Dr. Sohn’s website: http://www.drsohn.com/
This from EPI: http://www.epinet.org/content.cfm/webfeatures_econindicators_jobspict
This from the BLS houshold survey: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm
Am I reading all this correctly? Are 296,000 of these new jobs part-time?
Not that I claimed that unemployement didn’t blip up a bit, but you will notice that our rate is significantly lower than Europe’s. You will also notice, no doubt, that the Democratic nominee wants to introduce various Euro-style protectionist policies. If you care about jobs, you won’t be voting for Kerry, that is for damned sure.
There should be a good explanation as to how it was possible to add that many jobs, and then have more unemployment.
And I do think that beside temp jobs, a good chunk of the new jobs are contract jobs with no benefits and no security whatsoever, just like in my case. Yes, I got a job, and even though I like it, it is very likely that it will be transferred to India in the near future, hence the need to keep the majority of the workers in my workplace under contract.
Even if I get a good job, I am going to vote against Bush this November. Funny that many Bush supporters forget that Bush somehow convinced a good number of people to vote for him even when fully employed, why should I vote for him even if a million jobs are added from here to November? It did not work for the Democrats before, why it should work for the Republicans now? Job creation is good, but there are other (many more) reasons why I am not voting for Bush this November.
More people were looking for jobs. If you create 308,000 jobs in a month in which an additional 400,000 people entered the workforce (the seocnd number I just made up as an example) then you would have more people with jobs, but a higher unemployment rate.
I think Bush is a dolt but it’s pointless to doubt jobs were created; the Departmenr of Labor has no reason to lie. They weren’t lying in the no-job months. The guy who runs monster.com was on the radio today, and HE said they knew the job creation figures would be way up.
BTW I did not doubt the numbers, I was only wondering why the rate numbers came like that, and why it is that, on the whole, this is considered good news.
I do think that, just like the Democrats found out that prosperity is not a warranty to victory, that the Republicans will find the same on November, specially since the prosperity Republicans are gloating now, is for jobs that are a shadow of what many had before.
As I said, people can’t legitimately cite BLS numbers to argue about how Bush is Bad (to wit, all of the claims from the Dems that 2 million jobs have been lost since he’s been in office), and then, when the numbers turn positive, say that the numbers from the very same source, are all of a sudden lies. Can’t have it both ways, mi amigo.
Brought to you by the “Hey, look, everybody, a pony!” school of economic thought.
I am hopeful that the economy is improving, but I’ll wait awhile before jumping up and down at this news, and would friendlily advise everyone else to do the same: you don’t want to make predictions or conclusions based on this that later make you look foolish.
Daniel
Which is why everyone needs to understand HOW the numbers are created rather than simply focusing on essentially meaningless single numbers like a 5.7% unemployment rate. You need to look at all the footnotes that the BLS offers, hours worked, changes in wages earned, etc. Only then will you have enough information to truly understand what you are being told.
As everyone can see from the posts and links in this thread (and other similar ones):
**- part-time workers are counted as fully employed
There is no distinction or consideration when someone who was making 60k/yr loses their job and then gets another at 35k/yr., perhaps with less or no benefits Unless they were living frugally (unlikely given all the statistics about low savings rates and increasingly high credit card debts), then that person’s/families ability to participate in American consumerism is much more limited than before. Furthermore, if that person now HAS to work a 2nd job to make up the difference between 35k and 60k, then their quality of life is likely to be lessened.
Businessweek recently ran the following article that says that maybe there REALLY are big problems with the availability of jobs and that this is because the GDP numbers are not correct: GDP Growth: Are The Numbers Too Rosy?
An informed person is less likely to be bamboozled by politicians and the sound bite media…
A few random comments:
Those numbers mostly come from the Census Bureau, which does a whole bunch of surveys for other government agencies on a contract basis. (It’s what they do ‘the other nine years’. :)) But the Census Bureau takes its independence every bit as seriously as the Bureau of Labor Statistics does, so that doesn’t make any difference. Karl Rove ain’t telling neither agency what the stats should look like this month.
The current month’s CPS survey estimated the unemployment rate at 5.7%. The estimate was up from last month’s estimate of 5.6%. This doesn’t mean unemployment went up; if there was a statistically significant increase, they would have said it went up, rather than using fudge words that translate into “no statistically significant change”.
WAG territory: I’m not sure what the numbers ‘mean’ either. I’m glad to see more people going back to work, but a few different categories look like they have the potential to be one-shot increases, and some of those hourly/weekly wage numbers further down look kinda weak. I’m personally guessing April will see a lot fewer new jobs than March, but I’m no expert; it’s definitely a WAG.
Well, why don’t you show us all how bright **you ** are and produce a cite with the “correct” numbers? The BLS is not the WH.
There you go again John.
Offer nothing substantive throughout the thread, but come in at the end with a snide remark.
If you want a cite, you find it.
But I think that if even **you, John Mace ** reread this thread, you might agree that BLS skews the data in ways to present the best possible picture for the sitting president.
Take just one excerpt - from iame99’s post on BLS’s job-counting protocols:
**- part-time workers are counted as fully employed
There is no distinction or consideration when someone who was making 60k/yr loses their job and then gets another at 35k/yr., perhaps with less or no benefits Unless they were living frugally (unlikely given all the statistics about low savings rates and increasingly high credit card debts), then that person’s/families ability to participate in American consumerism is much more limited than before. Furthermore, if that person now HAS to work a 2nd job to make up the difference between 35k and 60k, then their quality of life is likely to be lessened.**
Sorry, but you set it up with an OP that was nothing other than a snide remark. You provide no data to back up your opinion. Nothing.
As for your “skewed data” hypothesis, you need to demostrate that the BLS has made substantive changes recently to the way it processes the data. Do you think that during the Clinton presidency the BLS counted a job differently if the person taking it ended up with a pay cut from his previous job? Do you think the BLS suddenly invented “seasonal adjustments” last month? Please. Offer something of substance for a debate, and you get something of substance in response.
Brutus: […]but you will notice that our rate is significantly lower than Europe’s. You will also notice, no doubt, that the Democratic nominee wants to introduce various Euro-style protectionist policies. If you care about jobs, you won’t be voting for Kerry, that is for damned sure.
Actually, Brutus, if you look at the European unemployment rates by country, you’ll notice that several of the more socialist/protectionist EU countries have unemployment rates comparable to, or in some cases lower than, that of the US. There is no clear and simple correlation between what you call “Euro-style” policies and high unemployment.
(Note also that the US unemployment rate is artificially lowered by our very high incarceration rate, especially for nonviolent crimes such as drug offenses. We’ve got nearly 3% of our entire adult population in jail, and since most inmates fall in the working-age category and have fairly poor employment prospects, it’s likely that a large number of them would be unemployed if they weren’t doing time. The combined incarceration plus unemployment rate for the US is probably much closer to the European average than the unemployment rate alone.)
The second thing I look at in the report, after the number of jobs created, is the number of hours worked. Scan down to that and you’ll notice that total hours worked in the private sector fell by .1 hour to 33.7, which is unchanged from a year ago. Manufacturing hours worked also fell by the same .1.
This confirms and ties in with the idea that most of the new jobs were part time.
While I think the concept preposterous, I’ll still play along. However, if one was going to include the incarcerated in unemployment rates, you would first have to deduct the number of inmates actually performing jobs while incarcerated. You would also have to eliminate the inmates that are on work release programs and there would be no use in including inmates with prison terms which exceeds their “working age” (no use in including people that will never again be able to enter the job market).
The reason this is a preposterous concept is that unemployment figures are comprised of people that are available for work and that are attempting to find work. Being incarcerated makes it difficult to do either.
Jumping in on your battle with Antiochus - It wasn’t my contention that the numbers are being massaged by the Bush administration. I believe the BLS numbers have been awry for a long time. They didn’t give an accurate picture of employment in the past (due to the reasons I have previously cited) nor do they do so now.
The OECD uses standardized numbers to compare unemployment rates between the various countries. They standardize the methodology so that they can make good comparisons. I believe they are the same as followed by the BLS. So if there are any errors in methodology, they are the same across all countries. So you can’t simply wave away the low unemployment figures for the United States as being ‘faulty data’. If unemployment is higher than 5.7% in the U.S., then it’s also higher than 7.4% in Canada. If the methodology is the same, the relative difference between the two is the same.
OK, so that means that there are likely MORE people unemployed or marginally employed than the official numbers are showing in all countries. Therefore, it is imperative that we do something to address and fix the problem before it becomes much worse, rather than sitting on our arses and saying everything is good.
?Bush and Co. can’t touch it; that he wouldn’t dare…?
There is no gainsaying their brass–they will tell whoppers with a straight face that are breathtaking!
(also, what manual did I not read to tell me how to frame prior quotes in that cute little box?)
iamme99 said:
uh… What? How do you conclude that there are more people unemployed than the official numbers show?
And since the same methodology has been in place for a long time, perhaps you could explain why the 5.6% unemployment figures today are somehow worse than the 5.6% unemployment figures in 1996?
And if something drastic needs to be done to save the day, could you explain why we managed to survive the nearly 10% unemployment in the early 1980’s?