Labor Department may delay October jobs report

Politics & Elections
41

Yeah, Obama definitely dodged a bullet with this last pre-election jobs report, and probably benefited a little due to the fact that it was simply better than expected.

If the unemployment number had gone past eight percent, I think that that would have turned out to be the most egregious effect on these last few days of the POTUS’s campaign. The thing is, though, an unemployment rate above eight percent would’ve probably been psychologically damaging to Obama’s reelection chances, but I’m not all that sure that it would’ve translated into any practical effects by election day. I mean, seriously, this entire campaign has seen several months’ worth of shitty jobs reports, yet virtually none of them have moved the needle in any measurable way.

Still, this was the last hurdle that Obama needed to overcome before election day. Like I said, the fact that it was better than expected has allowed him to dodge a bullet.

42

Let’s see- in the week before the election:

Colin Powell endorsement. Can’t hurt a bit.

Performs admirably before, during, and after a natural disaster.

Gets praised by major Republican figure

Gets endorsed by Mayor Bloomberg

Final jobs report largely positive.

It’s like Obama has shed five tackles and now has nothing but green grass and yard stripes between him and the end zone.

43

Also, national disaster knocks any and all coverage of Romney out of the media for at least a few days, and when he does show up, it’s doing transparently political storm relief in Ohio.

44

While we’re on the subject of mines that did not explode, I would add the furtherreportingon Benghazi shows the situation to be fitting the Fox News narrative less and less.

This doesn’t really matter to busting the Fox News narrative, since they won’t report it. But it is one more landmine that could have exploded. Despite Drudge’s desperate search for a smoking gun document showing Obama to have mishandled the situation, they haven’t been able to come up with anything.

45

Only if by “effectively” you mean that Obama still wins on Tuesday. If so, then I agree that Romney will be able to spin this “effectively”. :wink:

46

Well, yeah, but Obama is not going to win the election on the strength of the unemployment figures (and Romney was not going to win on that basis either).

47

To be honest, I really don’t know what you meant when you said Romney would be able to spin this “effectively”. You seemed to be objecting to something I posted, so perhaps you could flesh that idea out a bit. In what way will his spin be “effective”?

48

And boy is it fun watching the righties scramble furiously to try to find any Obama administration misstep on its handling of the Hurricane Sandy aftermath.

He responded too quickly!
He responded too slowly!
It’s all one photo op!
He’s not visible enough!

49

I mean he still has a soundbite to use that won votes (you said he’d have one if the rate went back over 8%). The CNN “response tracker” thingy went way up when he used that “yeah but” line during the debates.

50

According to Steve Benen at Maddowblog, with these jobs numbers, Obama has overseen more jobs creation this year than in 5 of the 8 Bush/Cheney years.

51

If the claim is that the previous month’s jobs created was enough to drop the unemployment number by .3%, then this month’s even stronger numbers should not have raised the unemployment number.

52

That didn’t take long.

It’s an obvious play, politically. Using the 7.9% figures allows Romney to make the ‘going the wrong way’ argument.

Why? Because 95% of the listeners don’t care about the inside baseball numbers.

53

That’s not necessarily true because it leaves out the number of “discouraged workers” who have reentered the job-seeking market. The good news from the previous quarter caused lots of people who had stopped looking for work to start looking again which caused a spike in the U3 unemployment rate. If you want to compare apples to apples, you want to compare what’s known as the U6 rate which includes all these workers. When you do that, you see that the unemployment rate dropped from 14.7 to 14.6%.

From the BLS

54

I agree that the rise in unemployment with these jobs numbers is likely because of new people entering the workforce. That’s understood.

The question is whether the previous month’s decline is similarly due to people dropping out. I was responding to the claim that it was not and was solely due to actual job creation.

55

The way the lies flow from that man’s mouth it actually took longer than I anticipated.

56

In regards to the BLS announcement of the unemployment being at 7.9%.

I found this on a site which I couldn’ make sense of. Can someone please clarify this:
If the labour force participation rate was the same as when Obama took office, however, unemployment would be 10.6 per cent.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2226865/Unemployment-rate-rises-7-9-cent--HIGHER-Obama-took-office.html#ixzz2B5KaaWV2
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

57

Meh; this is pretty much the definition of “spin”. If you want to emphasize the negative, you point to the unemployment rate. If you want to emphasize the positive, you point to the jobs created. Neither side is lying, they’re just cherry-picking the truth.

58

Yabbutt, he’s a Democrat, and so is genetically predisposed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory … :dubious:

59

Looking for economic analysis in the Daily Mail is like looking for boobies in the Wall Street Journal. Near as I can tell, that’s a very strange way of saying that the number of discouraged workers is higher now than it was in January 2009. It’s undeniably true but should be fairly obvious to anyone who realizes we were entering a huge recession at the time. I can’t tell where they got a figure of 10.6 but, if you look at the total U6 unemployment rate, it was skyrocketing at that point due to the recession.

Note that it’s also a cherry picked number because the same statement could not be made one month later. The rate is actually lower now than it was in February, 2009. Sorry for the poor formatting…

Year Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Annual
2002 9.5 9.5 9.4 9.7 9.5 9.5 9.6 9.6 9.6 9.6 9.7 9.8
2003 10.0 10.2 10.0 10.2 10.1 10.3 10.3 10.1 10.4 10.2 10.0 9.8
2004 9.9 9.7 10.0 9.6 9.6 9.5 9.5 9.4 9.4 9.7 9.4 9.2
2005 9.3 9.3 9.1 8.9 8.9 9.0 8.8 8.9 9.0 8.7 8.7 8.6
2006 8.4 8.4 8.2 8.1 8.2 8.4 8.5 8.4 8.0 8.2 8.1 7.9
2007 8.4 8.2 8.0 8.2 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.4 8.4 8.4 8.4 8.8
2008 9.2 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.7 10.1 10.5 10.8 11.1 11.8 12.7 13.5
2009 14.2 15.1 15.7 15.8 16.4 16.5 16.5 16.7 16.8 17.2 17.1 17.1
2010 16.7 16.9 16.9 17.0 16.6 16.5 16.5 16.6 16.9 16.8 16.9 16.6
2011 16.1 15.9 15.7 15.9 15.8 16.2 16.1 16.2 16.4 16.0 15.6 15.2
2012 15.1 14.9 14.5 14.5 14.8 14.9 15.0 14.7 14.7 14.6

60

Ok…First there’s the Population, which is the Adult Civilian Non-Institutional Population: Everyone 16 and older who is not in the military, or in prison, or an institution. Basically all the people who do not face any legal restrictions to work or changing jobs.

Employed are those who worked at least 1 hour for pay or 15+ hours unpaid in a family business or farm. Those not working because of vacation, weather, temp illnes etc are still Employed.

Unemployed are those who did not work but could have taken a job the previous week and actively looked for work in the previous 4 weeks.

Employed + Unemployed is the Labor Force…those working or trying to work.

Everyone else in the Population is Not in the Labor Force (mostly retirees, students, disabled, stay home spouses, etc).

The Unemployment rate is Unemployed/Labor Force.

Now, if someone was looking for work, but stops looking, or was working, stops and doesn’t look for work, s/he is no longer in the Labor Force and is now "not in the Labor Force.

The Labor Force Participation Rate is the Labor Force as a percent of the Population…answers the question “what percent of the population is actually available for work?” In Jan 2009 it was 65.9%. In Oct 2012 it was 63.8%

So what some people are doing is this:
The current labor force is 12,258,000 unemployed plus 143,384,000 Employed equals 155,641,000 (rounding errors). But what if the same percent of the population was trying to work as in Jan 2009? The current population is 243,983,000 so 65.9% of that is 160,785,000. That’s what the Labor Force would be if the same percent was participating. So 160,785,000 - 155,641,000 = 5,144,000 more people who would be looking for work. Adding them in with the new labor force gives us (12,258,000+5,144,000)/160,785,000 = 10.8%

Now all that is true…BUT…boil it down and all it’s saying is that if more people were Unemployed then the Unemployment rate would be higher. Duh.

Furthermore, it’s assuming that the difference in Labor Force (people who dropped out or never started looking) is ALL people who would be unemployed except they stopped looking. The problem is that the number (and percent) of people who don’t want to work has also gone up.