Why Today’s BLS Jobs Numbers Make No Sense

By: Daniel Horowitz (Diary)  |  October 5th at 11:45 AM  | 

Every month, we try to break down the monthly employment report from the BLS and analyze it in plain English.  Today’s report of September employment is so bizarre that it’s hard to comprehend, much less give over. The BLS puts out two surveys:  1)the establishment survey, which shows the growth in non-farm payroll jobs (as well as a breakdown by specific industry), surveys businesses and | Read More »

Jobs Report: Stagnation Continues

By: Daniel Horowitz (Diary)  |  July 6th at 10:45 AM  | 

The June jobs report from the BLS is out this morning, and the findings are not pretty.  The headline number of the establishment survey is that only 80,000 net jobs were created last month, about 100k under the requisite amount to accommodate the population increase.  The working-age population grew by 189k in June, according to the household survey.  As such, there are now 29 thousand | Read More »

Government’s broader unemployment measure still at 17%

By: Dan Spencer (Diary)  |  November 6th at 11:34 AM  | 

The government reports that the unemployment rate remained stuck at 9.6 percent in October. The government’s broader measure of unemployment, sometimes referred to “true unemployment,” is still at 17 percent. There was drop of 318,000 in the number of people employed part time but who would prefer full-time work. The drop resulted in a slight decrease in true unemployment from 17.1 to 17.0 percent.