Expectations for job creation were pretty close to perfect according to the new report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, with the economy adding 157,000 jobs in January. The big news, however, is in the revisions.
First, let's note the basics. The unemployment rate was effectively unchanged at 7.9%, and as is often the case, austerity measures undermined the employment landscape -- while America's private sector added 166,000 jobs in December, the public sector lost 9,000 jobs. Indeed, over the last three months, the nation's private sector added 624,000 jobs, while 24,000 government jobs were lost.
It'd be easy for Washington to improve the latter number and lower the unemployment rate, but congressional Republicans won't allow it.
Regardless, today is the day the BLS publishes its revisions for all of 2012, and that's where we see the genuinely good news. Not only were the job totals for November and December revised up considerably -- 127,000 jobs combined -- but for the entire 2012 calendar year, we learned this morning of an additional 335,000 jobs that had not been previously reported.
That means 2.17 million jobs were created just last year, which is the best annual total since 2005, and tops seven of the eight years Bush/Cheney was in office. [Update: You'll want to check this out.]
Above you'll find the chart I run on the first Friday of every month, showing monthly job losses since the start of the Great Recession. The image makes a distinction -- red columns point to monthly job totals under the Bush administration, while blue columns point to job totals under the Obama administration.
Update: Here's another chart, this one showing monthly job losses/gains in just the private sector since the start of the Great Recession.
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And enter the conspiracy theories about the DoL cooking the books to help Obama. (note too that there were no conspiracy theories about the shrink in GDP from the left).
I was just thinking about those conspiracy theories. Somewhere the Foxy Friends who pushed the idea that the administration was cooking the books to help Obama's reelection are apologizing, or NOT.
Do you know what I want for 2013? I want to see the revival of good old fashioned journalism. I know the talking head pundits make all the jack and actual reporting is old fashioned, but I would love to think there is a real source of straight up news.
Socialism!
it is such great new, yet the unemployment number went up in Jan......
You need to look at the numbers in detail Avg Joe to understand why the unemployment number going up is less important. The unemployment rate commonly reported excludes people who aren't looking for work, commonly known as discouraged. The rate went up in January because more previously discouraged workers started looking for work again, therefore although more people were employed, the number counted as unemployed went up by the amount of people now looking for work. This is a good sign.
The other key point in this report is that the only reason that unemployment hasn't gotten even better, and also the reason that GDP shrank last month, was due to cuts in government spending. In other words, republican prescriptions for helping the economy, which almost always include government spending cuts, would actually be bad for the economy. In fact, the extra taxes paid by those who would be working if government spending weren't cut as much as it has been would offset much of the deficit created by that spending.
@Ron Beyers
"I want to see the return of good old fashioned journalism"
And editing videos (most recently Heslin) to spin a story is surely honest reporting.
Yes but Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade told me things are still very very bad!
Those two are the Typhoid Mary's of AVS (Airborne Viral Stupidity)
See!?!?! Obama is trying to get everyone to have a job! Socialist!
Last weeks initial unemployment claims 355,000. You do the math.
Why you just make up your own anyway. God forbid the sun should shine down on your gloomy little parade.
Shooter reminds me of my late father in the final years of his life. Doom and gloom all the time. Did I mention my dad watched cable news and listened to talk radio continuously? It got so bad I didn't want to visit him. It was sad watching a former newspaper executive who should have known better descend into the entertainment hell that is cable news, especially Fox News. The family should have done an intervention.
Shooter are you a retired guy who watches Fox News and listens to Rush Limbaugh all the time? Have you ever thought about volunteering your time to do good works? What about joining a service club? Kiwanis, Lions or even Rotary? They all have programs were you can help real people.
What say you friends, should we do an intervention with Shooter?
Apparently you folks enjoy being fed @!$%# sandwiches. Not surprising.
Apparently you all enjoy being fed sh1t sandwiches. Not surprising since you all believe Govt taking money, skimming a cut, and putting it back, will inspire jobs. You're living in fantasy land.
Ooops sorry for the double post.
Apparently
youfolks like blanks enjoy being fed @!$%# sandwiches. Not surprising.There. Corrected it for you, blanks.
You're welcome.
Re: #4
OK - let's do the math, but first let's figure out what the numbers mean.
How are these numbers related?
If someone gets fired - and gets unemployment (counts as an initial unemployment claim) - but the job doesn't disappear - is filled with someone else, how does that get counted?
Is the number of jobs added the total after some are added and others are lost?
Apples and oranges?
Shooter, we (including you) are fed bullsh*t sandwiches all the time. That is what they do in Washington. Our goal has to be to figure out the truth.
I happen to like Rachel a lot, and I have followed Steve for a long time, but I know they have a point of view that is informed by their need to make a living and that they are sometimes wrong. Watching the Mighty Wurlitzer on the other hand is like watching a really bad play or reading Pravda. All bullsh*t all of the time to keep their key demographic happy, with no effort at getting anything right. Sometimes, listening to Ed Schultz and Al Sharpton and some of the others on MSNBC, I worry that they are falling into the same trap as Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly.
The difference between you and me, is I know CNN and MSNBC are of commercial enterprises in the entertainment business. Fox News, on the other hand, really is trying to shape a world imagined by Rupert Murdock and Roger Ailes.
It is always good to pay attention to everything going on from a lot of different sources. Sorting out the truth is up to each of us. It requires we remain informed and have an open mind.
Maphi those are valid questions that I don't the answer to. They also point up how Govt stats can be misleading. The unemployment rate for instance. If it weren't for all the people erased from the labor force since 2009 the real rate would be double digits, yet 7.9% hits the headlines.
Or the official inflation numbers that exclude food and fuel. These days believing anything the administration offers as information has to be qualified, and qualified, and qualified, to the point they are at best misleading and worst lying by omission.
Poor, stupid Shooter. Apparently, in his dumb world, we have been losing > 1 million jobs each month for as long as records have been kept. I mean, the new claims number is always over 300,000 each week. That's at least 1.3 million per month. And we only gain 200,000 in a good month. So 1 million lost per month, 12 million per year... so we've lost at least 400 million jobs since Reagan was elected! Pretty amazing for a country that doesn't even have that many people!
... or maybe, stupid old Shooter doesn't realize that jobs created is a NET number. I mean, the dummy always makes this argument, at least when a Dem is in office...
Or maybe he's just being dishonest.
Are you sure about that?
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/about-jobs-improvement-under-president-obama
If the jobs created is a net number, why did the unemployment % go up in Jan, but the was a net gain in jobs ?
Re: #4.11
Thanks for the link. I don't know who "zerohedge" is, but the graphs were from FRED - one of my favorite sources for data.
One of the graphs is this one:
Civilian Employment - Population Ratio (SA
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/EMRATIO
I would like to point out several things:
One is that the graph in the article stops with January 2011 - and so misses the improvement since then.
The author also makes a point of showing that on 1/1/2009 it was 60.6%. As of 1/1/2013 it is 58.6. (Anybody remember what happened to the economy in between those two dates?)
Does this chart look good? H*** No! Are the numbers going up? Yes - creeping.
Another thing I want to point out is that the current % is similar to what it was back in the early 80's. As I recall, that was about the time wages started to stagnate and it became necessary for the Moms to go back to work - thus increasing the % of the population employed. So maybe the 60.6% employment is not a target we want to strive for (speaking as a Mom who had to work full-time from the time my kids were little).
Re: #4.12
The % unemployment includes only those who are actively looking for work.
When the jobs situation is really bad, some people stop looking (stay home and take care of the kids - or go to school - or whatever). When things start to look up, people start looking again, which can makes the % unemployment go up.
Raul of Dorchester banned, re-reg of willrogerswasright and others.
From January through November the beltway geniuses (like Fineman and C. Matthews) kept telling us how bad the job numbers were for Obama. Turns out it's his best year yet for job creation.
The biggest story of the 2012 election is how the media created the horserace that they so desperately wanted, out of thin air. It's impressive and disgusting.
Yes, Rollo, but it helped us win.
Our people stood in line for hours because they thought their vote mattered.
I wonder how many of their voters left the line because they thought Mitt would win without their vote.
Interesting theory. Certainly possible.
But, the media did the opposite of their job. The media's job, during the most important election we have as a country, was to inform the public, not spin their preferred narratives.
@ronbyers.
I agree the only way we get the news the way it's supposed to be is to watch the News Room, which is a drama and still gets the news right. (a year later but still the way news should be done.)
All News networks please take note, I don't need to be told what to think, I am quite able to do that, all I need is unbiased facts. In context but unbiased.
That's why I watch the BBC
Well, having been notified that my job at a Fortune 500 company, along with thousands of others', will be eliminated in three weeks doesn't exactly fill me with optimisim.
But I'm pretty sure we need more abortion laws and honorary post office namings before the economy and jobs get addressed. Priorties, people, priorities.
Shooter,
The only way to reasonably COMPARE numbers is to use the same starting point. The unemployment numbers have been calculated the same way fora LONG time. As for people leaving the workforce, you make it sound like that is a bad thing. My mother left the workforce last year. She retired. She is no longer LOOKING for work, and is not part of the pool of available labor. As Baby Boomers retire that number will increase dramatically over the next decade or so.
A person may have been looking for work and now decided to get another degree. They are getting an education, NOT looking fr work, so why would we count them as unemployed? There are also MANY people who start up their own business (home based or otherwise). They are no longer looking for work, they should not be counted in the numbers.
There is only ONE way you can consider yourself part of the labor force. LOOK FOR WORK, or HAVE WORK. If you are too lazy, stupid or bored to LOOK, you deserve to NOT be counted.
awesome, data-based news. Wondering what the crazy far right spin will be on the numbers.
To see a Repub spin, see #12 below.
Although he does have a point.
But, #11 below, has a better point.!!
If you look at the graph, most jobs were lost in 2008......following all that Mr. Bush put us through killing the economy.....that should tell you something.....
Bush had 5% unemployment during most of his time in office. I'm not sure how much growth you can expect from a level that economists consider very close to full employment. Obama has 9%, so a lot more people out of work and looking. Two very different situations. I'd trade 9% unemployment with the currently still anemic job growth in favor of 5% unemployment and even less growth any day of the week.
The only real question I have... Is Maddow really so stupid she believes this crap, or does she just think her readers and viewers are that stupid?
Re: #12
Did you seriously forget the Great Recession - that started in December 2007 - that nearly destroyed the global economy?
I agree that 5% unemployment would be terrific. So - how do we get back to that?
If you want to look at the data - lots of data - I recommend:
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/
This may be an OK place to post this--
You see all the time in the media the comparison between a family budget and a/our nation's budget. Especially any deficit.
http://neweconomicperspectives.org/p/modern-monetary-theory-primer.html
Modern Money Theory says you should NOT do this. Why?
Well, let me ask these questions to illustrate why. The nation has a GDP, for a family what is the equivalent? For a family, what is the equivalent of the Fed. Gov.?
You see, for a nation, almost all the economic transactions that matter are between persons/corporations that are both "in" the nation. For a family ALL the transactions that matter are between a family member and someone outside the family. For the nation, these transactions are the foreign trade transactions.
BTW-- I think that the balance of trade number (+or-) is important. The Repubs don't sponsor anything to make it better. Obama wants to reduce oil imports thru alternate source of energy, more mpg cars, etc. I want to reduce imports by raising tariffs to at least 20%.
Has nobody read this?
Or don't they understand it?
Or can't they answer the questions asked?
Please, my friends here start a dialogue on this, please.
This is not near enough jobs to sustain the economy and every month their is the anticipation that the jobs report will disappoint, which it has for years now. Most Americans are not earning enough income to properly support themselves and their families. The country is experiencing a widening divide between an elite income class with well-paid salaries and dividend and capital gain income from stock ownership and low-pay wage earners and those dependent on taxpayer-supported government welfare funded by extracting taxes and incurring national debt.
This situation will continue to worsen. Americans need to WAKE UP and realize that the FUTURE is one of technological unemployment and underemployment. As private sector job creation continues to deteriorate most American incomes will decline, which will result in a downturn in the economy as there will be fewer and fewer "customers with money" to purchase the products and services society needs and wants. The result: no or significantly reduced opportunity for income.
In the past decade and previous to that Americans were increasingly relying on CONSUMER DEBT to finance homes, cars, vacations, education, and their material affluence. This is the worst debt because it does not generate its own income stream to pay for its self unlike applying the logic of corporate finance, which is self-financing and asset-backed credit for productive uses to grow the economy. People invest in capital ownership on the basis that the investment will pay for itself. Ordinary Americans are shut out of this opportunity because our financial institutions require a form of loan security and relay on "past" savings and equity, which ordinary Americans, and by that I mean the majority, do not have. What is need our proposals to free economic growth from the slavery of "past" savings.
The new reality of technological unemployment is not going to go away. This reality is the result of technological innovation and invention, tectonic shifts in the technologies of production, and an obsolete union movement stuck in job creation and "more pay for less work" instead of bargaining for employee ownership and increased incomes resulting from dividends earned as stock owners in corporate America.
We need REAL solutions, which combine JOBS CREATION and OWNERSHIP CREATION. There is a solution, which will result in double-digit economic growth and enable ordinary Americans to become affluent. The Just Third Way Master Plan for America's future is published at http://foreconomicjustice.org/?p=5797.
MSNBC, once again putting Pravda to shame.
Pravda??? You should try FOX (aka Ostrich) NEWS... The Gabby Giffords story was shut down after 3 comments. I wrote some 5 more, all passed inspection, but NONE were published. I accused them of blatant censorship, but they refused to publish