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.
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.