{"id":4051,"date":"2012-11-02T08:35:45","date_gmt":"2012-11-02T12:35:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/?p=4051"},"modified":"2012-11-02T08:35:45","modified_gmt":"2012-11-02T12:35:45","slug":"the-latest-jobs-report-171000-jobs-7-9-unemployment-and-what-it-should-mean-for-the-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/2012\/11\/02\/the-latest-jobs-report-171000-jobs-7-9-unemployment-and-what-it-should-mean-for-the-election\/","title":{"rendered":"The latest jobs report (171,000 jobs, 7.9% unemployment) and what it should mean for the election"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"e26b170012445c56d240655bdd03f7bf\" data-index=\"1\" style=\"float: left; margin: 10px 10px 10px 0;\">\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\"><!--\r\ngoogle_ad_client = \"ca-pub-5595881567027133\";\r\n\/* Medium Rectangle *\/\r\ngoogle_ad_slot = \"8584504377\";\r\ngoogle_ad_width = 300;\r\ngoogle_ad_height = 250;\r\n\/\/-->\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\"\r\nsrc=\"http:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/show_ads.js\">\r\n<\/script>\n<\/div>\n<p>Moments ago, the Bureau of Labor Statistics <a href=\"http:\/\/bls.gov\/news.release\/empsit.nr0.htm\" target=\"_blank\">estimated<\/a> that the nation added 171,000 jobs in October. That number (like all of those is here) is adjusted for seasonality.<\/p>\n<p>And that&#8217;s a pretty good number &#8212; it suggests that our recovery is continuing and it&#8217;s higher than the number of jobs that we need to add each month to keep up with population growth.<\/p>\n<p>The unemployment rate went up, however, to 7.9 percent from 7.8 percent the previous month.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll say more about the data later.<\/p>\n<p>On balance, this seems like good news for President Obama, but no one should be making up their mind about whether to vote for Mitt Romney or Barack Obama based on a single month&#8217;s jobs report.<\/p>\n<p>The numbers are estimates and could be revised significantly up or down as new data become available. <\/p>\n<p>The headline jobs number comes from an ongoing survey of payroll establishments across the nation. <\/p>\n<p>The unemployment rate comes from a different survey of households. Unlike the establishment survey that attempts to count the number of jobs in the country, the household survey estimates the number of Americans who report that they have work. Some of those people might have more than one job, some might have deeply unsatisfying jobs, some might even be unpaid interns. <\/p>\n<p>The two surveys tell us different things, all of which are important and all of which should be taken with shakers of salt.<\/p>\n<p>And as for all the talk of partisan tinkering with the data: The numbers are gathered and analyzed by career civil servants working closing with state government employees and using methodology that has been in place for decades.<\/p>\n<p>If there&#8217;s a conspiracy to alter the data, then that conspiracy will unravel for sure &#8212; it would involve too many people at far too many different levels all of whom would have to agree to fabricate numbers to show the same general trends.<\/p>\n<p>Today&#8217;s report should be viewed in the broader context of our sluggish recovery. The nation has been adding jobs for about three years, but we&#8217;re still far off the peak of employment in 2008. That sluggish recovery seems to have picked up a little steam of late, but there are lots of known and potential headwinds.<\/p>\n<p>The biggest problem our economy faces is the same one we&#8217;ve faced for years: the housing slowdown. New residential investment is typically an economic driver out of recession, but that simply couldn&#8217;t happen this time around &#8212; and the next few years are going to be bad ones in historical terms no matter who gets elected.<\/p>\n<div class=\"e26b170012445c56d240655bdd03f7bf\" data-index=\"2\" style=\"float: none; margin:0px 0 0px 0; text-align:center;\">\n<script async src=\"http:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js\"><\/script>\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:inline-block;width:300px;height:250px\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-5595881567027133\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"4374909701\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script>\n<\/div>\n\n<!--CusAds0-->\n<div style=\"font-size: 0px; height: 0px; line-height: 0px; margin: 0; padding: 0; clear: both;\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Moments ago, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that the nation added 171,000 jobs in October. That number (like all of those is here) is adjusted for seasonality. And that&#8217;s a pretty good number &#8212; it suggests that our recovery&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"more-link-p\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/2012\/11\/02\/the-latest-jobs-report-171000-jobs-7-9-unemployment-and-what-it-should-mean-for-the-election\/\">Read more &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[4,62],"tags":[117,31,410],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1gN9R-13l","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4051"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4051\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.billdawers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}