Jobs report: Unemployment Rate Drops to 7.8%

[Harlowe]

Obama needed some good news. I've read it would be a bit lower if it weren't for the drag of cutting 570k+ government jobs cut since Obama took office.

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012 ... for-obama/

[Embar Angylwrath]

Except that unemployment didn't drop. Reporting of unemployment did.

The real number is the U-6 number, which more accurately captures the unemployment/underemployment picture, and isn't some meaningless count on the people who are on the unemployment benefit rolls. And that number in September was 14.7 percent, the same as it was in August. It has come down by a little over 2 percentage points since its high in late 2009.

http://portalseven.com/employment/unemp ... ate_u6.jsp

Romney will be sure to bring that up in the debate. Using the unemployment number currently tossed about is a fiction. Since the U-6 number didn't change at all, the largest driver of the drop in that unemployment number were people giving up and no longer looking for work and people whose unemployment benefits have expired.

[Lurker]

Except that unemployment didn't drop. Reporting of unemployment did.

It's true that sometimes drops in the U3 unemployment rate can be explained by frustrated people dropping out of the work force, but that's not what the numbers show this time. The numbers do not show that people dropped out of the labor force. Keep that fact in mind when you hear people repeating the talking point you used.

The real number is the U-6 number, which more accurately captures the unemployment/underemployment picture, and isn't some meaningless count on the people who are on the unemployment benefit rolls. And that number in September was 14.7 percent, the same as it was in August.

I agree that U6 provides a better picture, but the fact that the U6 number didn't change from August to September doesn't mean that there aren't more people employed now than there were in August. People moving from unemployed to part-time work would still show up in U6.

The jobs report had some good news. Not good enough obviously, but lets not resort to disinformation about what the report showed.

And we haven't forgotten that the Republicans engaged in a deliberate strategy of economic sabotage for political gain, blocking Obama's Jobs legislation again, and again, and again, and again.

[Harlowe]

Some right wingers are claiming that it the numbers were manipulated...Tony Fratto, former spokesperson for GWB basically calls the tin-foil-hatters dumb.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/theoval/2 ... n/1614969/

[Fallakin Kuvari]

1) Holiday hiring.

2) see number 1.

Its really the only thing that would explain 873,000 people getting jobs while the U6 numbers don't move.

[Fallakin Kuvari]

MSM gives Obama an excuse - Romney Cheated! http://t.co/vaXrLai -- MSM will say anything to save the anointed one.

P.S. It was a handkerchief.

[Garrdor]

I don't claim unemployment anymore because I'm ineligible for benefits now.

But yeah, no job.

++not counted, so everything is fine right?!?!?!?

[Ddrak]

Romney won't talk about it at all, and Obama probably won't either. It's too technical and doesn't neatly fit in a 5 word sound-bite. Romney is more likely to just claim the numbers are fudged or something similar because that's far easier to get to stick.

As for Jack Welch - he was and continues to be an asshole and not someone that was EVER worth listening to. His policies as CEO of GE sucked and he's only gotten worse since he left. The sad part is the idiots that try to emulate him are still infesting Fortune 500 companies.

I like that Fallakin's linked article has a retraction posted - so much for that good old mythical bias (hint: playing the helpless martyr card is lame).

I'm pretty sure you won't see holiday hiring in September (and it doesn't fit the stats anyway as that would cause a U6 drop). The change in U3-U5 with none in U6 would seem to be people moving from part time to full time, by definition.

Dd

[Fallakin Kuvari]

I'm pretty sure you won't see holiday hiring in September (and it doesn't fit the stats anyway as that would cause a U6 drop). The change in U3-U5 with none in U6 would seem to be people moving from part time to full time, by definition.

Dd

U6 doesn't count people hired for part-time work because thats generally considered "underemployed". Most holiday jobs are part time and the ramp up for Christmas started in September this year (way earlier than in years past).

If they moved from part-time to full-time, it would've been reflected in the U6 numbers.

What is U6 unemployment rate ?
The U6 unemployment rate counts not only people without work seeking full-time employment (the more familiar U-3 rate), but also counts "marginally attached workers and those working part-time for economic reasons."

[Ddrak]

@Fallakin,

Yeah, you're right. I got it the wrong way around. /facepalm.

Not convinced it's entirely holiday hiring though. Sep seems crazy early. Why do you say it's started so early?

Dd

[Minute]

Why do you say it's started so early?

Dd

Durr, because anything else would be to admit that perhaps the current administration would have something to do with it lowering.

[Fallakin Kuvari]

@Fallakin,

Yeah, you're right. I got it the wrong way around. /facepalm.

Not convinced it's entirely holiday hiring though. Sep seems crazy early. Why do you say it's started so early?

Dd

Because Christmas decoration sales, layaway sales and holiday ads started in early september this year, as opposed to October (another sign that our economy is in the shitter).

[Lurker]

As sluggish as the economy is right now, things would have been infinitely worse if the Republicans had gotten their way and we had implemented a spending freeze instead of a stimulus, and had allowed the auto industry to collapse instead of rescuing it.

And we still haven't forgotten that the Republicans engaged in a deliberate strategy of economic sabotage for political gain, blocking Obama's Jobs legislation again, and again, and again, and again.

[Lurker]

A Wall Street Journal fact-check shows that part-time jobs declined and all of the gains in employment were due to full-time jobs.

A lot of people — some of them very smart — are saying something false about today’s jobs report: That the unemployment rate fell only because lots of part-time jobs were created.

...

That’s just not so.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of people with full-time jobs increased by 838,000 in September to 115.2 million, while the number of people with part-time jobs declined by 26,000 to 27.7 million.

In other words: All of the gains in employment were due to full-time jobs.

It’s right there in Table A-9.

It remains to be seen if this is a one month aberration or if the trend continues, but according to the report the drop in unemployment is not the result of part-time holiday hiring.

[Embar Angylwrath]

And it can't be due to solely new hiring. There have been similar jobs reports before, and they haven't resulted in such a swing in the unemployment numbers. Also,the U-6 didn't budge. And it would have if the unemployment rate came down solely because of new hiring.

Side note: It seems Romney got a decent bump from the debate. According to Pew, he now leads with likely voters. He's lost 12 points over the last month. That's a pretty big swing in that group.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/onpolitic ... e/1621309/

[Ddrak]

Nate Silver is still the authority on chance to win.

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/

Romney did get a significant bump from the debate - no question, but when mapped across the states and EC he's still only a 25% chance. Not taking away that it wasn't a great result from the debate - looking like a 4% instant bump that faded to around 2.5%.

Take other sources if you want:
http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pol ... y-vs-obama#!
http://www.oddschecker.com/specials/pol ... ion/winner
http://www.predictwise.com/politics/201 ... individual

Dd

[Arathena]

Nate Silver is still the authority on chance to win.

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/

Romney did get a significant bump from the debate - no question, but when mapped across the states and EC he's still only a 25% chance. Not taking away that it wasn't a great result from the debate - looking like a 4% instant bump that faded to around 2.5%.

Take other sources if you want:
http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pol ... y-vs-obama#!
http://www.oddschecker.com/specials/pol ... ion/winner
http://www.predictwise.com/politics/201 ... individual

Dd

Interestingly, the bump in Romney's nominal support is followed by a slightly smaller decrease in intention among his supporters to vote, and a bolstering of Obama's supporter's intentions to vote. It is difficult to tell how much of it is real, but I also wonder how much of it comes from the fact that you can splice together videos like this.

[MeGusta]

http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com ... -away.html

Too arrogant to take a core campaign responsibility seriously. Too arrogant to give his supporters what they deserve. If he now came out and said he supports Simpson-Bowles in its entirety, it would look desperate, but now that Romney has junked every proposal he ever told his base, and we're in mid-October, it's Obama's only chance on the economy.

Or maybe, just maybe, Obama can regain our trust and confidence somehow in the next debate. Maybe he can begin to give us a positive vision of what he wants to do (amazing that it's October and some of us are still trying to help him, but he cannot). Maybe if Romney can turn this whole campaign around in 90 minutes, Obama can now do the same. But I doubt it. A sitting president does not recover from being obliterated on substance, style and likability in the first debate and get much of a chance to come back. He has, at a critical moment, deeply depressed his base and his supporters and independents are flocking to Romney in droves.

[Harlowe]

He also said, in that same article...

I'm trying to see a silver lining. But when a president self-immolates on live TV, and his opponent shines with lies and smiles, and a record number of people watch, it's hard to see how a president and his party recover. I'm not giving up. If the lies and propaganda of the last four years work even after Obama had managed to fight back solidly against them to get a clear and solid lead in critical states, then reality-based government is over in this country again. We're back to Bush-Cheney, but more extreme. We have to find a way to avoid that. Much, much more than Obama's vanity is at stake.

[Lurker]

Andrew Sullivan sure panicks easy.