So some around here are huffy and puffy about the jobs data. People who say the unemployement lowered because people have stopped looking for work. Well 418,000 entered the job market last month. So people are apperently activily looking for work.

There seems to be a lot of skepticism about today’s solid employment report in certain corners of the Twitterverse. How is it that unemployment could fall a head-turning .3 percentage points—from 8.1 to 7.8 percent—when the economy added a mere 114,000 jobs last month?

There are a couple things to say in response. First, as people who follow this stuff know, the unemployment rate and the payroll numbers are calculated from two different surveys. The unemployment rate comes from a survey of households, the payroll (i.e., jobs) number from a survey of businesses. They don’t match up perfectly, and certainly not from month to month, since there’s often a lot of noise in any given survey. But they do tend to converge over time.

Which leads to the second point: Even though the numbers do come from different surveys, today’s report shows that the surveys are starting to tell us similar things, as the labor economist Betsey Stevenson points out. Namely, that the job market has been stronger than we thought in recent months. The drop in the unemployment rate speaks for itself. As for the payroll numbers, they were revised upward by at least 40,000 in both July and August. So it’s not like the trends are headed in different directions.

Finally, the reason that more informed skeptics (i.e., not Jack Welch) are probably surprised by today’s big drop in the unemployment rate is that, as the economy improves, the rate tends to rise a bit, or at least move sideways for a while, before eventually easing down. That’s because rising economic optimism encourages people who had dropped out of the labor force, and therefore aren’t counted in the standard unemployment measure, to get back into the labor force, where they boost the unemployment rate until they find a job. And, indeed, more people did join the labor force last month—a whopping 418,000, according to the household survey.

http://redsfan.newsvine.com/_news/2012/10/05/14248209-why-todays-jobs-numbers-are-truly-good-news

What was the change in REAL unemployment from month to month?  Maybe more people stopped being counted as unemployed due to being dumped into the "not looking" or 'no longer in labor force' category.

Gotta cover all angles with this stuff 'cause there's a lot of spin.

THE EMPLOYMENT SITUATION -- SEPTEMBER 2012


The unemployment rate decreased to 7.8 percent in September, and total nonfarm
payroll employment rose by 114,000, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported
today. Employment increased in health care and in transportation and warehousing
but changed little in most other major industries.

Household Survey Data

The unemployment rate declined by 0.3 percentage point to 7.8 percent in September.
For the first 8 months of the year, the rate held within a narrow range of 8.1
and 8.3 percent. The number of unemployed persons, at 12.1 million, decreased by
456,000 in September. (See table A-1.)

Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men (7.3 percent),
adult women (7.0 percent), and whites (7.0 percent) declined over the month.
The unemployment rates for teenagers (23.7 percent), blacks (13.4 percent), and
Hispanics (9.9 percent) were little changed. The jobless rate for Asians, at
4.8 percent (not seasonally adjusted), fell over the year. (See tables A-1, A-2,
and A-3.)

In September, the number of job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs
decreased by 468,000 to 6.5 million. (See table A-11.)

The number of persons unemployed for less than 5 weeks declined by 302,000 over
the month to 2.5 million. The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for
27 weeks or more) was little changed at 4.8 million and accounted for 40.1
percent of the unemployed. (See table A-12.)

Total employment rose by 873,000 in September, following 3 months of little
change. The employment-population ratio increased by 0.4 percentage point to
58.7 percent, after edging down in the prior 2 months. The overall trend in
the employment-population ratio for this year has been flat. The civilian labor
force rose by 418,000 to 155.1 million in September, while the labor force
participation rate was little changed at 63.6 percent. (See table A-1.)

The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes
referred to as involuntary part-time workers) rose from 8.0 million in August
to 8.6 million in September. These individuals were working part time because
their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time
job. (See table A-8.)

In September, 2.5 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force,
essentially unchanged from a year earlier. (These data are not seasonally
adjusted.) These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were
available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months.
They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work
in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. (See table A-16.)

Among the marginally attached, there were 802,000 discouraged workers in
September, a decline of 235,000 from a year earlier. (These data are not
seasonally adjusted.) Discouraged workers are persons not currently looking
for work because they believe no jobs are available for them. The remaining
1.7 million persons marginally attached to the labor force in September had
not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey for reasons such
as school attendance or family responsibilities. (See table A-16.)

Establishment Survey Data

Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 114,000 in September. In 2012,
employment growth has averaged 146,000 per month, compared with an average
monthly gain of 153,000 in 2011. In September, employment rose in health care
and in transportation and warehousing. (See table B-1.)

Health care added 44,000 jobs in September. Job gains continued in ambulatory
health care services (+30,000) and hospitals (+8,000). Over the past year,
employment in health care has risen by 295,000.

In September, employment increased by 17,000 in transportation and warehousing.
Within the industry, there were job gains in transit and ground passenger
transportation (+9,000) and in warehousing and storage (+4,000).

Employment in financial activities edged up in September (+13,000), reflecting
modest job growth in credit intermediation (+6,000) and real estate (+7,000).

Manufacturing employment edged down in September (-16,000). On net, manufacturing
employment has been unchanged since April. In September, job losses occurred
in computer and electronic products (-6,000) and in printing and related
activities (-3,000).

Employment in other major industries, including mining and logging, construction,
wholesale trade, retail trade, information, professional and business services,
leisure and hospitality, and government, showed little change over the month.

The average workweek for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls edged up by
0.1 hour to 34.5 hours in September. The manufacturing workweek edged up by
0.1 hour to 40.6 hours, and factory overtime was unchanged at 3.2 hours.
The average workweek for production and nonsupervisory employees on private
nonfarm payrolls was unchanged at 33.7 hours. (See tables B-2 and B-7.)

In September, average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm
payrolls rose by 7 cents to $23.58. Over the past 12 months, average hourly
earnings have risen by 1.8 percent. In September, average hourly earnings of
private-sector production and nonsupervisory employees increased by 5 cents
to $19.81. (See tables B-3 and B-8.)

The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for July was revised from
+141,000 to +181,000, and the change for August was revised from +96,000 to
+142,000.

____________
The Employment Situation for October is scheduled to be released on
Friday, November 2, 2012, at 8:30 a.m. (EDT).

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

Ever think of taking up PR, spaceguy? You seem to have a pretty strong tolerance for vertigo given how well you tolerate the high speed rotation you spend a lot of your time engaging in.

Look at healthcare go. I can't imagine how big it's going to eventually grow. Perhaps I should have gone to nursing school.

Regarding the conspiracy theories, the most awesome one I've seen thus far is someone suggesting that thousands of democrats lied about finding jobs in order to make Obama look better.

"Joined the Job Market" means "started looking for work."  In a jobs report number... these would be added to the denominator.  In otherwords, that's exactly why republicans(and moderates) are confused.  The Job number increased by 114,000.  418,000 entered the market.  The entered the market number would be put in the denominator.

If you were to compute the unemployement numbers just based on those two numbers... Unemployment would be 27.3%

Instead unemployment went down .2%.

It's not surprising people are confused who don't know the ins and outs of the jobs report. 

What's more confusing is people who don't see why someone would be confused.  Espiecally people who don't know the job report.

This is likely a better arguement explaining it.

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/05/explaining-the-big-gain-in-job-getters/?ref=business

It's funny that people don't realize why some people might be confused why the jobs numbers went from an average 160,000 to 873,000 in September.

What people are skeptical about is the statement that "Unemployment is below 8%" ... When you look at the employment to population ratio you get this:

The employment to population ratio has fallen (roughly) 8% from it's pre-crisis peak of (roughly) 63.5% to it's current level of (roughly) 58.5%; and (roughly) 10% from it's dot-com bubble peak. Unemployment was officially reported at (roughly) 5% which would indicate that the unemployment rate should be close to 13.5%.

Sorry SpaceGuy. Look at the U-6 numbers. Unchanged from last month. The U-6 includes people who either gave up looking for work or people who want full time work and only could find part time work. The jobs added were part time.

Also, anyone remember 163k jobs added in July but unemployment went up .1%? Makes you think about where these numbers come from.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm