BLS Unemployment Numbers Released Friday (Updated x2)
[Guest post by DRJ]
Most analysts expect the unemployment numbers released tomorrow by the Bureau of Labor Statistics will show 200,000 more jobs:
“Action Economics expects the U.S. employment report for April, scheduled for release on May 7, to show an increase in nonfarm payrolls of around 200,000, beating the gain of 162,000 in March. We expect another big boost from Census hiring, while the private payroll figures in the report should continue to post a slow but steady recovery from the peak declines of the recession seen in the first quarter of last year.”
As noted, the bulk of the new jobs may be temporary Census jobs:
“The industry mix should reveal a hefty surge in government hiring in the neighborhood of 150,000 that is led by an assumed 170,000 surge in Census hiring, alongside a modest 50,000 gain for private payrolls that would mark the fourth straight monthly increase.
We will assume that the Census contribution to government employment will climb to a cumulative 570,000 by May, which is below the 635,000 estimate from the Commerce Dept. The climb to a May peak should be quickly reversed by yearend.”
If these numbers prove to be correct, government is doing well.
— DRJ
UPDATE: In a 1999 press release, the Commerce Department said there were 2,578 American cities with populations of 10,000 or more. Assuming tomorrow’s report shows there are approximately 50,000 new private jobs, that means each city added 19 private sector jobs.
UPDATE 2 – 5/7/2010: Most analysts were wrong. The numbers show good news:
“In April, nonfarm payroll employment rose by 290,000. Sizable employment gains occurred in manufacturing, professional and business services, health care, and in leisure and hospitality. Federal government employment increased due to the hiring of temporary workers for Census 2010. Since December, nonfarm payroll employment has expanded by 573,000, with 483,000 jobs added in the private sector. The vast majority of job growth occurred during the last 2 months. (See table B-1.)”
April added 231,000 private sector jobs, plus revisions for February and March added significantly more jobs. However, there are still concerns as the underemployment rate and long-term unemployment rose. Presumably more discouraged workers are returning to the workforce.
New Obama Economic Jobs Plan: ongoing census every year?
JVW (bf4fc7) — 5/6/2010 @ 11:41 pmJVW,
It’s an ongoing Census until the month prior to an election, and apparently almost everyone is welcome.
DRJ (d43dcd) — 5/6/2010 @ 11:51 pmI updated the post with a look at how the job numbers play out across America. Hopefully I did the math right.
DRJ (d43dcd) — 5/7/2010 @ 12:11 amthe only thing i know about senseless j*bs is that, despite a perfect 28/28 on the test and five extra veteran’s points, i’m not getting hired.
the only other thing i know is that i will be down at the local Representatives office filling out a constituent form asking him to look into why that is.
redc1c4 (fb8750) — 5/7/2010 @ 1:13 ami’ll also be waiting to see who, if anyone, comes to the house to ask about our form. š
19.4, if you want to get fussy…..
redc1c4 (fb8750) — 5/7/2010 @ 1:20 amone more thing: if the numbers were actually good, they wouldn’t be burying them on a fryday, they’d get them out early to enjoy the bounce.
even the liars admit they are lying.
redc1c4 (fb8750) — 5/7/2010 @ 1:26 amBLS labor statistics? I think you have a typo there, your acronym has an extra letter.
thatguy (2bda65) — 5/7/2010 @ 4:51 amI updated the post with good news.
DRJ (d43dcd) — 5/7/2010 @ 6:00 amIt’s good to hear good news on the economy. This is what would have happened in the natural course of things, without spending all that money on the “stimulus”.
The American economy is too big to keep down for long. It’s 300 million people going about their daily business. Only a fool would believe anyone has the power to eliminate cyclical recessions.
Some chump (4f03b2) — 5/7/2010 @ 7:09 amonly a fool would believe these numbers…. “survey” must be government speak for “random number generator”.
i’m not sure who’s pulling these figures for publication, but i hope their health care covers the cost of Preparation H, because they’re going to be needing it.
redc1c4 (fb8750) — 5/7/2010 @ 7:20 amIf you’ve got more reliable numbers, redc, I’d love to see them.
Did you believe the BLS numbers when Bush was President?
Some chump (4f03b2) — 5/7/2010 @ 7:26 amHow is this good news? Excuse me? The unemployment numbers go from 15,005,000 in March to 15,260,000 in April? That is 255,000 more unemployed Americans in one month and the unemployment rate went up to 9.9%, and that is good news?
I am seeing Cencus workers everywhere. There is even one sitting at a table all day long at my county court house. What happens when those people are laid off? And our local Lowe’s just hired 10 seasonal workers (3-6 months) that are not permanent.
So someone needs to explain to me how an increase in the number of unemployed and the hiring of seasonal workers is good news?
retire05 (2abfb2) — 5/7/2010 @ 7:36 amhahahahaha….. when Bush was President, unemployment at 6 or 7% was the end of the world, but now that Ear Leader is leading us down the path to “hope” and “change” 10% is good news.
i don’t know anyone who has found a j*b, other than one person who landed a senseless one. everywhere i go in the Valley, apartments are begging for tenants. the home improvement stores are empty and the shopping malls have parking open right by the stores. there are more empty storefronts on the Boulevard than there were last month, including a restaurant that has been there for years.
so keep churning out those numbers anyway you want them: i’m gonna trust my lying eyes, not some corrupt third world socialist and his minions.
redc1c4 (fb8750) — 5/7/2010 @ 7:58 amhave another hit on the Obama regime crack pipe
redc1c4 (fb8750) — 5/7/2010 @ 8:24 ami’m not the only one throwing the BS flag
“Birth/Death” concept explained
redc1c4 (fb8750) — 5/7/2010 @ 9:20 amI gotta vote with #12 on this…
just how in ‘ell is an increase to 9.9% good news?
Ooh, Ooh, Mistah Cahttah, it’s because it’s not 10%!
AD - RtR/OS! (044556) — 5/7/2010 @ 9:20 amNPR is at pains to tell us that 9.9% is just an artifact of the fact that more folks are back to trying to find work.
Of course, nobody mentioned all those folks when they just gave up looking, and let the percent down to 8.9% That was just wonderful then, and the increase to 9.9% is just wonderful now.
Glad we have the MSM to keep us informed of what Obama wants us to think.
sherlock (c70795) — 5/7/2010 @ 10:51 amNPR is at pains to tell us that 9.9% is just an artifact of the fact that more folks are back to trying to find work.
This is accurate–the number of reentrants to the labor force went up by 195,000 last month–but it doesn’t tell the whole story. On page 2 of the report, the BLS says that long-term unemployed went up again to 45.9%. That means we are getting closer to a point where half the unemployed work force has been without a job for 27 weeks or longer.
Yeah, I’m sure the expiration of these individuals’ unemployment benefits didn’t have anything at all to do with their decision to start looking for work again. /sarc
Also, the number of marginally attached and discouraged workers is up y/o/y; NOT good news at all when federal income tax revenues dropped 17.6% from last year. This is going have a waterfall effect and put even more pressure on state and local governments to make ends meet. The failed “stimulus” has just about run out of gas and these governments aren’t going to be able to count on Helicopter Ben to airdrop federal deficit bailout funds for much longer.
The data is showing incremental improvements in some areas, but I think in the long run the other factors are going to take over and strangle whatever piddly “recovery” has taken place.
Another Chris (2d8013) — 5/7/2010 @ 11:34 amOnly a fool would believe anyone has the power to eliminate cyclical recessions.
Only a fool would believe that massive gov’t intervention in the form of unsustainable deficits won’t seriously harm the inevitable climbback – and lead to the inevitable climbdown. Please peruse Henry Morgenthau’s (FDR’s chief architect of Keynesian insanity) opinions on how that worked out for FDR. Not so much.
Dmac (21311c) — 5/7/2010 @ 12:42 pmYes, but Obama is still in FDR’s first phase – the demonizing of the financial class (remember how long they pursued Mellon – and still do to some extent),
AD - RtR/OS! (044556) — 5/7/2010 @ 12:58 pmit will take him time to get to the back of the book and find out that what he’s doing now is all wrong.
Market fell another 140 points today; but, yesterday was 340, so it’s getting better just like those unemployment numbers.
AD - RtR/OS! (044556) — 5/7/2010 @ 1:04 pmThe idea that there is any good news in the jobless report is unfortunately false.
As mentioned here the report’s U6 unemployment rate went up to 17.1 percent in April. That simply puts paid to the claim that the rise in the regular unemployment rate is due to more job seekers. The U6 rate included those who stopped looking for work because they gave up. If it was true that the rise in regular unemployment was because of more job seekers coming out of that category, then the U6 rate would not have increased.
Frankly, Obama can’t be blamed for the fact that we have high unemployment at all. I think that he can be blamed for why high unemployment is continuing as I think his administration’s policies have lengthened the recession. That’s difficult to prove conclusively of course.
What is clear is that Obama and the Democrats about 14 months ago bet the recession would end soo and that they would be able to pass a “stimulus” bill on the crisis that paid off their constituents, funded pet programs and did nothing to actually help anyone. It was a dishonest and stupid bet at the time, and it backfired on them.
SPQR (26be8b) — 5/7/2010 @ 1:39 pmAs to how the unemployment, employment and labor force numbers are determined youād be surprised to know that is done via the BLS doing 60,000 telephone interviews each month. Yes, interviews which the questions are so convoluted that the BLS says with pride that at the end of the interview the interviewee will have no idea how they will be classified. (see http://www.eoearth.org/article/Measuring_employment_and_unemployment ) Luckily there is no chance that these numbers can be manipulated. /sarc
in_awe (44fed5) — 5/7/2010 @ 2:10 pmWhat is clear is that Obama and the Democrats about 14 months ago bet the recession would end soo and that they would be able to pass a āstimulusā bill on the crisis that paid off their constituents, funded pet programs and did nothing to actually help anyone. It was a dishonest and stupid bet at the time, and it backfired on them.
For a President that talks so much sh*t about Wall Street bankster gamblers, he sure doesn’t have a problem emulating their methods. No surprise from the First Ward Heeler.
Another Chris (35bdd0) — 5/7/2010 @ 4:34 pmNon sequitur. I never said that the current unemployment rate was good. But the fact that the economy added 250K jobs last month is a good sign.
I didn’t and wouldn’t vote for Obama, but good economic news is good economic news.
And you didn’t answer either of my questions:
1. Do you have a better set of numbers on job growth than the ones the BLS publishes?
2. Did you believe the BLS while Bush was President?
If you base your statistics only on people you know, you’ll start sounding like Pauline Kael.
I found a job, been there 5 weeks now. It’s paying 6 figures (not including the two to the right of the decimal point). Based on a survey of my household, the unemployment rate is 0%.
Some chump (4f03b2) — 5/7/2010 @ 5:35 pm^Gee, and we’re all so happy for you! Please go out into the streets where you can tell the millions of the unemployed the good news!
You’d last about 30 seconds in my neighborhood if you started braying about that kind of luck. What an arsehole.
Dmac (21311c) — 5/7/2010 @ 5:55 pmNo need for insults, dmac. I was just supplying a counterpoint to redc’s claim that no one he knows has found a non-trivial job. Both are absurd positions, simply because the samples are so small.
Look, any way you slice it, the fact that the economy added over 250K jobs last month is good news. It would have been good news when Bush was President, and it’s good news with Obama as President.
Does it mean the recession is over? I don’t know. Generally speaking, the economy doesn’t begin to add jobs until after a recession has bottomed out and started into the early phases of recovery.
Does it mean that unemployment suddenly isn’t an issue? Of course not. No reasonable person would say such a thing.
Does it mean that the debt Obama has gotten us into is no longer a problem? Again, of course not.
I got sick of liberals a few years ago who talked down any good news on the economy simply because Bush was President. No matter how good the news, it was never good enough: there were still many people unemployed, there were still many more jobs that had been lost, etc. I’d hate to think that the regular commentors on this board have fallen into the same partisan mire.
Redc said that only a fool would believe the numbers from the BLS, and I challenged him to supply more reliable numbers. No answer to that. I asked whether he trusted the BLS numbers when Bush was President, and he sidestepped the question.
The point I was trying to make, which apparently was lost on you and him alike, was that it is intellectually dishonest to gainsay statistics from an organization whose stats you trusted when a man from a different party was in office.
On a side note, you have my sympathies over being forced to live in such a low-class neighborhood full of people who can’t be happy for another man’s good fortune.
Some chump (e5b8dc) — 5/7/2010 @ 8:54 pmLook, any way you slice it, the fact that the economy added over 250K jobs last month is good news. It would have been good news when Bush was President, and itās good news with Obama as President.
Sorry, but it’s rather silly to claim that the economy added 250K non-farm jobs when the BLS reported that 188K of that number was from the birth/death model inputs–a statistic that is merely an assumption of businesses gained and lost, not a verified number. We’ve been hearing the “employment lags the market” argument for nearly a year now, and at this point it’s just a lame attempt to avoid dealing with reality.
Just as an example, the BLS is off from the ADP report by orders of magnitude. In April, the ADP report said that the economy gained 32K jobs in March; the BLS reported that the economy gained 162K jobs, with 81K from birth/death and 48K from the census, and another 100K adjustment for “weather”.
Take out those numbers and the net is -67K; put the “weather” stat back in and the number is 33K, almost exactly what ADP reported.
This month, ADP reported another 32K job gain.
Guess what? When you remove the Census workers and birth/death stats from the BLS counts, the net is 36K, a number closer to ADP’s report than the BLS.
Lastly, the BLS has been known to do some bad math at times:
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/bls-discloses-it-has-overrepresented-payroll-data-824000-or-15
Is it good that some people found jobs? Of course it is. But don’t go claiming that this report is good news–it’s not. Even a superficial analysis shows that there is little, if any, evidence that we are in any kind of sustainable recovery. All the happytalk in the world won’t change that.
Another Chris (35bdd0) — 5/8/2010 @ 10:38 amSome chump, you are not paying attention are you? BLS’ own data undermine your spin.
SPQR (26be8b) — 5/8/2010 @ 10:45 amOn a side note, you have my sympathies over being forced to live in such a low-class neighborhood…
I don’t live in a “low – class” neighborhood, where I live is composed of those who don’t brag about their awesomness 24/7, but have the good grace to realize their fortunate situations and STFU about it.
who canāt be happy for another manās good fortune.
Does this sound like someone who’s sincerely grateful for his good fortune?
I found a job, been there 5 weeks now. Itās paying 6 figures (not including the two to the right of the decimal point). Based on a survey of my household, the unemployment rate is 0%.
That is the sound of an unmitigated, narcissistic bunghole.
Dmac (21311c) — 5/8/2010 @ 12:40 pm