unemployment figures a freaking joke...

[TeyshaBlue]

Underemployed? This word has made a comeback during the Obama years..lol

It's the defacto employment descriptor, tbh.

[TeyshaBlue]

It's the defacto employment descriptor, tbh.

But, I suppose alot hinges on the definition of underemployed. That seems to be fairly plastic term.

[DarrinS]

So are you insinuating that Ms. Solis misrepresented data?

I think the numbers are suspect.

[CosmicCowboy]

It's the defacto employment descriptor, tbh.

No . Retail and food service hires two people and gives them each 30 hours a week and no benefits instead of the "old" way of hiring one person for 40 hours a week with benefits.

[boutons_deux]

Underemployed? This word has made a comeback during the Obama years..lol

The Obama years are really the Banksters' Great (Jobs) Depression years.

[DarrinS]

Zero hedge calling it "Complete preelection 'massaging' farce"

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-1...xpectations-82

[FuzzyLumpkins]

I think the numbers are suspect.

The data points come from specific sources. They are not subjective ie they count actual data like unemployment filing and tax withholdings.

Who is counted as employed?

Employed persons consist of:

All persons who did any work for pay or profit during the survey reference week.
All persons who did at least 15 hours of unpaid work in a family-owned enterprise operated by someone in their household.
All persons who were temporarily absent from their regular jobs, whether they were paid or not.

Not all of the wide range of job situations in the American economy fit neatly into a given category. For example, people are considered employed if they did any work at all for pay or profit during the survey reference week. This includes all part-time and temporary work, as well as regular full-time, year-round employment. Persons also are counted as employed if they have a job at which they did not work during the survey week because they were:

On vacation
Ill
Experiencing child-care problems
Taking care of some other family or personal obligation
On maternity or paternity leave
Involved in an industrial dispute
Prevented from working by bad weather

Who is counted as unemployed?

Persons are classified as unemployed if they do not have a job, have actively looked for work in the prior 4 weeks, and are currently available for work.

Workers expecting to be recalled from layoff are counted as unemployed, whether or not they have engaged in a specific jobseeking activity. In all other cases, the individual must have been engaged in at least one active job search activity in the 4 weeks preceding the interview and be available for work (except for temporary illness).

So what figures do you think that they are lying about?

Do you feel that they are falsifying survey data or government figures?

[FuzzyLumpkins]

Zero hedge calling it "Complete preelection 'massaging' farce"

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-1...xpectations-82

Care to post something that's not a blog with contributors named testosteronepit and tylerdurden?

[boutons_deux]

What kind of bull accusation is that? Nobody is cheering the awful job numbers. It's a ing national tragedy that 15% of the people in the US are unemployed or underemployed.

That's the way the corporations want it. with 37 straight quarters of international trade deficits and govt policies that encourage US companies to offshore (aka "globalize") jobs and bring back the products tarriff free can be corrected, but UCA will block any such corrections.

Most of recently created jobs are in the sub $20/hour range, some near $10/hour, NOT quality middle class jobs. They same was true with 10Ms jobs created in the 1990s.

[FuzzyLumpkins]

How can their report say the economy added 114,000 jobs from August to September, yet also say that from August to September 873,000 more people had jobs?

Technical information: Revisions to CES data for late sample reports, annual benchmarking, and other factors
Background

The Current Employment Statistics (CES) program (also known as the payroll survey or the establishment survey) is designed to measure trends in employment, hours, and earnings by industry. Each month BLS surveys approximately 141,000 businesses and government agencies representing approximately 486,000 worksites throughout the United States. The monthly Employment Situation news release provides national CES data on employment, hours, and earnings, as well as labor force and unemployment estimates from the Current Population Survey (CPS), also known as the household survey.

The Employment Situation is typically released on the first Friday of the month following the reference month. For example, the February 3, 2012 Employment Situation published CES first preliminary employment estimates for January 2012. CES estimates represent information reported by survey respondents for their pay periods that include the 12th of the month.

Not all sampled firms are able to report their data in time to be used in the first preliminary estimates. Therefore, BLS continues to collect sample responses after the release of first preliminary estimates for incorporation into second preliminary and final sample-based estimates. Second preliminary estimates for a reference month are published the month following the initial release, and final sample-based estimates are published two months after the initial release.

Sample-based estimates remain final until employment levels are reset to universe employment counts, or benchmarks, for March of each year; the benchmarks are primarily derived from Unemployment Insurance (UI) tax records. The annual benchmarking process results in revised data back to the last annual benchmark for not seasonally adjusted series and back five years for seasonally adjusted series.

CES data are principal economic indicators and serve as input to many other economic series. Each time the CES employment estimates are revised, additional information that was not previously available is incorporated into the estimates. Below are discussions of how CES data revise:

Monthly, to include late sample reports;
Annually, due to benchmarking; and
Irregularly, to avoid discontinuities while incorporating methodological changes.

Monthly Revisions to Include Late Sample Reports

CES data users typically are most concerned with revisions to over-the-month changes. This section profiles these monthly revisions of CES seasonally adjusted over-the-month changes and the sample collection rates that underlie the revisions.

Revisions to CES over-the-month changes are calculated by comparing each month's second preliminary over-the-month change to the first preliminary over-the-month change, the final sample-based over-the month change with the second preliminary over-the-month change, and the final sample-based over-the-month change to the first preliminary over-the-month change.

See www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cesnaicsrev.htm for a table of revisions to seasonally adjusted Total nonfarm over-the-month changes from January 1979 forward. The monthly employment change figures shown in the table do not reflect subsequent changes due to the introduction of benchmark revisions, seasonal adjustment, or other updates.

Mean revisions and mean absolute revisions for each calendar year are included in the table. Mean absolute revisions indicate the overall magnitude of change to the estimates, while the mean revisions are a measure of whether there is a bias in direction of the revisions. The closer the mean revision is to zero, the less indication that revisions are predominantly either upward or downward. For example, if in a given year there were six upward revisions of 50,000 and six downward revisions of 50,000, the mean revision would be zero; however, the mean absolute revision would be 50,000.

BLS begins collecting sample reports for a reference month as soon as the reference period, the establishment's pay period that includes the 12th of the month, is complete. Collection time available for first preliminary estimates ranges from 9 to 15 days, depending on the scheduled date for the Employment Situation news release. The Employment Situation is scheduled for the third Friday following the week including the 12th of the prior month, with an exception for January. (For January, the news release is delayed a week if the third Friday following the week of the 12th occurs on January 1, 2, or 3.)

Given this short collection cycle for the first preliminary estimates, many establishments are not able to provide their payroll information in time to be included in these estimates. Therefore, CES sample responses for the reference month continue to be collected for two more months and are incorporated into the second preliminary and final sample-based estimates published in subsequent months. Additional sample receipts are the primary source of the monthly CES employment revisions.

Prior to 1991, most of the CES sample was collected by mail in a decentralized environment by each State Workforce Agency. BLS has gradually centralized collection and adopted automated sample collection methods with the result that collection rates have gradually risen over time. BLS uses a variety of collection techniques, tailored to individual firm preferences to encourage participation in this voluntary survey. Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI) is used for initial enrollment and collection of sample. Sample units are often transferred later to an automated method of self-reporting, such as through Fax, Internet, or Touchtone Data Entry (TDE). Many large, multi-establishment firms report through Electronic Data Interchange (EDI); the firms provide electronic files to BLS that include all of their worksites. A small percentage of sample units still report via mail.

Collection rates are defined as the percent of reports received for a monthly estimate compared to the total number of actively-reporting sample units on the sample registry.

CES collection rates back to 1981 can be found on www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cesregrec.htm.

Much of the month-to-month variation in the first preliminary collection rates is a function of the number of collection days in the individual months. The overall upward trend over time is attributable to replacing decentralized mail collection with automated techniques.
Benchmark Revisions

Annual CES benchmark revisions are published along with January first preliminary estimates in February of each year. Benchmark revisions reflect a re-anchoring of CES sample-based estimates to incorporate near universe counts of employment. These comprehensive counts of employment, or benchmarks, are derived primarily from employment counts reported on UI tax reports that nearly all employers are required to file with State Workforce Agencies.

http://www.bls.gov/ces/cesregrevtec.htm

That was so difficult to find.

[boutons_deux]

Big Picture Time!


The Betrayal of America's Middle Class Was a Choice, Not an Accident


http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/11...d-james-steele

and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persona..._United_States

[Winehole23]

http://www.hamiltonproject.org/jobs_gap/

[TeyshaBlue]

http://www.hamiltonproject.org/jobs_gap/

That's a cool link, WH.

[TDMVPDPOY]

counting casual and part time jobs as full time jobs...lol watta joke

[101A]

Kind of feel sorry for Obama. IF these numbers haven't been manipulated in some way - they APPEAR, just based on the convenience of them, that they HAVE been manipulated in some way. THAT seems to be the story; "These don't add up"..."How convenient"....etc.......

Makes them look desperate.

Now, I'm gonna call my (must be previously) unemployed friends. Since several of them must have jobs; THEY can buy tonight for a change.

[FuzzyLumpkins]

counting casual and part time jobs as full time jobs...lol watta joke

Is someone with a part time job employed or unemployed?

[vy65]

That's a cool link, WH.

Cool or really depressing ?

[boutons_deux]

in the simplistic unemployment rate, and new jobs number, there's almost never any mention of wage level for new jobs

The low-wage jobs explosion


http://money.cnn.com/2012/08/31/news...obs/index.html

During recovery, most new jobs offer low wages

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505143_1...fer-low-wages/

[ElNono]

189,000 jobs are added in August and the unemployment is 8.1%

Only 166,000 jobs added in September and the unemployment drops to 7.8%?

Isn't it always like that? I thought that was why the number gets adjusted seasonally.

[Th'Pusher]

http://www.cnbc.com/id/49299718

I'm well aware of why the number shrunk. That was my point. Romney now has to make the more difficult argument of explaining the shrinking labor force and he can no longer use the unemployment rate above 8% meme. Seems like you get that. Now it is just DarrinS and Jack Welch that seem to think Obama is directly manipulating the numbers in an effort to win at all costs.

[LnGrrrR]

Is there some sort of certificate that could prove these numbers? I heard conservatives were big into certificates.

[CosmicCowboy]

The Labor Department, based on a broad survey of employers, said 114,000 jobs were added in September.
But the unemployment rate itself is based on a separate "household survey," which showed a whopping 873,000 new jobs in September.
"This must be an anomaly," former Congressional Budget Office director Doug Holtz-Eakin said in a snap analysis of the numbers. "It is out of line with any of the other data.."
Holtz-Eakin noted the household survey is smaller, suggesting it is not as reliable. He called estimate of 873,000 new jobs "implausible."

Liberal economist Dean Baker, with the Center for Economic and Policy Research, called the September rate drop "almost certainly a statistical fluke."

[RandomGuy]

That's a cool link, WH.

Here is an interesting search though that offers some more detailed insights:
http://www.npr.org/templates/archive...ngId=127414874

Very interesting bit by a rather sophisticated simulation from Moody's analytics:
Even If You're All-Powerful, It's Hard To Fix The Economy
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/...e-economy#more

Zandi is the chief economist at Moody's Analytics, and he built his model to predict what's going to happen in the real world. When he plugs what he thinks is going to happen in the real world, his model spits out a pretty grim result: Four years from now, the unemployment rate will be 6.6 percent. That's lower than today, but still much higher than the 5 percent rate that was typical before the recession.

...

"What's happening is the economy is reaching its new limits," Zandi says.

This is something I hadn't really appreciated before. When you go through a really big, catastrophic recession, it's not always possible to fix things.

Millions of people lost their jobs in the recession. At the same time new high school and college grads started looking for jobs.

The economy just can't grow fast enough to absorb the backlog. Zandi says we'll have an extra million people looking for jobs, and unable to find them.

"We dug ourselves a huge hole," Zandi says, "Its gonna take a generation to get completely out of it."

Doesn't matter which guy gets the President nod.

If you are concerned about "jobs", you should simply flip a coin and vote by that outcome.

Luckily there are a lot other things that presidents can do that matter. Supreme court justices, for example.

[boutons_deux]

"The economy just can't grow fast enough to absorb the backlog"

backlog? how about just adding enough jobs to keep up with population growth?

If Gecko/Ryan get in + a Repug Congress, their promised austerity will make the jobs and depression worse.

[djohn2oo8]

It's funny how Republicans cheer for the economy to do poorly under Democratic leadership and get pissed whenever an unemployment number that's been calculated the same way for decades goes down. Would you have preferred it went up? Stayed the same?

Some of it is subconscious and some of it is deliberate, but it's clear Republicans in this country care more about Obama failing than America thriving.

What kind of bull accusation is that? Nobody is cheering the awful job numbers. It's a ing national tragedy that 15% of the people in the US are unemployed or underemployed.

lol your next post about it being a fluke.
lol rooting for failure
lol you fail