nate Silver here.
As long as the direction is downward, Obama wins IMHO.
Why are you trying to pretend that these numbers today have any relationship to the numbers put out in 1984? We live in a world of hooga-booga voodoo land where the powers that be just goal seek to pull good-looking numbers out of their ass. That goes for the stock market, LIBOR, BLS data and whatever other number some corrupt politician senses an opportunity to tweak to make themselves look better.
jgordon @7
I will rely on Nate Silver’s dispassionate and professional analysis over your emo-commenting.
and Jack Welch comes out as a card-carrying member of the Crazy Loon Old White Man Club…right up there with Trump and the troglodytes….
kind of like the “dispassionate and professional analysis” provided by Judy Miller of the NYT in the lead up to the Iraq war?
I rely upon looking at the stats myself..here they are & they say that 16.4 percent of America is unemployed -
bureau of labor statistics press releses of 10-05-2012
I believe this bullshit as much as I believe in unicorns.
How stupid do these mofos think we are?
Its great to live in a country where 4.2 million unemployed people are simply passed over, neglected, defined out of existance so that we can all say ‘hooray’ -
I guess that these folks just don’t count or don’t exist or we shouldn’t worry about them, or we don’t have to care about where they sleep or how they find food .. right, o voters?
from the press release linked in the blog post -
“In September, 2.5 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force, essentially unchanged from a year earlier. (These data are not seasonally adjusted.) These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. (See table A-16.) …
&
Discouraged workers are persons not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them. The remaining 1.7 million persons marginally attached to the labor force in September had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey for reasons such as school attendance or family responsibilities. (See table A-16.)”
To commenters above, the issue was whether, politically speaking, this was good news for Obama, not whether the rate is a valid measure of employment, economic well-being, or whether and how much the economy is improving.
FWIW, I accept virtually all the points made above about the measure itself.
Some of you ought to do yourselves a favor and actually read Nate Silver.
The U-6 unemployment rate, which includes part-time workers who want full time jobs, remained unchanged at 14.7%
The U-3 unemployment rate, which varies per the household survey, saw a pick-up of 582,000 part-time workers, which accounts for drop in the U-3 number to 7.8%.
econobuzz @ 13
I, like you, recognize the limitations of these statistics. One of the reasons I urge people to read Nate Silver is that he professionally discusses the value and limitations of these statistics.
All that said, like it or not, like Big Bird, they matter in this election season.
My cut on this is that it is enormously important politically, coming when it did. As you know, I have huge problems with Obama. But the thought of a Romney presidency is absolutely horrific.
And I LOVE watching Jack Welch squirm and lie and make an utter ass of himself.
Here’s the Friday night dump folks:
That’s a report that cannot be fudged, but its release, unlike the employment statistics, can occur at a politically opportune time.
So did 900K become employed or 100K? Does Werner Heisenberg run the BLS?
“And I LOVE watching Jack Welch squirm and lie and make an utter ass of himself.”
I’ve not trusted BLS numbers for ages. I think what Welch said is true that BLS numbers are subject to manipulation, which I’ve thought that for a long time. The BLS is part of the executive branch under the President and as such I don’t trust any President from trying (and succeeding) in manipulating the numbers. I trust ShadowStats more:
http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts
Actually that was in 2011. The 2012 number is 14.2 not seasonally adj. U3 was 7.6 not seasonally adj/ So take your pick.
Also there are adjustments to July and August reports of +86000.
They are not easily manipulated since they are compiled from two sources as I understand and one of those sources is a field survey. But they do revise prior months numbers when better numbers become available.
Good question. Ecahnomics where are you?
There is substance to Romney’s criticism that the unemployment rate has fallen mainly due to people dropping out of the workforce or accepting part-time work when they want a full-time job.
I know that Romney is proposing some disastrous ideas, but Obama is still a failure.
Mike Norman post
See the Mike Norman article noted @26 above. It also has some nice things to say about the stimulus. (I know that is a sore subject around here, but…)
“They are not easily manipulated since they are compiled from two sources as I understand and one of those sources is a field survey. But they do revise prior months numbers when better numbers become available.”
Actually that’s why they are easily manipulated. If these surveys are indeed statistically viable, there’s absolutely no reason to revise a valid statistical analysis one month, six months or one year down the road. However, what goes on with these numbers is that they’re adjusted – and re-adjusted over and over again. These two sources are by definition ignored so that the numbers can be massaged, which is why we have so many revision and adjustments, when none of this should be necessary in the first place.
All this funny business creates a situation where we have now that it’s being reported at the same time payrolls increased by almost 900K on one hand and 100K on the other, which those can’t both be true at the same time. A variance of 800K jobs is glaring huge and definitely statistically significant.
The post markets the numbers, but it doesn’t explain the numbers. In the same post – and without the post doing any hint of self-contradiction – it touts both 114K new jobs on one hand at 873K jobs on the other. Which BLS data is not scientifically valid? They can’t both be valid – they can neither be valid, but these can’t both be true. I can’t take these numbers seriously since they’re so widely off from one another that it undermines the credibility of all BLS jobs data.
Oh, look. Republican economic policies do work after all.
Isn’t that the message here?
Republicans are in charge of Treasury and the Fed and Republicans have blocked everything Obama has tried to do since he was inaugurated, with, of course, the exception of the Obama tax cuts.
Based on those facts, which conclusion would you reach? That Obamacare, most of has not even gone into effect yet, has saved the economy? Or the tepid stimulus package?
If you remove the “L” from the BLS it’s closer to the truth.
IT WAS A MIRACLE!
Hallelujah!