Job report: 171,000 new jobs in October, previous months revised up 84,000, UR @ 7.9%

[NFS4]

Threads Merged

Fern
Super Moderator

Headline on CNN's website. No story attached yet. Not exactly good news or bad news. Doubt this really has any bearing on changing peoples' minds in the end.

Besides, if you're an undecided voter at this stage, you're an idiot.

http://www.cnn.com/

 

[Blackjack200]

Good news!

No doubt Mittens will scream bloody murder that the unemployment rate moved up a tenth of a percent.

Also, the monthly jobs number does need to go higher, but we clearly have some momentum going into the end of the year where at the beginning of the year we had slower growth.

I don't think it will have much impact on the election.

 

[mshan]

IIRC, we only need 100k - 125k per month to keep up with population growth*, and unrevised monthly average this year has been about 150k (with revisions I think it has been 175k/month).


95% confidence interval on unemployment rate appears to be about +/- 0.2%:

while that on topline number appears to be +/- 100k:

(from commentary I've seen on tv, 150k - 175k / month SAAR job growth does seems to be consistent with 2% (possibly slightly higher) real GDP growth, too)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...jobs-report-where-do-these-numbers-come-from/

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2266842 (popular vote margin)

http://election.princeton.edu/ (electoral college projection and probability)



* Population growth has only been 0.7% - 0.8%, where historically it has been as high as 1.4% - 1.5%.

 

[xBiffx]

I fail to see the good news in the unemployment rate ticking back up instead of ticking down. After all, we should be a couple of whole points lower than this by now.

 

[jackstar7]

This number can't be trusted! They're cookin' the books for... no particular reason!

More pointless whining!

 

[mshan]

Blackjack 2000 already started a thread on this topic (http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2280533)

Regarding The Undecideds: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/the-daily-rundown/49086377#49086377 (commentary is from earlier in cycle, September 19, to be exact, so presumably pool of remaining undecided voters is even smaller and more sour ("they suck lemons") than commentators describe above)

 

[jackstar7]

This number can't be trusted! They're cookin' the books for... no particular reason!

More pointless whining!

 

[NFS4]

Blackjack 2000 already started a thread on this topic (http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2280533)

Regarding The Undecideds: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/the-daily-rundown/49086377#49086377 (commentary is from earlier in cycle, September 19, to be exact)

Uh, my thread was first

My thread ID : 2280532
His thread ID : 2280533

But whatever...

 

[jackstar7]

I fail to see the good news in the unemployment rate ticking back up instead of ticking down. After all, we should be a couple of whole points lower than this by now.

Why should we? Are there parallel economic cycles that you're drawing from to make that conclusion?

 

[NFS4]

Full Report:

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Hiring increased last month, while the unemployment rate ticked higher, according to a report released just four days before the presidential election.

The economy added 171,000 jobs in October, while the unemployment ticked up to 7.9, from 7.8% in September, the Labor Department said Friday.

Economists surveyed by CNNMoney had expected employers to add 125,000 positions in the month and unemployment to inch up to 7.9%.

The number of jobs added in August and September were revised sharply higher, adding a combined 84,000 more jobs that originally reported.

Professional and business services added 51,000 positions, while health care employment rose by 31,000. Retail and leisure and hospitality also boosted payrolls. Manufacturing was little changed and mining lost 9,000 jobs.

The report, the last before Tuesday's election, will likely be picked apart by politicians as well as economists. September's report, which showed an unexpected drop in the unemployment rate, prompted an outcry from Republican supporters, including Jack Welch, claiming the figure had been manipulated.

The monthly jobs report has taken on increased importance as the nation struggles to recover from the economic downturn. Roughly 12.3 million people remain unemployed, 40.6% of whom have been so for more than six months. And presidential candidates Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are centering much of the campaigns on who can create more jobs.

Employment growth has averaged 157,000 jobs per month so far in 2012, slightly more than the 2011 average monthly gain of 153,000.

http://money.cnn.com/2012/11/02/news/economy/october-jobs-report/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

 

[mshan]

Sorry, my bad.

Guess I saw his thread first, then saw yours, and assumed he posted first.

I copied and pasted what I wrote in other thread since I don't know which thread mods will close:

IIRC, we only need 100k - 125k per month to keep up with population growth*, and unrevised monthly average this year has been about 150k (with revisions I think it has been 175k/month).


95% confidence interval on unemployment rate appears to be about +/- 0.2%:

while that on topline number appears to be +/- 100k:

(from commentary I've seen on tv, 150k - 175k / month SAAR job growth does seems to be consistent with 2% (possibly slightly higher) real GDP growth, too)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...jobs-report-where-do-these-numbers-come-from/

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2266842 (popular vote margin)

http://election.princeton.edu/ (electoral college projection and probability)



* Population growth has only been 0.7% - 0.8%, where historically it has been as high as 1.4% - 1.5%.

 

[Charles Kozierok]

I fail to see the good news in the unemployment rate ticking back up instead of ticking down.

You didn't seem to see any good news in it going down three points last month, either.

 

[xBiffx]

You didn't seem to see any good news in it going down three points last month, either.

For the same reason. People stop being counted in both numbers because they no longer are "on the books". Also, we are replacing higher paying jobs with lower paying or PT jobs. Its not always about quantity but quality of jobs.

Edit: Time for a mod to merge I think.

 

[Charles Kozierok]

The labor participation rate improved with this report. That's part of why the rate ticked up a bit.

You can't have it both ways.

 

[Capt Caveman]

I fail to see the good news in the unemployment rate ticking back up instead of ticking down. After all, we should be a couple of whole points lower than this by now.

That's b/c you don't understand the numbers. And based on the current global economy, thinking the employment rate could be a couple of whole points lower is silly.

Oh wait, you actually believe Romney about being able to add 12 million jobs with no plan on how he's going to do it while reducing the deficit, lowering taxes and increasing military spending.

 

[xBiffx]

The labor participation rate improved with this report. That's part of why the rate ticked up a bit.

You can't have it both ways.

Like I said, its not about quantity. I can have it both ways. The only way we are going to see any "recovery" is getting Americans back to good paying jobs, not sending them to lower paying PT jobs.

To send them back to work in a lower employment status that they originality came from is far from recovering. They need to get back from where they came to call it a recovery.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

The point is that no matter whom wins in a few days, the hiring rate is picking up and approaching that 250-300k per month figure we all need to start seeing improvements (ie: pay increase, better benefits, ect). Assuming Congress gets the fiscal cliff taken care of without much drama, I doubt the tea party will make much of a fuss over it since the beat down they had last year on the debt ceiling. Businesses will start to hire, business owners simply want certainty which is currently missing.

 

[mshan]

"They need to get back from where they came to call it a recovery.'

Unless you are calling for socialism in terms of government intervention in economy, that is an unreasonable goal, because economy has changed and evolved even while going through The Great Recession.

Like Jack Welch said a month or so ago, corporate America is around 70 - 80% of peak revenue from 2007 - 2008, yet corporate profits have gotten back to those lofty bubble economy highs still. And with 30% fewer workers, in part because automation has permanently remove alot of those jobs you are waiting to come back.

Plus retailers and restaurants have been using sophisticated software to convert their workforce from full-time employees to part-time workers for the last few decades:

"While there have always been part-time workers, especially at restaurants and retailers, employers today rely on them far more than before as they seek to cut costs and align staffing to customer traffic. This trend has frustrated millions of Americans who want to work full-time, reducing their pay and benefits.

“Over the past two decades, many major retailers went from a quotient of 70 to 80 percent full-time to at least 70 percent part-time across the industry,” said Burt P. Flickinger III, managing director of the Strategic Resource Group, a retail consulting firm.

No one has collected detailed data on part-time workers at the nation’s major retailers. However, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has found that the retail and wholesale sector, with a total of 18.6 million jobs, has cut a million full-time jobs since 2006, while adding more than 500,000 part-time jobs.

Technology is speeding this transformation. In the past, part-timers might work the same schedule of four- or five-hour shifts every week. But workers’ schedules have become far less predictable and stable. Many retailers now use sophisticated software that tracks the flow of customers, allowing managers to assign just enough employees to handle the anticipated demand.

“Many employers now schedule shifts as short as two or three hours, while historically they may have scheduled eight-hour shifts,” said David Ossip, founder of Dayforce, a producer of scheduling software used by chains like Aéropostale and Pier One Imports.

Some employers even ask workers to come in at the last minute, and the workers risk losing their jobs or being assigned fewer hours in the future if they are unavailable."

"Many corporations place store or restaurant managers under strict limits about what their payroll or employee hours can be each week, usually based on a formula tied to sales. These formulas usually give managers little flexibility to increase the hours assigned.

David Henson, a former assistant manager at a Walmart in Thief River Falls, Minn., said part-timers would sometimes come into his office on the brink of tears.

“A lot of them were single mothers. They said they weren’t earning enough to support their families,” he said. “They desperately wanted more hours, but we weren’t able to give them.”

Some, Mr. Henson said, were eager to take second jobs. But if they said they were unavailable during certain hours, then the managers and scheduling software would reduce their hours further, he said. Many workers concluded that it was simply not worth it."

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/part-time-life-hours-shrink-142806402.html



(and IIRC, alot of food stamps probably go to the children and working single moms described as struggling so badly now in article above)

 

[Thump553]

I fail to see the good news in the unemployment rate ticking back up instead of ticking down. After all, we should be a couple of whole points lower than this by now.

Bless you for being so predictable. You should audition for a spot on Fox News.

Somewhat related good news (that doesn't appear good at first glance)-it appears that worker productivity has peaked. This means that employers have squeezed as much as they can out of current workforce and further growth will necessitate further employment.

It will be interesting what effect Sandy has in the near term. Productivity in my area (CT) was shot to hell this week, and our problems are much much smaller than NYC or NJ.

 

[PJABBER]

There is nothing to celebrate with these reported numbers.

 

[mshan]

Just saw this on the Princeton Election Consortium website:

"Imagine for a moment that national and state polls use exactly the same methods (not exactly true, but close enough). Historically, pollsters as a group do well. But they aren't perfect. In 2000-2008, national-poll medians missed the final outcome by 0.3%, 1.4%, and 2.5%, despite the fact that perfect methods would have missed by 0.6% on average. So there's a large systematic error. How would this affect one's snapshot view of the national and state race?

This year, the national race is close. A systematic error of 1-2% would make it hard to accurately determine who was in the lead nationally. But state races are usually less close. Even Ohio, a critical swing state, has a median of Obama +3.0 +/- 0.5%, a lead that would not be altered by that systematic error. Indeed, at the moment only two states are within range of flipping in such a way: Virginia and Florida. The likely outcome of the other 49 races would still be determined correctly. The Presidency is decided by winner-take-all elections in each state. Therefore our Meta-Analysis of State Polls is likely to come closer tothe correct result than national polls. In coming days I'll combine the two to come up with a final prediction of the popular vote margin."


http://election.princeton.edu/believe-national-or-state-polls-2nov2012.php

Even if you give Romney Florida, Virginia, and let's toss in Colorado (because it seems to have a slight Republican lean this cycle), that still puts Obama at 284 electoral votes.

Democratic Wave would still put Obama around 347 electoral votes (North Carolina), but popular margin above 2.5 - 3%, according to PEC (website archives not available because they had to move server because of Sandy), would probably put control of House into play realistically.

And Romney long ago threw Senate Republicans under the bus with choice of Ryan as VP (seems like Democrats will retain seats, and possibly even pick up one seat)

 

[Blackjack200]

There is nothing to celebrate with these reported numbers.

Wow, I'm just totally shocked! I saw PJABBER responded to my thread and thought to myself "self, PJABBER has seen these numbers and is coming into the thread to celebrate with me."

Imagine the total and complete jolt to my system when I click on the thread and see him critical of the report! Just so unexepected!

 

[Matt1970]

Let um cook the books all they want. Even 7.7% unemployment at this point would still stink to high heaven and is just further proof of the failures of the current policies in place.

 

[emperus]

I fail to see the good news in the unemployment rate ticking back up instead of ticking down. After all, we should be a couple of whole points lower than this by now.

You are so transparent.

 

[xBiffx]

You are so transparent.

Working on my run for president in 2016.