Employment Situation Summary Table A.Household data seasonally adjusted (Unemplymt falls to 7.8%)

Bureau of Labor Statistics ^ | 5 Oct 2012 | BLS

[xzins]

Employment Situation Summary Table A. Household data, seasonally adjusted

HOUSEHOLD DATA
Summary table A. Household data, seasonally adjusted

[Numbers in thousands]

Category	Sept. 2011	July 2012	Aug. 2012	Sept. 2012	Change from: Aug. 2012- Sept. 2012
Employment status
Civilian noninstitutional population	240,071	243,354	243,566	243,772	206
Civilian labor force	154,004	155,013	154,645	155,063	418
Participation rate	64.1	63.7	63.5	63.6	0.1
Employed	140,107	142,220	142,101	142,974	873
Employment-population ratio	58.4	58.4	58.3	58.7	0.4
Unemployed	13,897	12,794	12,544	12,088	-456
Unemployment rate	9.0	8.3	8.1	7.8	-0.3
Not in labor force	86,067	88,340	88,921	88,710	-211
Unemployment rates
Total, 16 years and over	9.0	8.3	8.1	7.8	-0.3
Adult men (20 years and over)	8.7	7.7	7.6	7.3	-0.3
Adult women (20 years and over)	8.1	7.5	7.3	7.0	-0.3
Teenagers (16 to 19 years)	24.5	23.8	24.6	23.7	-0.9
White	7.9	7.4	7.2	7.0	-0.2
Black or African American	15.9	14.1	14.1	13.4	-0.7
Asian (not seasonally adjusted)	7.8	6.2	5.9	4.8	-
Hispanic or Latino ethnicity	11.3	10.3	10.2	9.9	-0.3
Total, 25 years and over	7.7	6.9	6.8	6.6	-0.2
Less than a high school diploma	13.9	12.7	12.0	11.3	-0.7
High school graduates, no college	9.6	8.7	8.8	8.7	-0.1
Some college or associate degree	8.4	7.1	6.6	6.5	-0.1
Bachelor's degree and higher	4.2	4.1	4.1	4.1	0.0
Reason for unemployment
Job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs	8,028	7,123	7,003	6,535	-468
Job leavers	972	878	942	957	15
Reentrants	3,484	3,380	3,318	3,306	-12
New entrants	1,323	1,311	1,277	1,247	-30
Duration of unemployment
Less than 5 weeks	2,743	2,711	2,844	2,542	-302
5 to 14 weeks	2,902	3,092	2,868	2,826	-42
15 to 26 weeks	2,029	1,760	1,845	1,860	15
27 weeks and over	6,197	5,185	5,033	4,844	-189
Employed persons at work part time
Part time for economic reasons	9,270	8,246	8,031	8,613	582
Slack work or business conditions	5,900	5,342	5,217	5,523	306
Could only find part-time work	2,844	2,576	2,507	2,572	65
Part time for noneconomic reasons	18,329	18,866	18,996	18,736	-260
Persons not in the labor force (not seasonally adjusted)
Marginally attached to the labor force	2,511	2,529	2,561	2,517	-
Discouraged workers	1,037	852	844	802	-
- Over-the-month changes are not displayed for not seasonally adjusted data. NOTE: Persons whose ethnicity is identified as Hispanic or Latino may be of any race. Detail for the seasonally adjusted data shown in this table will not necessarily add to totals because of the independent seasonal adjustment of the various series. Updated population controls are introduced annually with the release of January data.

[tsowellfan]

If Christmas hiring got unemployment down to 7.8 THIS year why didn’t that happen last year? Or the year before that?

All unemployment extensions expire around Jan 14th 2013.

I have a hunch those who have already expired are being counted as working (whether they got a job or not)

And perhaps those about to expire jump on a short-term, part time job (perhaps dressed as a pirate on the street corner near a Halloween Store).

Others probably got a part time job which opened only during the holiday season.

The USPS did a BIG hiring spree for the holidays as well. The did a mass mailing of post cards announcing that. But again, short term jobs that last until jan.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Macy’s plans to hire 80,000 seasonal workers for the holidays

http://www.examiner.com/article/macy-s-plans-to-hire-80-000-seasonal-workers-for-the-holidays

[xzins]

See tsowell's post at 35 and follow the link to:

Update: Bloomberg’s Alex Kowalski has an explanation that covers most of the confusion: The household survey showed an 873,000 increase in employment, the biggest since June 1983, excluding the annual Census population adjustments. Some 582,000 Americans took part- time positions because of slack business conditions or those jobs were the only work they could find. Jeryl Bier points out another part of the explanation:

[Democrat_media]

The numbers are fake.

[xzins]

see #36 plus markomalley’s charts at 25, I think.

[9YearLurker]

And if you believe that...

[An American In Dairyland]

Miscounting the expired unemployment extensions of January 2013 would probably be enough to tweak these numbers down to 7.8%.

However, EVERY Christmas Kohls and Macys and other retailers hire seasonal help.

IF people want to make the claim that seasonal retail work makes the difference this year in getting the number down to 7.8% then how do you explain why seasonal retail work did not bring the unemployment numbers down to 7.8% last year?

What I’m saying is that obviously since those Christmas jobs did not bring the unemployment figures down to 7.8% last year or the year before that then they can’t be the reason the unemployment number came down to 7.8% this year (election year) either.

I do not believe there are enough of these Christmas retail jobs to bring the numbers down from 8.2% last month to 7.8% this month.

[khelus]

Table A-1
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t01.htm
Civilian Labor force

Not Seasonally Adjusted
155,255 - 155,075 = -180,000

Now apply the magic of seasonal adjustment and
-180,000 ==> + 418.000

Participation rate
Not seasonally adjusted
63.7 - 63.6 = -0.1
Now apply the magic of seasonal adjustment and
-0.1 ==> +0.1

[xzins]

Are you asking if part-time work makes these numbers look a lot better than they should.

You bet I do.

That coupled with the “discouraged worker” sleight-of-hand are what’s being used to keep the UE rate far lower than it should be.

And, I’ll bet there’s a problem with holdback, lost numbers, and hidden numbers, too.

[9YearLurker]

Check out the poll on the lower right section of this page:

people aren’t buying the numbers.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/us-jobless-rate-falls-7-123110416.html

[9YearLurker]

The number of people working part-time who want to work full-time didn’t surge like that last month—or any month.

They had to go back and majorly revise the two months before that even to ramp up to such a ridiculous number.

Look at this poll (lower right-hand corner), people aren’t buying it:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/us-jobless-rate-falls-7-123110416.html

[xzins]

Also, the part time number increased nearly 600,000 in one month, when the previous month they’d dropped 200,000.

[xzins]

People should NOT be buying the numbers. Do you think I’m saying that they SHOULD be buying them? If so, then we are totally misreading each other.

I’m saying that they’re being manipulated.

They’re being manipulated by “discouraged workers” which artificially decrease the number of unemployed.

They’re also being manipulated by part-time workers which artificially increases the number of employed, and especially if it’s holiday related, and it’s something like a 10-20 hour a week job.

So, if I can say I have a hundred jobs instead of 90 jobs, then I look better. And, if I can say I have 15 unemployed, instead of 25 unemployed, then I look better.

[9YearLurker]

What I’m saying is those part-time numbers are bogus—and nobody was hiring temporary holiday staff in September.

[tsowellfan]

IF people want to make the claim that seasonal retail work makes the difference this year in getting the number down to 7.8% then how do you explain why seasonal retail work did not bring the unemployment numbers down to 7.8% last year?

Before I answer that with what I think could be possible I want to say that I too find this whole 7.8% to be suspicious. Secondly, I'm no economist. There are many on FR that would know much more about me on this stuff.

It would not have been able to drop as low as 7.8% last year because the unemployment rate was at least 8.3% last year. I'm not sure what the holiday hiring had brought it down to last year.

The reason why it went from 8.3 to 8.1 was because of expiring unemployment and/or people settling for part time jobs.

[xzins]

I can accept cheating as an answer, so we’ll probably agree.

But, I also know that stores gear up for back-to-school, and start gearing up for halloween, christmas around that time, so I’m not going to say a lot of it isn’t legit.

[Will88]

I don’t know if we have season adjustments because someone thinks they make things more clear, or because they’re just one more way for the gov’t to play games with the numbers. But I don’t think we should even have seasonal adjustments. For those who pay attention to these stats, seeing the seasonal fluctuations would actually help them understand how the economy works and what factors impact various stats throughout the year.

Next, maybe the gov’t will decide to seasonally adjust the temperature and general weather activity. Sort of smooth out the extremes for us.

[khelus]

First I forgot some zeroes and data:

Table A-1
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t01.htm

Civilian Labor force
Not Seasonally Adjusted
155,255,000 - 155,075,000 = -180,000
Now apply the magic of seasonal adjustment
-180,000 becomes + 418.000

Participation rate
Not seasonally adjusted
63.7 - 63.6 = -0.1
Now apply the magic of seasonal adjustment
-0.1 becomes +0.1

Employed
Not Seasonally adjusted
143,333,000 - 140,107,000 = -3,226
Now apply the magic of seasonal adjustment
-3,226 becomes +873,000

[AppyPappy]

“Part time because I had to” number went up 697,000.

[khelus]

I don’t know if we have season adjustments because someone thinks they make things more clear, or because they’re just one more way for the gov’t to play games with the numbers. But I don’t think we should even have seasonal adjustments. For those who pay attention to these stats, seeing the seasonal fluctuations would actually help them understand how the economy works and what factors impact various stats throughout the year.

Next, maybe the gov’t will decide to seasonally adjust the temperature and general weather activity. Sort of smooth out the extremes for us.

Good observation and good point about the weather.

IMHO seasonal adjustment is just another tool that can be used to 'enhance' the stats.