U.S. Sept nonfarm payrolls rose 57,000

biz.yahoo/Reuters ^ | October 3, 2003

[Starwind]

U.S. Sept nonfarm payrolls rose 57,000
Friday October 3, 8:32 am ET

   WASHINGTON, Oct 3 (Reuters) - U.S. Labor Department
seasonally adjusted jobs data.
In 1,000s, Change       Sept     Aug  (Prev)    July  (Prev)
 in Nonfarm Payrolls      57     -41     -93     -57     -49
Jobless Rate (Pct)       6.1     6.1     6.1     6.2     6.2
Earnings, Hours of Private, Non-Farm Production workers:
.                       Sept     Aug  (Prev)    July  (Prev)
Avg Weekly Hours        33.7    33.7    33.6    33.6    33.6
Manufacturing Hours     40.4    40.2    40.1    40.1    40.1
 Overtime Hours          4.2     4.0     4.1     4.1     4.0
Earnings/Hour (dlrs)   15.45   15.46   15.45   15.43   15.43
   Pct change        -0.1     0.2     0.1     0.3     0.3
Non-Farm Month-On-Month Payroll Changes by Industry (1,000s):
.                       Sept     Aug  (Prev)    July  (Prev)
Total Private             72     -39     -67     -39     -56
Goods-Producing          -17     -29     -26     -60     -58
Construction              14      19      19       4       3
Manufacturing            -29     -46     -44     -61     -59
Service-Providing         74     -12     -67       3       9
Trade/transp/utilities    17     -10     -21     -27     -34
Wholesale Trade           -5      -9     -10     -11     -12
Retail                    10       1      -4      -6      -2
Transp/warehousing        12      -3      -7     -10     -21
Information               -4     -14     -16      -7     -10
Financial activities      10      -2      -1       9       3
Real estate/rental      unch       1       2       4       2
Professional/business     66      -5     -28      57      46
Temporary help svs        33      18       7      19      12
Leisure/hospitality       -3      -3       5      12       8
Government               -15      -2     -26     -18       7
Aggregate Weekly Hours Indexes, Seasonally Adj. (1982=100)
                              Sept     Aug    July
Total Private (pct change)       UNCH     0.3    -0.4
Manufacturing (pct change)        0.2    -0.1    -0.9
Total Private (index)            98.6    98.6    98.3
Manufacturing (index)            94.2    94.0    94.1
Note--The indexes show total aggregate hours of production or
nonsupervisory workers on private nonfarm payrolls by industry.
Pool of available workers
Seasonally adj in mlns
.         Sept      Aug
.        13.81   13.745
 Pct change
.          0.5     -1.7
  HOUSEHOLD SURVEY-Civilian Employment, Seasonally Adj.
(Monthly change in 1,000s):
.                  Sept     Aug
 Workforce           15     -10
 Employed           -52     147
 Unemployed          68    -157
JOB LEAVERS        Sept     Aug
  Total             847     782
  As Pct of
unemployed       9.4     8.8
 FORECAST:
 Reuters survey of U.S. economists forecast for Sept:
 -30,000 for U.S. non-farm payrolls
 6.2 pct jobless rate
 +0.2 average hourly earnings
 33.7 hours in average workweek
 HISTORICAL COMPARISONS/NOTES:
 BLS TO RELEASE ACTUAL BENCHNMARK REVISION TO MARCH'03
PAYROLLS IN FEB'04
 BLS--EXPECTS TO REVISE MARCH'03 NON-FARM PAYROLLS DOWN
145,000, OR -0.1 PCT
 The nonfarm payroll data is based on a survey of employers
and the jobless rate is based on a survey of households.
 Click (USLD01) for full text of employment report.

[Starwind]

The full BLS report is at THE EMPLOYMENT SITUATION: SEPTEMBER 2003

[Starwind]

Fyi...

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[alrea]

turn around in jobs = positive and predicted

[arete]

Why am I getting the feeling this report is totally cooked?

Richard W.

[lchoro]

Household survey shows a decrease for both the raw (-406,000) and the seasonally adjusted (-52,000) for the unemployed. It appears the establishment numbers are probably reporting the seasonally adjusted figures, which also include the small business fudge number of 200,000 jobs created per year.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t01.htm

[lchoro]

Household survey shows a decrease for both the raw (-406,000) and the seasonally adjusted (-52,000) for the employed. It appears the establishment numbers are probably reporting the seasonally adjusted figures, which also include the small business fudge number of 200,000 jobs created per year.

Corrected "unemployed" to "employed".

Hard to believe that unemployment doesn't rise with the porous borders that we have. Immigration shows almost 4 million newly arrived and approved. It would be difficult for any economy to absorb so many.


http://www.immigration.gov/graphics/shared/aboutus/statistics/msrjuly03/BENEFIT.HTM

[Sacajaweau]

I'd just love to know how they compute the "contract" workers. My son's contract is month by month. My friend's is per unit.

[reformedliberal]

Because you want it to be cooked? I usually see your posts on the goldbug threads, don't I?

These stats are gathered all over the government from so many different sources in separate departments that it would be next to impossible for a conspiracy to be enacted.

Sorry if this sounds harsh, but I am tired of conservatives who want to believe everything is rotten. Things are getting better. Carter would have killed for this economy. In Clinton's 1st term, this sort of news would be front-page-above-the-fold hallelulahs!

An actuary once gave me a rule of thumb for testing stats of this sort: look around you and if your private universe doesn't correlate positively with the number being touted, investigate some more and if it does, provisionally, you can probably accept it w/some degree of confidence. I have tried this w/the medical stats of how many folks die each second of some innocuous practice or how many are homeless/starving/bankrupt, etc and it is fairly accurate. So, how many of the people you know/work with/live next to are unemployed? Has that changed over the past year? If you can support your suspicions, I would be intrested in hearing about where you live, why you aren't working or why all the folks you know are out of work.

And, BTW, I am told that that is also true of our intel: it comes in bits and pieces from many sources collated in several different departments/agencies and so it would be difficult if not impossible for it to be purposely spun, even if the principals would want it to be.

[michaelt]

Because you've demonstrated that the only news you believe on the economy is bad news.

[Starwind]

Looking at the seasonally adjusted data, service jobs have gained...

It looks like most of the rise is in professional & business services, followed by adminstrative & support services, temp agencies, education and health services,, retail stores, air & rail shipping, transit & ground passenger transportation, some state & local government.

No increase, mostly decreases in mfg, logging, mining, etc.

Unadjusted, state & local education grew a lot, plus some others....it'll take awhile sort out the deatils, but overall it looks like this time the service economy grew more than the manufacturing economy shrank.

See table B-1

[arete]

Because you want it to be cooked?

Actually, what I want and expect is an honest accounting without all the flim flam, adjustments and guessing. There is real desperation in Washington right now over the economy and jobs situation and I'm not delusional enough yet to think that political pressure isn't being used to dress up the numbers.

I usually see your posts on the goldbug threads, don't I?

What's a goldbug?

Richard W.

[Starwind]

These stats are gathered all over the government from so many different sources in separate departments that it would be next to impossible for a conspiracy to be enacted.

Well, conspiracy (your word - intent to commit a crime or deceive), no. But he said 'totally cooked' and the seasonal adjustments do 'totally cook' the report, and because the nature of the adjustments are not published if one looks at only adjusted data it is very difficult to get a picture of reality.

OTOH, some adjustments (like teacher returning to school) make sense but again without knowing what adjustments were made, it is very difficult to get a picture of reality. When this happens with corporate financials, 'cooked' is the term that usually applies. Other government numbers, like CPI, are very much cooked.

The headline job increase is based on seasonal adjustments, and it appears this time the service economy grew more than the mfg economy shrank, which is consistent with the view that many of us have held that the economy is unbalanced and continues to be more so.

[Starwind]

It appears the establishment numbers are probably reporting the seasonally adjusted figures, which also include the small business fudge number of 200,000 jobs created per year.

The headline number is seasonally adjusted. The 'fudged' jobs are 145,000 and will be revised downward on Feb 6, 2004.

[JNB]

The problem is that there are too many "seasonal adjustments" used to make the numbers accurate, and all too often they are revised, often in a very dramatic fashion, later on. The BLS main problem is the manner they use the adjustments since the 90s, due to Clinton era changes that took place.

It seems very much so the job report worked, it looks like today all the DOW and S&P 500 will hit new 52 week highs, but that said, even if the numbers were beyond dispute, the economy running on liquidity injected via re-fis wont last long term.

[The Coopster]

Because you and Willie Green are life mates......

[Soren]

It's useful to keep in mind the confidence interval for these reports:

the confidence interval for the monthly change in total employment from the household survey is on the order of plus or minus 290,000. Suppose the estimate of total employment increases by 100,000 from one month to the next. The 90-percent confidence interval on the monthly change would range from -190,000 to 390,000 (100,000 +/- 290,000). These figures do not mean that the sample results are off by these magnitudes, but rather that there is about a 90-percent chance that the "true" over-the-month change lies within this interval. Since this range includes values of less than zero, we could not say with confidence that employment had, in fact, increased.

[Starwind]

It's useful to keep in mind the confidence interval for these reports

Yes, very. Thank you for the reminder.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Connect to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and look it up. They have (burried somewhere) the methodology described.

[Arrowhead1952]

Just heard the job news stats are driving the stock market up - DOW is +128 in the first hours of trading!!