Damn GOOD Jobs Report: 'What's going on here? These are big jumps up!'

[bigtree]

_________________

CNNMoney.com ?@CNNMoney

U.S. economy added 114,000 jobs in September, the government reports. Unemployment rate fell to 7.8%. http://cnnmon.ie/bkgnews


CBS News ?@CBSNews

Breaking News:Unemployment rate falls to 7.8% in Sept.; Economy added 114K jobs
Retweeted by Donna Brazile


Daniel Gross ?@grossdm

Hey look at the establishment survey: labor force rises, employment/pop ratio up, 873,000 people back to work. Take that, declinists!


Ezra Klein ?@ezraklein

So we actually gained 181k jobs in July and 142k in Aug. The last few months have been way better than the initial numbers showed.


Zeke Miller ?@ZekeJMiller

Number of unemployed because they lost their jobs down 468k


Ezra Klein ?@ezraklein

Also, employment-to-pop ratio and labor force participation are both up. So drop outs are not why unemployment rate went down.


Mike Konczal ?@rortybomb

Labor force participation rate is up 0.1%; Employment-population ratio up 0.4% (!); Not in labor force population down. That's great!


ThinkProgress ?@thinkprogress

Labor force grew by 418K, so the drop in the unemployment rate was not due to people giving up on looking for work http://thkpr.gs/PE8cOF


Zeke Miller ?@ZekeJMiller

873k more people employed in the household survey in September than in August. Wow.


Zeke Miller ?@ZekeJMiller

Black unemployment rate down from 14.1 to 13.4%



Zeke Miller ?@ZekeJMiller

Hispanic unemployment rate down from 10.2 to 9.9%


Mike Konczal ?@rortybomb

Average hourly earnings up a big number too, $23.51 -> $23.58. What's going on here? These are big jumps up.



Greg Sargent ?@ThePlumLineGS

Heh RT @fshakir @NorahODonnell 7.8 now, 7.9 then. So technically, rate is better than when he took office.



Justin Wolfers ?@justinwolfers

Today's payrolls numbers CHARTED. Squint hard: You can barely see the slowdown we were worried about.


pic.twitter.com/8vHc12wv

[JuveDem]

1. wow. This is a Stellar report across the board

A good break for the country in general.

[awake]

2. Thanks for the info

very nice post you did a great job putting all of this together.

[doc03]

3. You know Mitt would do better he would have added 12 million

jobs in September. Also Obama had to have the numbers cooked.

[bluestate10]

18. You right-wing troll

[Doodler71]

4. Tweet this up!!

Let's get this out there.

[writes3000]

5. Hasn't Consumer Confidence been going way up over the last month?

This explains why. People were going back to work even though the numbers didn't reflect it.

[bigtree]

6. I was thinking the same thing, writes

everyone wondered where all of the 'confidence' was coming from

[My Pet Goat]

8. Yep, maybe confidence was a leading indicator.

Had been wondering about all the good consumer confidence numbers the last few weeks and where they were coming from.

[Inuca]

13. I'll reply with another tweet

Greg Sargent?@ThePlumLineGS

Upward revisions of July/August could explain why Obama's approval has improved recently. We didn't have full picture before.

[A HERETIC I AM]

7. Cue the "Stock Market Watch" naysayers in 3, 2, 1,... n/t

[bigtree]

9. fugetaboutem

[Historic NY]

22. Markets up

[gollygee]

10. 873,000 more people back to work in what amount of time?

I'm confused by the number of 114,000 jobs added, but 873,000 more people working. Is that 873,000 number for a larger period of time?

[bigtree]

14. Total employment rose by 873,000 in September

from the USDOL: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm


Total employment rose by 873,000 in September, following 3 months of little change. The employment-population ratio increased by 0.4 percentage point to 58.7 percent, after edging down in the prior 2 months. The overall trend in the employment-population ratio for this year has been flat. The civilian labor force rose by 418,000 to 155.1 million in September, while the labor force participation rate was little changed at 63.6 percent.


Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 114,000 in September. In 2012, employment growth has averaged 146,000 per month, compared with an average monthly gain of 153,000 in 2011. In September, employment rose in health care and in transportation and warehousing.

Health care added 44,000 jobs in September. Job gains continued in ambulatory health care services (+30,000) and hospitals (+8,000). Over the past year, employment in health care has risen by 295,000.

In September, employment increased by 17,000 in transportation and warehousing. Within the industry, there were job gains in transit and ground passenger transportation (+9,000) and in warehousing and storage (+4,000).

Employment in financial activities edged up in September (+13,000), reflecting modest job growth in credit intermediation (+6,000) and real estate (+7,000).

Manufacturing employment edged down in September (-16,000). On net, manufacturing employment has been unchanged since April. In September, job losses occurred in computer and electronic products (-6,000) and in printing and related
activities (-3,000).

Employment in other major industries, including mining and logging, construction, wholesale trade, retail trade, information, professional and business services, leisure and hospitality, and government, showed little change over the month.

The average workweek for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls edged up by 0.1 hour to 34.5 hours in September. The manufacturing workweek edged up by 0.1 hour to 40.6 hours, and factory overtime was unchanged at 3.2 hours.

The average workweek for production and nonsupervisory employees on private nonfarm payrolls was unchanged at 33.7 hours. (See tables B-2 and B-7.)

The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for July was revised from
+141,000 to +181,000, and the change for August was revised from +96,000 to
+142,000.


http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

[bluestate10]

17. The larger number could include certain job categories like Teachers and seasonal workers.

Teachers started back teaching in September. Teachers are technically not unemployed during the summer, but some may have looked for jobs and got included in earlier unemployment numbers.

[adigal]

20. Teachers are not unemployed in the summer, we don't collect

unemployment, we don't file any papers, and if we get jobs in the summer, they are part-time summer work. We don't skew this at all.

[progree]

32. Both surveys are seasonally adjusted. And unlike another responder, unemployment benefits have NOTH

unemployment benefits receiver status have NOTHING to do with the unemployment rate or number of unemployed statistics. FFI: http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm

[mathematic]

29. They measure slightly different things and use a different definition of employment

Adding jobs and employment are different things because one person can hold multiple jobs. So, for example, if the number of people holding multiple jobs goes down (as it did last month), then an unchanged number of jobs implies that that more people are employed.

There is a difference in definition of employment as well. The establishment survey (which is the 114k jobs) does not include agricultural or self-employed workers, for example, or count workers on unpaid leave.

Also, all these numbers are seasonally adjusted so a consistent seasonal effect like the start of the school year has no or minimal impact.

Here's the BLS technical note that describes these differences: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.tn.htm

[progree]

31. They are two separate surveys ...

The payroll jobs survey of businesses produced the 114,000 added jobs in September

The households survey (of 60,000 households) produced the 873,000 more people working in September figure. This is also the survey that produces the official unemployment rate (now 7.8%).

As to why such an enormous gap between two surveys, I don't really know.

[porphyrian]

11. Boom. n/t

[alcibiades_mystery]

12. Several DU Obama critics love using the words "dismal" and "anemic" to describe the August job #s

That was at 96,000. Will they adjust their critiques now that the August jobs have been revised up to 142,000?

I want to hear them say "dismal" and "anemic" again.

[abumbyanyothername]

25. At the time, I explained the August jobs report

The problem with the jobs report is that they have not adjusted their seasonal adjustments to reflect the fact that construction . . . sucks. Since so many fewer employees are in construction, their seasonal adjustments tend to make the summer months look worse and the other months looks better than is actually the case.

[bluestate10]

15. Too late to hop on now, the train has left the station.

President Obama and his team have the train steaming down the tracks and picking up steam. Romney, meet your first October surprise, there will be others.

[JaneQPublic]

16. The colors on that chart need to be reversed.

Red for the Bush decline in jobs and Blue for the Obama recovery.

[bigtree]

19. Today's jobs report in six graphs (alas no political party coding)

Ezra Klein ?@ezraklein

Today's jobs report in six graphs. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/10/05/the-jobs-report-in-six-charts/ … (via @dylanmatt)


Unemployment and Payroll Numbers

Unemployment took the biggest fall in months, reaching below 8 percent for the first time since January 2009:




Labor force participation

That said, the unemployment rate is a function of two things: the number of people employed, and the number of people in the labor force. But the proportion of people in the labor force actually went up, suggesting the fall in the unemployment rate reflects a real improvement, rather than people stopping their work search:




Public and private

Public employment stopped falling for the first time since February. Whereas previous July and August numbers saw it falling, revised numbers suggest that 73,000 public jobs were added in the past three months:




Alternative Unemployment Measures

As I explained last month, the BLS releases six unemployment measures. There’s U3, the number that shows up in all the news article, which counts people who don’t have jobs, but have looked for one in the past four weeks, but U1, U2, U4, U5 and U6 exist as well. U1 and U2 are usually lower than U3, and measure the percentage of people who have been unemployed for 15 weeks or longer and the percentage who have lost jobs or done temporary work in the period in question, respectively.

U4, U5 and U6 are usually higher than U3. Each of these categories includes everyone in all the lower categories: all people in U3 are in U4, all people in U4 are in U5, and all people in U5 are in U6. U4 adds people who have stopped looking for work because they’ve concluded none is available. U5 adds people who would like to work but for whatever reason have not looked for work recently. U6 adds the underemployed, or part-time workers who want to be working full-time but cannot for whatever reason.

The six measures are pretty well coordinated, and all six ticked down in September, suggesting again that the drop reflects real improvement:



Sectors




more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/10/05/the-jobs-report-in-six-charts/

[bhikkhu]

24. Another graph that helps explain things:

The labor participation rate is supposed to be in long-term decline as the boomers retire, which explains in part how we can have a dropping unemployment rate without "discouraged workers". It also implies that the "150,000 new jobs a month" we are supposed to need to keep up with population growth hasn't been true for some time.

[LongTomH]

36. Ezra Klein has also answered the Right-Wingers claiming Obama is 'cooking the books!'

RW pundits have formed an organized rug-chewing-and-bedwetting team to scream that the jobs numbers aren't real; GE CEO Jack Welch seems to be team captain.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/10/05/september-jobs-report-debunking-the-jobs-report-conspiracy-theories/

We’ve hit that moment in the election when people begin to lose their minds. Case in point, within minutes of the jobs report, Twitter filled with Republicans claiming the books were somehow cooked, the numbers aren’t real, etc.

Let’s take a deep breath. Jobs reports are about the economy, not about the election. Confusing the two leads to very bad analysis.

Here's the meat and potatoes of Ezra's argument:

Let’s get one thing out of the way: The data was not, as Jack Welch suggested in a now-infamous tweet, manipulated. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is set up to ensure the White House has no ability to influence it. As labor economist Betsey Stevenson wrote, “anyone who thinks that political folks can manipulate the unemployment data are completely ignorant of how the BLS works and how the data are compiled.” Plus, if the White House somehow was manipulating the data, don’t you think they would have made the payroll number look a bit better than 114,000? No one would have batted an eye at 160,000.

The fact is that there’s not much that needs to be explained here. We’ve seen drops like this — and even drops bigger than this — before. Between July and August the unemployment rate dropped from 8.3 percent to 8.1 percent — two-tenths of one percent. November-December of 2011 also saw a .2 percent drop. November-December of 2010 saw a .4 percent drop. This isn’t some incredible aberration. The fact that the unemployment rate broke under the psychologically important 8 percent line is making this number feel bigger to people than it really is.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/10/05/september-jobs-report-debunking-the-jobs-report-conspiracy-theories/

[goclark]

21. OH HAPPY DAY!!!!! K and R

Take this Rethugs, take this great news for America!!!!!

[jsmirman]

23. The readjustments, at least for me

look like hugely good news.

[flamingdem]

26. Right when Koch & others were opening their checkbooks for Willard..

Great job numbers! Lots of ruffled feathers today nuk nuk sqwak

[VWolf]

27. Imagine

where we'd be without GOP obstructionism.

[bigtree]

28. 7%

. . . without the government cuts.

[politicaljack78]

30. It's what the President explained during the debate with honesty and integrity...

that he will do everything to the improve the nation and in spite of all the challenges that have befallen this administration, he will help the middle class and thus the nation succeed. We are moving forward today in America because of diligent, industrious, reputable leadership.

[bigtree]

34. well said, politicaljack

[politicaljack78]

35. Thanks. I only spoke the truth in that statement.

And right back at you !

[RetroGamer1971]

33. This Is How Obama Did It!

Obama Uses Black Magic To Revise Unemployment Rate!
http://www.democraticunderground.com/111623552

[bigtree]

37. unemployment Rate has dropped by 1.2% over the past year

James F. Haning II ?@jameshaning

The #Unemployment Rate has dropped by 1.2% over the past year, the largest annual drop in over 20 yrs. It is vital we do not turn back now.


don mellowz ?@don_mellowz

@jameshaning that's 1.2 pts or 13.3%, not 1.2%.