disemployment

Short Form: In seasonally adjusted terms, 165,000 jobs and unemployment dropping to 7.5% are OK, but not great results. At that job creation rate and taking population growth into account, it would take about 2 years to reduce by one million those currently unemployed. The BLS estimates current unemployment at 11.815 million. I calculate it at 20.542 million. So perhaps I should not say OK but rather next to nothing is being done to address the jobs situation. Read below the fold...

Short Form: In March, in the Household survey, the BLS undercount of those unemployed grew, and the labor force became smaller. It will take 6-12 months to know whether the declines we are seeing in the size of the labor force are cyclical or secular. The adjusted and unadjusted numbers for the labor force showed different pictures. Adjusted (trend line), the labor force fell with employment and unemployment also falling. Read below the fold...

In brief: Trendline, 236,000 jobs were added in February and the official unemployment rate fell to 7.7%. Actual jobs increased 959,000 but this followed a loss of 2.840 million last month. Similarly, employment rose 614,000 this month against a 1.446 million loss last month. However, notably the size of the labor force did not increase. The current rebuild and expansion of jobs should continue for the next two to three months. If this growth is choked off by the sequester or austerity, the consequences will extend through the rest of the year. My recalculated rate of unemployment remains high and declined only slightly to 12.5%. Hours increased this month which is good but wage gains taking inflation into account remain largely flat. Read below the fold...

The short form: Yearly revisions increased the number of jobs created in 2012 by 647,000. These revisions make some comparisons difficult between December 2012 and January 2013 and obscure that January is an absolutely dreadful month for jobs and employment in real terms. After Christmas, the economy sheds large numbers of jobs that are not picked back up until later in the spring. The result is that while the adjusted numbers show gains, these numbers mark a trend basically bridging a chasm. The bottom of that chasm is where the economy now is. Read below the fold...

The current BLS jobs report covering December 2012 states, without qualification, that the official or U-3 unemployment rate remained unchanged at 7.8%. It is only on page 5 of the pdf in a table that you find that the November rate was originally reported (a few days before the election) as a more favorable 7.7% down from 7.9%. This revision is part of the BLS' yearly revision of its numbers in the Household (people) survey. This complicates matters because revisions to the Establishment (jobs) survey will not happen until next month. Read below the fold...

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The Bureau of Labor Statistics continues to struggle with a model that does not correspond well to what is going on in the economy. Follow me. In the Establishment or survey of businesses, 171,000 jobs (seasonally adjusted) were created in October. In the Household survey, employment (seasonally adjusted) increased by 410,000 or about two and a half times the number of jobs created. Now the two surveys have very different levels of statistical significance: 100,000 for the Establishment survey and 400,000 for the Household survey, and they cover slightly different population sets, but it would seem a goal of its modeling that the two surveys converge as much as possible. Read below the fold...

In September's report, we are presented with two contradictory numbers. An uninspiring 114,000 jobs were created versus a stellar three-tenths of a percent decline in unemployment to 7.8%. Basically, what we had was an anomalous spike in employment in September of 873,000. This was made up of 456,000 unemployed. A tenth percent change in unemployment represents about 150,000 people. Three-tenths would come to about 450,000. So that checks. The September employment spike also includes some 418,000 people entering the labor force. The main driver of the spike appears to be a 582,000 increase in involuntary part time workers. Read below the fold...

The big number is that unemployment dropped two-tenths of a percent from 8.3% to 8.1%. However, the illusory nature of this drop can be seen in the fact that the number of jobs increased only 96,000. Essentially, what happened is that the unemployment rate declined, not because people found jobs but because the BLS defined them out of the labor force. Both of these numbers are seasonally adjusted.

In revisions of jobs numbers from the previous two months, June was revised down 19,000 from 64,000 to 45,000. It had originally been reported at 80,000, already a weak number, in the July report. The good, not great, number of 163,000 for July was decreased by 22,000 to 141,000. So a downward adjustment of 41,000 overall. Read below the fold...

The big number for July is 163,000 jobs, seasonally adjusted, added to the economy. This is a good, but not great number. A great number, a number indicative of a strong expansion would be 200,000+. For example, in 1998, job creation seasonally adjusted averaged 227,000 jobs a month; in 1999, it was 254,000. Unfortunately, that 163,000 number isn't real.

(Revisions to the jobs figures, seasonally adjusted, for the last two months were something of a wash. May was increased 10,000 from 77,000 to 87,000 while June was even worse than thought dropping 16,000 from 80,000 to just 64,000.) Read below the fold...

The Dog Days of summer seem to have set in early this year with record breaking temperatures and jobs reports reflecting an economy stalled out at high unemployment levels. The official unemployment rate was unchanged at 8.2%. Job growth remained sluggish with 80,000 jobs seasonally adjusted added in June. Overall, job creation averaged 75,000 in the second quarter as compared with 226,000 in the first quarter of the year.

Both the seasonally adjusted civilian labor force participation rate (the ratio of the actual labor force to the potential labor force) and the employment-population rate (the ratio of employed to the potential labor force) were unchanged at 63.8% and 56.6%, respectively. Read below the fold...

[Welcome, Naked Capitalism readers! --lambert]

This jobs report reflects a weak even stagnant economy. The two big numbers this month are a weak jobs number 69,000 and an unemployment rate which rose a tenth of a percent to 8.2%. Additionally, the March job numbers were revised down 11,000 from 154,000 to 143,000. April was revised down 38,000 from 115,000 to 77,000. Total downward revisions were 49,000. The April number is significant because it fell below the 105,000 needed for that month to keep up with population growth. Read below the fold...

In the April BLS jobs report, the big numbers are: 115,000 jobs showing poor job growth and the unemployment rate dropping a tenth of a percent to 8.1% mainly from those exited from the labor force by the BLS. Jobs for February were revised up 19,000 from 240,000 to 259,000 and for March 34,000 from 120,000 to 154,000, a total upward revision of 53,000. Read below the fold...

It looks like the seasonal early year surge in jobs is, as we predicted, wearing off. The big news this month is that the BLS is reporting 120,000 jobs created in March. Traditional media sources were forecasting more in the 200,000 area, and this was itself a weaker forecast than in previous months. Nor was there any good news to be found in the near term revisions for the past two months. It was a wash. The January job creation was revised down 9,000 from 284,000 to 275,000 and the February number was revised up 13,000 from 227,000 to 240,000.

The official U-3 unemployment rate edged down from 8.3% to 8.2%. Read below the fold...

The BLS jobs report covering February 2012 showed not only a big gain in jobs for the month (227,000) but also revisions upward for both December (203,000 > 223,000) and January (243,000 > 284,000). The unemployment rate, however, remained unchanged at 8.3% reflecting a return to the labor force of some of those the BLS had chosen to define out of it.

So I suppose the important question is how much of this is real. Offhand I would say it is a mixture of stimulative early in the year government spending (remember its fiscal year begins in October) moving into the economy and modeling and margin of error effects. But let's look at the numbers. Read below the fold...