Jobs, Jobs, Lies, and More Jobs Data
This week the focus of this column was on the Friday Jobs Report for August and the Month in review column that was released September 1st. The Month in review column highlighted the most read columns during the month of August - not surprisingly thoes columns focused on jobs, housing, inflation, consumer spending and the Federal Debt.
(Aug 29) This week started with some research into the revisions made to the Current Employment Statistics data. Each month a report is released and in that report there are data from the current period plus revisions to the two prior periods. There are even revisions to the revisions to the data from the same month of the prior year. This past April there were major revisions made to the CES data from 2005 through 2015. When the data from 2015 was imported it showed that we lost "jobs" (workers) during January 2015. This is not much of a headline because we lose millions of jobs every January. Normally the seasonal factors convert these job losses into job gains. When did the President's Job Streak End? May 2016 or January 2015?
(Sep 1) Every month this column produces a Top Ten column with the Ten most read columns of the prior month. Sometimes there are columns from prior months that continue to garner interest. This month the Top Ten Columns of August contained eight columns from August and two from July. Two of the columns were the "Four Presidents at ___ months" column. "Four Presidents at 90 Months - Effective Unemployment over 12%" and "Four Presidents at 89 Months - Effective Unemployment Rate between 10.26% and 12.71%." examined the jobs created and the unemployment levels of Presidents Reagan, Clinton, Bush, and Obama. The "Top Ten Columns of August 2016" column also contained articles regarding the July Jobs Report, The July Consumer Price Index Report, The July Existing Home Sales Report, and the July Treasury Report.
(Sep 1) Every once in a while a thought enters my head for a potential column. The job projections in this column often focus on the monthly changes that we should expect for a given category. Recently annual changes and trends in housing as well as revenue and spending have been forwarded in articles. How are we doing with Job Creation? How are we Doing with Worker Creation? There is a difference. "Final Pre-Jobs Report Thoughts" reveals that while we are adding both workers and jobs that the pace of growth for each category is slowing.
(Sep 2) You may have read elsewhere that we added "jobs" during August. We lost one million part-time jobs and gained nearly 400,000 full-time jobs, no seasonally adjusted. We did gain 33,000 non-seasonally adjusted private sector workers - the problem is that the headline number is the seasonally adjusted Current Employment Statistics jobs - and the Department of labor had to skew the season factors used to convert. The August Jobs Numbers were a Disappointment. The reporting of them elsewhere was terrible.
Our economy is running out of gas. Scott Shellady, a Fox New Contributor, likened it to the engine on a car blowing and the powers that be pull the car over to the side of the road to re-inflate the tires. I envision it like this:
President Obama is standing in the White House with a set of car keys - possibly with his Nobel Prize hanging around his neck, dressed as a college student he says "Thanks for the car - the tires are flat, it is out of gas, it was pulling to the left when I started driving it, now it is pulling to the right, and don't trust the odometer or the gas gauge."