When August's disappointing job totals were released a few weeks ago, it was considered important news. With that in mind, this seems like at least as big a story.
The government's estimates of job creation are not particularly accurate, a point that is often made and often ignored. On Thursday morning, the Bureau of Labor Statistics provided another reminder. The agency said it probably undercounted the extent of job creation between April 2011 and March 2012 by 20 percent.
The agency, which issues a much-discussed monthly estimate, also issues regular revisions of those estimates, which regularly receive much less attention. One of the most important revisions uses state unemployment insurance tax records – records filed by nearly all employers, which include actual counts of the numbers of people they employ -- to check the accuracy of a full year of its monthly estimates.
And what did the BLS revision show? That over the last 12 months, the economy added 386,000 jobs that up until now had not been reported. That may not sound like much, but it's a 20 percent jump over the 1.94 million jobs thought to have been created overall over that same period.
Also note, this is a net total: the private sector created 453,000 additional jobs, while Republican austerity measures forced the public sector to shed an additional 67,000 jobs.
As a political matter, Pat Garofalo notes another salient angle: even if the early 2009 job losses are held against President Obama, he's now broken into positive territory for his first term. It also means more jobs were created in Obama's first four years than during George W. Bush's first four years -- and Bush didn't inherit a global economic catastrophe.
It's very likely Mitt Romney was looking forward to arguing next week that the economy hasn't added any new jobs during Obama's term. The talking point was always ridiculous when considered in context, but now, the talking point is off the table entirely.
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This is going to be like a gag in Sean Hannitys mouth. This is all he ever talks about.
Except that he won't even acknowledge that this report exists!
That reminds me of Dizzy Gillespie , he would put a mute on his instrument . Dear old Sean would have a similar effect , merely allowing you to hear him through a mute .
Every time Hannity moves his mouth to speak, I gag.
Get Enraged and Engaged:
Mooch the Vote 2012!
;-)
Hi Y'all -- it's a shame that the minute I hear or see Fox News, I mute my TV...At one time, I believe, Fox News was a leader in news reporting
How is it a gag on Hannity's mouth? This doesn't change much at all unless you are contending there has been 0 growth in labor eligible population, hint there has not been. To remain constant there needs to be a net of 150k jobs a month, multiply that by 40 months and Obama is still way down in the labor force participation.
You mean like the gag he agreed to put in his mouth when he offered to be waterboarded for charity?
Yeah I'm not holding my breath.
Obviously a skewed librul report from those Dimmycrats running the Department of Labor. All real Americans know you can't trust govermint statisticalness. How else does that Kenyan socialist get to keep wrecking the country but with lies like these?
it was snark folks!!
Just heading them off at the pass there TC :-)
IS THIS ACTUALLY SNARK? I'M CONFUSED AND FURIOUS
TC is back to being TC!
"Confused and Furious"? Sounds like another imaginary right-wing scandal!
Sam Clemens : "There are three sorts of lies, plain lies, damn lies, and statistics ."
"The talking point was always ridiculous when considered in context, but now, the talking point is off the table entirely."
Yeah, right, if what you mean by "off the table" is "Continuously repeated as if it were still true".
Bingo. Steve, you know better than to say crap like that. The truth doesn't matter to the Republicans, and the media are too invested in "both sides lie" to straighten things out.
You beat me to it. Romney has never met a fact he couldn't ignore.
Hey, they're not going to let the Romney campaign be dictated by those pesky 'fact checkers'!
I want this chart in a bumper sticker...is there any?
The message will be that economy is still bad and should be much better. Of course they can't say anything about the American Jobs Act or all the obstruction that has been going on for almost 4 years.
Romney will dismiss this jobs report just like he dismisses the polls that show him losing, as being biased against him and towards the president. Too bad there aren't other corroborating jobs reports.
If corroborating jobs reports came from the corporate world, Republicans would say they were in the tank for Obama, like they do for the service industry - teachers, firefighters, policemen. You can't win with these people. All you can do is drown them out...
...although my preference would be to delete the last word of that sentence.
"Off the table," hahahahahaha. What, you believe in facts or something?
I love ya, Steve, but I disagree.
It should be off the table, but I think Romney will still say it during the debate. And the moderator will say nothing.
Thanks, Rollo. You're right. The talking point exists because Romney's campaign exists in a fact-free vacuum where facts are what they say they are. His answer to Jim Acosta about the Medicare ad should have proved this to Steve. Normally he's right on with his analysis, but not on this.
A fact-free vacuum? Actually, that explains a lot. Vacuums suck!
Get Enraged and Engaged:
Mooch the Vote 2012!
;-)
How quickly we forget , sigh . It should be remembered that Mittens will only need to glower or something and the Jihadists will begin behavior modification , Mitt style , snap a lash a crack a . Now with all the time saved with a glower , Mittsy will be able concentrate on not so much dredging up the memory of the dread Obama years , but reminding us how it coulda woulda been better . Ahhh ! Feels so much better in context !
Facts are irrelevant to Republican ideology. If the facts don't correlate to ideology, then fabrications are a perfect substitute. The rubes eat it up regardless of truth.
From a Ron Suskind article in NYT Magazine:
The public (rubes) need to be made more aware of of their "tooliness" for falling for the schtick.
I try to hint at it, but they don't grasp that.
Another benefit is that the Obama camp taking point of "4.6 million private sector jobs in the last 30 months.", now becomes "over 5 million jobs".
By the time of the final debate it could be 5.5 million jobs.
Uttering the phrase "5.5 million jobs created" is a political winner. Even though monthly averages are not spectacularly high.
Republican justifications for the numbers above:
1- Investors are putting money into businesses because they know Romney will come into office and that will magically make things better; remember Romney, just by being Romney, will make businesses want to hire
2- Economics is entirely psychological, therefore this is merely the result of not enough fear mongering on behalf of Republicans
3- See!!! I told you if we just shut the gub'ment down more jobs would be created!!!!
4- Republicans having control of the US Congress has accounted for all this job creation- no Democratic policies helped!!!!
5- All these jobs are temporary jobs that aren't real jobs like those created by Republicans
6- Yeah, well, the job growth would be better if Mitt Romney was in charge. 1 million jobs isn't anything to brag about
7- 1,000 more jobs would've been created if the oil pipeline would've been built! (Note: you're not supposed to wonder how number 7 doesn't conflict with number 6)
@Cartoonthenews! - lol, perfect!
This seems like something Rachel would be interested in: I certainly found it disturbing- the fact that parties might be able to screen Republican voters and Democratic voters ahead of time while registering people to vote, is pretty appalling. Maybe you guys could examine the veracity of some this stuff?
http://www.nationalmemo.com/video-appears-to-reveal-gop-voter-registration-worker-screening-out-dems-in-colorado/
e-mailed a copy with the link - hopefully she will see. Also the link regarding the Florida article
“Questionable” Palm Beach County voter egistration forms forwarded to state attorney for review
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/news/local-govt-politics/questionable-palm-beach-county-voter-registration-/nSL5Y/
Wouldn't it be extremely ironic if the party that is claiming that voter fraud is a huge problem, the Republicans, had decided to make voter fraud a problem themselves? They will have even less credibility than they do now. Our country should not be having these kinds of shennanigans going on- don't we have bigger fish to fry? If the Republicans were really concerned about the economy they would not be doing things like this. I sure hope Rachel looks into it, because I can't think of anyone else who would do so to my satisfaction.
"It's very likely Mitt Romney was looking forward to arguing next week that the economy hasn't added any new jobs during Obama's term. The talking point was always ridiculous when considered in context, but now, the talking point is off the table entirely."
That won't stop Romney and the GOP from using that false talking point, just like any other lie they spew. After all, their campaign won't be dictated by fact checkers.
Speaking of truth. The total number of employed is still several million below what it was before Obama and the democrats cratered the economy. So this piddly little revision means nothing. We are still not creating jobs fast enough to keep up with the birth rate.
The problem with red herring arguments is that you're so desperate to distract away from what it is that is being argued that you inadvertently agree with the argument you're attempting to run away from. So in this instance you're trying to raise a shiny coin and scream look at the shiny all the while inadvertently agreeing that the argument you're so scatter brained about is correct.
You just agreed that the numbers are correct, that jobs are being added and have been added, and that Obama has added more jobs as a net total than Bush did.
So presumably your argument here is that you want more Democrats in power and Obama to serve a second term since your complaint is that you want more growth than what we've seen.
You are also, conversely, stating that the Republican policies put into place before were ineffective for job growth and that Republicans are stifling job growth.
Lots of liberals and Democrats would agree. Give Obama the House and Senate and give him a filibuster proof majority in the Senate (60+) and we will see more growth, just like you want.
Actually, you are wrong. We now have 86,000 fewer people working than when Obama was inaugurated. But last month we had 33,000 MORE people working than when Obama was inaugurated. The "people working" number comes from a different source than the "jobs" numbers and is more volatile. Also, the sample size is smaller and therefore the "people working" samples are more susceptible to error.
And, as the Republicans have not yet rolled back child labor laws, we don't have to worry about jobs for newborns.. yet. As it is, almost all of our population growth now is taking place in the 55+ age group as the Baby Boomers approach retirement. Because of that, we now only need about 65,000 jobs a month to accommodate population growth.
"And what did the BLS revision show? That over the last 12 months, the economy added 386,000 jobs that up until now had not been reported. That may not sound like much, but it's a 20 percent jump over the 1.94 million jobs thought to have been created overall over that same period.
Also note, this is a net total: the private sector created 453,000 additional jobs, while Republican austerity measures forced the public sector to shed an additional 67,000 jobs."
Thus giving lie to all the usual Benen nonsense that government job losses are the problem with the recovery and that as a sector they have lost more jobs than any other.
LOL!!!
You still got nothing, bantroll!
LOL!!!
....Banned that sentence proves that Benen is correct. Unless you'd like to explain the statement that the next loss is 67,000 jobs public and 453,000 created private that means that the public sector lost jobs while the private sector added jobs. That would then mean the statement that the public sector lost the most would be correct.
Nothing you stated negates this, refutes this, or argues against it.
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/jolts.pdf
From Bureau of Labor Statistics There were 3.7 million job openings on the last business day of July, little changed from June, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.
The JOLTS report shows GROSS job additions and subtractions. The monthly jobs report (and this revision) shows NET job additions and subtractions.
We added over 4,000,000 jobs in July, and lost something like 3,900,000.
We still have about 3.4 jobseekers for every job opening out there.
The fact that the total number employed is still several million below what is was before Obama and the democrats cratered the economy is what is important, not this silly minor revision.
I'll repeat what I wrote above:
Actually, you are wrong. We now have 86,000 fewer people working than when Obama was inaugurated. But last month we had 33,000 MORE people working than when Obama was inaugurated. The "people working" number comes from a different source than the "jobs" numbers and is more volatile. Also, the sample size is smaller and therefore the "people working" samples are more susceptible to error.
And, as the Republicans have not yet rolled back child labor laws, we don't have to worry about jobs for newborns.. yet. As it is, almost all of our population growth now is taking place in the 55+ age group as the Baby Boomers approach retirement. Because of that, we now only need about 65,000 jobs a month to accommodate population growth.
About Obama and the Dems cratering the economy: Do you sniff that rightie juice poison --- or do you just gulp it down? Did you also just climb out of the cabbage patch in January 2009?
You just like to see angry fist shaking and people being evicted and can't seem to enjoy anything but cynicism?
I have seen some relatives and friends going through some real s$%& and things are becoming clearer and going in positive directions.
I have a friend who went through loss of home, health, job for a couple of years. Things turning around with now 2 job offers closer to home. She moved 3 hour drive away, but stays with us during the week for her temp job.
My sister in law going through the same kind of thing. But she is working on a plan that is going to work out for her, making lemonade from the lemons.
Sorry, I can't f'in stand it when people want to wallow is misery because they hate the President. Rmoney is not running for president for any other reason than cutting the taxes for those like himself by hurting those that are already on shaky ground of those that earned their benefits.
People like want to insist on there can be no success other that in self sufficiency. Discounting any public resources that may have helped them achieve and offer opportunity. There can be no cooperation or social benefitting from anything other than for profit endeavors. We are not talking about communism, but SOME THINGS are better when we pool resources and work together.
I do not see why people would root for more failure and do so with the intention to ruin consumer confidence. Consumer confidence drives people to order goods and services. We should all be FOR that, not sour grapes for the gradual movement toward economic recovery.
These are driveby media lies designed to disspirit conservatives from voting! The additional jobs reflect short term and temporary jobs with no attached benefits which is really called unemployment. Sorry, unemployment is still in play during the debates.
I don't think you know very much at all about jobs numbers.
The monthly jobs numbers are based on a "survey sample" of employers throughout the U.S. The sample survey is used because complete data, based on the unemployment tax forms that employers are required to submit quarterly, is not available until about six months after that quarter closes. As a result, the samples may be overestimated or underestimated.
Not only that, but these jobs numbers are NET jobs numbers. Certainly some of these jobs are temporary jobs, but there were still 386,000 MORE jobs in March 2012 than we thought there were, no matter what kind of jobs they were.
Seasonal adjustments even out temporary and Christmas jobs so that we can compare jobs month to month. Otherwise we would only be able to compare jobs numbers year over year.
That certainly was very clear, in the end your babbly read like temp jobs.
Your comment makes no sense, Sminton.
There's some kind of time warp going on here? The economy crashed in 2008, President Obama didn't take office until January of 2009.
Yep, the number of people who blame Obama for the recession is astounding. I guess a lot of these clowns just climbed out of the cabbage patch in January 2009.
Didn't you know that at the Tea party in Wonderland everyone knows the recession was caused the day Obama decide to run for President. It's his fault for getting uppity !!!
Like the MSM, and more recently, the established, reputable polling companies, the RWNJ's & FOX will just claim this is wrong. How could it be right? After all, it makes Obama look good and could easily drop UE by .2% or, under 8%.
Then Romney is toast...and FOX will squealing like hyenas and lying 24x7 as the ship goes down ;)
.
What kind of jobs? :D
How will this affect the unemployment rates?