(snip)"Employment Facts You Didn’t Hear
October 8, 2010
By Lee Adler
Total employment actually dropped by 214,000 according to the unadjusted household survey (CPS), not seasonally hocus pocused (NSHP). The establishment survey (CES) showed a gain of 428,000, again NSHP. Hard to reconcile those numbers. I guess a bunch of the millions of self employed gave up on their businesses selling junk in the attic on Ebay. However, putting that gain in the CES in perspective, in typical non recession years the September gain ranges from 500k to 700k. 428 ain’t so great.
Total nonfarm payrolls were 130.6 million in September. That compares with a trough of 127.6 million in January and a peak level of 139.1 million in November 2007. The economy has lost 8.5 million jobs in just under 3 years. Unfortunately, there are also 1.6 million more mouths to feed in the US now than there were in November 2007. That could explain why there were 16.3 million more people on food stamps in July of 2010 (total 41.8 million) than there were in July 2007.
According to the CPS, 139.7 million folks were working in September, up from 136.8 million at the seasonal trough in January. The peak was in July 2007 when 147.3 million had jobs. So by this survey the economy has lost “just” 7.6 million jobs.
Looking at the SHP (seasonally adjusted) numbers on those two series the job losses come out to around 7.7 million.
There are fewer jobs in the US today than there were 10 years ago according to the CES and there are 25 million more people today. Over that time the percentage of the population that is employed has dropped by 6% from around 65% to around 59%.
You’ve probably already heard today that the unemployment rate including discouraged workers and those working part time who want but can’t find full time work is 17.1%. That is seasonally adjusted, and it’s off only 3/10 of a percent from the peak rate set in October of last year. The not seasonally adjusted rate is 16.2% which is up from 16.1% this month last year. Where’s the recovery?
How can we even think about a double dip? We never left the first dip. Of course employment is one of those data series that Wall Street economists don’t count when they discuss the “recovery.” As far as Wall Street is concerned, economic recoveries are about corporate profits, not people."(snip)
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