Jobs gained?? No lost...

[Savoir Faire-Demogague in NJ]

How many private sector jobs were created?

Everyone is excited about the new employment numbers and the increase of 243,000 non-farm payroll jobs in January. Does that mean that there are 243,000 more jobs now? Not actually. Joyn Crudele at the NY Post explains:

Those 243,000 jobs are the total after seasonal adjustments.
The question you should be asking is, what’s the un-tampered-with number before the adjustment?


Glad you asked. The Labor Department reported a loss of 2,689,000 jobs in January.

Did you catch that? Because the Labor Dept. expected a loss of nearly 3 million jobs but only 2.7 million jobs were lost, it reports a job gain. Now, "seasonal adjustments" are, in principle, a good thing. When you allow for how the running "seasonal adjustments" have never been very accurate, the adjusted number has little meaning.



www.nypost.com/p/news/business/rosy_report_ruse_LsXHVA9epmxGzTBHeOW6WP

[djAdvocate]

and this differs from how unemployment has been measured for the better part of the last half century.....how?

i think i see the GOP tact here, tho. when the statistics back up what you are saying, use them. when they don't, scream fraud. sweet.

[Deleted]

Can one make the assumption that the seasonal adjustment in Nov/Dec 2011 was adjusted down by roughly 2.7 million jobs?

[Deleted]

Any way you look at it there are still a lot of people struggling. My brother and his wife are underemployed - they've both had their hours cut.

The number of long-term unemployed - those who have been without work for 27 weeks or more - remained stuck at about 5.5 million. That's 42.3% of all unemployed.

The "marginally attached" - people who want have searched for work in the past year but not the past month - category also remained steady at about 2.8 million.

But the number of underemployed workers - "part-time for economic reasons," in BLS-speak - increased from 8.1 million to 8.2 million.

A few more sobering statistics: America has 5.6 million fewer jobs than it did in 2008. And there are 462,000 fewer people working now than three years ago, despite a steadily increasing population.

moneymorning.com/2012/02/06/jobs-in-america-the-ugly-truth-behind-those-unemployment-numbers/

[floridayankee]

Feb 6, 2012 15:16:33 GMT -5 djAdvocate said:

i think i see the GOP tact here, tho. when the statistics back up what you are saying, use them. when they don't, scream fraud. sweet.

Why the finger pointing? That's pretty much the argument no matter the party, isn't it?

While you're pointing your finger at everyone else, you have three more pointing back at you.

[AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP]

I'm all for "seasonal adjustments"- we don't want to inspire panic the first quarter of every year. However, the raw number has one real, inescapable consequence: tax revenues. You can say what you want about the scope of the whole year, but the reality is that we now have-- today, at this moment-- more than 2.6 million people off the payroll.

[Deleted]

"Because the Labor Dept. expected a loss of nearly 3 million jobs but only 2.7 million jobs were lost, it reports a job gain."

Surely they put a little more into it than that. Seasonal adjustments by their very nature have to net to zero over a 12 month period, right? And the report for December didn't show a gain of 2 million jobs.

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"Because the government has stopped counting certain classes."

I don't think they've changed anything. They use the same methodology year after year. They also report stats on those groups you mention that they supposedly ignore.

[Deleted]

Feb 6, 2012 15:27:35 GMT -5 @investorbob said:

"Because the Labor Dept. expected a loss of nearly 3 million jobs but only 2.7 million jobs were lost, it reports a job gain."

Surely they put a little more into it than that. Seasonal adjustments by their very nature have to net to zero over a 12 month period, right? And the report for December didn't show a gain of 2 million jobs.

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Are we sure of that?? I don't know were to find that info.

[djAdvocate]

Feb 6, 2012 15:24:13 GMT -5 floridayankee said:

Feb 6, 2012 15:16:33 GMT -5 djAdvocate said:

i think i see the GOP tact here, tho. when the statistics back up what you are saying, use them. when they don't, scream fraud. sweet.

Why the finger pointing? That's pretty much the argument no matter the party, isn't it?

While you're pointing your finger at everyone else, you have three more pointing back at you.

i don't remember people questioning statistics nearly as much as they do now. are we reverting back to a pre-industrial time when anything scientific, which flies in the face of "common sense" is dismissed with contempt?

worrysome.

[Deleted]

i don't remember people questioning statistics nearly as much as they do now.

Maybe people are more aware now of how statistics can be misleading.

[djAdvocate]

Feb 6, 2012 15:53:20 GMT -5 @anne81 said:

i don't remember people questioning statistics nearly as much as they do now.

Maybe people are more aware now of how statistics can be misleading.

that is actually not grounds for dismissing them. it is a grounds for understanding what they mean. i don't see a lot of that in the general public. therefore, i find this suggestion dubious.

[Deleted]

"Are we sure of that?? I don't know were to find that info."

Well, I do know that job creation has been in the 200,000 range for quite some time now. As far as methodology goes, I think the BLS website has a lot of info.

[Deleted]

Feb 6, 2012 15:56:41 GMT -5 @investorbob said:

"Are we sure of that?? I don't know were to find that info."

Well, I do know that job creation has been in the 200,000 range for quite some time now. As far as methodology goes, I think the BLS website has a lot of info.

I can't find where the non-seasonally adjusted payroll numbers are on the site.

[djAdvocate]

Feb 6, 2012 15:58:15 GMT -5 @toughtimes said:

For statistics to be trusted, the people providing them must be too.

i think that is the crux of the issue. the BLS is actually not partisan. there is no reason to expect them to be fudging statistics for Obama, other than the fact that FOX News is trumpeting this canard. it is pernicious nonsense that makes perfectly serviceable stats seem useless. they aren't.

whatever. folks can do whatever they want with these stats. i am going to adjust my portfolio for growth.

[djAdvocate]

Feb 6, 2012 16:02:45 GMT -5 @toughtimes said:

I haven't trusted those statistics in years, truthfully.

i think they are totally serviceable. they don't say what people think they do, but it is as good an indicator as any of hiring.