Tweet
I’m skeptical that monthly job reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics move voters in any way. People live in the real economy, and they’ve already made up their minds about it. Nevertheless, tomorrow’s jobs report, which despite Hurricane Sandy will arrive on schedule, will no doubt get hyped as TEH MOST IMPORTANT JOBS REPORT EVAH, and at least provide talking points for the campaign trail (which restarts in earnest today).
So what should we expect? ADP, which just changed its methodology, announced this morning their preliminary estimate for private-sector jobs in October, predicting an increase of 158,000. This is up sharply from their September estimate of 88,000, but it’s very hard to judge the two together, because of the change in methodology. It did beat the consensus for the forecast, however. ADP has been often wildly at variance with the BLS report, so it’s hard to glean much information from it.
First-time jobless claims fell slightly to 363,000 last week. The slightly more useful four-week rolling average, which encompasses the month of October, stands at 367,250, which is consistent with modest job growth. These claims have been fairly constant over the entire year, although you can expect a spike next week, when the survey will look at the week of Hurricane Sandy. Similar natural disasters caused spikes in the first-time jobless rate.
One negative indicator is the layoff report from consultants Challenger, Gray and Christmas. This shows that planned job cuts spiked 41% in October, to 47,724. Weak quarterly earnings reports are seen as the culprit. Layoffs remain below last year’s pace overall, but elevated in the month of October.
Plug this all in and what have you got? The consensus forecast calls for an increase in 125,000 jobs. That would be an increase from last month’s increase of 114,000, but below the increases in July and August (August and September will get revised in the report). This generally matches what we’re seeing in the ancillary reports, and shouldn’t be a number that would arouse joy or sadness in either Presidential campaign. However, with the volatility of last month’s topline unemployment rate, derived from the household survey, I wouldn’t be surprised if you saw it increase from the current level of 7.8%.
Either way, it’s a preliminary report, and we probably shouldn’t put as much weight on it as we will, especially with the political implications headed into the election.
13 Comments
Support this site!
Subscribe to the newsletter
Advertise on Firedoglake
Send
us your tips
Make us your homepage
About FDL News Desk
Holiday retail jobs have already started. They can’t just show up on 1 December or on Black Friday. They have to be trained. Many retail establishments have already begun hiring. This is going to have an impact on the numbers. The projected lay-off report is just that: projected. Those folks are still working and will have no impact on the report tomorrow. It’s a nice-to-know, but until it actually happens, it cannot be considered by rational people.
Of course, many of us aren’t rational.
Is this your approach to global warming, too?
Unemployment drop down from 7.8 to 4.8 %.
How many of these jobs are good middle class jobs, and how many are burger-flippers at McDonalds?
Oscar, gainful employment opportunities of the past are gone. The underlying cost of energy for transportation and manufacturing extracted, jobs life and liberty from the republic, to emerging markets more conducive to exploitation, hence profit, for corporations which once provided gainful employment in America. It has all been undercut by monopolies, increased energy costs and inefficiencies.
No, sir, it is not. The evidence of global warming has made itself abundantly clear.
Layoffs are not layoffs until they actually happen. I’ve seen, personally, more than one announced layoff that was severely reduced or even cancelled in practice.
Unemployment in the technical sector is at 3% with jobs going wanting.
Unfortunately, those that are unemployed do not have the skill set, the geographical status or aren’t young enough to fill the positions that are available.
One cannot make an administrative assistant into a website developer by waving a magic wand. That’s the problem with this current pool of unemployeds: they aren’t bad people; their jobs evaporated and there’s nowhere to go with the skillset they have.
Most of these jobs are in the retail sector. Probably no benefits as they are typically part-time positions, but at least some income. If your unemployment has expired, as has that of a few of my friends, it’s something to keep the wolf from the door.
DingDingDingDing
Of course, a lot of tech companies don’t really want a PITA QA person even in the best of times.
Yeah, unfortunately, I wish I could say I was being facetious.
A very good friend of mine was the Purchasing Manager for a steel mill that closed down. College-educated. He has applied for all sorts of work, including grocery store bagger and driver for one of the local hospital patient care firms. All these positions require background checks, drug tests and all the rest, which he could pass.
But he’s 57 years old.
As soon as they meet him, he’s done. Been out of work for over two years. Most businesses in our town have left the area, so there are no purchasing manager positions available. No buying. Nothing.
Oh, I well know you are not being facetious. I’m 60 and had my last job in my career field in ’04.
I’m just stubborn enough though to keep on pushing and force the b*st*rds to respond to me, one way or another
Yes, and sadly, *many* employers aren’t that interested in anyone who hasn’t worked for over one or two years, no matter what their age. Despite our current economic climate and the vast loss of jobs over the past 5 years or so, most employers still state that they are mainly only interested in hiring those who are currently employed already, or, at least have only been out of work for 12 months or less.
This is all stated privately but true enough.
Anyone past 50 and unemployed for longer than 1 year is pretty much toast. I am very fortunate, but some of my friends are not… and possibly will never be employed again, at least full-time.
You would be an unusual warmist if your concern was restricted to the warming or sea level rises experienced to date, and not to the projected changes.
One thing always to remember with the BLS (and the ADP) numbers is that they aren’t “real.” I don’t mean they are the product of a conspiracy. But they are generated by means of three surveys (two by BLS and one by ADP) which suffer from all kinds of methodological problems. For example, if you worked 5 hours last week, you are counted as employed. If you desperately want a job but haven’t seriously looked in 12 months because you kept being turned down, you are not counted.
Moreover, the numbers aren’t “real” because they apply seasonal formulas smooth out the huge peak in holiday hiring at this time of year and the trough that comes in January and February. And there is the “birth-death” of businesses formula. None of this is to say there is a conspiracy. But anybody who says without qualification that the economy generated xxx,000 jobs in October will be deluding themselves or their audience. And there will be plenty of reporters doing exactly that. It just isn’t that exact. It’s part science, part art. And it gives us the trend, which since March has been on a plateau that isn’t good enough to put all the millions of people who are out of a job back to work before 2017, much less absorb all the new entries to the working-age population. Even the “October” part is not quite accurate: The BLS report actually measures Sept. 13-Oct. 12.