Jobs Report, Poor Data?

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profette_IHB

profette_IHB

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<p>The Labor Dept. reported that 166,000 jobs were added in October. Hooray! Oh wait...</p>

<p>"Some analysts saw distortions in the data, questioning an increase in administrative jobs. Others said that most of the job gain came from an estimate that the Labor Department makes each month about how many jobs were added by new businesses, known as the “birth and death” model. The Labor Department did not actually find evidence of these jobs; it assumed they were created based on historical patterns.</p>

<p>And a separate survey of households, also conducted by the Labor Department, presented a very different picture of the job market. It showed that fewer Americans over all were employed in October. The labor force shrank by 211,000 jobs, and 465,000 Americans said they were no longer working."</p>

<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/02/business/02cnd-econ.html?hp">Linky</a></p>
 
<a href="http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/images/blantiwar-eye.htm"><img border="0" alt="" src="http://z.about.com/d/politicalhumor/1/0/6/O/antiwar_economy.jpg" /></a>
 
<p> Of 278 industries, 53.4% were adding jobs in October, down slightly from 55.6% in September. Of 84 manufacturing industries, 43.5% were hiring in October, the best since July. </p>

<p>


Jobs in goods-producing industries fell by 24,000. Construction jobs dropped by 5,000, bringing the total loss to 124,000 since the peak a year ago. Increased hiring in nonresidential construction trades nearly offset continued declines in residential building. </p>

<p>


Manufacturing jobs fell by 21,000 in October and 203,000 over the year. </p>

<p>


Jobs were also lost at banks and mortgage brokers, where employment fell by 5,000 in October, bringing the cumulative loss to 56,000 since February. </p>

<p>


Job growth was strong in many of the services, where employment rose by 190,000, the most since May. </p>

<p> Food services added 37,000, health care added 34,000 jobs, and employment services added 34,000, reversing steady declines earlier this year. </p>

<p>


Temp-help jobs are considered a leading indicator of demand for workers, so the increase in October is encouraging. </p>

<p>Retail jobs fell by 21,500, one indication of softer consumer spending ahead.


</p>

<p> The employment to population ratio fell by two-tenths to 62.7% in October, after peaking at 63.4% in December. The employment participation rate fell to 65.9% from 66%.





So the labor force decreased by 211k jobs and the amount of employed decreased by 250k jobs and yet unemployment only increased by 38k and the amount of people not in the labor force increase by 465k. How is this a good thing? And this is just month over month.





YOY our civilian labor force has increased by 1.2mil people but the amount of employed only increased 670k. This good right?





YOY the amount of people employed increased .5% and the amount of unemployed increased 7.9%.





The employment participation rate of 65.9% is the lowest since 1988. Really? I mean really are there that many people that do not need to work? If we had a normal participation rate of 66.4% (that is being modest) it would equal 8516 unemployed making the rate 5.6%.





These numbers are crap and haven't been this bad since the tech bubble burst. You can't compare the two because the participation rate was so much higher in the early 2000s. Ugh bad numbers!</p>
 
I wish I had seen Professor <a href="http://www.rgemonitor.com/blog/roubini/224473">Roubini's take on this yesterday</a>. He backs up my theory that the household numbers are a better indicator of the job growth and he has more credentials than I do.
 
I really didn't get much blog reading in yesterday because here is <a href="http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2007/11/cyclical-jobs-r.html">this gem from Barry</a>.
 
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