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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Francis Cianfrocca to discuss why the latest unemployment report is good politically, but not a sign that the recession is over, the Facebook IPO, and our Super Bowl picks.
We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.
Related Links:
Employment Jumps; Rate 8.3%, 243,000 New Jobs Created
BLS: Employment Report for January, 2012
Why the unemployment rate might fall to 8.1 percent by Election Day—and why it’s bad news for Obama
Record 1.2 Million People Fall Out Of Labor Force In One Month, Labor Force Participation Rate Tumbles To Fresh 30 Year Low
Facebook Form S-1
Who Owns What, Who Makes What in the Facebook IPO
Facebook’s net income and revenues: $1 billion on $3.71 billion in 2011
From Founders to Decorators, Facebook Riches
The Quiet Man: Meet the Less-Known Face of the Facebook IPO, CFO David Ebersman
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I don't know...adding 257,000 private-sector jobs while shrinking govt jobs by 14,000...
APA Guy (Diary) Friday, February 3rd at 10:20AM EST (link)…is a pretty decent January outcome…regardless of who is president.
Of course, it could (and SHOULD) be better…and it would be if we had a president who actually cared about private-sector job growth. But we shouldn’t droopy dog improved numbers just because there’s a Democrat in the White House and en election in 9 months. Let’s focus on what he HASN’T DONE rather than try to talk down what was a better month for the private sector.
Exactly
Death_of_the_Donkey (Diary) Friday, February 3rd at 10:44AM EST (link)and the numbers were actually somewhat better, as recent months were revised UP and the birth/death adjustment for January subtracted an addition 350,000 jobs from the total.
As for the Zero Hedge link, be careful with those, as (like in this case) they are usually clueless when it comes to reading data. That 1 million add to not in the labor force wasn’t for January, it was from revisions to prior data based on getting the 2010 census data and thus is not comparable to December 2011 (the BLS states this very clearly in the report). So no, a million more people did not drop out in January, that is simply false.
But the formula did change, DotD, back in the spring of last year
lineholder (Diary) Friday, February 3rd at 6:47PM EST (link)The government did remove people who have dropped out of the labor force from the formula. This has had and continues to have an impact on the unemployment number that is being presented to the general public. It is misleading, and should be called out on that basis.
Simple math:
20 people out of 100 people are unemployed. All 100 hundred are considered part of the active labor force. With this data being used, the unemployment rate is 20%.
After the formula changed…10 of the people who are unemployed drop out of the labor force and stop looking for work. The active labor force is reduced to 90. Under the new formula, the unemployment rate is noted as being 11.1% .
There’s still 20 people unemployed though.
The point is that the Dems are using it to fudge the numbers to make it look like Obama’s policies are succeeding. If they get the public to buy into it, then they can use it to their advantage in Nov.
Yes but you don't know why they dropped out of the labor force
bonnman Friday, February 3rd at 9:53PM EST (link)so thats why they aren’t counted. Look at it this way, would you count Mitt Romney as unemployed? He’s of labor force age and not looking for work. This goes for people going back to school or deciding to retire early. What you are prob thinking of is U4 unemployment which would be slightly higher than the traditionally used official U3 rate.
Zero Hedge is Wrong (as usual)
Death_of_the_Donkey (Diary) Friday, February 3rd at 10:55AM EST (link)The million gain in the not in the labor force is from census adjustments to past data (which the BLS clearly spells out in the report) and is not reflective of something that happened in January.
My suggested House GOP Message on Jobs Report
Spartan4Life (Diary) Friday, February 3rd at 11:29AM EST (link)“We are pleased to see a positive jobs report for January, 2012. Further, we have started to see some improvement in the overall economy since Jauary, 2011 when a Republican House majority was sworn in. So far, all we have been able to do is keep President Obama from dealing any more body blows to the economy he created in 2009 and 2010. The next steps that are needed to see even greater improvement are to start to unwind the policies passed by the Democrats from 2007-2010. In order to do that, we need to defeat Harry Reid by sending a Conservative majority to the Senate and get rid of President Obama by electing whoever is the GOP nominee in the fall. Once we have repealed Obamacare, Dodd/Frank, and all the damaging regulations put in place by this administration, we can get about the business of putting the country on a glide path towards fiscal sanity. thank you for the opportunity.”
This is still bad
unsk Friday, February 3rd at 2:43PM EST (link)There may be improvement in the January numbers, but overall the total numbers of people employed year to year and employment percentage shrank. That’s right shrank.
You can spin this anyway you want, but the overall picture is very bad. The economy is generally not improving after being in a “recovery” officially for almost two years.
For more on why this is so see Karl Denninger @ Market Ticker ::http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=201459
The plain fact is that the economy has not improved under Obama. It is gotten worse. Furthermore, serious retooling is necessary and the minor adjustments Willard would want to make won’t help much either. We are in a serious depression in a seriously over leveraged economy, not cyclical recession where the usual Progressive / Keynesian remedies would make a difference.
And Romney's chances in the general just got a lot slimmer
bonnman Friday, February 3rd at 5:11PM EST (link)There’s not a lot of spin you can put on this. Its good news for the economy, good news for Obama and bad news for Romney.
We lost 2.5 million jobs in 30 days, but unemployment has fallen by 250,000
snowshooze (Diary) Friday, February 3rd at 5:17PM EST (link)Or so.
And Barak is up there crowing, and Romney is saying it is a move in the right direction, just not enough.
As usual, the numbers are Hogwash.
Brand new is Romney agreeing with them. It almost sounded like an Obama endorsment.
...and there it is...THAT should be the narrative...
APA Guy (Diary) Saturday, February 4th at 8:31AM EST (link)Not trying to talk down what is a good jobs report, but rather spotlighting the fact that the recent uptick in jobs numbers came subsequent to Republicans running the show in the House and about 2.5 years too late for many who went bankrupt and lost their homes during that span. We tried to talk down the positive activity in 1996 instead of highlighting Clinton’s failed record during his first two years (including a collosal meltdown on health care) and look where that got us.
The numbers are always massaged
renny (Diary) Saturday, February 4th at 8:51AM EST (link)The Dept of Labor assumes monthly that 50,000 jobs are formed in garages and basements (and re-adjusts 50-90 days later) and adds them in as employed workers.
DOL also assumes for every business loss or failure that another hires those jobless workers (and re-adjusts later), so does not immediately subtract the 15,000 laid off at Acme Non-Digital Film Products.
Something NEW, is now the DOL seems to be including seasonal hires as if perm. workers–we saw this phenom. in Nov. and Dec. numbers. Most of those numbers all disappear in Jan. and Feb.
And, I cannot believe, even as lefty shills, that Yahoo and the AP (and prob. the NYTimes that took a HUGE bath last year) think the loss of nearly 2 million jobs from the ec. is good, even if a few 100,000 dropping off the rolls make the “stats” look good.
Mitt should look at the figures more closely before he opens his mouth and steps on his own campaign.
Even worse then that.
jayjayson (Diary) Tuesday, February 7th at 7:43PM EST (link)I noticed something about the labor force numbers. They haven’t changed since O entered office. Now over a 4 year period the average increase in the labor force is between 1.6% -1.8%. So at best the abor force numbers are missing 9 million workers, at worse 12 million workers. My question is where did they go?
Cavuto and Dobbs both chose to ignore the million man
olsmithie (Diary) Friday, February 3rd at 7:07PM EST (link)math involved in the new labor figure. I was very surprised. Fortunately Gerry Willis set it all straight.
Regards
After 3 Years and a Trillion Plus $
btpull Friday, February 3rd at 9:25PM EST (link)We are getting back to a normal economy growing around 3% and adding a couple hundred of thousands of jobs a month. Really not much of an accomplishment from Obama.