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Jobless rates falls below 8% for the first time in 4 years

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gatti-man said:
I had to work 2 jobs in 2004 when I graduated from UT of Austin. Which is a higher end school. The idea that a college education guarantees you easy living is a myth. Roll up your sleeves and climb that ladder.
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Does not wanting to take a job for $12-14(max) per hour, in a job that uses barely any of my skills (a kid that got a good education in science in HS could probably do this, maybe an Associates degree) working say 40 hours a week 3rd shift with no prospects for any real advancement classify me as entitled? If so, count me in that 47% bucko.

I have a few thousand in school loans that I just couldn't pay off for a semester or two fully, I need to make a living wage to support at least a 1 bedroom apartment over my head, and finally, I am kind of in need of a new car soonish and would like to start saving.

Note: I really do not endorse either candidate too much, but yes, Romney, you are part of that 47% sucking off of Americas teet while reaping the benefits at your criminally low tax-rate and your shady business dealings.
 
pigeon said:
This is disappointing, because I thought you were a genuine poster who was just wrong, but it turns out you'd rather change the definition of the words you were using than admit that your understanding was incorrect.
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Wait, what am I misunderstanding here? I'm just pointing out that there was an increase of 600k in people working part time who would rather work full time.

Now the numbers show an increase of 114,000 nonfarm payroll employment in the month of September. So unless somehow those 114k jobs are being held by those 600k people working part time, I'm not seeing how the math adds up.

Now I'm not saying all of them are season jobs either. I'm not even sure where you came up with that assertion. I am guessing some of those 600k are indeed seasonal, but as to the exact number, I can't venture a guess until actual numbers come out. However, I am referring back to my point that I hope people get permanent and full time jobs to bring back a healthy economy again. The fact that there is an increase of 600k people working part time who want to work full time is bad, imo. That's all I'm pointing out.
 
Zhengi said:
Wait, what am I misunderstanding here? I'm just pointing out that there was an increase of 600k in people working part time who would rather work full time.

Now the numbers show an increase of 114,000 nonfarm payroll employment in the month of September. So unless somehow those 114k jobs are being held by those 600k people working part time, I'm not seeing how the math adds up.

Now I'm not saying all of them are season jobs either. I'm not even sure where you came up with that assertion. I am guessing some of those 600k are indeed seasonal, but as to the exact number, I can't venture a guess until actual numbers come out. However, I am referring back to my point that I hope people get permanent and full time jobs to bring back a healthy economy again. The fact that there is an increase of 600k people working part time who want to work full time is bad, imo. That's all I'm pointing out.
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You're mixing data from the two surveys. The household survey showed 600,000 extra part-time workers and 873,000 new workers overall, against 418,000 new entrants to the labor force. Meaning some 255,000 people moved from full-time to part-time employment. Err, not sure what I was thinking there.

The payroll survey showed nonfarm payroll employment expanded by 114,000 persons, and an increase in the average workweek by 0.1 hours. Combining these two reports (which you shouldn't do) would mean that part-time workers worked less but were more than made up for by longer hours for full-time workers. But again, you probably shouldn't try to combine that data.
 
Zhengi said:
Wait, what am I misunderstanding here? I'm just pointing out that there was an increase of 600k in people working part time who would rather work full time.

Now the numbers show an increase of 114,000 nonfarm payroll employment in the month of September. So unless somehow those 114k jobs are being held by those 600k people working part time, I'm not seeing how the math adds up.

Now I'm not saying all of them are season jobs either. I'm not even sure where you came up with that assertion. I am guessing some of those 600k are indeed seasonal, but as to the exact number, I can't venture a guess until actual numbers come out. However, I am referring back to my point that I hope people get permanent and full time jobs to bring back a healthy economy again. The fact that there is an increase of 600k people working part time who want to work full time is bad, imo. That's all I'm pointing out.
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That's a fair point, but what pigeon is taking issue with was your use of the word "temporary", for which there is an actual business definition that is separate from part-time. Part-time work doesn't go away unless the employee quits/is fired, temp jobs do whether the employee wants them to or not.

It would be better if these were all full-time positions, but part-time jobs are more encouraging for the employment picture than temp jobs.
 
WickedCobra03 said:
Does not wanting to take a job for $12-14(max) per hour, in a job that uses barely any of my skills (a kid that got a good education in science in HS could probably do this, maybe an Associates degree) working say 40 hours a week 3rd shift with no prospects for any real advancement classify me as entitled? If so, count me in that 47% bucko.

I have a few thousand in school loans that I just couldn't pay off for a semester or two fully, I need to make a living wage to support at least a 1 bedroom apartment over my head, and finally, I am kind of in need of a new car soonish and would like to start saving.

Note: I really do not endorse either candidate too much, but yes, Romney, you are part of that 47% sucking off of Americas teet while reaping the benefits at your criminally low tax-rate and your shady business dealings.
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Are you sure you meant to reply to my post? I had student loans too, 27k worth. That's why I worked 7 days a week to pay them off quick and live my life. I took an entry level job in my field that of course doesn't pay well and a 2nd job waiting tables. It's called working your way up. Why everyone expects their relatively unskilled straight out of college green self to garner large wages is beyond me, especially in this economy. Education gets you your first real job just don't expect it to pay 50-60k a year. That's not the norm for most fields.
Edit: my first job was 50+ hours a week at 35k a year. Not a picnic.
 
obama busy fixing our economy while mitt romney and the GOP are busy thinking of ways to kill big bird. who do you trust to steer the ship?
 
DqNX4.png
 
My dad is a hardcore republican and he posted a political cartoon A few weeks ago on Facebook implying that unemployment was down only because people gave up and stopped looking for jobs. I wonder what he'll say now
 
gatti-man said:
Are you sure you meant to reply to my post? I had student loans too, 27k worth. That's why I worked 7 days a week to pay them off quick and live my life. I took an entry level job in my field that of course doesn't pay well and a 2nd job waiting tables. It's called working your way up. Why everyone expects their relatively unskilled straight out of college green self to garner large wages is beyond me, especially in this economy. Education gets you your first real job just don't expect it to pay 50-60k a year. That's not the norm for most fields.
Edit: my first job was 50+ hours a week at 35k a year. Not a picnic.
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I guess I maybe hit the wrong button by mistake. But the roll up your sleeves comment might apply to my response. I am not against working my way up, not at all, that is why I basically went to college instead of making 30k right out of highschool. I don't have have close to 27k, but I don't want to be paying off loans for the rest of my life or having to continue working my way up from 26-29k salary per year if I want to have a family. I am just saying, there is a gap in this country between employers and the workforce. Sure, I don't have 10 years of experience, but I also thinking that it is kind of ridiculous that by going to college I have somewhat dug myself deeper into a hole not only monetarily wise, but also has been a time sink.
 
Zhengi said:
I would say that people working there are only there temporarily and want to move up from where they are back to full time. So in a sense, yes, they are temporary.
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So when someone finds that full time work, does that mean that this part time job created just goes away?
 
Chairhome said:
My dad is a hardcore republican and he posted a political cartoon A few weeks ago on Facebook implying that unemployment was down only because people gave up and stopped looking for jobs. I wonder what he'll say now
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Isn't that true for the most part? At least it was for last months numbers.
 
Volimar said:
Conservatives probably gave a medal to the guy that came up with "yeah but how many people just stopped looking?"

They get their very own vague, fudgeable number to use however they wish.
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Do you know how the numbers are calculated? It is clearly a real issue. Whether it applies here is a different story.
 
ggnoobIGN said:
Isn't that true for the most part? At least it was for last months numbers.
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For July and August, yes. Not for this month's.

Since Sept. 2011 there has been an increase of 2.7 million people not in the labor force, and 2.8 million people employed. That compares with an increase in the labor force of 1.1 million people and a decline of 1.8 million people in the number of "unemployed." Some of those "unemployed" people from last year found jobs, some of them dropped out.

Fenderputty said:
LAst months numbers were revised. That's why this recent jump is so large. At least that's what I thought I was reading.
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The establishment survey (business payrolls) was revised. The unemployment percentage is from the household survey, I think it is only revised at the end of the year.
 
Had to sneak a post in at work because this is so ridiculous:

Numbers are bad - Republicans: "LOOK AT THESE NUMBERS! LOOK AT THEM AND WEEP"

Numbers are slightly better but still bad - Republicans: "THE NUMBERS ARE FAAAAKE"
 
mernst23 said:
Not fast enough growth
7.8 is still bad
Obama didn't do anything to fix it
With Romney we'll be at 5% in a year
Numbers are wrong
Numbers are made up
U6 is what's really important
Underemployment
Mcdonald's jobs

Did I miss any?

Edit:
Seasonal work
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Screw that, he'll make it 2% by next year and everyone will have yachts!

Oh, and all immigrants and poor people would have been self deported by then.
 
This was my bro's response:

Jon those revisions were not the cause. They used a different survey and tacked on 873,000 jobs the largest since 1983. If you look at the u6 number it is still 14.6 the same as last month. There are two ways to lower the real rate. A decline in the labor force participation rate or adding 250,000 jobs per month. If the labor force had held steady since Obama took office the number would be 10.7. A ton have just given up looking for work. Today's number is a scam and this has been predicted to happen for more then a year and it came true.
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This is good news, BUT... how many of these are part time jobs? How many are jobs the governmemt added? How many of these are low wage jobs?
 
Gray Man said:
This is good news, BUT... how many of these are part time jobs? How many are jobs the governmemt added? How many of these are low wage jobs?
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Government job numbers going way down is the main reason unemployment is as high as it is right now. Private sector jobs have been steadily growing.
 
mavs said:
Part time and temporary employment is counted in the payroll survey. They also collect data on the average number of hours worked, which is where the nature of part-time or full-time work would show up.

According to the Economist:



I think the two large drops they mention are the huge negative numbers in August and July for people leaving the labor force.
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Yeah, sorry, I think you're right. There probably is a lot of noise in there, though it should be said that the 582,000 figure itself is not necessarily the largest non-January month since 1983, even if 873,000 is.
Meier said:
This was my bro's response:
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This jobs report is not a product of people giving up looking for work. More people entered the labor force than left it. Furthermore, the U6 figure is not indicative of the true unemployment picture. According to Ezra Klein's blog:

U6 is not an unemployment measure. It includes part-time workers who want full-time work. So it doesn’t count the increase in part-time work. But every measure of actual unemployment — U1, U2, U3, U4, and U5 — went down. You can see them all here. Again, there’s no mystery.
 
Gray Man said:
This is good news, BUT... how many of these are part time jobs? How many are jobs the governmemt added? How many of these are low wage jobs?
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600,000. 10,000. They didn't ask, but the average hourly wage rose by 7 cents and retail employment was unchanged.
 
polyh3dron said:
Government job numbers going way down is the main reason unemployment is as high as it is right now. Private sector jobs have been steadily growing.
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The source of Obama's infamous "The private sector is doing fine" line relates to the steady job growth of the private sector.
 
Good that it wasn't due to people giving up looking. Hopefully the trend continues. Overall employment is still way down, though.

Is it just me, or does no one care about the whole "McJobs" label anymore?
 
WickedCobra03 said:
I guess I maybe hit the wrong button by mistake. But the roll up your sleeves comment might apply to my response. I am not against working my way up, not at all, that is why I basically went to college instead of making 30k right out of highschool. I don't have have close to 27k, but I don't want to be paying off loans for the rest of my life or having to continue working my way up from 26-29k salary per year if I want to have a family. I am just saying, there is a gap in this country between employers and the workforce. Sure, I don't have 10 years of experience, but I also thinking that it is kind of ridiculous that by going to college I have somewhat dug myself deeper into a hole not only monetarily wise, but also has been a time sink.
Click to expand...

It's a dog eat dog world. I now make more than double what I did when I started. Simply looking at what you can make starting vs a go no where job isn't the right way of looking at it. Find a company you believe in and get in. Then work your way up. I mean if I looked at it your way I never would have stopped waiting tables. I made 45k a year there and took a large paycut with more hours and responsibility.

Look at it from the perspective of person that is hiring you. He's got 100 applications all with college degrees and no idea who really is a worker and who is a check taker. It's up to you to show them you are a worker but that's proven not given. My sister had that attitude of why should I take a pay cut I won't earn scraps in my field I have a degree. 6 years later she's still leasing apartments with zero headway into her field.
 
I'm glad for the people who got jobs and the revisions in the payroll numbers. The household survey, though...yeah I'm going to be a bit skeptical until there are a few more months of similar news. Can't wait for the Republican salt the first Friday of December when this rockets back up to 8% because it fell the other way. I'll be interested in the year-end revisions to be sure.
 
brother said:
Jon those revisions were not the cause. They used a different survey and tacked on 873,000 jobs the largest since 1983. If you look at the u6 number it is still 14.6 the same as last month. There are two ways to lower the real rate. A decline in the labor force participation rate or adding 250,000 jobs per month. If the labor force had held steady since Obama took office the number would be 10.7. A ton have just given up looking for work. Today's number is a scam and this has been predicted to happen for more then a year and it came true.
Click to expand...

His perspective is not entirely unreasonable, except insofar as he is calling the number a "scam" and seems to think that the 873,000 newly employed reflecting the largest reported increase in employment since 1983 is being compared to a different survey (it isn't). The way that unemployment is reported doesn't change from report to report, so it's no less of a scam than any other unemployment number given at any other time.

A genuine recovery from a deep recession should result in extremely strong job reports--what goes down must go up (provided there is actually a real recovery), and usually about as quickly:

45N4a.png


A recovery from a recession as deep as this one should create economic numbers and rates of growth not seen since the Great Depression. In other words, jobs reports reporting extremely large job growth should be expected. It is not an indicator of great economic governance.

All that said, one cannot look at a single jobs report and make any reasonable conclusions about the state of the economy. One must look at several data points. While this jobs report is not bad, it does not prove that any real recovery is happening, especially given the volatility of the household survey on which the unemployment rate is calculated.
 
empty vessel said:
His perspective is not entirely unreasonable, except insofar as he is calling the number a "scam" and seems to think that the 873,000 newly employed reflecting the largest reported increase in employment since 1983 is being compared to a different survey (it isn't). The way that unemployment is reported doesn't change from report to report, so it's no less of a scam than any other unemployment number given at any other time.

A genuine recovery from a deep recession should result in extremely strong job reports--what goes down must go up (provided there is actually a real recovery), and usually about as quickly:

45N4a.png


A recovery from a recession as deep as this one should create economic numbers and rates of growth not seen since the Great Depression. In other words, jobs reports reporting extremely large job growth should be expected. It is not an indicator of great economic governance.

All that said, one cannot look at a single jobs report and make any reasonable conclusions about the state of the economy. One must look at several data points. While this jobs report is not bad, it does not prove that any real recovery is happening, especially given the volatility of the household survey on which the unemployment rate is calculated.
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Well in those other recessions was there a political party doing everything in their power to sabotage our economy?
 
Joe Shlabotnik said:
That's a fair point, but what pigeon is taking issue with was your use of the word "temporary", for which there is an actual business definition that is separate from part-time. Part-time work doesn't go away unless the employee quits/is fired, temp jobs do whether the employee wants them to or not.

It would be better if these were all full-time positions, but part-time jobs are more encouraging for the employment picture than temp jobs.
Click to expand...

Ok, that's definitely a fair point.
 
polyh3dron said:
Well in those other recessions was there a political party doing everything in their power to sabotage our economy?
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There is no doubt that Republicans are to blame for the anemic recovery to date. Although I would like to see Democrats be more aggressive about it.
 
PhoenixDark said:
I see no point in celebrating mediocrity.
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And the more the left trumpets these numbers, the more middle class, independent voters will recognize just how clueless this administration is at promoting acceptable levels of economic growth.

By playing this up, some of you guys here and the lefty media are simply gift wrapping Romney another couple "zingers" to use against Obama in the next debate.
 
empty vessel said:
There is no doubt that Republicans are to blame for the anemic recovery to date. Although I would like to see Democrats be more aggressive about it.
Click to expand...



Can you give me some examples of what you're talking about? I'm not doubting the truth, I'd just like to learn more myself.

Also, can someone explain the logic behind Mitt and other republicans saying that people just quit looking for work, thus the unemployment rate decreased. Are they still not unemployed? I don't get it.
 
this is such bullshit:

The right-leaning Americans for Limited Government released a statement saying, "Either the Federal Reserve, which has its fingers on the pulse of every element of the economy, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics manufacturing survey report are grievously wrong or the number used to calculate the unemployment rate are wrong, or worse manipulated. Given that these numbers conveniently meet Obama's campaign promises one month before the election, the conclusions are obvious."
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