The jobs report: Happy days are not here again
The number that has our friends suspicious is the giant 873,000 leap in employment as measured by the “household survey.” That’s the biggest one-month increase in nearly 30 years, which certainly does deserve an explanation.
The household survey contacts about 60,000 individual households to find out how many Americans are working. It is different from the much larger “establishment survey,” which measures about 141,000 businesses and government agencies to see how many jobs they created. The household survey determines the jobless rate, so the huge one-month leap accounts for the September decline to 7.8%.
Because of its small size, the household survey tends to be highly volatile. In August it found that the number of net new jobs had fallen by 119,000 and in July by 195,000. The point is that you can’t read too much into one month’s number. As much as we agree that you can’t trust the government, this is probably the explanation for the huge one-month jump in September.
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That is Zero’s problem. Where people were once just waiting and waiting for some “good news,” now no one believes anything he says. He’s the liar in chief.
Rational Thought on October 6, 2012 at 8:30 AM
why everybody gotta talk down the economy? Where your dollar at?
/Obama
ted c on October 6, 2012 at 8:32 AM
One month before the election. Of course I trust this coincidence. /
Yoop on October 6, 2012 at 8:33 AM
Jack Welch to Chris Matthews-”I won’t take it back.”
redridinghood on October 6, 2012 at 8:54 AM
I find it hilarious that for July and August household survey showed negative growth! You didn’t hear anyone trumpeting that number. By trumpeting the 873,000 number, it would be like us trumpeting those negative numbers back in the summer when we knew full well the establishment survey was more stable and accurate. Screw em all
Donald Draper on October 6, 2012 at 9:13 AM
Look.. even if these numbers are true… why is 7.8% good? Is this for real? Some people are applauding this? Wasn’t unemployment around 5% under Bush? Rush is right.
We are being sucked into thinking these high numbers are the new normal when they are actually a disaster.
JellyToast on October 6, 2012 at 9:15 AM
Listened to WABC this morning, an idiot reporter said this at the top of the hour: “Romney is campaigning in Florida today, but he is missing one of his talking points. Yesterday’s job report completely destroyed his argument that the unemployment rate had been above 8% for all of Barry’s tenure.” What an imbecile.
bayview on October 6, 2012 at 9:24 AM
I don’t get it.
60,000 households.
873,000 jobs.
That’s 14.55 jobs per household.
Either something’s fishy,
or there are 60,000 octo-moms out there.
mrt721 on October 6, 2012 at 9:47 AM
It was a sampling, and the BLS projected the purported increase in the household survey nationally to estimate the number of newly employed as applied to the total US population.
bayview on October 6, 2012 at 9:56 AM
There’s really nothing about this job report that’s good. Sure, I expect Democrats to tout the drop in the unemployment rate to low information or idiot voters, but the drop is largely meaningless. First, only 114,000 jobs were added. You have to add around 200,000 per month to even break even due to population growth in the workforce. So, anything less than that is really a loss. Second, 2/3 of the 873,000 increase in employment was due to part-time jobs. I find it a bit odd that part-time employment should jump so much in one month (it could be partly due to stores gearing up for the holidays and people working on various political campaigns). Regardless, if Democrats want to argue that people giving up looking for full-time work and settling for part-time is a good thing, then let them. Much of the rest of the 873,000 appears to be, unless I am mistaken, adjustments to previous months’ numbers and government jobs.
In fact, based on the adjustments to previous months’ numbers, the value of 114,000 jobs created in September would represent a reduction in the number of jobs created. In other words, we’re heading in the wrong direction.
No, there’s really nothing good about this report.
Mullaney on October 6, 2012 at 10:47 AM