When I went to bed last night, a news or local channel reported that 144,000 jobs were created but it was enough jobs to move the unemployment rate at all.
When we woke at 6:00 this morning, lo and behold, the unemployment rate dropped from 8.1% to 7.8%, a really good number, if true. Of course, Obama trumpeted the numbers to his flock of believers while Mitt Romney said the real numbers is close to 11%.
The U06 unemployment rate, the rate that measures all unemployment and under employment stayed the same at 14.7%. http://portalseven.com/employment/unemployment_rate_u6.jsp
That rate has been stagnet from 15.1% to 14.5%. And again it measures: The U6 unemployment rate counts not only people without work seeking full-time employment (the more familiar U-3 rate), but also counts "marginally attached workers and those working part-time for economic reasons."
Note that some of these part-time workers counted as employed by U-3 could be working as little as an hour a week.
And the "marginally attached workers" include those who have gotten discouraged and stopped looking, but still want to work.
The age considered for this calculation is 16 years and over
So, how can the unemployment rate the president speaks of and comes from the Obama administration go down while the U-6 rates stays the same?
From Fox News:
But skeptics pointed out that not only is 7.8 percent unemployment
hardly a "real recovery," but the report reflected an uptick in
part-time jobs and the number of self-employed. Further, they stressed
that there appeared to be a huge disconnect between the modest number of
new jobs reported and the significant decrease in the unemployment
rate.
The Labor Department, based on a broad survey of employers, said 114,000 jobs were added in September.
But the unemployment rate itself is based on a separate "household
survey," which showed a whopping 873,000 new jobs in September.
"This must be an anomaly," former Congressional Budget Office
director Doug Holtz-Eakin said in a snap analysis of the numbers. "It is
out of line with any of the other data.."
Holtz-Eakin noted the household survey is smaller, suggesting it is
not as reliable. He called estimate of 873,000 new jobs "implausible."
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Dan, I've got a tinfoil hat for ya. . .
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