On Dec 7, 2013, at 11:41 AM, Louis Proyect <[email protected]> wrote: > It’s easier to see the trends if you skip over the government’s wacky > data for the month of October, and compare November with September. The > number of people that the government counted as unemployed fell by > 348,000, driving the unemployment rate from 7.2 percent to 7.0 percent. > But the number of people with jobs only increased by 83,000. In other > words, for every person who found a job between September and November, > three other people stopped looking.
The author has a point, but the employment figures in the household survey are extremely volatile. The numbers from the employer (establishment) survey are far more reliable, and they've been up by 200,000 for two months in a row. In November, there was also a sharp decline in the number of unemployed. All in all it was a pretty good report - mediocre by long-term standards, but by recent standards, a barn-burner. Doug _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
