obama's labor department cooks the numbers of new jobs in Octobers report.

[cbirch2]

These workers were striking workers returning to work.

You realize that even the conservatives that are normally on this board are coming out to say that your wrong, right??

What problem do you have with BLS reporting people that are temporarily out of work? Thats the whole point...

Is it that you somehow think a person out of work because of a strike has no effect on the economy??? because it does....

Point me to one conservative in this thread.

Heres Six

UER is unchanged because, though there MAY have been 103,000 new jobs added, apparently there were just as many lost.

Push

103,000 new jobs were reported in Octobers jobs report Sounds good doesn't it?

US adds 103,000 new jobs but unemployment rate unchanged
Better-than-expected figures provide some relief for Barack Obama and boost markets, although unemployment still at 9.1%

But wait something is not right

The increase in employment partially reflected the return to payrolls of about 45,000 Verizon telecoms workers who had been on strike in August. The number of unemployed people, at 14 million, remained essentially unchanged in September.

US adds 103,000 new jobs as unemployment rate unchanged | Business | guardian.co.uk
So there were no 103,000 new jobs which means obama's labor department lied.

Good point....I didn't realize that

So I guess what you are trying to tell us is that the employment numbers from August to October were actually too low by 45,000 jobs

Did they count the jobs as lost when they went on strike?
Just curious because if they did, I suppose there's nothing wrong with counting them as gained once they go back to work.

^^That person agreed with you, at least thanked you, one page 1 or 2. Now hes realizing your a retard... ^^

I am still wondering how folks who go out on strike qualify for unemployment in the first place?


and they did minus 45k a few months ago, now they have counted it back in, the term NEW can be problematic, but in all fairness I am not sure if they even have that quantification/qualification in the mumbo jumbo they use.

The unemployment number and the payroll number come from two seperate surveys, so it's not unusual for them to be out of sync.

...When a company shut's down for the holidays, when they return to work is that considered new jobs add to the economy?

If the workers were all laid off and the owners sold the company to new people that hired the old workforce, then yes. It happens so rarely that we don't have to worry about it.

BLS numbers are good. They're not perfect but no tools are perfect. As with other tools the big problem is with the person who uses them. Right now we got people trying to do economics complaining about their tools, and we all know that it's a very poor carpenter that blames his tools for his bad workmanship.

All of those people are conservatives. I know either because of their sig, or because i have personally had arguments with them in the past

You need to pay particular attention to what rightwinger said, and what ba1614 said.

Your doing the same thing that ringwinger was doing, only he realized it right away.

If your claim is that the October numbers are artificially high, and those arent new jobs. Fine. But that also means that the September numbers were artificially low, and those werent lost jobs.

Idk if you can understand that....

 

[Oldstyle]

The one thing we should all be able to agree on here is that the unemployment numbers and jobs numbers are compilied in such a convoluted manner as to make them useless.

Could anyone here explain to me why someone who has been unemployed for so long that they've become discouraged to the point of giving up looking for a job should be removed from the unemployed numbers? Did they suddenly just cease to exist? They aren't working and they'd like to be but in our system they don't get counted. Then when the economy starts to improve the unemployment numbers often times swell because people that weren't seeking jobs get back into the search again. It's the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen.

 

[cbirch2]

But im not really sure you understand whats going on in the situation either.

If verizon lays off 45k workers and doesnt have anyone else to work its missing out on sales and its not making profit. The total productivity of the economy actually did decrease for that period verizon wasnt able to make profits.

Once it hired them back it rose back to normal levels.

No one is reporting a gain. They're reporting to have erased an earlier loss, which was caused by the strike.

Do you not get this? everyone gets this but you.

 

[cbirch2]

The one thing we should all be able to agree on here is that the unemployment numbers and jobs numbers are compilied in such a convoluted manner as to make them useless.

Could anyone here explain to me why someone who has been unemployed for so long that they've become discouraged to the point of giving up looking for a job should be removed from the unemployed numbers? Did they suddenly just cease to exist? They aren't working and they'd like to be but in our system they don't get counted. Then when the economy starts to improve the unemployment numbers often times swell because people that weren't seeking jobs get back into the search again. It's the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen.

How exactly do you plan to count the others.

Kind of the point isnt it.

 

[pinqy]

Could anyone here explain to me why someone who has been unemployed for so long that they've become discouraged to the point of giving up looking for a job should be removed from the unemployed numbers? Did they suddenly just cease to exist? They aren't working and they'd like to be but in our system they don't get counted. Then when the economy starts to improve the unemployment numbers often times swell because people that weren't seeking jobs get back into the search again. It's the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen.

Easy. To define Unemployed, what do we want and what are we really trying to measure? We want as objective as possible a look at the actual labor market conditions: what percent of available labor is not being used.

First we have to start with the Population. For the Population we will not include those under 16 because there are legal barriers/restrictions for their work. We also will exclude the military because of legal restrictions for entry/exit. And we exclude prisoners and residents of mental or long-term health care insitutions. These groups all have non-labor market legal restrictions so they would distort the picture (military were included from 1984-94 and just inflated employment). As of October 2011, the Adult Civilian Non-institutional population was 240,269,000

So next we want to look at Available Labor, both used and unused. People who are working are available labor...they're working. People currently actively looking for work are also available labor...they are trying to get a job. So we call thee people working "Employed" and people trying to work "Unemployed" and together they make up the Labor Force. And the UE rate is the percent of the Labor Force that is Unemployed...the percent of available labor that is not being used. As of Oct, Employed was 140,987,000, Unemployed was 13,102,000 for a Labor Force of 154,088,000 and a UE rate of 13,102,000/154,088,000 = 8.5% (I'm using unadjusted numbers...the official numbers are seasonally adjusted to account for regular fluctuations with an official UE rate of 9%)

Everyone not trying to work is Not in the Labor Force. 86,181,000 Most of these are Disabled, Retired, stay-home spouses, and full time students...people who don't want a job. But there were 5,969,000 people who said they wanted a job (though none were looking for work). Should we count these people who SAY they want a job even though they're not looking? Well, some could not actually take a job if offered, some haven't looked for years, which makes their claim that they want work a little dubious. Certainly NOT objective measures of labor market conditions.

But there are some people who, while not currently available, might become aviailable. These are the Marginally Attached (2,555,000). These people state that they want to work and could have taken a job the previous week if offered and that they had looked for work in the last 12 months but not the last 4 weeks. So we know that they have recently tried to get a job and are therefore likely to start looking again soon if their situation changes. Some of the reasons for not looking are illness, injury, pregnancy, needed to look after children or other family member, lack of transportation, and Discouragement. Note that most of these reasons are personal and have nothing to do with Labor Market Conditions, so including them as Unemployed will tell us how many pontentially available people aren't working, it distorts what the actual Labor Market is doing. The U-5 measure of underutilization includes the Marginally Attached and is at 10% (not seasonally adjusted). That formula is (Unemployed + Marginally Attached)/(Labor Force + Marginally Attached). Seasonally Adjusted rate is 10.5%

And now, the Discouraged (967,000, less than half of all Marginally Attached). These are Marginally Attached whose reason for not looking is that they don't THINK they'll find work. Note that this is a BELIEF and may or may not reflect reality. Some of the reasons for Discouragement are that the individuals think they are too old, or too young, or that their sex or race is discriminated against or that they don't have the right skills or just that nobody is hiring. This is extremely subjective and only tells us their belief, not reality. The U-4 measure of undertilization includes the Discouraged in the forumla (Unemployed + Discouraged)/(Labor Force + Discouraged) and was 9.1% not seasonally adjusted, 9.6% seasonally adjusted.

So in short, Discouraged are not included as unemployed because it's too subjective, the margin of error is quite high and it only tells us about belief, not actual market conditions.

The U-4 and U-5 are certainly useful to look at to see a broader picture of the Unemployment Situation, and you're certainly free to look at those numbers instead of the official U-3 if that's more helpful to you.

But it's not some kind of plot to mislead or misinform....adding them tells a different story, one that is not the main focus of most economists.

Oh, and note that discouragement has nothing to do with length of unemployement. Someone who was working in early August, got laid off and started looking for work in late August/early Sept, then stopped looking by the second week of Sept becuase he didn't think he'd find work would be classified as Employed for Aug, Unemployed for Sep, and Discouraged for Oct.