Surprising that the Labor Dept was off by 90,000 jobs for December (reported figures revised downward by 90k). What will the revisions be like for January? People I talk to in the business world, no matter their political persuasion, have a feeling of wariness. I hear the words ârecessionâ thrown around a lot even though things may not be particularly bad at present for their companies.
Does anyone believe these numbers? If its measured by filed unemployment benefits than I can see how it could be way off since a lot of those govât workers probably didnât apply right away if at all. I would surmise they werenât part of the calculations either or not as they should have been. Most workers never thought theyâd go without two paychecks, so holding out was probably what many did instead of filing early or at all. I just find any numbers out of this maladministration bogus or at best inflated. All the good govât people that were charged with figuring out these employment numbers were probably also out on furlough. Just call me cynical I guess.
If 175,000 workers were furloughed â unemployed during the month â the actual job gain was 125,000
Thatâs why the unemployment rate rose.
The Department of Labor is now lying about its numbers, and that is extremely dangerous.
How much of the jump was due to furloughed employees taking a temp job?
Who was collecting the data? Government workers? Were they paid? Lots of economic data was not being collected during the shutdown. Why this?
We canât hold the Department up as a beacon of truth when Trump criticizes it and then denigrate it when it seems politically expedient (âDoes anyone believe these numbers?â and âWho was collecting the data?â) But, we CAN ask TPM why they not only buried the lede but missed the real issue hereâŚDecemberâs numbers were off by 30%!!! Pretty sure that makes Januaryâs number suspect, by definition.
If most of the jobs are at places like McDonalds, and judging by signs around town and in Ann Arbor that seems to be the case, thatâs hardly something to brag about. People needs jobs that pay a living wage.
Believing any figures this administration is touting gets a huge dose of skepticism, because if anybody can manufacture fake news, itâs this bunch.
This is probably one of the biggest employment numbers Iâve ever seen and it comes during a month when 800,000 government workers and the added million in contractor service providers went without any work for the most part during this period? Nah. These numbers are bullshit. Total bullshit. You couldnât hire that many over Xmas and New Years with over a month-long govât shutdown. Those workers also didnât spend as much money during that month because many were conserving resources and simply trying to pay whatever bills were due, which means many employers didnât need to hire during this time. Unless youâre talking about debt collectors, utility companies and insurance company workers taking in remittances, I really doubt these numbers. Common sense tells you this is complete hokum.
Btw, on the front page it says 340,000 and on this page it says 304,000âŚso which is it?
Or did federal workers get new or second jobs?
It almost doesnât matter what the numbers are. If Democrats oversee economic good data, they talk it down and empathize with those who have not benefited. If Republicans oversee economic good or even bad data, they boast about it to the rooftops and the narrative of a âred hotâ economy takes hold. This structurally gives Republicans a messaging and branding advantage as the party of business, no matter how often they crash the economy or blow up the deficit. It remains incomprehensible to me how Democratsâand Obama was terrible culprit here, Im afraidâare so rhetorical self-defeating. There is no reason why Democrats could not be saying, at this moment, that the economy is a âdisaster.â For some reason they wonât.
Employers did not âshrug offâ the shutdown. The jobs were in the pipeline. The ill-effects of the shutdown on jobs will be felt in the next few months, and wonât be all that dramatic, because theyâll be spread out.
These encouraging job numbers are Obamaâs fault!
How fortunate. Employers get to screw more employees while they invest the trumPutin tax cuts in yachts, 2nd home, and more stock buyouts. Time to get real about the dire shit we face as a nation.
Shitty or simply innumerate article fails to mention that January is expected to be robust: December hiring is truncated by the christmas-new yearâs week so hiring activity is delayed until january, plus many organizations start with a fresh budget on jan 1 and can hire for positions that may have been frozen in the prior months.
A useful article would compare Jan 2019 with Jan 2018 and 2017. This reminds me of the time a company boasted of a 10% increase in monthy revenue (the month was March).
The December revision seems really large, more than usualâŚthey usually are a lot closer to the mark with the numbers. Maybe the shutdown affected it, and maybe the January number too (government workers taking a second job would look like new hires too). It would be a good idea to look at the numbers in a few months, they stop adjusting them after about three months and those are the final record.
Iâm not casting doubt about the process, to this point we havenât heard anything about the numbers being massaged (and we would, the government workers that put these together would leak if they were fudged). How the numbers get to the system, special conditions, those things can throw things off. Weâre probably still looking at a slowdown and recession in the next two years, especially if anything goes wrong in the world.