twenty16 asks: Come on SFB, no mention of the fact that the reason the unemployment rate went down is because 540k people stopped looking for work since they can't find jobs? Quit pissing on our heads and telling us it's raining.
» SFB says: Sure, let’s cover it. From the BLS report:
The civilian labor force participation rate declined by 0.2 percentage point to 63.6 percent in November, offsetting an increase of the same amount in October. Total employment was about unchanged in November, following a combined increase of 1.3 million over the prior 2 months. The employment-population ratio, at 58.7 percent, changed little in November. (See table A-1.)
Here’s a chart of how it compares to prior months:
Here’s how ZeroHedge played it (followed by a bunch of conservative sites that followed suit):
Confused why the unemployment rate dropped? The same, favorite BLS adjustment - a drop in the labor force participation rate which declined by 0.2% to 63.6% once again, as the number of people out of the labor increased by over 540K to 88,883,000.
And how Businessweek played it:
The drop in the jobless rate, from 7.9 percent in October, wasn’t great news because of why it happened: More people dropped out of the labor force so they weren’t counted among the unemployed. The labor-force participation rate remains depressed more than three years after the end of the 2007-09 recession. If it were at normal levels, the unemployment rate would be substantially higher.
Anyway, quit creating DM-only burner accounts and acting like you’re a brave man because you sent an angry message to someone. In the great words of Damon Wayans, homey don’t play that game. (Even money that this guy is the same as this one.) — Ernie @ SFB
BREAKING: US economy adds 146,000 jobs in November
The U.S. economy added a solid 146,000 jobs in November and the unemployment rate fell to 7.7 percent, the lowest since December 2008. The government said Superstorm Sandy had only a minimal effect on the figures.
AP reports:Hiring remained steady during the storm and in the face of looming tax increases. But the government said employers added 49,000 fewer jobs in October and September than initially estimated. And the unemployment rate fell from 7.9 percent in October mostly because more people stopped looking for work and weren’t counted as unemployed.
Photo: A man walks past destroyed homes on the Rockaway Peninsula in the Queens borough of New York on Nov. 27, 2012. (Seth Wenig/AP Photo)
The good news: Things are improving. The better news: A tough month after Sandy didn’t crimp the improvement.
They include in their ranks Congressman Allen West, former GE CEO Jack Welch, and more. The panel at Morning Joe cast suspicion on the numbers (“it doesn’t make sense”) but didn’t accuse anyone of cooking the books. Ezra Klein dismisses the claims outright, theorizing that we’re at “that moment in the election when people begin to lose their minds.” Labor economist Betsey Stephenson says that “anyone who thinks that political folks can manipulate the unempt data are completely ignorant about how BLS works & how data are compiled,” and Michael Tomasky notes that “if the administration were somehow manipulating the data, then they’re doing a terrible job at it.” Far-right Obama-hater Erick Erickson doesn’t doubt the numbers’ validity, though he doesn’t think they’re ultimately good news. source
Number-crunchers over at the Bureau of Labor and Statistics realized today that between April 2011 and March 2012, there were 300,000 more jobs created than originally estimated. If this upward revision is correct, President Obama is now in the green for job growth, having overseen a net gain in roughly 100,000 since taking office. This has just been an astonishingly bad week for Mitt Romney. source
Wrote a thing.
Hat tip to this headline writer.
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Yesterday’s dismal jobs report showed the lowest labor participation rate in 31 years.
Employers added only 96,000 workers in August, down sharply from the 141,000 in July and well below the 100,000 to 150,000 jobs needed just to keep pace with growth in the labor market.
The weak report aside, the unemployment rate still dropped — from 8.3 percent to 8.1 percent — because many of the out-of-work simply gave up. And only two out of three working-age Americans either had a job or were looking for one last month, the lowest level since Ronald Reagan took office.
“The economy is crawling up the down escalator,” said Patrick O’Keefe, head of economic research at financial consulting firm J.H. Cohn in Roseland, N.J.
Potential presidential debate question: How do we encourage people who have given up on finding work to ”participate” again?
» Hard times for educators: According to a report released today spearheaded buy the White House Council of Economic Advisers, as well as the National Economic Council and Domestic Policy Council, the above figure represents the losses in educational jobs since June 2009. The report does originate from the White House team, and as such is expectedly supportive of the President’s proposal to stem this tide – a package of $25 billion to prevent further layoffs. The last few years have seen heavy cuts to public funding, largely pushed by conservative politicians during dire economic times, and thus public-sector jobs have dwindled in states and localities, driving up unemployment despite months of sustained (if underwhelming) private-sector job growth.
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Whoa — in some states, the rate of unemployment and underemployment is nearing 20 percent! And everybody’s still pointing fingers about it.
Interesting that the extreme “flyover” states are the ones with the lowest rates. Would be interesting to see the map with only underemployment.
» Many analysts say it’s fair to assign some portion of the blame for the rise in lawsuits on the global recession, though it’s hardly the sole — or even largest — reason for the increase. High-profile cases like Wal-Mart’s recent $5 million settlement put the issue on some peoples’ radar, while some low-wage laborers that can’t afford legal counsel have had their cases taken up by the Department of Labor. Seyfarth Shaw, the legal firm that released the report, also admitted that some lawyers had become driven to wage litigation after seeing massive pay-offs in the news. But, clearly, there is still more that could be done.
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