1. Every Thursday for something like the last year, the previous week’s new claim report was quietly revised up.
2. This year’s early-season data was adjusting heavily for weather even though we had a very warm Winter. There is reason to believe employment conditions were overstated, meaning late-year reports will have to understate jobs.
3. Birth-death adjustments have been abnormally high and are rumored to be overstating exits from the economy significantly.
4. We are at historic lows for LF participation rate. This has benign explanations and not-so-benign explanations. One of the pieces of really bad news is that many of these folks are erroneously removed from the labor force by virtue of falling off of long-term unemployment rolls at historic rates after occupying them at historic rates.
5. Nearly all the jobs added since 2009 are bad ones: part time, under-employing jobs. Jobs are not created equal, and the ones created under this administration suck.
What do you guys think?
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?
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» Does little improvement = decline? That’s Ezra Klein’s argument on the report. “In this economy, little or no change isn’t good enough,” he says. “We added 80,000 jobs in June. That’s not enough to keep up with population growth. So, in the context of our growing workforce, the labor market lost ground last month.”
» Editor’s note: And because this comes up EVERY SINGLE MONTH, the unemployment rate above is the U3 unemployment rate, the standard that the Bureau of Labor Statistics uses. If you use the U6 unemployment rate (which includes people unemployed but not currently looking for work, or working part-time for economic reasons), it jumps to 14.9 percent, which is up from last month.
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Jill Biden and I started this initiative to make sure that this country - which is a grateful nation - to make sure that we do whatever we can to honor the service of our troops, our veterans, and their families.First Lady Michelle Obama • Promoting Joining Forces, her campaign with Jill Biden, on The Colbert Report. Last night, Stephen Colbert tweeted “Supporting our troops takes more than wearing a ribbon, unless that ribbon says, “I just hired a U.S. Veteran.”
We need a candidate who’s going to be a fighter for freedom. Who’s going to get up and make that the central theme in this race because it is the central theme in this race. I don’t care what the unemployment rate’s going to be. Doesn’t matter to me. My campaign doesn’t hinge on unemployment rates and growth rates. It’s something more foundational that’s going on.Rick Santorum • Misjudging what the central theme of the race is.
Based on one report, it’s as if the president’s full economic agenda is either brilliant or moronic. Get good numbers and you’re Keynes reincarnate. Get bad numbers and you can’t add.Vice President Biden’s former chief economist Jared Bernstein • Discussing the process that goes into the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ monthly employment reports, reports which have taken on new importance as the 2012 election hits. (The numbers showed slight improvement Friday, with the unemployment rate staying steady but jobs levels increasing.) Highly recommend you read the Washington Post’s piece on the matter, which goes in depth explaining exactly what happens to bring those numbers — numbers which can define the entire debate over the next month — to reality. It’s fascinating.
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